Welcome to the Monkey House

So Eli is normally a monkey. He's all over the place. He makes funny noises. He makes odd faces while eating. He crawls like an ape. He climbs up and down anything he can.

But today he was a monkey for other reasons. This morning I took him to his first gym class at The Little Gym. His music class is over and I figured before we started swim lessons again we'd try something new. (If I don't get out and see other adults once a week I go nuts, and I've learned that Eli feels the same if he doesn't get out and see other kids. We are trying to rotate activities so we always have something going on, but only one thing per week, as to not overwhelm our bank account or Eli.) From the minute we walked in, Eli was in awe. Mats and bars and beams a plenty. As far as thee eye can see. Once we entered the play area Eli made a bee-line for the lowest balance beam, which he scurried under at breakneck speed. (Eli often crawls under any obstacle he can. Last week I found him crawling under the shorter side of our kitchen chairs, just for kicks.) The class started with a few songs/activities on the main mat, but Eli was far too busy investigating the equipment for most of that. There were a few structured activities on the equipment. Eli passed the first one with flying colors. The kids were to walk sideways on the balance beam (with an adults support around their waist, of course.) I didn't even have to prompt Eli's feet, as the instructor told us to. She was so surprised she even asked me how long he'd been taking gym classes (which he hasn't). I figure the dexterity he displayed comes from hours of inching around the guest bed, the coffee tables, the walls, etc. in our home.

The second part of Eli's monkey transformation today was in the form of speech. We've been working on animal sounds forever, but with no distinguishable comprehension. Today as we were reading a book with pictures of monkeys, I said to Eli, "Monkeys say 'Oo Oo Oo Oo. Ee Ee Ee Ee'." Eli looked at me and said "Oo Ee Oo Ee". I pulled out a few other books and went through the same process with the same results. Another case of Monkey See, Monkey Do.