tiny dancer.

ellie had her first dance recital on saturday.

it was amazing.

we started the class because of a great (really great) deal on groupon. i wasn't quite sure if we were going to keep going, honestly. ellie had a really hard time listening some days, but she is only three so that's expected. also, we had paid for 10 classes so we were going to do those 10 classes (darn it!). by that point, ellie would be so excited for class and cry all day monday until it was time to go. i knew she was learning, too, because she was using french words and doing moves that i certainly hadn't taught her. 

ellie's sweet teacher was so patient. it couldn't have been easy,  especially since they started with 10 girls under the age of 4. ellie even got kicked out of class one day because of her crazy antics. by the end there were only three and it got easier for the girls and their teacher.

three of my favorite moments from class: 

1. miss s kept telling the girls to "glue their feet to the floor" or something. ellie didn't like that at all. she refused to dance and i finally went in and asked her what was wrong. she told me something about gluing her feet to the floor and i told her that the teacher didn't really mean it, that it was just pretend. i said there was no glue, it wasn't real. so when ellie went back into class she marched straight up to miss s and yelled "you don't even have any glue!" and then went back to dancing. 

2. one afternoon the girls wouldn't get off the floor. they told miss s that they were snakes. luckily, it was toward the last few weeks of class and miss s had figured out how to deal with these little girls. "okay then," she said, "i need you all to slither over here for me, please."

3. during stretches, i would always see ellie rolling around on the floor instead of stretching. i couldn't understand why she wouldn't do it, since she was always doing her stretches at home. then i listened to the music - it was from the little mermaid. ellie was "swimming" on the floor instead of stretching. 

so i have a video from the dress rehearsal. it's better than the actual recital, i guess, because the poor little girl in the middle ended up having a meltdown on stage and the director of the studio came out to dance with the girls. ellie finished the routine pretty gracefully, but it was sad to watch the other girl. she was the one who had been the best in practice! ellie loved being onstage in a real theater. she literally screamed the whole way home from the dress rehearsal because she wanted me to take her back to the stage. when the audience clapped for them during the recital she was beaming! when they came to take a bow you would have thought the whole show was about her, the way she hammed it up. this isn't the last we've seen of our little ballerina. 

ellie's the one closest to the dance teacher, but you'll probably pick her out no problem. 

and by the way, am i not so blessed to have not one but TWO beautiful girls? 

look at poppy waiting outside for the show to start. my little dolly (and her daddy).