being oh, so very bendy

lamar held their fall festival on thursday night, with a big sidewalk sale and vendors set up all up and down main street. wild west athletics, kayla's (and anna's) gymnastics group, got to show off their skills right there on the sidewalk. it was loud, windy and very fun for the girls and boys who participated.
kayla has always been what we like to call 'bendy'. from the time she was tiny she could contort her body into all kinds of positions that would be much too painful for the rest of us to attempt. combine that with her amazingly solid and very strong little body, and you've got a gymnast in the making.

take a look at her stretching out at the top of these pics. she goes into a full split like it's no big deal... and look at her pointed toes! what form! what grace! what flexibility!

what a kid.

she absolutely loves gymnastics, and i love that she has something she loves. soccer comes and goes, softball is very high up on the list, but gymnastics definitely takes the cake in her book.

being oh, so scissor happy...

several months ago, anna got hold of the scissors and decided to cut her bangs off. this did not make her mama happy. after a very long and serious discussion (which may have just included a tiny little swat on the bum) she decided she would never do that again.

fast forward to monday...anna's preschool teacher had suggested cutting as a good fine-motor activity for her, so we spent the morning with her little safety scissors cutting circles out of colored paper and gluing them to another paper. i had laundry waiting, and left her to the task at hand for approximately 4 minutes. amazing how quickly things can go downhill.

i came back from the laundry room and anna said, "mom, i have hair on my shirt." the immediate flashback to the last time she had hair on her shirt brought all sorts of emotions to the surface, but at first glance all i saw was a tiny little wisp of hair on her tummy. relief flooded through me as i considered how much worse it could have been.
as i again emphasized to anna how not good it is for her to cut her own hair, i glanced down at the chair she had been sitting on. it took all i had not to scream and throw a temper tantrum right there. between what was on the chair and what came out in my hands as i ran my fingers through her hair, i thought i was going to cry. we had finally gotten her bangs back to normal, the cute little wavy curls around her ears did wonders to negate the fact that she has about 14 cowlicks, and her 3-year-old hair was just beginning to really thicken up.

and now about half of it is gone! this is just what came out in my hands (i had already thrown away what was on the chair):

the longest piece was about 7" long, and it all came out of the right side and very top of her head. so now we have a beautiful little anna with a mullet on the right side and a spiky-do on the top. AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! good thing she's got those killer brown eyes to draw your attention away from her hair and down to her face.

the moral of the story? don't listen to preschool teachers.