Sammy loves his tumbling class on base! Mom took a bunch of pictures today. In the shot above he’s doing one-footed jumping and we count to see how many he can do before toppling over. I think he hit 8 today. Before class started today he waited impatiently for the clock to tick by so he could go out on the floor and do warm ups. He kept asking me in his sweet voice “are we ready to start yet?” His favorite activity is the trampoline. He rushes through the tumbling part (forward roll, backward roll, log roll, hand stand, rope climbing, bars, etc.) just to get on that big trampoline. He’ll jump and jump and jump, sometimes flopping down on his back to catch his breath. He can sometimes be persuaded to go get a swig of water from his water bottle which he stores in a basket at the gym entrance. Then he races back for more! At the end of class, the other kids do this parachute thing (raising and lowering a big round nylon sheet with the kids hanging out underneath watching), which is cute, but Sam never wants any part of it. He grabs a big beach ball and hustles it back to the trampoline and bounces with his friend “ball” – the ball bounces as high as his head when he really gets it going. When he’s done he is so sweaty and tired, but today he asked “when is the next class?” He is eager to join the bigger kids who get more instruction on all the equipment. The class he’s in is more free-form with the mommies supervising. His instructor is really nice and loves the kids. Today he got some personal attention on the equipment and really seemed to appreciate learning from someone new…his “teacher.” Any other observations, mom, that we should record for him? 🙂

He tried the parachute a few times when he was about 1 year old (Poulsbo), but to his way of thinking, that’s ‘kid stuff”.   (He doesn’t avoid it because of any fear). And he bounces that ball by “jumping it up” – never touching it with his hands.  It’s as if the ball has a life of its own!  The smaller kids on the trampoline get his ‘bouncy” too!  Balance beam today was “a cake walk”!