Preparing for Maisie’s first meet

The excitement in our house is palpable as we prepare for Maisie’s first gymnastics meet this Saturday.  Maisie is beyond excited, constantly talking about her routines and what’s going to happen and medals, the girl is planning on scoring some points and coming home with metals!!  I just hope that she has fun, does well and enjoys the experience.

Yesterday after practice Maisie received her competition leotard which as you can see in the above picture, she just adores!  Pink, shiny, sparkly AND rhinestones make Maisie one very happy gymnast!

Today I had a practice go at putting Maisie’s hair into little buns, a first for me.  All the gymnasts at her level need to have two little buns instead of a single ponytail because part of their beam routine is a forward roll so a pony on the back of their head would bother them.  I went out and bought hair nets so between those, lots of hair pins and plenty of sparkly glitter spray, I did okay.  I obviously still need to practice and will hopefully do better as I do it more but it doesn’t matter because and in my totally biased opinion, I think she looks stinkin’ adorable!

Not only did she receive her competition leotard but also this extremely shiny and very cute warm-up/practice leotard.  Maisie has a very shiny one that she just adores which is quite similar to this one so when she pulled this leotard from the bag she was super excited.  She especially loves that the leo has the gym’s initials in green rhinestones down her right side.  I wonder if she’ll ever wear any other leo to her practices or if I’m going to be washing this one multiple times each week.

Yesterday when the girls received their gym bags (which are an adorable zebra print with their names and gym name embroidered on the bag), goody/make-up bags (in a matching zebra print and filled with hair clips, gymnast shaped silly bands and hair ties), two pairs of adorable ribbon & tulle flip flops, a fun pink water bottle with their name in funky black letters and a zebra ribbon bow (cute, cute, cute!) and of course their two leotards, they also received their warm-up suits which they will wear as they march into and out of the gym.  Well one of the coaches warned me that Maisie’s was a bit big even though they ordered the smallest size the manufacturer made.  She told me “you ‘may’ need to take it in & up a bit.”  Well she wasn’t kidding! 

Unfortunately I am not good at sewing but I did manage to take the pants (waist & bum) in about 4-inches as well as take the pant length up about 8-inches so at least the pants will stay on her and she won’t kill herself tripping over them.  The jacket…well there’s not much I could do there.  It’s just so big on her, all I could do was roll up the sleeves and tack them into place so that they won’t unroll on her.  Even though Maisie will get a new warm-up suit next year (Since it’s Maisie’s first year on a competitive team she had to get everything new but it’s usually it’s an every-other year thing between the two leotards and the warm-up suit.  Next year all the teams get a new warm-up suit and the following year is a new competition & practice leo year) I think that she’ll get many years worth of use from this warm-up outfit.  I’m guessing that maybe by the time she’s 7 or 8 it may actually fit her perfectly!!

Here’s my sweet little gymnast after I removed the buns and combed out her hair.  The hairspray was obviously still trying to hold her hair in place. Maisie loved that she had poufy hair and asked to have it more often!

Today was Maisie’s last day of school for the week and she had an awesome first week of school.  She had great days at school and was excited each day to tell me about what had happened and what she learned and even better, she couldn’t wait to go back the following morning.  We have already started a good routine of a little healthy (no sugar) snack on the drive home then once in the house it’s homework and when that’s completed she gets a treat (sugar snack and she usually chooses a popsicle) then it’s off to her 3 hour gymnastics practices.  We’re home from those at 7PM where we have a quick dinner, wash and bedtime.  Maisie has been tired and each night she’s been in bed no later than 7:40PM and has been sound asleep within 10 minutes.  I love that her school (all the grades from 5K – 12) only has a four day week, Monday – Thursday because by the time Friday rolls around, it’s nice to have a quieter day.   We do school work at our pace, meet up with friends, do other fun and/or educational activities and our only scheduled thing is Maisie’s hour long swim lesson in the afternoon, gotta love Fridays!!  I think everyone should have a four-day work/school week, it rocks!!  

Maisie’s been sleeping well but I unfortunately can’t say the same for me.  Tonight I think I’m going to try and make it an early one.  I just got a batch of yogurt into the oven for a 14-hour bacteria growth session and Eammon is still at the office and I don’t know how late he’ll be, so I guess I’ll go to bed and try to catch up on a bit of sleep. 

Keep an eye on my Cook Lisa Cook and Maisie Eats Bento blogs because in the next week or so I’m going to be having some awesome giveaways.  Keep checking back on all three blogs because I know you’ll want to enter!

Night  ;-)