The Gracie Thruster

This story isn’t as much about me as it is about my husband and my daughter. Those two are peas in a pod. People don’t believe but as much as my girl might look like me, she acts just like her Dada and she loves him fiercely. I love that. I love that she seeks him out, and that he’ll wrestle and tickle her. Just like her Dada, my child has ZERO fear and loves anything that causes her little heart to beat a little faster. So when there’s no roller coaster nearby, these two often make up their own death defying games.

It’s a completely normal thing in my house to hear Gracie squealing after being tossed in the air or while being chased during a game of tag. It’s also normal as a result, to hear the dogs barking after both of them, mostly because Daisy is constantly concerned about Grace’s safety (I think Daisy thinks she is Grace’s mommy).

Apparently one night, these two got the bright idea that they needed a new game to play. As I’m making dinner, I hear the happy squealing of my kiddo in the backyard and I didn’t even look up, because that’s so normal. I’m smiling, making dinner, happy that everyone is happy, and at some point I glance up to see Gracie flying in the air above my husband’s head. Like arms out, legs out, flying and thinking it was the best thing in the world.

Hence the Gracie Thruster. You know what a thruster is? It’s a functional movement back from my CrossFit days, where at its essence you’re moving a weight from the ground to above your head. Obviously this is typically done with a barbell or sometimes even free weights, but not with a child, much less my child.

But as I was watching my husband launch the kiddo into the air, it literally looked like she was the weighted aspect of the thruster. He was completing the squat through the shoulder press (with amazing form I might add) and adding in a toss at the top almost like a wall ball (another CrossFit movement where you toss a weighted ball to the same spot on a wall multiple times).

The whole time, all I could think was “well she’s not a small child so he’s working his booty off, but he said he didn’t get a workout in today, so this will totally count.” Sure enough, Gracie made him do this newly formed functional movement 100 times. I’m not kidding. Grace thought they discovered a new game, and my husband was absolutely worked from it.

Grace calls it the Hi-Ya, and every chance she gets, she asks for it, usually in increments of 10.  Now my husband uses it as a chance to get in a little extra workout, because why not multi-task if you have the chance?