A few nights ago, Lucy brought Lena in to our room at about 3 am saying Lena had thrown up and that their bathroom was a mess. Once Lena was settled, I headed to the bathroom to clean it up. I was relieved to see that most of the puke had landed in the toilet and that Lucy had cleaned up much of it with toilet paper.
The next morning, I thanked Lucy for helping out and told her that the bathroom was clean.
"Mom," she said. "All I did last night was bring her downstairs." I was confused.
According to Lucy, she heard Lena up in the night. She, in the dark, followed the noises to the bathroom and stepped in puke on the way. You can imagine how excited she was to feel that between her toes. She found Lena in the bathroom with a giant wad of toilet paper, cleaning up her own mess. Per Lucy, Lena didn't want to come downstairs until the mess was cleaned up, but Lucy scooped her up and brought her down.
Li'l Trooper
Yesterday, school started, for everyone but Lena. (Happy Birthday, Lucy! We celebrated with a full day of school for all school-age children, and a dinner of delicious sushi at FatFish (a local restaurant) with friends. Lucy wanted to cancel in order to celebrate with Gabe (who was at practice), but we wouldn't let her. We told her we could all go out together this weekend.)
Lovely Lucy. On the way to practice, of course.
Lena is convinced she will be going to school, but she'll have to wait a bit. Ballet, on the other hand, is something she won't be waiting for much longer. She's set to start a class next week. She is still very young, and I'm a little worried (the kids are a LITTLE busy with the various activities they started when they were two--well--Lucy started in gymnastics, but...). I do like the idea of letting kids, even little ones, have a hand in directing their lives.
Lena has been to one ballet class so far. It ended with pushing, falling, and all the tiny ballerinas crying. Lena explained it this way, "I pushed Ava and I pushed Juliet." I knew I should have taken her out of the room earlier when she stopped following the teacher... Lena has been talking about ballet for about 4 months now, and loves to tell new friends (read: strangers) all about it.
Lucy is still doing all-star cheer and loving it. She's on a level 5 team and is a backspot this year, which means she's tall. It's a big deal. Last season (this past May). when her team competed in Florida, people were looking through the professional pictures of her team's routine and someone noticed an unusual one... "There's a pic of a flyer stepping on a girl's FACE." (It was a rough routine.) I knew it was Lucy who had made that save. It was. I didn't buy the pic, but I wish I had. Lucy is a beast. The link there is not of Lucy and no, Lucy isn't tumbling at that level, but Lucy is a beast. She is working on perfecting her full.
Gabe is now a level 7 gymnast and dealing with bum knees. He's working through it, though. His most recent skills are "pirouette on high bar and a full on floor."
Char is a level 6 gymnast and dealing, sometimes, with a bum ankle. He's working through it. His most recent skills are giants on high bar and a cody (on the trampoline).
The oldest three kids' love of time in the gym is still there. About a month ago, it occurred to me while I watched a documentary on cat competitions (thank you, Delta In-Flight Entertainment) that these sports (all-star cheerleading and men's artistic gymnastics) that make up so much of our lives are on the relative fringes of society and that many people would find it interesting, if not odd, to spend so much time working on such specific skill sets... But then, I thought to myself, much of what the kids are learning is transferrable knowledge. Feel free to refer to the previous sentence if you find yourself without justification of an atypical hobby.
Life is definitely full of surprises!
Hooligans
