Another Double Performance
My six year old daughter E has been working really hard in her dance classes. She takes both jazz and ballet classes. She loves dance so much that a lot of her week is taken up with dance activities. This past week was especially busy because she had rehearsals and her dance performance.
My wife had to get her ready three separate times. Two times were for each specific rehearsal and jazz and ballet. The last time was for the performance itself. On the day of the performance, it was crazy to even try to make the performance on time. There was a lot of traffic everywhere and things were a gridlock. What was normally a 35 to 40 minute commute turned into almost an hour and a half.
Both my wife and I were driving separately and struggled to make it on time. I originally left earlier to take our four year old son C to his last soccer session. They were going to have a medal ceremony and since there was a lot of traffic, we didn’t end up making it at all. He was really sad. I apologize to him and asked him whether or not he would have liked to make his medal ceremony or to have spent most of the morning and early afternoon with his cousin. He said he wanted to go to soccer and get his medals and next time I told him we would do a better job of talking to him about the options so that he can choose. After all, life is about trade-offs and he probably wanted his medals a lot more than the playtime.
My wife was heading straight to the performance with our daughter E. They left a bit before us, but got stuck in the gridlock. I somehow found a way out and called her to tell her the route. I ended up making it seven minutes before the performance started and my wife and E made it 10 minutes after I started. Luckily, E wasn’t on stage for her first dance until about 20 minutes later.
When she came out for her ballet dance, she was all smiles. She really loves performing, and we cheered really loudly for her. C was getting impatient. He is such a ball of energy and the last performance we went to, we spent intermission, running up and down a huge set of stairs to tire him out. This intermission, we stayed put in our seats and he really wanted to go outside, but I didn’t want to deal with the crowds.
He was getting a little bit restless, so I decided to play paper scissors rock with him. I thought it was a good game to help teach him how to recover after losses quickly, and to keep playing the game. It was also pretty fun to teach him how to play and play it fast. The more we played it, the faster we got. Even on ties, I ended up making up a few hand gestures to make him laugh (like when we both threw rocks, I told him to pound it and dapped him up). He had such a good time and it definitely brighten his mood. It also helped get out some of the energy that he had.
It was a long ways away for E to come out for her jazz performance. She liked that dance better and they usually saved that dance for much later in the show because it’s a fun one with little kids who are so cute. It breaks up the more serious dances by the older kids. When she finally came out for her jazz dance, she had a huge smile on her face. They did an amazing job and what was even better was that the performance was over. I’m so glad we all made it and that she got to dance in both performances, but nobody was more relieved than my wife.
When we met up E around the corner, we gave her some flowers and quickly took some pictures. We wanted to beat the crowd out, and I think everyone was exhausted from the day. We all made it home eventually despite the terrible traffic. It was always great to see these performances, but I’m so glad that there is a huge break for the summer.
