Monthly Archives: February 2020

Learning to Handstand

Two days ago I had the opportunity to watch Sydney at her gymnastics class, which is normally during Devon’s parenting time. One interesting thing I noticed was that when Sydney was in line to attempt a cartwheel on the balance beam, which she is in no way ready to do, the teacher gave her one opportunity. Yet the girl in front of Sydney, who actually was getting her legs vertical above her, received five opportunities.

Whether that is fair or justified is for another post. What I took away is that Sydney needs help doing handstands and cartwheels. So yesterday we practiced the former. I had Sydney show me a handstand, which I videotaped and then she watched to see how she was not close to vertical. We then practiced a bit more and she is now much closer to getting it.

Then I attempted it too. This next video is pretty funny both because Sydney takes on my role of coach as she records the video and because I clearly should have learned to do a handstand 30 or 40 years ago!

Disney’s Frozen

If any one thing has dominated popular culture among young children during Sydney’s early life, it is Disney’s movie Frozen. Yet Sydney and I only just watched it today.

Frozen was released in 2013, 3.5 months after Sydney was born. I first heard about it in 2016, when Sydney was three years old and her friend Etta at Boulder Country Day School kept singing the Academy Award winning song Let It Go. Since then, Frozen has dominated popular culture for young girls: Halloween costumes as the princesses Anna and Elsa, songs, hairstyles, and much more. We even watched a kids production of The Nutcracker recently that worked in Let It Go.

I have written before about how Sydney is scared of many movies, especially Disney movies which seem to always kill off parents or have monsters. And Frozen is no exception – both parents die at sea, the two young girls live half their youths trapped in a castle and not speaking to each other, and there is a monster snow creature.

But finally, yesterday, Sydney and I watched first the musical and then the movie Frozen. Sydney loved them both.

Watching the musical and movie was propelled by Sydney signing up for an acting class in which Sydney will be in the musical Frozen 2. It won’t take us seven years to watch that one!