First day of ballet

Here's something you might not know about Shay...I took ballet for 15 years.  Yup.  From the time I was 3 until I was 18, I took ballet (and other forms of dance), so naturally, I wanted my sweet girl to take it too.  My dear (and very honest friend) Helen told me yesterday that she was skeptical...Kensington is more of a "gymnastics" girl.  She's right, of course.  Kensington hasn't really exhibited any "sit still and be patient while we work on pointing our toes" behavior.  She's more of a run and tumble around kid.  That being said, we went to our first class today to try.

Here is my sweet girl refusing to look at the camera before we left.  One day, I will remind her of this behavior and hope she feels quite guilty. :)

 She is just so mistreated.  I am posting the picture nevertheless because I want you to see her cute outfit and ballet slippers.

 Now, she's telling me she wants me to take "action" shots of her doing "ballet jumps" off of the chair.

Soooooo...here's how ballet went down.  There are 8 little girls in her class.  When we got there, 5 of them were screaming hysterically.  Naturally, this caused K to cry as well.  She said she wanted me to sit in her class and watch like the other mommies (the other mommies whose little girls were also crying).  I had two choices...stay with Kensington and leave Smith in the dance studio foyer unattended crying (I could see him through the glass) or stay with Smith and watch my kid cry all the way through her paid for lesson...hmmm...I went with option A.  I gave Smith a baggie of peanut butter crackers and left him strapped in his stroller in the lobby.  He cried for about a minute until a nice mom made him a paper airplane and then he was good as gold.  He sat eating crackers, playing with his plane watching us through the glass, and Kensington participated fully in her class.  Geez...next week, Andrew's coming too.  :)



 After class, Smith was all smiles.  What a good boy to sit by himself watching while big sister was in class!

 Kensington showing me her stamp for doing such a great job in class.

Watching the other big girls in a more advanced class.

I'm sure I'll have many more dance/gymnastic/soccer classes to talk about in the future.  Over the next few years, we're going to let her try several things and then focus in on her favorite.  Maybe it will be ballet, maybe not...we'll see.