Kidnastics...

I'm bummed that all of these pictures turned out so dark, but hopefully you can still see how cute Gavin is in his little "Kidnastics" class. He goes for 50 minutes on Thursday mornings, and I usually watch him from above while walking around the track with Gage. (And sometimes I get glares and admonitions about getting out of the inside runners' lane as I'm trying to catch Gavin for his turn on the trampoline or balance beam. Oh c'mon...give me a break!) It's so fun for me to watch Gavin jump on the trampoline and try to follow the teacher's instructions and imitate her actions. And one of my favorite parts is watching the little Olympic bow they all do at the end of their turn. So precious!

This is Gavin's favorite part: the zip line! And he gets to fall into the pit of foam blocks for even more fun and adventure. He's always a bit bummed when the zip line is tied up during a lesson.

Gavin recently discovered this little ladder. Lately he's been getting into climbing it and falling backwards into the foam blocks. Jackson is another one of his little classmates; there are three boys and about four girls in his little group. A couple of weeks ago, Gavin informed me that he and another little girl had been put in time out during class. "Yeah, we weren't listening to the teacher." His new motivation for behaving well has become the chance to play in the rec center play area after his class. I'm glad that it's working! We've had no time outs to speak of lately!

Here he was doing a little bear crawl on the parallel bars.

I wish that there were a way to capture how quickly and haphazardly Gavin normally runs across these balance beams. It cracks me up! He can't be bothered to slow down enough to master the art of balancing most of the time. He's gotten better at this lately, and in this picture he might have been going backwards. I put down some masking tape on the floor in the kitchen to help simulate a balance beam at home, but there was nowhere for him to fall when he wasn't balancing so I'm not sure how much that helped.

This class has been so good for him! It's a great way for him to practice taking turns and waiting for his turn, following directions, waiting in line, meeting new kids when Mommy's not around, etc. When I see him talking with the other little kids in class I just have to wonder what in the world they're talking about. I love to imagine what those little conversations are all about. Can you picture it? One time he told me that one of the girls in class told him "no" when he was writing in the teacher's book. Not exactly what I was hoping for with the preschool chit chat, but it's a start!