Annalise's Alley: Gym Class

At the beginning of October, Annalise started a gym class on Saturdays at the Sportsplex. It has been a lot of fun for both of us! At the beginning I thought that she would be really shy and that it would take a few weeks for her to even do anything, but I was wrong! Not that she wanted anything to do with any of the other adults there but she has only been afraid to do one thing the whole time we have been going. In addition to enjoying the equipment and little routines that she has to do, Anna really likes watching the older girls flip in the air. She always tells me "I do that, Mommy" and "I go over there, Mommy". I always tell her she can do it when she is bigger, but oh my, I can't imagine the heart palpitations I will get watching her flying around in mid air!
On a recent Saturday Stan took these pictures. Have I mentioned that I hate camera? No matter what setting (and you will see that Stan tried a few different ones), nothing seems to work to get decent pictures.

Ready to start gym class!

We always start by doing stretches. Annalise loves to go find her green square on the floor and obsesses over making sure that she stays on it the whole time.

Rope swing! She actually has pretty good upper body strength and does pretty well with this.

A little trampoline jumping.

Anna loves to crawl through this tube!

Usually she goes off to the side without the mat because she is waayyyy too tall to swing with the mat underneath her. On this day though she only wanted to drag her knees for some reason. This is one of her favorite things though. She calls it the "Swingy Swoo". I have no idea why.

On the balance beam. She is bending over to ask me where the stuffed animals are. The previous week the teacher got out animals and put them on the beam and the kids had to step over them. It became an issue that week because many of the kids were having fits about picking them up. Annalise just liked walking over them and would say "Hi, (fill in the blank with the type of animal it was). She would then just stare at the kids who were having fits. In fact, she often just stares at kids when they are having fits which I HATE because I am always fearful that she will start to think that that is way to act. I joke to Stan and say that I am concerned that she took "mental notes" on poor behavior!!

This child LOVES this pit of foam blocks. Me, on the other hand, not so much. My germ radar goes on extreme overload for this one! But Anna loves it. She runs down that long trampoline and would jump in head first if I would let her. Here I am telling her to wait so that I can jump in. Anna thinks it is really funny when I get in and loves to jump to me! This summer at the pool should be fun!