Family Zumba...Good Lord!

There are not many times that I have the thought "I wish someone was filming our life right now.  This is incredibly entertaining", but tonight was one of those times.  I swear that our family can not do anything in a normal or inconspicuous way.  We recently joined the YMCA and tonight the girls and I went to a family Zumba class.

First of all let me just say that when I read the name of the class I assumed that the class would be a bit less difficult.  Kind of like how I want to go to a senior yoga class (for real folks, I think I might just sneak in and pretend one of those ladies is my grandma!!).  I am easing back into physical activity since my surgery and knew I was not ready for a full on Zumba class.  Talk about false advertising, good Lord!  This teacher led us down a full on, hard core, exhausting hour of Zumba!  The girls did a good job at attempting to keep up.  Each girl had a different experience.

Caroline LOVED it.  She was grinning from ear to ear the entire time.  Every time the teacher did a new or difficult move Caroline would twist her sassy and expressive little face into the most hilarious looks and kept cracking the teacher up.  She never even took a break to get water. Apparently they did Zumba in her 2nd grade class sometimes as energizers, because Mrs. Speckman is da bomb.

Charlotte was very intense.  She hardly smiled because she was so focused on trying to figure out the moves, and unfortunately the girl has no rhythm and very little coordination.  She was not a fan because she could feel that it was working her stomach muscles.

Celia, oh Celia my dear love.  I was hesitant to even take her since she's five (although her emotional age is more like a 3 year old) plus she finds any excuse to complain about everything...EVERYTHING.  She does love to dance though so I let her come to check it out.  In the beginning she seemed to have fun.  She was making the older ladies in the class laugh a lot when she would shake her cute little booty.  About 30 minutes in she started to cry because she wanted to leave the class and go running around the track.  At this point, for the sake of making it through the last half hour, I told her she could just do her own moves, dance however she wanted.  That helped.  With 10 minutes left she asked me who she was supposed to be watching.  That might explain her look of confusion for the previous 50 minutes.  She's my blonde.

As I said before I went into this expecting it to be lower impact than typical Zumba and am still very out of shape.  I am also recovering from my third intestinal resectioning surgery from Crohn's Disease.  So it came as no surprise to me that about 40 minutes into the class I feel something below the belt that made me panic.  Was it booty sweat or was it something more???!!  Oh good Lord, did I just poop my pants at family Zumba class??  I went to the bathroom and much to my relief it was simply sweat.  I, in fact, was dripping with sweat and, when I looked in the mirror, my face was as red as my red t-shirt I was wearing.  Like, for real, only a shade away from fire engine red.  As I went back into the class I noticed that all of the other women in the class were older than me, like significantly.  All of them were as pale as me, and NONE of them had red faces!  LOL!  Once again, the older chicks were in better shape than me and kicking my butt at Zumba.  This felt very familiar since I had the same experience in a Jazzercise class last year which I blogged about then as well.

Here's another observation I made.  If you've ever taken a Zumba or Jazzercise class, you may have had that moment where you are in the groove, you are keeping up!  You must look pretty good doing this!  You think to yourself "After this class the instructor is probably going to come ask me if I've done this before.  She will probably tell me that I should become a teacher myself!  I am rocking this!"  Then you make the mistake of looking at yourself in the mirror.  OH NO!  Who is that freak looking back at you?!  Turns out that you don't look nearly as cute and coordinated doing it in real life as you do in your head!  I danced competitively for my entire childhood and even was on the dance team of a professional sports team in college, and even I look like a silly fool during these classes!

So in conclusion, thank you Zumba instructor for throwing me into the deep end of getting back into shape.  I may not be able to walk for three days, or shower, or brush my hair, but I know I will be stronger in the end.  It was pretty fun and entertaining to take an exercise class with my kiddos though.  I think Caroline and I will go back again...once I recover!

Caroline's 65 Year Old Smoker Soul

If you have spent more than five minutes with Caroline, then you've heard me apologize for her attitude by explaining that she has the soul of a 65 year old smoker.  I have said this since day one with her.  I guess you could say there's something about her that is an "old soul".

When we first moved to PA, our new cable package included the Lifetime Movie Network, which was new to us.   On this channel I stumbled upon a show called Ghost Inside My Child.  The show interviews parents of children who have memories and knowledge from another lifetime, including how they died when they were a grown up before.  Crazy, right?!  It could all be scripted, who knows, but it is pretty fascinating and it got me thinking about Caroline. 

