Summer Olympics, here we come!

All the cool kids take gymnastics lessons. Mine included.

Tai had his first gymnastics class this week and Minh and I were both bursting with pride (and shock) as Tai boldly walked into the gym, by himself, and took a spot in a circle of about 15 kids and 3 adults, none of whom he'd ever met before. "Who is this usually brave child?" we thought.

"Ohhhhh, that's more like it," we thought, when everyone in the circle stood up and started stretching and jumping around, while Tai sat open-mouthed on the floor and stared around the unfamiliar room. For 10 solid minutes.

After abstaining from the warm-up, Tai readily joined in the small group activities, which basically consisted of going through various little obstacle courses. (Crawl through a tunnel, go down a slide, hang from a bar, walk along a balance beam, etc).

The very first step in his very first activity? Do a somersault. "Oh no," I thought as I watched child after child (who were all older than Tai and who had all clearly been taking gymnastics since birth) do perfect somersaults down the wedge-of-cheese-shaped mat. Knowing that Tai cannot do a somersault, my anxiety mounted. Would he balk at even trying? Will there be tears if he tries and fails? Will the Russian judge be unfairly hard on him?

Watching all this through a window, we could not hear any of the conversation, but we saw Tai climb up to the top of the Cheese Mat and the teacher gesture to him to squat down and do a somersault. Mere seconds later the teacher realized who he was dealing with and decided he needed to give more hands-on help. With Tai squatting at the top of the mat, and the teacher's hands on his waist, I can only assume that the teacher verbally instructed Tai to tuck his head down and roll. And Tai promptly flopped onto his belly, legs sticking straight out behind him. The teacher, apparently, decided not to push the whole curl-up-into-a-ball component of somersaulting and just helped Tai flip down the mat, his body straight and stiff as a board. Clearly, Tai is already training for the roundoff-backhandspring-layout that will no doubt become his signature move by age 5.

The good news is, Tai had a really great time and can't wait to go back next week. This means I get to look forward to 12 more weeks of sitting in a crowded waiting room among seasoned parents who sit in the front row, blocking my view of my kid, while they do work or play with their iphones. Someday maybe I'll be that seasoned, but for now I'll enjoy watching Tai try his hand at gymnastics and hoping that he someday masters the back handspring, which I never did. Or at least a somersault.