How Fast Time Flies

Big news in our house last night:  La Nina lost her first tooth.  I remember her showing off that tooth so clearly in China.  She had it longer than she's had us. 

And now, she's showing off the place where it used to be.  Was it just yesterday I was trying to figure out how to help her cut these teeth?  And now, the process of them falling out has begun.  Isn't that classic motherhood?  All my worry and stress, and the darn things fall out anyway.  

Dance Marathon!

The following is a timeline beginning Thursday afternoon.  To the best of my recollection, this is how we ended the 2007-2008 dance season.  This is one of those posts that I will crack up reading in the future, but this morning, I'm too tired to see the humor in it.   

Thursday, June 19, The Warm Up

2:30pm:  Gather up La Nina to begin make up and hair for her 3:30 dress rehearsal.

3:25pm:  After a major communication snafu with another family, leave the house to pick up another dancer.  

3:50pm:  Arrive very late for dress rehearsal, but it's okay as we're second to last on stage. 

5:45pm:  Depart dress rehearsal and head for home.  

6:15pm:  Undress, remove makeup and store costume for show Friday night.

Friday, June 20, One Really Long Day

8:30am:  Gather up the Magster to prepare her for her dress rehearsal.  

9:35am:  Leave for Magster's dress rehearsal.

9:45am:  Arrive at dance studio for dress rehearsal.  Every other family is 10 minutes late.  It's not so easy to get a four-year-old dressed, made up and hair done.  Every mother had a tail of horror. 

10:45am:  Depart Maggie's rehearsal.  Only one hour and fifteen minutes to La Nina's next call time  

11:30am:  Depart house for La Nina's practice.  I'm dropping off three dancers, another Mom is bringing them home.  

Noon:  Drop off complete, Magster and I head for Kung Fu Panda.  (Thought it was a bit violent.)  

2:00pm:  Meet La Nina and other dancers for a smoothie between practice and another dress rehearsal.

3:00pm:  La Nina's second dress rehearsal begins.  I leave for home as I stayed at Thursdays and this one was belonged to another Mom.

4:15pm:  La Nina arrives home and I feed her dinner.

4:45pm:  Begin getting La Nina ready for her first show of the weekend.  

5:30pm:  Depart house, La Nina's hair in hot rollers, to make her 6pm call time.  Meanwhile, Dad heads off to Nana Papa's with the Magster.  La Nina's show will run too late for her and she has an early call the next morning.  

6:00pm:  Remove La Nina's rollers and leave her backstage.  Head off to restaurant nearby to meet the Dad for a quick dinner.

7:00pm:  Show begins.  It's only kids in La Nina's dance company and it's a fabulous show.  La Nina's group does a very nice job.  They're the littlest (age and size) kids in the company, but they're treated and expected to perform like the big kids.  They not only rise to the challenge, but love doing it.  

10:00pm:  I'm falling asleep in my chair, La Nina is dancing on stage in the finale.  She's all smiles, cheering for her teachers, applauding the scholarship winners, I marvel at how she's doing it.  

10:45pm:  I head to bed after feeding La Nina a second dinner.  She kisses me goodnight.  And asks if she can take Hip-Hop next year.  After my horror recedes, I tell her she has to be eight for Hip-Hop.  I'm pretty sure that's not true.  

Saturday, June 21, The Final Leg:  

7:45am:  Round up the Magster to begin hair and make up for her show.  

8:45am:  Depart the house for her call time.

9:15am:  Check in backstage.  I'm the back stage mom for her show.  So, I'll stay with her group until they line up for their performance.

10:15am:  Rush to my seat to watch the Magster dance.  Her group does the best they've ever done.  We're all very proud.

11:00am:  Leave the show for Nana-Papa's house with La Nina.  Magster and the Dad head out for a special treat.  Quickly eat lunch.

11:45am:  Begin hair and make up for La Nina.  

12:25pm:  Depart Nana-Papa's for theatre.  

12:35pm:  Traffic jam has delayed the back stage Mom for La Nina's last show.  Our team is delayed behind the theater.  Entire show gets delayed by 15 minutes, traffic is so bad.

12:50pm:  Backstage Mom arrives, La Nina checked in for last show.  Other moms head for coffee.  

