Lynne's Fitness Adventures

Toss Your Toddler dance class

Today I taught a creative movement class for preschoolers, 2 1/2 years to 4 1/2 years. I do this on most Mondays. The class used to be a Toss Your Toddler dance class which was a lot of fun and both parents and toddlers participated. (I still teach this class but it has now been moved to Wednesday mornings at 10:30 am). In this class there is a lot of running, jumping, falling, rolling and partnering with your toddler. Mateo and I loved this class; loved the partnering parts, the rolling together, climbing on top of me. I miss not having him participating in the class when I teach it on Wednesdays, but he’s getting too old, he’s growing up, the other kids are so young. He’s a preschooler now, not a toddler. But we have the Creative Movement class now….

It’s not the same. It’s me and a whole bunch of wonderful other kids and Mateo, who I have to treat as just another student. Which I can’t do of course, especially when he says, “Mama, I want to eat.” Luckily that was just two minutes before class ended. But today was difficult, sad really, even though it was a great class and I had a blast teaching. Mateo wanted to partner with me; he wanted to ride on my belly when we did the crab crawl, he wanted to come up and waltz with me for the waltz music, he wanted to roll with me instead of by himself, and a couple other times. It was sad to have to tell him that we couldn’t do those things together.

He understands that I’m the teacher and that there aren’t any other moms in the class, but soon he will really understand and stop asking me to partner with him in the class. Will we make enough time or the effort to do those things at home? By ourselves? Without the dance class? As my belly gets bigger and bigger?

Ah, but we did slither on our bellies this week. I kept my weight mostly on my arms and knees to keep the pressure off the belly, but it worked. For how many more weeks?