Party Girl

First of all, I can't believe that my sweet little girl, Miss Z, is going to be one year old next week. The year since we flew to Ohio to meet her has blown by at an incredible rate. Then again, I can certainly believe that she's going to be one since she's so big, so fast, so ready to become a toddler at any moment. And my girl, she's the life of the party, the belle of the ball. It won't be long before she starts dancing on tables with a lampshade on her head.

I take the kids HERE where they both have a blast. When the X-Man was little we took the Busy Bees class with the cool and groovy Teacher Justin. He's still teaching it now that Miss Z is a Busy Bee. The play lists are still fab and the welcome song is the same--but the experience for me is very different this time around. X spent a good amount of time snuggling on my lap, took his own sweet time acclimating to the gym equipment, and found the parachute play somewhat traumatizing. With Miss Z, your cruise director, it's a whole other deal. She's in the middle of the circle shaking her bells and crowing while Justin plays the guitar. Then she takes off--doing log rolls down the wedge-shaped mats, trying to hang on the uneven bars like the bigger kids, making a passable attempt at the balance beam. She occasionally stops to flash her irrisistable smile at random parents or nannies, and then she's off again. Come time for bubbles and she muscles her way to the front of the group to get her fair share. When we wait in the lobby for the X-Man's class, she and her friend--the Divine Miss M--try to break into the class area together. They share snacks and clothes, play ball and make mayhem with their crackers. Parenting Miss Z is like driving a hot rod down a long stretch of interstate with no troopers in sight--fast, perilous and pretty damn exciting.