Tumble and Bounce

Even though we ended up not signing Holly up for Gymnastics class we have tried to go to Open Gym.Head Over Heels has a free play session on Wednesday afternoon's from 1:00-3:00The time of day is not ideal and right when everyone usually naps, but we mustered up a few friends to join us.Here is Mira trying out the trampoline with Holly. She had quite a fun time. It was nice to have most of the gym to ourselves.However about half way through the session they had some classes going and I found it quite disruptive, the girls kept wanted to join the group.Here Holly is trying out the Foam Pit. She has a love hate relationship with it, sometimes she loves it.Other times it is a bit too overwhelming. But I try to get her to jump in and try it out.Mira enjoyed it quite a bit, and the mommies had a great time too.Holly had a lot of fun exploring and climbing and especially jumping.It was a little bit challenging for her to take turns especially when it came to the trampoline.Here our a few more friends, Chloe and Devlin climbing up the double Balance Beam.I tried to get Holly to follow suit, would have been great PT, but she refused.She had a blast running down the long tumbling trampoline, but wanted to go back and forth, instead of staying in one direction.It was a challenge to get her to jump down, run around and start back at the beginningBut eventually she did and then was excited to figure out how the routine worked.Next we tried out the uneven bars and attempted to get her to hang on the bars.Chloe did a great job hanging on and even lifted up her feet to hang on her own.This was amazing, They set the slide up next to the Foam Pit and both Chloe and Devlin slide right in.Mira decided to give the bars a try too. She hung on and with a little bit on mommy support she hung on her own.Here Holly is walking on the Balance beam. I was so excited as it is great for her hip rotation to walk like this.There were also some neat obstacle courses set up that Holly enjoyed climbing over.It was great to have Tanta Kat join us as we Mommies were exhausted thinking our 2 hours was up.But in reality we had only been playing for about 45 minutes. When we signed up for the session I didn't think it would be enough time.But it was more then enough time. We jumped and tumbled and ran around till exhaustion.The Kids found all kinds of things to get into and after a while tried to wander into the far end of the gym.So we found creative ways to keep them engaged, tunnels to crawl into stuff to climb on.It was so much fun to enjoy the space without the structure of a class, Holly was much more comfortable at the gym.I love this little picture of Chloe looking back over her shoulder at Holly while running down the trampoline.It was so great to be able to have Holly jump on the various trampolines, this one was extra bouncy.Here Devlin is climbing back onto the slide after diving into the foam Pit, I was amazed watching him go flying down the slide.I asked Holly if she wanted to go in, but she shook her head, "No No No" so I didn't push it past the first try.It was cool to see the other kids playing around inside the foam, it is different from the ball pit I think, and really works out those gross motor skills.Devlin is about 6 months older then Holly so it was fun watching all the neat things he was trying and doing like jumping off this spring board.Its nice to know what is coming next, it is so hard to keep up with there development when they try new things each week.Here the girls are jumping together, Chloe isn't a huge fan of jumping like Holly is, but when they did it together she had a great time.Holly enjoyed jumping with all her friends and never wanted to leave the trampoline in fact, she loved when they jumped and it bounced her around.So everyone decided to pile onto the trampoline and have a big group jump."Over here guys, lets jump on this one now"Without a nap though she was starting to get really tired, and even laid down. I think she liked feeling the vibrations and getting the full body input.We ended up leaving about 20 minutes before the session was over, we all had a little snack in the table area.And then headed home, the kids were all tired and ready to take very long naps.