Emily started gymnastics today and I think she liked it a lot. I am amazed at the progress she has made since starting daycare at the gym and doing ballet. On the first day of ballet it took a little bit of coaxing for her to go out on the floor without me, she barely moved the entire class, and that was all with us getting to stay in the room that first day.
But today we got ready and she was like la di da, just got ready and went with it. I'll admit, I was a little nervous for today's class. My husband couldn't come today, he had to take our camper to get it fixed, so I had to take her alone. I am an odd contradiction of fiercely independent....and I need someone to come with me the first time...like to anything. It took me weeks to be brave enough to go use the drive-thru pharmacy by myself for the first time. But once I've done something, I am fine from then on...and even if I have to do something the first time by myself, I don't like it, but I do it and then all is well. I was just a bit anxious this morning, not knowing what to expect.
Unlike her ballet class, gymnastics is ongoing, so when you want to start, you just sign up and start on the first of the month (usually, they were closed last week for the holiday). So rather than all of the kids starting this class together, Emily could have very well been the only new kid, and these other kids could have been going there for months now, and all knew each other. I was also a bit nervous about the mom situation. Was I coming into an already established mom-clique?
Please, I watch too much TV apparently. This is freaking Michigan suburbia, not LA. The moms were fine, none of them looked like a Stepford Wife, none of them looked polish or like they had to cancel their mani/pedi to bring their kid to gymnastics. In fact no one even talked to each other....the class was just three other girls, so of course, just three other moms and we just sat there and watched our kids.
When her teacher first came out and called her class, she took me by the hand and said come come, wanting me to come in with her. But there, they don't even do the first class with the parents. Her class, the itty bitty monkeys (how damn cute is that?) is without parents, but the class below, the tiny monkeys, is like a mommy and me class where the parents participate too. But those are mostly 1 and 2 year olds, for us to have done that, we would have had to start a year or two ago. But as soon as I told her I'd be watching from that room, she happily took off with her teacher and other classmates. They started with some stretching and I saw her immediately do her "butterfly" which she learned in ballet where you sit with your feet touching and then "flap" your legs up and down. I saw her sitting there chatting away with her teacher. It was soooo cute!.
It's such a worry off my shoulders to see that she isn't as shy as I was as a kid. I was painfully shy. I had terrible anxiety over things, to which I usually suffered in silence because I didn't want anyone to know how much anxiety I had. I obviously still have it today as I said, but it's much better. Fake it till you feel it is my motto. When I was her age, I would have had stomach aches before starting a new class like that, I would have been so worried and nervous. I can remember dreading swim lessons every day in the summer. This was my thought process....what if my class is in a different spot from yesterday (you went out onto the pool deck and located your teacher and class sitting on towels), what if I couldn't find them, what if I had to wander around the pool deck looking for them, what if the other kids were all better than me, what if they made me go underwater, what if they made me dive in the water, what if I couldn't find my mom after class, what if she left and doesn't come back to get me.....yeah, it sucked. Having that much anxiety is not fun and once it became apparent that Emily is pretty shy, I was very worried about her having my anxiety.
While she is shy, she is so much faster to warm up than I was, and I don't think the shyness hits her until the moment, so I don't think it dawns on her to be anxious or nervous to things as we're headed there. If she was nervous this morning, I totally couldn't tell. I worried about her shyness and being an only child, but I am starting to wonder if it helps her, and if having an older brother, an older brother who is 4 years older no less, actually hurt me in terms of being shy and so nervous. I can't think of much of anything that I went to as a kid that he didn't go to as well, so I likely hit behind him, and used him as my crutch. Since Emily is, for all intents and purposes, an only child, she doesn't have anyone to hide behind and she is forced to do things. Regardless of why, I am so glad it appears as though she doesn't suffer from shyness as badly as I did.
She did really well, she tried almost everything the teacher asked her to try, and only refused or stopped on a couple things when it was getting too scary. It was obvious one of the little girls has had gymnastics before as she was doing very well with everything, but the other two are either totally new, or relatively new. So Emily definitely was the most timid out of all of them to try certain things, I wouldn't say the other two girls are that much ahead of her experience wise. I took a video of almost every skill they did today. I am excited to do another video in about a month and see how well she does.
At the end they played in this pit with giant foam blocks, and they could also swing on a rope swing and then fall into the pit. She wouldn't do it though, and was already in the pit. I am not sure if she declined because she was afraid of the swing, or because she was just having too much fun in the foam pit. I think the latter because when they came out of class, she started crying, saying she wanted to go down the slide that led to the foam pit. But they have open gym for just $5 everyday for an hour after her class, so some days we'll stay and do that and she can just play on anything she wants and practice what she learned during class.
I'm so happy that she likes it so far, and she seemed to like her teacher and I caught her several times chatting up the other kids in class. I am so proud of my baby. Oh, and her teacher's name is Miss Kayla <3
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