Baby Gym Class

I took Charlie to his first baby gym class. Neither his father nor I were surprised to see that he was the busiest child in the class. He was the only one to try to wander out the door (3 times), try to play with the shoes everyone had taken off, try to crawl into the storage closet when they got out the parachute, and wander into the dark corners of the room completely by-passing the fun equipment set out for him. The other babies sat in the ball pit and enjoyed throwing the balls out. All Charlie wanted to do was climb in and out of the pit over and over again.

He was also a bit of a non-conformist. He would only sit for 2 of the circle time activities, finding the baby slide far too alluring to leave alone for a a full 5 minutes.

He was the most adventurous. He was the first to start wandering around the equipment, picking things up and examining them. He engaged in one of his favorite activities where he collects any number of items and piles them in one spot only to pick them all up and move them to a new spot. The child can spend a happy 15 minutes rearranging 3 items on a shelf- it's amazing. He also go to push some tubs around which is always thrilling. He may have a future in furniture removal...

He loved sitting on the parachute and waving it around but it was a woefully short activity. I'm interested to see what the next class is like since this was apparently just a day for the babies to get used to the equipment.

The next day we went to the library and he completely flummoxed this other little boy by making him his partner in crime. Charlie likes to give you objects to hold. If you take them out of your lap before he is ready, he will just put them right back in. Sometimes he mixes it up by wanting you to pass it back and forth to him. Fun times! I'm actually really happy about all this because it indicates some really great social and language development but anyway, back to the little boy. So, Charlie started taking all the trains off the table at the library and piling them in this little boy's arms. He had no idea what to do and considered crying but eventually decided to give them to his mom so we had this whole little chain of Charlie giving the little boy the trains who gave them to his mom who gave them to me until Charlie finally got distracted by the beanbag chair.