Living With a Gymnast

Okay, so this blog is dedicated to George, and how he influences our family. But I'm pretty sure that anyone else who is the parent of a gymnast, can relate.

So when George was four, he was more often on his head than his feet. He could not hold still. I don't mean not hold still in a fidget, bouncy way, but not hold still in that he could not remain on his feet for more than a couple of seconds. I decided to put him in gymnastics. Little did I know, how it would effect our family, our furniture, our free time, our savings, not to mention our physical selves.

Four years later, here we are. I thought that paying his monthly gym tuition would get the wiggles out. Nope. Even though we spend a small fortune every month (and a big fortune every Fall when meet fees are due), George can't separate the gym from the house. Our family room borders on our kitchen. The back of the couch is about two feet away from the bench at the kitchen table. George deemed this as his perfect place to practice parallel bars. So, after a few years of this, the back of the couch was torn apart. In May, Steve and I ordered new couches. I decided to go with leather because it might last longer. I warned George beforehand that he would not be using the new couch as his parallel bars. The new couches came. They look beautiful. And I should have been more specific. Indeed, George does not use the couch as his p - bars, but it just so happens that the leather curling over the armrest reminds George of the pommel horse. I am constantly asking him to stop practicing his flares on the armrest. Maybe that is why he has taken to pulling out the bar stool to practice his pommel horse routine.

The furniture is not the only thing getting destroyed. George cannot walk up the stairs, or down them. Oh, he can take a few steps, but then he has to grab the railings and straddle them like they are parallel bars. I keep asking him to stop, knowing someday the handrail will rip out of the wall. But he just doesn't know how. The top step he uses as a launching pad for a front handspring onto the upstairs landing. The walls in the house are perfect places for him to practice a handstand. And he has learned, after various back handsprings, that the basement floor, with cement underneath, is not as forgiving as the upstairs floor with particle board underneath.

But the furniture and the walls are not the only victims. All of us, at one point, or many others, have been kicked by an unexpected back handspring, cartwheel, dive roll, or handstand. Even Leah has fallen to the ground after colliding with George midair.

The kids went back to school this week. All summer George had gym in the early afternoon, but now he has it from 4 -8, three times a week. He misses our family dinners. And though eight is a lot at the table and one shouldn't make that much of a difference, we all feel his loss. This week, Maddie said, "I never see George anymore." I was glad that she admitted missing him (or at least came close to admitting it). Max responded, "Yes. I only see him when we come home from school and at bedtime." In the winter, many Saturdays are consumed with meets. We spent one weekend last winter in Las Vegas watching George at a meet.

But we all love it. I love hearing George talk incessantly about the new moves he has learned, like I understand all the names. And I love it when he means to say 'book,' but accidentally says, 'gymanstics.' And I love that he has a wall dedicated to pictures of top gymnasts in his room. And I love when Leah insists on wearing all of his medals and it knocks her over. I love seeing George in a straddle on the floor and then seeing him in a handstand a second later. But most of all, I love that George has not been able to sit still during scriptures for the last four years.