 Here are the top ten reasons I believe Caroline has the soul of a 65 year old smoker:

1.  Ever since day 1 she has had a scratchy smoker's voice.  It has become less evident as she's grown older and polished her English, but it's still there.

2.  Her attitude...about everything.  She has this bitter old woman sense about her, mad at the world and bitter about everything.  She always manages to be disappointed about everything.  I could say we were having ice cream and donuts for dinner and she'd still manage to let out a sigh and walk away in her Eeyore manner.

3.  Her sass and sense of humor.  She's straight up HILARIOUS.   Her sense of humor is way more mature than her age.  It makes it very hard to keep a straight face when she says something that's not quite appropriate for a 9 year old to say, but it's super funny.  She is super sassy and acts as if she invented the eye roll.

4.  One time right before Halloween when she was only 5, my mother gave the girls a bag of goodies for them to open up.  Inside was a small rectangular box of Malley's chocolates wrapped up in pretty paper.  She picked up the box, shook it next to her ear and said "Granny, why you get me some smokes?" then proceeded to tap the box on the palm of her hand a few times.  We all just stood there with our jaws on the ground.  Who says "smokes" anymore?  No one in our family even smokes.  This was the first specific incident when I knew there was some serious history wth this girl.

5.  In our hometown there is this super cool 50s type hot dog diner called Dan's Dogs.  We would go there frequently as a family.  All over the walls are pictures of celebrities and memorabilia from the 50s and 60s.  The first time we went there Caroline pointed to a picture of Elvis and asked who it was.  Over the years, every time we've gone she has asked questions about Elvis and found a book they have about him at the restaurant to read while we wait for our food.  

6.  Last year for the Fourth of July we went to visit some family in Toledo.  As we were all sitting around outside eating, my father pipes up and says "Hey, do you guys want to hear a funny story?"  Now this was a rare occurrence because my dad is a pretty quiet guy and is usually one to sit back and listen to other people talk, so all of our ears perked up.  This has got to be a good story for him to want to share, right?  So, he starts telling about a time where he left one of his three cell phones on the top of his car, started to drive off onto the highway and the phone flew off of the roof of the car.  Before he was even finished with what he thought was a hilarious story, Caroline rolls her eyes and loudly says "Good grief Gramps, great story." very sarcastically.   Who even says good grief anymore???  No one in her world, I can tell you that for sure.

7.   This child is OBSESSED with the TV.  It literally does not matter what is on the TV (commercials and all) her eyes are glued to it.  We here in the Bratt household refer to this as her TV comma.  At first I just figured "hey, the kid has lived in a mud hut for the past 4 years so she's never seen anything like this" but it never ever wore off or has lost its intensity.  It just got me thinking that if her "old soul" is from the 50s or 60s, then TV would have been a very new and fascinating thing.

8.  I'd say ever since she was 5 or 6 she would always point out to me when there was a handsome guy on a magazine cover in the grocery store, or on TV.  She was always on point too.  She always noticed, while Charlotte never did, nor did she care.  Caroline has a thing about peoples' eyes.  She's always pointing out if people have pretty eyes, even in person she'll say "Hey mom, did you see that man's eyes?  They were so pretty."  Just not typical for a 5 year old.

9.   She has always been very difficult to parent.  She's just so over being a kid and having to listen to other peoples' rules.  She has this air about her that an adult would have if their parent was telling them what to do.  I'm pretty sure at the age of nine she thinks she could go out, get a job and live on her own.  I'm not 100% certain she's wrong either!  Girl's got tenacity! 

10.   This story: We went to visit my friend Mary's campground one fall day and came away with one of my favorite stories of all time with Caroline. She had to go to the bathroom while we were there so Mary had her go into her parents' house to use the bathroom. Caroline has never met Mary's mom before. She walks through the kitchen to get to the bathroom and sees some junk food laying out like pop-tarts, chips, etc. She turns and looks at Mary's mom and says "Someone in this house is about to get some diabetes." I didn't even know she knew the word diabetes, let alone know how to use it properly! Half of the words in her vocabulary she can't pronounce properly, but diabetes she's got down cold!

 Now, before you get all "Well, aren't you a Christian?  How can you reconcile the concept of reincarnation with your faith?"  I don't know!!  It's just not that serious, ok?!  All I know is that the "child" I live with and love, does not act like a child a lot of the time.  It's mysterious, awesome and frustrating all at the same time.  One day I'll get to ask God what was up with that, but until then I'm just enjoying the ride.