Girl from Impanema

THURSDAY, JULY 22, 2010

Gymnastics class was fun this morning. All the parents are lined up on the bleachers overlooking their children as they attempt different things. Some parents bring laptops or books or other children - but we don't bring much except a diaper bag. Maybe it's just that it is new, but we love watching Madison try her best with gymnastics. Today was especially rewarding: she did her first unassisted front roll. Daddy can't even do that!

We asked Madison to try it out later on as she was at the house - and she was rolling all over the place like a pill bug!

Afterwards, we went to Toys R Us and splurged a bit on Madison. That helped a lot, actually. We got her a Kai-Lan game, and some more puzzles. These are 25 piece puzzles, and as soon as we got home, we tried them out. Madison picked the pieces up and went to work immediately. She's so fast with puzzles now! We're going to have to up the ante to 60 piece puzzles now!

Meanwhile, we hooked up an old Casio keyboard we've had in the garage. We had stopped at Toys R Us to get a power cable for it, and had luck finding it. Plugging it in was a wonderful experience for Madison: she played with that keyboard for about an hour. I'm not saying she hit any masterpieces - but she did have fun hitting the different tones and notes. This is the sort of keyboard that plays all different kinds of instruments on it. Also, it has pre-programmed music on it as well. For example, we played "Girl From Impanema" one time and decided to head to the kitchen dance floor: swing, swing, swing - turn!