2:00pm:  Moms report backstage to pick up our kids.  Kids spill out of theater excited by their performance.

2:20pm:  La Nina and I arrive home.  When I tell her dance is over until August, she nearly bursts into tears.  "But Mommy," she says, "I don't want to quit dance."  

"Honey," I console her, "We're not quitting dance.  We're just resting a little."

"But I get to do more next year, right?"  

"Yes," I tell her, "You get to do lots more."

"Good.  Because all these shows were really fun."  

As we walk into the house, I marvel.  The last 48 hours were grueling, but she didn't mind.  In fact, she loved it.  If she's that passionate about dance now,  I guess I better enjoy our brief break.  'Cuz we probably won't get many of these in the future.

  

Updates

Boy, since I found out about the writing conference, I haven't been blogging much.  So, I'll just post a few brief updates that will perhaps explain why.

End of Year Party Season:  La Nina wrapped up Kindergarten with a series of parties to end all parties.  She spent her last days in the safety of Kindergarten attending picnics, pool bashes, pizza feasts, etc.  The festivities left her feverish.  Literally.  In fact, she came down with a mysterious fever that appeared every afternoon around 3pm and disappeared over night.  

FCC Camp Out:  La Nina and her fevers caused us to arrive a day late at the camp out.  The car was packed and we were minutes from leaving when I discovered La Nina asleep on the floor, running a 102 temperature.  I gave her motrin, the fever broke, but we chose not to push our luck in a tent with a fever.  We've had way too much nights spent in the van at Olema to want to chance it again.  

Anyway, the camp out was the usual great time.  I could wax poetic about the power of seeing all the girls running around together, but I just don't have time today.  So, suffice to say, we had a great time and the fever seemed to stay away.  

Emergency Room Visits:  Until yesterday when La Nina came to me with a lump on one of her two beloved sucking fingers.  To me, it looked like a pus-filled sack (yep, pretty gross) to her it just hurt.  Never being sure of first aid protocol when it comes to problems of this nature, I took a wait and see posture.  The infection I saw yesterday afternoon had doubled in size.  So- obviously something had to be done.  La Nina was howling like a wounded animal at the mere thought of us dealing with it, so I called the doctor.  

For future reference, if your child has a growing infection on their finger, proceed immediately to the nearest emergency room.  (Who knew?)  Two hours later, La Nina and I emerged from the emergency room.  The doctor had numbed, lanced and wrapped in sterile cotton the hurting finger.  She's now on antibiotics and suspended from swim lessons until next week.  

We're hoping the fact that her sucking finger is wrapped in tape and gauze will help her break her long-standing habit.  Of course, I don't think this will do it.  But I'm willing to leave her finger bandaged as long as possible to see if it works.

Swim Lessons:  Just because La Nina is riding the bench at swim lessons, doesn't mean Maggie can't take classes.  With her sister and I looking on, the Magster did a great job in class today for her MALE teacher.  Can you believe it?  The child who will barely speak to men she's known all her life is hanging with a college-age male swim teacher and liking it.  Mr. J (name hidden to protect the innocent) is great with kids.  He's "hilarious" according to La Nina.  And I'm impressed with how quickly he can dive into the pool and snag kids who are struggling.  We saw one of Maggie's classmates test old Mr. J a bit, and he didn't miss a beat.  Despite the fact he's a big guy, he's sort of soft spoken and he clowns around just enough to appear non-threatening.  Regardless of his techniques and the fact the Magster grouses a bit about being the only girl in her class, she's handling the situation beautifully.

So, that's it from me.  Now, I have 10,000 words I need to get to work on, so please forgive me if I'm a bit brief over the next few weeks.

My Big Day

Over the weekend, I heard a friend of mine who also applied for the Squaw Valley Writer's Conference received an email she was on the wait list for acceptance.  I was very happy for her and sad for me.  Surely it meant that the acceptances were already out if wait list people received notification.  It only made sense. Notify acceptances, contact wait list folks, then time the turn downs to arrive on the deadline.  I received my turn down on the deadline last time.  Clearly, I'd make the long walk to the mail box today and find the plain cream colored envelop with the very nice letter telling me 'not this year'.  

