Dancing Queen

We made it through dance class! In December Sophie had two dance performances. I seriously stressed out about her just melting down and refusing to do it. I tried to convince family not to come just because it's a fifty second dance. Sophie even cried the first time I put her in her costume so I was sure we were doomed to failure. 

Not at all.

Sophie did amazing. (As amazing as you'd expect a 2.5 year old to do) Our first performance was at a Christmas Expo with a whole bunch of people. It was terribly organized and way overcrowded. Thankfully the day before, Sophie and I went with Erin and Kira to watch Kira dance so Sophie was all excited about doing her hair fancy and dressing up like Kira. The day of Sophie's performance it was sheer chaos where they were performing. But to my delight, Sophie marched up on stage and she and one other little gal were the only ones out of the class of five to dance and be up there alone. Sophie surprised me by remembering most of the choreography and just being her happy self in front of tons of people. She really isn't shy sometimes and it was so fun to watch her dance and be so proud of herself. She was bubbling with joy afterwards and we took her to Coldstone to celebrate. She wore her tap shoes until we forced her out of them and continued to wear her costume for the rest of the day. The worst part of that whole performance is that Sophie's cousins had come to watch her dance and because the stage and everywhere was so crowded and people refused to move for anything they couldn't even see her. I promised them at the next performance they were coming with me to sit right in front of Sophie. 

Her next performance was at the Elk's Lodge and it was nearly as overcrowded and chaotic as the first performance. Again Sophie was so excited. She did well being up there but pretty much did the same dance move the entire time. It was still cute to watch and we got a great video of her cute self. Her cousins were able to sit up front with me and everyone left happy.

Dance class has been an interesting experience. In the beginning, it was more work than anything...continually yelling at Sophie to listen, wait her turn, stop this and stop that. There were days she refused to participate or put her dance shoes on at all. But the last few weeks I was able to just sit back and she really did learn how to wait her turn and listen to her teacher. It was so fun to watch Sophie doing stretches with her class or practicing her "princess walks" across the room. She really made me proud in the end. She still talks about class but we are stopping classes for now while we wait for baby sister to come. Hopefully we can find some fun summer activities before we start up with preschool in the fall!