Gym time

No, I'm not going to the gym for my own exercise regimen. I'll divulge the secret to my slight weight loss another day.

It was rainy this morning, so I knew I had to find something fun and active for the girls and me. Per the recommendation of a neighbor, we went to a local gymnastics gym playtime. Man, was it fun! The girls were completely exhausted from all the trampolining (or attempted trampolining, in Peanut's case), balancing and swinging -- and I moved quite a bit too, trying to keep track of both of them.

I have wondered since the Olympics how watching gymnastics affected them. Besides learning to "sell" their landings when they fall or jump, I was curious if any of the fanfare and (hopefully) athleticism would stick with them. As it turns out, the fanfare stuck with Jellybean.

On the way to the gym this morning, Jellybean asks me, "Will the audience clap for us at the gym?"

Me: "Um, well, there might not be an audience there today. But I'll clap for you when you do things."

Jellybean: "No, I don't want YOU to clap for me. I want the audience to clap."

Me: "Oh, okay."

Olympic impressions -- good or bad?

We've been watching Olympics a lot this year -- even on our aforementioned vacation, which is a bit insane, but it only happens every four years (the Olympics, not our vacation, I hope!).

Jellybean is currently fascinated with cartwheels. She's only 3, so unless she's a trained Chinese gymnast, she has no hope of actually doing one until she's 5 or older. But, we keep encouraging her to try.

I thought she might like seeing some Olympic gymnastics on TV. We don't do much TV for the kids here, but I recorded gymnastics so I could play it back in bits and pieces. Sure enough, she loved it. Peanut got to see a few minutes of it too.

Their responses to the tumbling geniuses were fascinating to me. Jellybean kept asking, "Is she a girl? Or is she a lady?" about each gymnast she saw. I had to chuckle to myself, because if you've heard the controversy about the Chinese gymnasts' ages, she's hit the nail on the head. I am guessing that her motivation is trying to figure out how much older than her they are, because they are clearly capable of cartwheels at that point.

Peanut paid the gymnasts way more attention than I thought she would. Usually she takes TV time as her opportunity to rifle through the contents of our TV cabinet, which is closed tight when the TV is not on (read: all day every day). Instead, she stood about 3 feet from the TV and raised her arms over her head touchdown style every time a gymnast struck her landing pose.

I tried to be extra aware of my comments as impressions on them, especially Jellybean. I made a point to talk about strength and practice and coaches instead of superficial beauty and leotards. Hopefully that worked. Only time will tell.