I'll Tumble 4 Ya

The following was originally posted September 6, 2009, at http://www.parentclick.com/BlogPost.html?id=1247:

As Riley and Jenna close in on school age, there's a definite, discernable difference in their needs, physically speaking. They need more exercise.

Riley never really took to soccer (though we strongly suspect that my coaching his team had a lot to do with that), and Jenna's independent streak left us skeptical that she'd take to organized instruction.

Then we discovered the Hamilton County Sports Complex, and our problems in this area seemed solved. They had karate, perfect for Riley, and gymnastics, which our bouncing baby girl would no doubt love.

We hit their summer fair and got to try out some of their wares. Riley did love the karate, but he loved the gymnastics even more, especially their two very large pits full of foam cubes, and even more than that he loved climbing the balance beam and leaping into those pits of foam.

So we enrolled Riley and Jenna both in gymnastics. They were in different "classes," of course, but went at the same time on the same night, which is most convenient for Crystal and I.

And in some ways the two couldn't be more different. Riley pulled the shy routine, refusing to get involved, and sitting while the rest of the class performed calisthenics and stretched. He withdrew, even with personalized instruction in small groups.

Jenna, on the other hand, became the social butterfly without even spending time in the cocoon. On the contrary, her biggest problem was waiting her turn. She struggled and squirmed as Crystal held her, and screamed as only she can a few times in hopes of wriggling free.

She was equally exuberant in performing the activities in spirit, if not in body. Her tiny legs and undeveloped sense of balance made for awkward, weight-shifting histrionics, but she soon began getting the hang of her exercises, be they jumping on the trampoline, navigating the balance beam, or doing a front roll. Her long wavy hair flopped forward dramatically as she tucked her head , but she needed some help getting her body over.

Riley, as I suspected, is a little less trusting, and needs to see that teacher and student alike won't betray his trust by teasing or laughing at him. After watching for 10 or 15 minutes, you could see the itch developing, and soon he was running, flipping, and bouncing with everyone else. We introduced him to a classmate named Jack, and while they didn't exactly get chummy right away, it did help, and soon he was bouncing on the trampoline, gripping the rings, though he got help actually flipping his body between them (he too, seems to have inherited his father's body control), and sneaking a full-on dive into the foam here and there, whether they were at that station or not.

Jenna continued her fear of public toilets (specifically their tendency to flush unnecessarily loudly), cutting into her play time as I fought with her to stay on the potty, until, finally, she went pee pee.

The next week was more of the same, with Jenna leaping headlong, this time wearing her little tu tu as she pranced about, but Riley taking a little longer to get into the mix. This time, though, once he started, he threw himself into it. Even his dives into the foam were more confident, instead of the somewhat tentative foot-first jumps, he did swan dives that would make Superfly Snuka proud.