So many posts, so little time
The room at our park district gymnastics center is pretty sweet, in my opinion. And this is surprising since most things very close to us are not sweet. This park is in Pilsen, which is a predominantly hispanic neighborhood, and the teacher is also hispanic. He has a thick accent, so I'm not 100% sure what his name is, but I think maybe he said it's "Mario". My kids call him "teacher" though because we aren't sure.
He's pretty strict, and doesn't allow goofing off, so of course this means Sammy is just barely allowed in the class. I have to peek my head into the class about 5 times in the hour and yell "SAMMY....get out of the chalk and go obey your teacher" or "SAAAAAAAAMMMY....get off the vault and go do the headstands with the class!" Now, we've lucked out and somehow there are only 4 kids in this particular time slot, so Sammy doesn't have to wait very long between turns.
Which is good because he doesn't wait for things. He vaults. Now, the upside is that he's pretty darn good at the stunts he's doing when he's disobeying the teacher, but obviously the obedience is more important, right? Sometimes I wonder if, instead of a class, though, they might allow me to just rent out the gym for an hour and let Sammy just go wild and do what he wants. I have a feeling he'd be a lot tamer at home after we let him do about 30 vaults...maybe 50. He did actually request a vault for Christmas.
Here he is on the rings. We actually bought a set of rings from IKEA and mounted them to the ceiling in the hallway downstairs. We don't have room for a vault unfortunately, but the rings do get a good workout most days.
Here they are after class. This is always the time when I hear a drumroll playing in my ears because this is when Mr Mario/Teacher decides whether or not Sammy deserves a stamp or not. If he hasn't "listened" well enough, NO STAMP. He doesn't seem to really care if he doesn't get one, but I always feel a little broken hearted about it. It will make you happy to know, though, if you have developed any affinity for this cute/naughty boy, that he did get a stamp on this last day of gymnastics for the year. They start up again this January. This was Monday. Now, Claire, who is not normally particularly coordinated or daring, surprised us tonight by kicking herself up into a headstand before bed and holding it for quite a while. I was on the fence about whether or not to do it next semester, but after that (she was SOOOOO proud of herself) I decided we should keep going. Maybe she'll find her inner Harris competitiveness afterall.
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