I snapped a bunch of pics of Anna jumping on the trampoline and then had fun with them in Photoshop.  Click to see the full size version.

(She’s getting pretty close on that kickover.  She did others that were really close that I didn’t get pics of.)

…and one more cute pic from today:

You can see all the pictures HERE.

Caption from the video: In gymnastics this past week, Anna was taught how to do a little jump forward roll into the pit. Well, she decided to get on the trampoline and do the same thing with no prompting from me! (I promise!) She also did the closest thing to a backward roll that I’ve seen her do on a flat surface. She can sometimes do them down the incline mat at gymnastics, but she did a few really close ones on the trampoline! Anna is 3 years, 11 months in this video.

I’m trying to get through the bazillion photos I took in Michigan while we were there for my brother-in-law, Steve’s wedding.  Anna was the flowergirl in the wedding so I got a bunch of great photos of her.  This one, I think, is my favorite.  It’s not posed (for the most part) and her smile (laugh) is genuine and not forced like it almost always is when I command her to smile…  :-D  I just love this one.  I’ll have all the pics up on my gallery site soon.

Love this photo I took today…just wanted to share.

Anna has decided she wants curly hair, much to my dismay.  I have super curly hate and hate it.  I’ve always wanted straight hair and straighten mine from time to time when I’m not feeling too lazy.  So I love the fact that Anna has straight hair.  Not sure where she got it from..definitely not me!

Anyway, I bought a thing of curlers and put them in her hair last night.  I probably shouldn’t have used the smallest ones in the pack, nor should I have rolled them all the way to her scalp because when I took them out this morning her hair was so curly that it was about 2 inches above her shoulders….and she has LONG hair!  I was able to pull it down some and it turned out pretty cute.  Next time though, I think I’ll use bigger rollers and not roll it up all the way.  Here are some pics.

Please ignore the lack of a shirt in the last few pics.  She was in between wardrobe changes..  :-D  Cute though, right?

At Anna’s gymnastics class today I noticed that she wasn’t listening very well or doing what she was supposed to be doing.  It was the first time in awhile that there were more than 2 or 3 kids in her class…there were 5 today..so I don’t know if that’s the case or if she was getting a little bored.  In any case, she really didn’t listen very well at all which was very frustrating.  However, I did notice that she seem pretty far ahead of the other kids in her class.  The only time she needed help with anything was on her backwards roll down the incline mat and her instructor asked her several times to demonstrate something for the other kids, which was really cool.

Throughout the whole class I debated with myself on whether to ask her instructor if Anna could go ahead and move up to the Preschool 3 class.  I think they generally don’t move the kids until the end of the session, but the session just started (week 3 of an 8 week session) and this is our last one before we move, so I thought maybe they’d make an exception.  Plus, Anna does seem to be doing pretty well and I want her to continue to learn new things.  So at the end of the class I started to ask her instructor and before I could get the question out she told me to go ahead and bring her to the Preschool 3 class next week, that she watched Anna and she thinks Anna definitely needs to be moved up.  So YAY!  I didn’t even really have to ask.  The Preschool 3 class is the one I guess she would have skipped if she would have been able to start the pre-team at the beginning of next session.

Here’s a video of Anna doing handstands and cartwheels in the living room today.  They’re getting better.  The last cartwheel in the video is pretty good, I think!  :)

(Sorry about the poor video quality.  I recorded it with my Blackberry.)

I took pictures of some of Anna’s recent artwork (well, ok some is from March, so not *that* recent) and thought I’d share.

Here are two we did today:

Here are some other ones that I added to her art album as well:

I feel like this blog is turning into “all gymnastics all the time”…lol..

Today after Anna’s gymnastics class I was talking to her instructor (who is AWESOME) about the preschool open gym thing they are starting back up.  She told me after that to be sure to let Anna’s new gym in WA (because we’re moving back for those who didn’t know..) know that they were going to move Anna up to pre-team!  I was like “WHA..??????”  I had no idea that that was even an option, let alone that Anna, at 3 years old, was about ready for it.  Craziness.  So I was pretty floored, and it makes me even more sad to leave because her current gym is just awesome.  I’ll be hardpressed to find one that’s equally as good.

Anna, however, has just continued to improve really quickly.  She’s only done gymnastics for about 4 months (since April 2009).  In that time she has gotten a full bridge, with her head off the floor and everything.  When she first started she barely got her feet off the ground doing a handstand or cartwheel and now her handstands getting closer to vertical and her legs are a bit straighter and just today in her class she did a straight legged cartwheel..a really high one at that.  I was shocked.  She can sometimes do a backwards roll down the cheese mat.  She can flip over the bar…  I’m just amazed at how far she’s come in such a short time.  Tonight she was showing my dad a handstand and she kicked so hard that she started to fall over forward and actually tucked her head and did a forward roll out of it!  Before, if she actually kicked hard enough to fall over…which very rarely happened…she’d just flop over to the side or onto her back.  That shocked both me and her speechless.  Anna just kind of had a look like “what happened?”  Heh..  Kids just learn so fast.

So anyway, I think it’s probably hard for anyone who is not a parent to understand, but all these little things just make me SO SO PROUD.  I can feel myself just beaming when she finally “gets” something.  I don’t know if she has any exceptional talent or not…of course, as her mom, *I* think she does…OF COURSE!  But I’m really excited to see where all of this takes her.  I’m trying my best not to tell her how to do things at home because I don’t want her to think of gymnastics as work yet.  It’s all fun right now and I want to keep it that way.  But gosh…to be told that they wanted to put her on pre-team, which I guess would mean skipping the next level of preschool class, that just floored me.  I’m still really shocked by it all.  I’m just so proud of her.  :)

In the car just now, Anna was counting the barrels in a construction area we went through.  She counted all the way up to 49 without any help at all!  I was amazed!  After 49 she said 60, so that was close.  She’s been able to count very consistently to 29 and most of the time she’ll get to 39 but then she’d start saying random numbers (like 40, 80, 90, 70, etc).  We’ve been counting up past 100 with my help at the “ten’s” (30, 40, 50, 60, etc.) so she gets the concept but just couldn’t remember what order the “ten’s” came in.  I was so surprised though.  It’s amazing how fast they learn things at this age.  Next up, differential equations.

Check out this backbend Anna did yesterday!

This was her backbend at the beginning of June (so a little less than 2 months ago):

Good progress, huh?  I haven’t helped her at all with it.  I read somewhere to not help with the backbends, that if you force it before they’re ready (for under 5 years old)  it could cause damage.  I even noticed in her gym class that her teacher only puts her in the position to push up and then lets Anna push up on her own.  I don’t think the teacher has ever pulled her into a backbend.  So Anna has pretty much figured it all out on her own.  I was really amazed when she pushed up so high on the trampoline yesterday.