The dance fiasco

My eldest fell in love with ballet last year (while in Kindergarten) due in part to a brief "princess dance" session (ballet essentially). So in September, we decided to sign her up for dance (though I'm not fond of the idea that it goes ALL YEAR LONG).

Well, dance had a bit of a rough start this fall... Initially, it was to be ballet and jazz, back to back. But then she BEGGED me to do tap. Doing all three was out of the question, so in my stupidity, I seemed to think that (in theory) it might be manageable to do ballet right after school, have a 45 min. break where we could run up the street to grab a slice of pizza before tap. That would bring us home around 7pm, in time for the bedtime routine. It would be a nice girls night out... right!?

Not so much. The first week was BRUTAL! We ran like crazy, were late for both classes, her tap shoes were on back order, and no one told her mommy that she was supposed to switch into a black outfit with tan tights from her pink ballet outfit in between classes... (did I ever hear about that one when the class was over! poor kid... she was a real trooper during class though and never complained!) So we got the wardrobe right the second week (the tap shoes still on back order), but I found myself dredding Thursday all week! All of that running around, with a 3 year old and 2 month old trailing (the latter needing to be breastfed by the time tap rolled around...).

I consulted my common sense to recognize that the entire thing was just NUTS! So I had a chat with my dear daughter and asked which one she absolutely wanted to do, because we just couldn't do both. Without too much protest (to my surprise) for having to drop one, she was excited to choose tap (again, to my surprise). Now we have time to come home for a nice dinner and to feed the baby before heading out for tap class (with her new tap shoes... finally!). Phew!

Oh whose kidding who, we're still rushing to get homework done, shove food down our throats and rushing out the door to make it to tap on time... but it's WAY better than before!