Frankly, I was good with getting turned down.  Disappointed and realistic all at the same time.  I know my book needs work and I've been so busy with kid things that I haven't had time to write.  An entire week away from the family is a lot.  The Dad can go it alone for an entire week, but I worry about things like the kids getting bathed, brushing of hair, vegetables being consumed.  Not getting accepted also meant I'll be around for the first week of dance AND I'll get to go to the travel group reunion.  Really, the land of rejection is a place any writer knows well and sometimes it's a happy place.  The land of rejection is also a crappy place, but hey, I've visited it before I can rationalize it better.

The day dawned, I took Pete (our dog) out for his walk, and came in to check my email.  A note greeted me with the following topic:  "WRITERS WORKSHOP FICTION ACCEPTANCE". 

I read it at least seven times before I realized it wasn't junk email trying to sell me cut-rate prescription drugs.  Then I couldn't focus on any word but "ACCEPTANCE".  I freaking got in.  Can you believe it?  Oh man, the chapter I sent really was a decent chapter of fiction.  I wrote one damn, decent chapter.  Chalk one up for the mom writers of the world.

Now, I'm alternating between delight and terror.  Real writers go to this workshop.  I'm not a REAL writer.  Sure, I write.  I love to write.  I drag myself from bed at 4am without the benefit of caffeine and sit in front of a lap top to pound out stories about people I created in circumstances of my imagination.  But, me...the person who didn't decide to give the craft of writing a whirl until I was almost 40 in a conference like this?  Oy vey.  I can't believe it.  What am I going to do when they figure out I don't have another decent chapter?

Now, my fingers are crossed for my friend.  She's such a great writer.  I'm so hoping there's a cancellation and she gets accepted.  She deserves it and it'll be a lot more fun if she's there.  I've also got to get to bed.  My day will start early tomorrow.

Dance Fever!

La Nina's big dance recital was yesterday and she did a great job on all of her dances.   While I'd like to say, this rounds out her dance season, this was just the beginning of the end.  We have a week off, then she has two more shows the weekend of June 21 plus Maggie has a show. Here's a run down of our day by the number:  

Number of:  

Bags packed:  5

Dances performed: 4

Shows she danced in:  2

Costume changes:   4

Pairs of tights:  8 in 2 colors

Pairs of tights destroyed: 3

Shoes:  3

Hair pieces changed:  4

Hair style changes:  2

Hot rollers used backstage:  8

Hours spent backstage:  6

Complaints about waiting:  0

Minutes spent on stage:  15

Trips to the bathroom:  6

Lipgloss touch ups:  7

Bobby pins used: 10

Hours I spent last night:  10

The thing that makes it all worthwhile is after I loaded a very tired La Nina into the van, she started singing one of the songs she danced to and said, "Mom, today was fun." After a little bit of rest, she was dancing around the house again and asking about her next shows.  The sinking feeling in my stomach tells me she's going to be dancing for a few more years.  

Getting Ready for the Big Show

Here's a picture of La Nina ready to leave for her dress rehearsal yesterday afternoon.  To make it through one dress rehearsal, it takes three bags filled with costumes, tights, shoes, make up, snacks and lots of bobby pins.  

She's wearing her costume for her ballet class.  Her dance is called "English Princess".  And as you can see, she looks like a princess in this dress.  

For more details on the rehearsal, keep reading.

Dress Rehearsal

Last night was La Nina's dress rehearsal for her big recital on Saturday.  The plan was for her to rehearse her four dances in about an hour and a half.  I was prepared with four costumes, four pairs of tights in two colors, three pairs of shoes, fifty bobby pins in two sizes, make-up, snacks on ice and sweats for the ride home.  

Because I was not a "backstage mom", only a dressing room mom, I could assist La Nina with changes between numbers, and otherwise had to stay in the audience.  The first number was a disaster.  A dancer came onto stage late and it threw the entire number off.  La Nina came off the stage ticked, not at the other dancer, but at the fact the lighting was wrong, which for her role was crucial.  It was all she talked about while I changed her, touched up her make-up and handed her her jazz shoes for her favorite number.  

When she was stage ready again, I took her to the 'green room' and ran back to the audience.  I was with the other moms, waiting for La Nina's second number, when the studio director came onto stage with La Nina's teacher and said, "Will La Nina's Mom please come back stage?"  

