Gym Rat

When I began taking Lana to a local Baby Power and Forever Kids for a weekly parent/child enrichment class, I hoped she would get practice interacting with children her own age and learn to feel comfortable in a group setting. Mission accomplished. She's not only gained confidence around new people and children, but she's also learned a variety of new songs, the importance of taking turns, and how everyone should pitch in to help clean up. What could be wrong with that?

What could be wrong is that the child has become absolutely obsessed with "the Gym", as she likes to call it. We go to class on Friday morning and to Open Gym at least once a week, but it is never enough. Most days, Lana wakes up in the morning and immediately asks, "Gym?" I often tell her that the gym is closed (which is usually true), at which point she sadly repeats "Gym closed" and shakes her head slowly like she's contemplating the injustice of global hunger.

Lately I've noticed that Lana has taken a different approach to her quest to spend every waking moment at the gym. She's begun placing pretend phone calls to her grandparents, perhaps as practice runs until she manages to hit the right call back number on our caller ID. Here are the transcripts from calls placed last night:

"Hey Granny. Hi. Gym fun. Jump, slide. Boys. Ok. Uh huh. Gym? Ok. Bye bye."

"Hi Pop. Love you. Gym? Bye bye."

Should I be more alarmed that she's already figured out how to bypass Mom and Dad and ask the grandparents or that she's already talking about boys?