My Little Tumbelina

Before you sign your kid up for a child gymnastics class, there are a few things you should know.  Sure, the girls look cute in their dance outfits and they love getting their hair done, but that all costs money.  Precious, precious money that you could otherwise be spending on bacon and Redd's Apple Ale.  Don't commit to that monthly gym fee until you've counted up the costs.

Classes:  One class runs 30 dollars a month.  The more classes you enroll your child in, the less each class costs.  So, for gymnastics and dance, we'd shell out 52 dollars.  Throw in some jazz hands and you're talking 70 bucks a month.  Sure it's a great deal, but who wants to sit through a jazz recital?

What bothers me the most about classes is that parents aren't allowed to watch.  We drop off Leah for 45-minutes and then come back.  I don't know what's going on in there each week.

 We could be shelling out all of this money for her to do nothing but somersaults each week.  Then again, it's 3/4 of an hour that my wife and I get to revert back from a zone defense to one-on-one coverage, so it's well worth it.

Dance Outfit:  While the girls look cute in their gymnastics outfits, it doesn't necessarily follow that the outfits themselves are cute.  In fact, the one we had to buy for Leah was pretty hideous.  It also cost 61 dollars and she wore it twice.  But, she was cute enough to get flowers from some guy in the audience:

The tumbling outfit that we bought her for classes looks better than this one, it only cost 20 dollars, and she wore it every week to practice from September to May.

Hair Styling:  Once you've blown money on clothes, it's time to throw more of it away on fancy hair-dos that last two or three days.  I couldn't tell you how much it costs to get hair done, because I opted for The Deb hair-do, you can't go wrong with a classic.  My wife later opted to undo my hairdo and do a new do.  That's my boo.

Rehearsal Fees:  At the end of the tumbling season (we break for summer), you get to shell out another 30 bucks for "The Big Night".  And since you have no idea what your little one has been doing in class all year, you have to pay to see what you've been paying for.  It's a brilliant business strategy and were I not a victim of its design, I would applaud it.

(Recitals:  A reason to not have kids)

Hemorrhoid Cream:  It would be awesome if you could come and watch your daughter perform her routine and then leave wouldn't it?  Yeah, well you can't.  Instead, you can sit through three hours of watching other parents' kids twirl, cart-wheel, and jazz-handing, while you wait for your daughter's 5-minute routine to come up.

Here's the breakdown:

Classes:     $30/month X 9 months = $270
Outfits:       $61 ugly routine dress + 20 beautiful practice dress = $81
Hair Do:      $45 (if you're a sucker)
Rehearsal: $30
Cream:       $3.28 (Equate brand)

Total:  $429.28

For a little over four-hundred dollars you can get 5-minutes of entertainment.  Was it worth it?

Every Penny!