Laney Lou Retton

Dear Laney,

On Tuesday afternoon, I took you to your first-ever gymnastics class. I figured it was time; for months, you've been hurling yourself at the ground, doing a slow-motion sideways roll and announcing, "SOMERSAULT!!!" It's super-cute now, but if we don't get you some professional gymnastics help, I'm worried you're going to use the same technique into your teen years, and people are going to suggest we get you medicated.

I didn't take any pictures, because sometimes I think there's a thin line between being a supportive mother and being a middle-aged Japanese dude at Niagara Falls.* But since we got to the class 15 minutes early, I got some extra footage of you playing around on the equipment.

You call this class "Somersault School," and I think you had a great time. I went into it hoping that you would have fun, but mostly praying that you would not be the most poorly-behaved child in class. [Reader: If you think that sounds terrible, you have obviously not had a two year-old that needed to mingle with the general public.] As it turns out, you were NOT the most poorly-behaved kid in class. That honor fell to a 5 year-old boy who could not be coerced to participate, and spent most of the class sprawled out on a gym mat, pouting. All of us parents were corralled into a spectator section, and his mother thought she could get him up and moving by repeatedly screaming his name, which is how I know his name is EZEKIEL CORNELIUS GOLDENBLATT, IT'S TIME TO GET ON THE TUMBLING MAT.**

Okay, his name wasn't exactly that. I changed one of the words to something similarly awful, because I don't want him to google himself one day and find this blog. Anyway, when I was naming each of my children, my mother advised, "Go out in the yard and practice screaming it, and make sure it sounds good as you're hollering it, because you'll be doing that a lot." Now, I understand that advice. Poor Zeke.

You've been asking when you can go back to Somersault School, so it looks like gymnastics is a hit. You're a maniac, maniac, on the floor.

Love,

Mom

* = I know this is ridiculously stereotypical. Lord, I apologize.

** = After reading this again, I think it would be a great title for a children's book. Someone remind me to write it.