Twinkle Toes

Please excuse a brief bit of gushing in this post. Amy had her first "dance recital" today and I am VERY proud of her. The Little Gym really does it right; they schedule each class to a 30 minute block, all the girls come in and perform their two numbers (one tap, one ballet), twice each, then get a medal and a group picture and then are sent home.  No endlessly endless marathon dance company recitals like the ones I participated in that are, honestly, torturous for the audience who must sit through 3 hours of other people's kids dancing.  Phew. This was better.

Anyway.

Miss Amy started dance class back here, and hit a bit of a rough patch about three weeks in - she had a couple of huge meltdowns over the whole experience, for reasons we could never quite figure out.  I let her sit out a couple of weeks but then talked her into trying it "just one more time," to at least finish on a positive note, and from that class on she was just fine and LOVED it.

I have no plans on making a dancer or a gymnast out of her, but did feel strongly that this was a good thing for my girl who has had no other peer/away-from-mommy class experience.  I will mark this one in the WIN column for my mommy-judgement, because the last few months have indeed done wonders for her confidence.

So my girl did all her dances with a smile on her face today and I am super-pleased for her.  She can be a tough cookie to figure out, and I worried just a little that she might freak out again about the whole experience.  She might be the only 4-year-old girl I know who really didn't want to wear the tutu.  But she did and did so happily and danced her heart out.

Huge props to her teacher, who did an admirable job of guiding a group of girls, age 2.5 to 5.5 through all these skills, and always with a smile and encouraging word.  I likened it to herding cats, but she is a master.

And perhaps the sweetest part of all was after it was all done, and William simply couldn't stop hugging Amy.  Real, sweet, unprompted, sister-loving hugs.  It was too much.  AND after all that, Amy decided she wants to give William her "I'm a Star at the Little Gym" medal, because "he is always so good about watching my classes".  Who is this girl and what did she do with Amy?

She has her last class this week, during which she'll show off her gymnastics skills.  I'm excited for that, too, and happy to call this whole first-dance-class thing a good experience.