All in a Day

Saturday was a great day in a great weekend. The weather is hot. The sun is out. The mud is ideally "goopy." I noticed the irony in the fact that on the morning of Sophia's debut as a ballerina, she was covered head to toe in mud. She's probably not the only dancer who starts the day with a skin treatment, but I bet she enjoys it the most!

 

That was followed up by a swim with Aaron and William.

 

Then a good nap and off to the dance recital!

Here's how that went down: I will possibly post later about the trauma of leaving my tiny girl at the back door of Jesse Hall, but for this, let's just say I dropped her off and went inside. Once inside for a while, I saw her teacher come out from backstage and mouth to a parent helper ".... freaking out." I knew immediately that would be Sophia. None of the other kids are freakers. Cryers or crazies, perhaps, but not freakers. That's Sophia.

Sure enough, they had tested the smoke machine back there. Have I mentioned before that Sophia has what has played out as a full fledged phobia of smoke and sizzling - the symptoms of fire? Since she burnt her hand and had the accompanying surgery, she has been deathly afraid. So, when they turned on the smoke back there, she "freaked." Hallie came out to ask me whether or not I should go back to calm her down. I said, obviously I don't want her freaking out, but if I go back there, we're done. So Hallie took care of it, and I never knew for sure how it would turn out. I may blog more about that another time too.

Anyway, the first we saw of her, she was being led onto stage with the other 3- to 5-year-olds in her class. Still teary, she looked at Miss Hallie and gave her a quick thumbs up. My heart shattered into a million pieces. I haven't yet determined if the breakage was a happy or sad one. I'll analyze that another day. Regardless, Sophia completed the dance with gusto. She actually looked the right direction more than a couple times. She still seemed to want to have a conversation with the girl next to her at the one turn, but all in all, a great showing.

The grandparents were kind enough to take the gamble that she would perform.

 

And now we have the summer to recuperate. I have the summer to keep her all to myself. And I plan on it.