She got a medal, too.

Marley had her gymnastics show yesterday, and it was out-of-control cute.  She was literally squirming with excitement in the days preceding this event, and I was feeding her wriggles with frequent comments like, "I can't believe it's almost your SHOW!"  In the morning, she squealed over her special leotard's sparkles and its matching, anachronistic scrunchie.  I helped her get ready with mixture of anticipatory nostalgia ("You're almost done with nastics.  Can you believe it?"), nervousness (I fluttered around the house with curlers in my hair as though it were date night.), and frazzled-mom irritation (Classic, and ridiculous: after pleading with Marley to wear sweatpants and a zip-up hoodie over her leotard, and listening to her whine about her need to wear a dress, I snapped, "Fine!  Wear the dress!  I don't care!" while I was scrubbing the toilet.  Because I was up so early for this event that I needed to make use of all those spare minutes to accomplish several extra chores.  I'm not kidding: I had to say, "Don't vacuum.  Don't vacuum."  OUT LOUD to myself so that I would leave on time rather than try to squeeze one last chore in.).

We made it in plenty of time.  Enough time, in fact, for Marley to get all weird and clingy while a couple dozen friends and relatives crowded into the small space where only five to six moms spent just about every Wednesday morning for the past nine months.  When Marley started this gymnastics class in September, I was seven months pregnant and Toot was a breech ball crushing my shrinking bladder.  Now Rudy is seven months old and communicates with more than her trademark surprised and delighted expression.  She babbles, shrieks, and giggles.  And here she is below, spitting up while posing for a family photo.  Marley is completely distracted by the high beam on her right.  Four seconds after this picture was taken, she was hanging upside-down from the beam, swinging like a three-toed sloth on methamphetamine.  

 

And in case you're wondering what a class of three- and four-year-old gymnasts (who aren't in China or Russia training for the 2020 Olympics), does at its show, enjoy this sequence of modest floor routine components.