A Fish out of Water

Today, I took Jake to our weekly class at Gymboree on the UES. Jake loves his weekly class! For those of you not familiar with Gymboree – the class starts with circle time singing songs like itsy bitsy spider and the Hokey Pokey. Then, they have a theme of the week activity. The theme this week is socialization- so all the kids hopped on the big banana tube and did motion rolls (see picture), then off to practice standing and crawling together. Very comical! Throw in a little baby soccer, parachute, and bubble time…and you now get the gist of this 45 minute Gym Class. It is a great workout for Jake. Even better, they have their free playgym after our class for 45 minutes – so it is really 1 1/2 hours at the gym for us. Jake is exhausted after class and takes a long nap as you could imagine!

So why are my “a fish out of water?” As you can see in the pictures, I am the only dad with 12 other moms and nannies. It is like this every week for us NYC at home dads! Don’t get me wrong, I am not upset about it. I enjoy the conversation with the moms about playing, nap schedules, and other classes to take in the hood. In fact, if I were selective to only take Daddy & Me classes, then I would be at home with Jake everyday – there are no Daddy & Me Classes! That is disappointing. I have nothing against the mommy and me classes/groups, but sometimes it would be nice to take a class with all dads! That is where our meet up group comes in – it gives me that opportunity on a weekly basis to hang with dads during the week.

Finally, our NYC Dads Group are partnering with Baby Fingers, a sign language class, to take our first Daddy & Me class with nine other stay-at-home and part-time at-home-dads. I look forward to sharing that experience with everyone soon.

If you know of a great class or even better, a Daddy & Me type class, please share it!