Making the Move

It's hard to spend more than 5 minutes with Charlotte without seeing her do some kind of tumbling move and she's really good at what she does -- probably because she practices it all the time! We've been thinking that at some point she might give gymnastics a try, but she was happy just tumbling so we didn't push it. Her tumbling coach always told us that Charlotte would let us know when/if she wanted to do more that tumble, but, honestly, I think we all thought that day would be months, if not years, from now. However, back in early January she started asking to learn bar and beam and vault, and after several weeks of putting her off, I finally made the call to a local gym to ask about classes. After talking to the girl on the phone and answering her questions about Charlotte's skill set, she decided we needed to come in for an eval. We came in the next day and one of the coaches evaluated Charlotte and we were immediately invited to be part of a special class. It's a class you have to be asked to join and Charlotte was so excited to start. The class was actually meeting that day and Charlotte wanted to start right away! 

She 

I knew that she'd be behind on bars and beam since she's never been around them, but I also knew that she'd be fine on the floor. Well, she was waaaaayyyy behind on the bars, and a little behind on beam, but her floor skills were super advanced. :) So it kinda all balanced out. She absolutely loves class and coach Katie! I'm very thankful that she has a coach that seems to fit with her perfectly! And, Charlotte works so hard for her. 

Charlotte's class meets 2 times each week and she has learned so much. It took her 3 weeks to learn how to do a pullover and back hip circle on the bars, which caught her up completely with her class -- now they are moving on to other things. She has caught up on beam and is still rocking out the floor. :) 

And, all this work has worn her out! This girl has napped more in the past 5 weeks than in the past 2 years. :) They are usually short naps, but still! The first couple of weeks she napped quite a bit, but the past few weeks I think her body has adjusted and she's not napping anymore. But those naps sure were sweet while they lasted!

I've said before, her tumble coach is wonderful and will always have a special place in our hearts. :) When I told him that we were moving her to Hopes & Dreams, for gymnastics, he assured us that she'd always have a home at his gym. And then he asked us if we'd like to get a beam for her -- he'd found on online. We got the beam and he drove to Kansas City to pick it up for us and delivered it to a very very excited little girl! We let Charlotte write her name on "her" beam.

Our gym is in the midst of tryouts for PreTeam for the coming year. Matt and I have talked a lot about what to do -- it's more hours and more work, but Charlotte is absolutely eat up with gymnastics. I finally decided to just ask her coach about it and Katie told me that Charlotte's class is actually already a PreTeam class and we don't even have to tryout. Woohoo! I'm still not sure what that mean for the coming year as far as practices, but I know that somehow we will make it work because she loves it so much. I feel like there is so much that I don't know about how all this works, but I have a feeling that we are in this for the long haul with Charlotte so I guess we will figure it all out at some point. :)