Cailee works so hard at Gymnastics. Day in and day out – she currently practices nearly 4 hours a day – Monday – Thursday. She’s a gold level gymnast which mneans every year she has to learn new skills. This year, the big ones are the full turn, cartwheel and back walkover on the balance beam, front handspring without the mat vault, aerial, front handspring, roundoff back tuck on the floor and the kip, squat on to high bar and flyaway for bars. I have to say the kip and the back tuck have been taunting her for a while now. She’d be so close but not quite there week after week. She’s also one of these gymnasts, particularly on floor where she doesn’t want to do it until she knows she can do it. Finally, she got the kip (on both the low and high bar) after fighting for it all summer long and this weekend she was determined to master the back tuck. She’s been doing flavors of it for a while and it still needs a little perfecting but by golly she’s getting a lot closer. We did it over and over again, inside and outside.

What’s different this time is that it used to be me pushing her to practice (mostly because I had to deal with the meltdowns when she didn’t perform as she wanted) but now SHE wants to practice and I’m just the videographer – which I’ll gladly be any day. To say I’m proud of my Cailee-Bean and all she’s accomplished is a huge understatement, even if she’s still a little jokester (note the water spitting episode).

https://photos.amidewar.com/2018/September-30-2018/

On her birthday, a few weeks back she learned her floor routine. And this actually made her day! Here she is doing it for the first time all the way through. Excited to see how she progresses through the season.

PS. She also got invited to AIG this year after scoring a 5 on her 3rd grade Math EOG – also a huge accomplishment. Winning in the class and on the field – my little super star.