Living Vicariously

Well, as you all know, I am about to give birth to my 3rd son. So, I have taken it upon myself to use my niece to get my girly fix. We enrolled her in gymnastics this week and she started on Thursday. I got to take her to the gym where I took gymnastics for years and then taught gymnastics when I graduated high school.

Here we are upon our arrival. She was so excited she was almost beside herself.

Here she is waiting in line to go in for her class. There were girls of all ages but the girls in her specific group were her age, or close to it.
She got to pick out her leotard and she chose this one because she liked how soft it was.

Ava had a little bit of trouble staying focused on what she was supposed to be doing when her teacher was helping the other students and this little girl kept trying to keep her straight, telling her where to stand in line and to stay on her own mat. It was pretty funny.

Ava was learning how to do a forward roll, which she already knew how to do, but I think she liked rolling down then wedge mat because it makes her go faster.

Here she is climbing up onto the bar! She was especially excited about this part.

pushing up into a back bend was a breeze for her. She did that better than the rest.

Here she is on the beam. This one lies flat on the ground and she kept running to the higher ones and walking on them. You can tell in her mind she is better than this just like she thinks she is at everything else. She is just too big for her britches. I will say though, when she climbed up onto the other beam which sits about a foot off of the ground, she did it really well, and without falling off so, maybe she's right.

Getting help with her forward roll.

Here she is learning to do a cartwheel over the mat. It's pretty hard to teach a child this age to do a cartwheel, but she was trying.

This was at the beginning of class, when they were stretching. As you can see there is one boy in her class, and Mikey and I were thinking about letting Huett take classes too. He would be great at it, and my brother took gymnastics with me and Trisha when we were growing up, so it can't hurt! I'm going to take him Thursday night and let him watch to see what he thinks about it.

Anyway, I got a little sad talking to the gym-owner Regina because I started thinking about how I probably won't ever have a daughter to take on my own, but I got over it when I wrote that check for Ava's gym fees and started to realize how much money we will save having 3 sons. I mean a monthly fee, not to mention leotards and hair bows and recitals and cover-ups, etc.

I might have to pay a registration fee for the boys to play sports but it is a one-time a year thing, and then uniforms are usually included. And they are only 4 years old.

Oh boy...and girl!