love is patient.: My Child, Gymnastics meets the Alphabet, and The Chalk-Eating Dog

Nora has graduated to the non-Mommy class of gymnastics. She is very excited about this, and so am I. Sure, sometimes I get a little weepy that she's so grown up. But, you guys, do you know what this means?! It means that for 45 minutes every Tuesday, I sit on a bench and talk to other moms while my child is happily entertained by a saint named Brittney who somehow manages to teach six 2 & 3 year olds to jump in fancy ways and run on a line and make "Ws" on a tiny little bar without anyone getting hurt. Plus now I can really watch her and see what she does, which was hard to do when I had to be right next to her and paying attention to everything else that was going on.

Anyway, obviously I think she's amazing and will be in the Olympics. So I'd better start saving my pennies so I can go watch her.


Stretching

Last week at gymnastics, they practiced jumping on the long trampoline. At first, they each had their own spots, and Miss Brittney let them pick a shape for her to draw on their spots. Most kids picked a standard shape - a star, a circle...you get the drift. What did Nora pick? The letter I. That's the daughter of an English teacher for you.

Or maybe I just need to work on shapes with her.

Speaking of drawing, Nora is an artist. One day, in the garage, she exclaimed "I draw Nowah!" This is what she drew:

Face, eyes, mouth, "toes", and hair

And, later, she drew our family. She is the big one in the middle, of course.

One thing we've also learned from Nora's new interest is that our dumb dog likes to eat chalk. We shouldn't be surprised - besides a stray spinach leaf that fell on the floor yesterday, she will eat pretty much anything - but CHALK? What a weirdo.

And, here are some other things we've been up to this summer:

A trip to Michigan -