'nastics

N is still taking gymnastics (or, 'nastics, as she calls it) and loves it. She is doing pretty well. She loves the bars. LOVES. She hangs from them very well and the first thing she does when allowed into the little baby area is hang from the nearest bar, putting her toes up near her hands. If she can't quite reach the bar, she climbs up the side and reaches over to hang. Coach says she has a lot of strength in her little hands and recommends baby wrestling as an early career choice. She does a very good chin-up hold and can hang for more than a ten count. She still needs to work on holding herself up over the bar with straight arms. She's beginning to understand what we want her to do and it's just a matter of practice and strength. This was her first time on parallel bars.

She does somersaults well, too, and does her bear crawl well. (Bear crawl is crawling on all fours across a horizontal ladder.) She also jumps very well for a 2.5 year old. Developmentally, kids may not be able to jump and land on both feet at the same time until around 3, but this is something N mastered as soon as she started gymnastics.

An area she struggles with is balance beam. I think if she slowed down on it, she could do it, but she tends to try to walk too fast and doesn't really concentrate. She does it easily with a little support, but on her own she just wobbles all over the place, takes one step, falls off, gets back on, takes another step, falls off, etc. She always gets back on at the end to dismount, though, with a nice two-footed jump. She'll get the hang of it eventually, though.

This week she "skinned the cat" by herself and was so proud of herself! Her arms are short and learning to do this and keep her hold was difficult for her, but she finally mastered doing it by herself. Wearing a pull-up instead of a regular diaper may have helped...regular diapers are bulkier and with her short little arms, even the coach couldn't always get her little bottom through until recently.

We have had a lot less incidence of pouting lately, but here she is coming to grips with the fact that it was her classmate's turn to skin the cat and after Mommy told her not to do it on the higher bar because Coach said she could hurt her arms by doing it on something other than the lowest setting. She was so proud and ran over to the higher bar to keep doing it by herself, but we had to tell her no. So she sat down, crossed her arms, and had a moment. More like a minute. Or two.

Speaking of pull-ups. After an initial three-day potty bonanza, she took about a two week vacation from anything potty. Then last week she decided that it was something she wanted to do again. Nowadays she goes on the potty quite a bit. She isn't totally dependable, but yesterday she kept herself dry and clean all morning. She received a Touch and Teach Turtle for Christmas and has decided this is her toy of choice on the potty.