Bye bye toddlerhood

My little girl is no longer a toddler. She is a child fully capable of playing with the big kids. Today she got her first real bike. She has been asking for one for ages now. I told her she could have one for her birthday if she showed me she could ride it in the store. She did. I told her Daddy and he insisted on seeing for himself. No problem. Off we went as a family so the little girl could strut her stuff and home we came with a beautiful fully assembled non-licensed (ie no characters on it) bike. Froggy was so proud of herself, she could not contain it and bounced the whole way home.

As well Froggy is now taking both swim class and ballet. She is doing well in swimming and seems to like the coach well enough. Her ability to propel herself through the water is still non existent. But she is so much more comfortable in the water. We went swimming as a family last night. Froggy wanted to go down the slide into the water over and over again even though it meant she would go completely under and only be "caught" as she came back up. She is also able to doggy paddle / tread water enough to keep her nose out of the water for several seconds at a time with no flotation devices or touching anything. This is a significant improvement over when we left my mother's.

However much she likes swim class, she likes dance class ten times more. The first class was much harder on me than on her. The school came highly recommend so I took a leap of faith and put her in even though parents are not allowed to watch the class, at all in any way. The little girls all file in. The teacher closes the door and it does not open again until they all file out an hour later. I only have the barest idea of what goes on in the class because all I have is Froggy speak for what happens which does not give me a full picture. She is enjoying it and clearly likes the teacher so I trust and go on. Hard hard hard.