A Dancer, A Gymnast

Its been so intriguing to Stan and I this summer to watch the differences in our children become more obvious.  Of course we know they are different, but when one copies the other a lot, its harder to see.  But this summer, we've taken note of it as it seems to happen more often.  Chasadya seems to be much more artistic, always wanting to color, draw, do crafts, or read.  She loves music, and last spring we enrolled her in dance classes, which included ballet and tap.  She loved it, and she's enrolled for the full year coming up.  She loves to put on her ballet clothes and slippers and dance around the house.  Stan recently brought home a plastic ballet bar from a co-worker, and she loves to stand there, practicing on one leg with pointed toes.  She often sings to herself, as she is right now as I'm typing this.  We feel like she's definitely going to be our creative, artistic child. 

Mikaela has done a lot of these things as well, as a copycat to her sister.  However, she gets bored of coloring long before her sister, and will dance with her sister, but it seems to be something she does because her sister is.  Invariably, while Chasadya is coloring, Mikaela is playing barbies, or more recently with the Polly Pockets given to the girls by their auntie.  She can sit for hours playing with the little dolls.  She also talks and sings while she plays, but again, it seems a learned behavior from her sister.  She does a high pitched voice when she plays that gets a bit annoying, but to her makes perfect sense.  Along with these noticeable differences comes the most obvious.

  She loves to climb on things.  And not just furniture, but play equipment.  In our backyard we have an old metal swing set, the kind with the seesaw swing, as well as a two-person bench swing.  It also has two sling-style swings.  Although some of the ideas of what to do on it came from her older cousin, Mikaela has learned that there is a lot more to the swing set than swinging.  Its actually a bit frightening.  She climbs onto the arms of the bench swing, grabs hold of the top support bar, and lifts her feet off the swing.  She then proceeds to do a number of different things.  Sometimes she just lets the swing go back and forth, putting her feet on the other side, other times we've caught her with her feet on the top bar beside her hands, with her head hanging upside down.  The first time I saw this I almost had a fit.  But she is completely comfortable.  She then often goes from one end of the swing set to the other, climbing on the other support bars.  We have come to the conclusion that rather than put her into dance like her sister, that she should probably be in gymnastics.  We desire to see our children doing things they enjoy, and do well at.  It would be easy to put Mikaela in the same things as her sister, because its simpler.  But we're thankful that God has given us two very different children, and that we have had opportunity to see this summer some of those differences.

Proverbs 22:6 says " Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it."  Rather than seeing that as a promise that if I teach my child everything about God when she is young that she will not rebel( very nice thought, but not sure that's what God guarantees), we think that the verse means to teach them in their "bend".  Meaning, find out what their gifts are that God has given them, rather than impose on them our own ideals or dreams.  To let them explore their God-given talents.  I know I'm not saying it as clearly as I would like, but basically, what I think is that we can't pour all our children into the same mold and expect it to turn out perfectly.  They each have their own path, and its our duty as parents to find out what that is. 

Once again last night we saw the differences in our girls.  Chasadya started to dance for her daddy in the living room.  She twirled and twirled.  Soon Stan pointed out Mikaela.  She was standing on top of her wooden rocking horse with no hands, rocking back and forth.  We laughed together.  We most definitely  have both a dancer and a gymnast. 

Pool crazy

A while back I talked about how the girls, especially Chasadya seemed to not be as comfortable in our pool as we thought she would be.  As I glanced back at that post, I realized that I need to update things, as it has changed a lot.  Because of the beautiful weather we've had this summer, we have been in the pool a lot.  Almost every afternoon that we are home we have spent at least an hour in it.  And that has dramatically changed how our girls play in it.  We've gone from being cautious, and careful to dunking, and floating like crazy.  Just the other night as Stan and I watched the girls, we said that our pool has done for our girls what several years of swimming lessons would have taken, and its only been one summer.  Chasadya has no problem dunking her head now, and can hold often hold it for at least three seconds.  She can float, with water wings, on her back and front, and allows us to throw her into the water and be submerged.  Mikaela is also putting her face in the water, and has relaxed enough to float by herself in a star shape( with a puddle jumper-kind of a cross between a life jacket and water wings) and constantly floats around while being pulled.  We recently bought another pool, as our other sprang a leak, and as we considered the cost, we realized that everything they teach in swimming lessons at $100 a session, we've been able to do for our kids for half that.  Once they need to learn more skills that a 2 foot pool can't offer, we'll put them back, but for now, when all they learn is to be comfortable in the water, we've achieved it at home.  The cost of the pool is minor when we see the pleasure and comfort the girls have had this summer.  Definitely worth the purchase. 
The other thing worth mentioning is that it has been something me and the girls have done together.  Often I don't take as much time to play with them as I should, but the pool has brought that out for us.  I seldom will sit out while they are swimming, so it is something that brings about great quality time for us.  Its been special for both me and the girls.

"I can't do it"," yes, you can"

Lately we've been trying to teach Mikaela  that most times when she doesn't think she can do something, that she actually can.  Specifically, that she can go to the bathroom by herself without any help, and that she can pedal her trike by herself even when she's tired.  Often she tells us "I can't do it"  and our response has been "yes, you can".  Its become obvious to me that we have been saying it a lot, when I hear Chasadya from the other room tell her sister "you can do it, yes, you can".  Not having boys, I'm not completely sure if I'm right on this, but I believe that is Bob the Builder's motto.  "Can we do this?  Yes we can".  Kind of funny hearing it from my kids now, but I guess the words have been repeated enough.  Hopefully it sinks in.