Leia's First Ballet Class

Today was Leia Rose’s first ballet class ever, . . . and she has been wanting to go for a long time. Leia’s interests run the entire gamut. She loves everything pink, Barbie, My Little Pony, Strawberry Shortcake, and Littlest Petshop, . . . but she equally loves bugs, worms, and especially dinosaurs. (That’s her lunchbox request for next school year, . . . dinosaurs. Hmmm, . . . ebay.) Today, however, Leia Rose was truly feminine. She loved Vacation Bible School this morning again (they learned about the prophet Daniel), but what she really couldn’t wait to do was to get home and put on her new pink leotard, pink tights, and pink ballet slippers. I took lots of pictures all around the house (and I even tried a few with the tiny digital camera Mom and D gave us for Christmas, . . . that I had totally forgotten about. We’ll see if it works. IT DOES!) At four we went to the Ballet School of Chapel Hill, which also happens to be home to her Artgarden Montessori Scholl as well. There were six girls in her class. One of them was actually named Olive. I had never met anyone with that name before, well, except for Olive Oil. : ) So I had to tell the mom my “Olive” knock knock joke. You know, the one that ends with Olive You (I love you)? I’m not sure she appreciated it.

It was pretty hard for me to put into words my feeling about watching my daughter during this first ballet class. I felt very nostalgic, remembering the short time I took ballet and being kind of sad that I was never in a recital. I was also proud of my daughter, but mostly I was overflowing with happiness for her. It’s just the most special thing for me to watch my daughter experience happiness. The only thing that tops it is watching both of my children experience happiness together. Before Leia was born, my one wish for her (and Annie too) was that I wanted her to be happy in this life and the next. That pretty much covers everything I could hope for. I don’t know if I have ever seen Leia Rose more in her element than at that ballet class, dancing (mostly jumping) around with all of the other pink-leotard-clad four-year-olds. I had never considered Leia a very physical child until now. Seeing her enjoy physical activity was also a great blessing. It’s really neat how a ribbon wand or a scarf can make anyone appear graceful. Later when she asked me, I told her the truth about how I had never really liked ballet. I realized that I never had a true love for an extracurricular activity like this. Come to think of it, almost all outside-of-school activities I was in seemed a chore to me. I guess I felt they just cut into my play time. Telling Leia that I didn’t really like ballet when I was young was a bit of a mistake. Noticing her concern, I tried to explain that even though I didn’t enjoy ballet, I was waiting for a daughter who would and that it brought me lots more happiness to watch her. The short of it is this: I never had a true love for an activity like dance, but I sure felt great joy watching my daughter revel in that same true love that I never experienced.

And I got all of this out of a four-year-old pre-ballet class. *sigh* What the heck is going to happen when she makes her First Communion?



As for the actual class, we got to watch it through mirrored glass, a really great feature! Ironically, I couldn’t hear anything, so I had to guess what was going on. Once they crawled like a crab and then dove under a scarf (“it was a waterfall, Mamma!”). Another time the teacher had them lay in a circle with their toes all touching (“it was a pineapple pizza with M&Ms, Mamma!). Later they curled up in balls, crawled on the floor, curled up into balls again, and then ran around holding a scarf between their arms (“we were changing into butterflies, Mamma!”) I did see them do first position and a few other true ballet poses, and Leia fell down every time they did the one where you put one foot to the knee. (I don’t know what it’s called.) And through the whole thing, Annie kept saying “Leia! Leia! Leia!” (which sounds a bit more like “Yay-ah! Yay-ah! Yay-ah” sometimes) whenever she caught a glimpse of her sister.

Now I have to mention more about Annie in all of this. She was an angel! We stood sweating in the heat up there on the second floor and looking into some windows for a whole hour. Annie just happily chewed on toys that I just happened to have in my bag. At one point I resorted to letting her eat cheerios out of a snack trap, . . . which quickly deteriorated into her eating them off of a filthy bench. *sigh* This is a perfect example of the kind of baby Annie is: an extremely happy one. : )