Our Busy Spring

We seem to get busier and busier as the school year goes along. In addition to preschool on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings and dance class on Wednesday afternoons, we've now added tennis lessons to Elsa's schedule, on Monday afternoons.

At one nearby indoor tennis club, kids can take lessons without anyone in the family being a member, up until age 7. So we got Elsa into the spring session, and she's had two lessons so far. She now has her own racket (21 inches for $21), and when I saw tennis skirts at Target in little girl sizes, how could I possibly resist that?


So far, Elsa seems to just love tennis. She spent the first part of this week's lesson jumping up and down almost continuously because she was so excited to be there. There are only two other little girls in Elsa's class, so they get lots of individual attention. Every lesson starts with the very patient tennis pro tossing a ball to each girl, and they have to catch it after one bounce. Elsa is remarkably good at this—she catches the ball almost every time, and is actually much better at it than the other girls, who have been in this class before.


Elsa has more trouble when it comes to actually hitting the ball with the racket. As good as she is at anticipating the bounce when catching the ball, that same anticipation trips her up when she's hitting. However, they also did some volleying at the net during the last lesson, and she hit several volleys in a row, including a few that were actually over the net and in. And when we got home from our last class, she asked me to "give her another tennis lesson" (so she must be enjoying this a lot). We practiced hitting the ball on one bounce for about 15 minutes, and she really improved in that short amount of time. She got the racket on the ball at least three times, and that was with a regular tennis ball (which is smaller than the big nerf ones they use in the lessons).

Along the with addition of tennis lessons, we've also been getting together fairly regularly with some of the other moms and kids from Elsa's preschool class. We usually go to an indoor play area, but we've also been downtown to Betty Brinn with this group. Unfortunately for Elsa, all the other kids in this group happen to be boys. But as a result, I think she's getting more used to playing with boys, which can't be a bad thing.

And on top of all this, I'm still trying to make it to the gym three times a week (although it usually ends up being twice), we have our regular music class, and we have zoo classes once a month. So we don't have many days without some sort of activity. And happy little Claire is always such a sweetheart at all of these various lessons and outings—she gets to watch the bigger kids doing their thing, which I think she enjoys. I guess all three of us like staying busy!