Tonight, I took Julia to the first session of her "tumbling" class at the Northfield gymnastics center. Honestly, there's not much tumbling occurring, except inadvertently, but the kids have a fantastic time running around the gym and especially using some of the gymnastics equipment, like the trampolines. Julia attended the same class last fall, and took most of the time at each session and over the course of the weeks just getting used to being around other kids (often bigger, older, and faster). Not having mastered the two-feet-off-the-floor jump, she also couldn't really enjoy lots of the equipment. One of the best things in the gym is a deep pit filled with foam cubes. Lots of kids just throw themselves into it with great abandon, but last time around Julia could only really step off the edge, invariably catching her other foot and falling headfirst the two feet into the cubes. Not much fun.
Compare that to tonight's exuberant playing. Not only did Julia run around at top speed for most of our 45-minute session, but she was totally unperturbed by the other kids (even the weepy boy who cried every five minutes) and she used her jumping/hopping abilities to great effect on the trampolines and the pit. I eventually had to cut off the pit-jumping when my arms got too tired from lifting her up and out 30 or times. No problem! Back to the trampoline! And, hilariously, the whole time we were there, she pretended that she was Charlie Brown (whom she knows from a tape of the Christmas special and a few coloring books) and that was his friend, "Lions." She even bemoaned the fact that poor Sally (Charlie Brown's younger sister, of course) couldn't be there to share in the fun.