Coordination

As a general rule, Pyrope is my coordinated child.  Usually.

These last two weeks have been a very interesting mixture of him making significant gains in new gross motor skills and regular spectacular displays of uncoordination.

In ice skating, he has not only learned to stop on command and skate backwards with some actual speed.  He also learned how to switch from skating backwards to forwards and vice verse without stopping between.  He can also be skating forward and catch a puck with his stick and skate with the puck in a controlled fashion (instead of hitting the puck ahead, catching up, then repeating).

In swimming, he now can be on his stomach and roll over to his back or roll from his back to his stomach.  He started treading water.  For the first time ever on Thursday, he was able to do an actual front crawl stroke instead of the doggie paddle he had been doing or having his face in and just kicking.  Then, a few minutes later, he was doing the front crawl again, he paused to get a breath (using his new treading water skill), then put his head back in the water and continued with the front crawl back to the wall.  This is amazing progress (he has been progressing nicely, but these are really significant leaps in a period of maybe 2 weeks).

On the other hand, he has had some spectacular mishaps.  He tripped walking on the sidewalk (not on a crack or anything, just his feet).  He didn't just fall, but his motion kept going and he rolled up onto his one shoulder, both feet in the air bending up behind him.  It even got comments from strangers.  He has walked into trees (not because he wasn't looking, he has done that, but simply because he didn't realize how close he was getting that quickly), rode his bike into the garage (not into the garage as into the building, but as in he didn't stop and hit the garage), and has hit his hand (hard) onto walks when he was just walking (too) close to the wall (then almost cried because he hit has hand so hard).  The one day he went to sit on a chair, and missed the chair and was sitting on the floor right in front of the chair.

It is an interesting contrast so see him gain so many skills while at the exact same time having so many issues with things that don't typically cause him problems.

It almost makes me wish that I tracked Pyrope's height and weight more like I do Obsidian's (but I don't as he is growing normally and there is no particular reason to).  I would guess that I would be seeing some significant growth.  Right now we are transitioning from purely winter clothes, so spring clothes, and there have even been a few days of shorts and t-shirts.  So I don't have the best handle of which clothes he is outgrowing (plus summer clothes, you have to grow a lot before it really shows, so I won't have a real feel for it until fall, of which he rarely fits into anything he did in the spring... unlike Obsidian who I put into his 6 month shorts today that he wore last summer and the summer before and they still fit, they are right at his knees (the first summer he wore them they were below his knees, I just have to remind myself of that fact)).

So I get the joy of watching Pyrope quickly gain new skills, the humor of many of his incidents, and a few "I hope he didn't get really hurt" between the two sets of events....