On Active Duty

As mentioned in the last post, Sonia considers herself to be quite a performer, and lately she has been focusing on lots of new activities that give an outlet to her natural (albeit very shy) tendency to showcase her "talents." :-) Or, really, a series of activities that Sameer and I subject her to to keep her active while the weather outside is rainy and cold (at least by California standards). First off, she has started taking a ballet class, which really is just an excuse for 3-year-olds to wear pink tutus every Wednesday, but chances are Sonia would have done that anyway. Here is a video of Sonia and her classmates stretching at the end of the session...you'll have to trust me that she was having fun since there are no smiles, only fierce concentration. It seems she is focused on fulfilling her genetic destiny to be teacher's pet (she is the one sitting on the teacher's left).



In addition to dancing, Sonia has become a *huge* fan of the Nintendo Wii that we got our house for Christmas. It has become our latest bargaining chip in all conversations ("You can play the Wii later if you eat two more bites.") She particularly loves all of the little games that come with the Wii Fit and is the current reigning champion at our house for the penguin iceberg game and table tilt. Her favorite, though, is soccer (where you try to hit incoming soccer balls with your head while avoiding flying shoes and panda bears). Sonia was the long time champion at this game as well, until someone (ahem...Sameer) played it often enough that he beat her score, an episode which ended in tears. The high scorer for each game is listed with a crown next to their name, and Sonia was very proud that she had the crown for soccer ("I'm good at soccer!" was uttered at least 5 times daily). Sameer claimed it was a "good lesson" that Daddy had done better, but after the tears (from Sonia) and the glares (from me) he has since avoided playing soccer again. :-)

The Wii Fit also includes Yoga, and Sonia enjoys doing the poses along with Sameer. Here she is doing "The Tree" (with potentially better form than her father).



Finally, with the new year upon us, Sonia is focused again on swimming. (Yes, we do let her sit down and relax every once in a while.) After several lessons that mostly seemed to involve just splashing around, it seems that the teacher is now focused on actually teaching her to swim. She's not exactly a natural, but this is still big progress from our initial encounters with the pool. The lessons seem to involve mostly being dragged around the pool by the teacher while practicing kicking, and then swimming on her own for approximately 6 inches. Oh well, I'm sure Summer Sanders started the same way. (Sorry for the fog in the video, the pool was having its own weather system inside due to the fact that it is super heated and it was quite cold this day.)