With as much attention as Alexander tends to receive due to the surgery and his therapies, it becomes even more imperative that Nicholas have special activities and times that are his and his alone. Bath time and the obligatory story before bed are two of those times in Nicholas’ daily routine.
But it’s even more important that we help him release the nearly boundless energy he has and for that, we turned to a gymnastics class designed for little ones of his age. It’s a weekly session that lasts about 45 minutes (when you get into it…there is the hurry up and wait before and the pack ’em up after).
Now imagine this if you can! This class is a mixed bag of toddlers… the ones under two-and-a-half years old are Beasts and the ones closer to three years old are Super Beasts. On that scale, Nicholas falls right in the middle of the scale so I don’t know if that makes him Above Average Beast but whatever. 🙂 Into the class they go and there are big mats and gymnastics equipment strewn about this big open room.
For their part, the students are very orderly and amenable to the classroom setting. You know the bit…attentive to the instructor when she’s speaking and fully engaged in the paying attention thing without unnecessary commentary.
And whilst we’re on that subject…does your home state’s postal initials stand for “Fantasy Land”?!?*
The people running the programme were smart enough to know that you have at most three or four minutes for a given skill before the class descends into a thinly-veiled chaos!
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to try desperately to keep up with your particular beast and help keep them at least reasonably on-target with the skills the instructor is trying to impart. If you’re not in decent shape, a few weeks of chasing after an excited two year-old who is faster and more agile than you are when it comes to slipping round other parents and children will certainly do the trick. Atkins and South Beach wishes their exercise programs were this good!
Seriously, there are a lot of good things that Nicholas can learn from this class above and beyond the gymnastics skills (which he is pretty good at but he won’t jump off the platform…he’ll go butt-on-platform and then to the floor every time…come on, Gramps used to jump out of planes at high altitudes…three feet, I tell you…it’s just a three foot drop instead of ten thousand feet!!!). You learn pretty quickly about cooperation and sharing in this class, how to tidy the play area, and a whole lot of other useful little nuggets. Plus the whole taking direction from an instructor thing.
But most importantly, it’s his time to be in the spotlight with his special activity. And that plus the fact that he’s usually quite tired at the end of it and sleeps well through the night…well, you just can’t put a price tag on that, can you? 🙂
*For our Eagle-Eyed BLOG Readers who actually live in Florida, please don’t shoot the messenger!!! I can’t help it that the US Postal Service didn’t consult with Disney before picking an abbreviation that actually could stand for Fantasy Land. Of course, having lived there myself, I have to wonder if it wasn’t at least appropriate for the denizens of that big white tower in Tallahassee… 🙂
