Catherine and I hooped it up last night.
We went hula hooping in fact.
Together. In public.
(Did I mention we were together?)
What a great time we had at this offbeat fitness class hosted by Jazzercise of Southwestern Connecticut‘s center. Great fun, terrific workout (my abs have been singing all day).
In fact, it’s amazing the transformation that can be wrought by a circular length of PVC piping wrapped in colorful tape. All the women — a wide range of ages and fitness levels — were reduced to giggly 16-year-olds like Catherine in no time.
And we all GOT it pretty quickly. I think we’ll be buying hoops of our own — serious ones, not the flimsy dimestore variety.
Of course the best part was doing it with Catherine. I can’t remember the last time we did something more than buy her sundries or get our nails done together.
These days, she has her own calendar and activities, and they typically don’t include spending time with old, embarrassing me. Unless she has to.
It wasn’t always this way, of course.
When she was little, we did things together all the time.
Tea parties to rival those at Buckingham Palace.
Games of War and hopscotch.
Fingerpaints.
Jigsaw puzzles.
Blowing bubbles.
Making chalk drawings.
Keeping the baby dolls clothed and fed.
Dollhouse afternoons that mostly involved “setting everything up” only to put it all away (or not). (And that dollhouse had more furniture and things than I can ever hope to own!)
Cooking and baking.
Mammoth crafts projects that involved glitter glued on 2 inches thick (and which we then tucked in envelopes and sent to Grandma, who is still vacuuming up the shiny pieces, swearing under her breath at me the whole time!).
🙂
Frisbee tosses.
Badminton (this mostly involved a stationary Catherine holding her racquet while I ran all over the yard like a lunatic).
Trips to the playground where try as I might, I could never manage to shake the motion sickness brought on by “Mommy, swing next to me!”
We used to have a lot of fun together, back before Catherine became a teenager.
Last night, it was nice to have her back. Even for an hour.
Pushing on a Rope 
There’s hope. Today Iris and I put stickers on our nails (Mommy says no nail polish yet). And Cousin Ellen put a braid in her hair — and learned it’s hard to braid hair on a 4-yr-old who is never still. And Grandma has read stories, watched a movie, and is now trying to get 2 kids to bed who have never been away from Mommy and Daddy before. We’ve had a LOT of togetherness since Wednesday morning. Grandma is exhausted; the kids still have energy.
Posted by Karen Waggoner | June 16, 2012, 11:48 pmI’m tired just reading about it all! What fun you’re having! Hope the night was uneventful and those kids found a true home away from home at Grandmas!
Posted by Terri S. Vanech | June 17, 2012, 8:25 am