It's never good to hear your name called in these situations.  So, I made my way to the stage, and was hustled behind the curtain.  La Nina had "an issue".  

I found her standing in a puddle with black tears of mascara dripping down her face.  Obviously, the issue had a cascading effect.  While I rushed off to change my daughter, the rehearsal was thrown into a tail spin.  They called another group onto stage, but about seven of those girls requested bathroom breaks after witnessing La Nina's problem.  So, the director punted and called up a dance that was clueless as to our little drama.  

While La Nina and I stripped off her not so wet costume and her soaked tights and shoes, we had to figure out how to dress her:  old, slightly damp costume, next costume or sweats?  In the end the question was what would she feel most comfort on stage in since she would no longer match her group?  Then La Nina made the statement heard round the theatre:  I'm not going out there.  

Okay, well, now we really had a situation.  The studio policy is no dress rehearsal, no recital for that dance.  And it was her favorite dance.   I tried, her teacher tried, the studio owner tried, the studio director tried, the child wouldn't budge.  We pointed out other kids with tight changeover times had danced out of costume, but La Nina refused.  We covered the fact, no one knew the problem, she just shook her head and bit her lip.  We threatened her with not dancing her favorite dance, she just cried harder.  As she sobbed on my shoulder, four adult women, three of us mothers, were stumped.  

The show had to go on, so her group was called to stage, thirteen girls of their own will, La Nina in my arms, head buried in my shoulder.  Her group took the stage and La Nina, tears streaming down her face, shook her head 'no' a final time and the group danced without her.  

After the drama of the second number, she needed desperately to get back on stage in a 'get back on that horse' way.  Lucky for her, her third number was only ten minutes after the tragic second one.  I patched up her make up and hair, handed her the tap shoes, and again took her to join her group.  This time, I was allowed to stay with her back stage.  When her group got the call, she took her place in line, marched onto stage and delivered.  Whew.  The fourth dance also went off without a hitch.  

So, the question became what to do about the second dance?  Would the studio let her dance unrehearsed?  After some discussion, it was decided she'll be allowed to dance.  The reason they waived the rules is because she did so well on her other numbers and all agreed, she was under a bit of duress given the disastrous first number and well, 'the issue'. 

Now, the bad news for me:  The jazz shoes were a total loss.  I can't wash them and they're smelly.  So, today, on the day I was hosting a play date for three of Maggie's friends, getting La Nina to a dentist appointment and normal school things, I had to track down a pair of size 2 jazz shoes.  I found some and will pick them up at the studio tomorrow. Whew!

I tell you, there is never a dull moment around here.  

For Auntie..."Fancy Girls"

I told my sister this story and she's been after me to post it to the blog.  So, I'm finally jotting it down.    The following conversation happened in the car the other day.  In the way of background, "fancy girl" is a very desirable title in our house.  Near as I can tell, it means you wear lots of makeup, high heels and sparkly clothes.  I've been informed by my daughters that I'm not "fancy."  

La Nina leans over to Maggie and starts in:  "Maggie you are not a fancy girl.  You don't have high heels or make up.  And your skirt isn't very pretty."  

The Magster listens, looks her up and down, then leans over and answers:  "Fancy girls don't suck their fingers."  

La Nina is silenced.  She sticks her fingers in her mouth and looks straight ahead.  The Magster looks out her windows and smiles.  I don't know why I feel so protective of my younger daughter.  She manages just fine without my help. 

A Crazy Day

Today was dance picture day.  Last year, dance pictures just about put me over the edge, but this year hair and make up went much smoother.   I've lived through a dance competition, two Nutcrackers and two recitals, so I'm more experienced.  In fact, with all the hair and make up I do, I'm thinking I should take the test to become a beautician.  After two plus hours in the bathrooms, the girls emerged ready to pose.  I snapped the above picture on our way out to their official appointments.   

And as if the day wasn't enough with pictures, as soon as the last photo was snapped, we rushed home, removed the make up, put on the jeans and headed out to our first Giants game of the year.  The girls made it through ten innings of Giants baseball with a quick trip to the Coke bottle slide and a bag of cotton candy.   

It was a crazy day, but we all survived.  Hopefully, the pictures turned out as well as the game did.