Jumping Rope

This evening we jumped rope in our family room. Usually an outside activity but since there's snow on the ground we stayed inside. The kids hadn't ever seen anyone do this and were quite excited to join in. When Chris and I turned the rope Oliver was able to get two successive jumps. We never got more than that! Evelyn was the funniest though she would wait until the rope made it around and then jump, kind of like a delayed reaction. Since most of the little ones aren't coordinated enough to jump in time yet Chris held them while he jumped. Great spontaneous fun.

Evelyn was taking a turn and we finally just laid the rope down so she could jump over it back and forth. She was thinking so hard about jumping over the rope that she had no room for any other thoughts. That included the dog walking in front of her. Everyone else saw the dog, I can only figure she did too but things didn't click fast enough and she jumped and kind of did a belly flop on Rosco. Nobody, or animal, was hurt in her stunt. She looked really shocked that the dog suddenly appeared there.

I think she has that thought process from me, her mother. Watching her reminded me of a diving class I took as a child. The first day of class the teacher wanted us to practice jumping into the deep end. I was nervous about the class and had in my mind that it was a diving class. For the first 3-5 turns I tried to change mid jump from a dive to the jump the teacher had requested. By the time the teacher gave up and had me dive all I could do was jump because I'd finally gotten that in my head. I think I had a whole class of belly flops...sorry Evelyn, you're just like your mama but don't worry there's good things about that too.