Summer Olympics 2024, Here We Come!

There is a young man in our house who has been obsessed, I mean obsessed, with tumbling, cartwheels, flips, headstands, handstands, and general gymnasticry. (You can look it up, but I'm pretty sure it's such a new word you won't find it on dictionary.com.) Our couch gets disassembled daily in order to make mats for softening the blows of intense practice. He hasn't shown much interest in many sports other than gymnastics, so we decided to go ahead and sign him up for classes at a local gymnastics academy for some beginning classes. And since whatever Will does Catie does, we signed her up too.

Those of you who know Will well know that he's not a patient boy. My procrastination paid off this time- I called last week and left a message at the gym, and they called back Monday to get the kids on the roster for Tuesday classes. I only had to listen to the incessant "How many more minutes until gymnastics?" question for fewer than 24 hours.

So they had their first classes today- Will's a Peridot and Catie's an Opal. Will really seemed pretty good, and really enjoyed himself even though he was the only boy in the entire gym and there were LOTS of classes going on. But he listened, followed directions, flipped around the bars, bounced on the trampoline well, and showed his teacher his cartwheels. Here he is in all his giddiness:

Catie has a little more work to do because her core doesn't seem to be quite strong enough (perhaps it's that buddha belly she's toting around?), but all in all she did very well. She was probably more excited about the leotard than the actual class-- our friends Olivia and Ava gave her two! Her first-day portrait:

And for good measure, and since they're so cute, here's the two of them together: