Acrobats

China is known for its amazingly flexible tiny women, dangling plates on their nose while scratching their ears with their toes. They master their art so well that everything looks easy and fluid.  It reminds me: When I was young(er), my dad proceeded to copy a move he just saw on TV, and ended up on the floor with a blocked back!
In fact, we have a bunch of these young contortionists living just around the corner, at the Beijing Chaoyang Theatre who hosts the Flying Acrobatic Show (check their site for awesome pictures). Pauli took me there last year for my birthday. The show in not only having a number of young girls (some very young) folding themselves and putting a number of plates in equilibrium. There are a number of acts with boys or girls flying on top of one another, or running in some kind of gigantic hamster wheel (my favorite), of contortions in equilibrium on a dangling plank, or of human pyramids on rolling bikes with plates dangling on top of their nose. 
This year, I brought Noam there to impress him, hoping he could sit through the whole show. And he did!  It was priceless to see his eyes wide open for the 90 minutes of the show!  And of course, as a good little boy, once we returned home he attempted a few of his own version of the show. Now he climbed out of his crib for the first time yesterday afternoon... Ah! (My nights will be even more doomed now...)