The girls have been taking ballet from one of my amazing friends here. We just do it at the house, but I make a big deal out of it and Jane knows that she has to toe the line with her ballet teacher if she wants to keep homeschooling. I have told her that's important that she learns to be respectful, take instructions from, and be teachable with other adults. For the most part, it's gone well. Emiline is my struggling perfectionist that assumes that if she doesn't get something exactly right the first time that she must collapse onto the floor in misery. So it's been especially good for her to have this opportunity. And after several months of all this, Jane is finally OK with doing someone else's moves. That kid loves to make and create everything on her own.
So my friend and I decided that we really wanted them to have a solid performance opportunity and that the Ward Talent Show was perfect. We had lots of plans. And as I've begun to say, "with small children, there are plans, and then there is reality." My friend has two kiddos, one about Adam's age (28 months) and an 8 month old. So first her kids got sick, then mine did, then Thanksgiving, then her's got Hand Foot Mouth Disease which kept them quarantined for almost 2 weeks, then we had something flu/strep-like....etc, etc, etc. The forces were conspiring against us! But she had a cute little dance in mind, and costumes envisioned, and Emiline at least was SO excited to perform. We kept planning on it happening. As it turned out, the girls only practiced the lightly-choreographed dance a few times during one very naughty rehearsal (in which they wrote Sorry Cards to their patient teacher) and practiced with me (who didn't know the dance) a handful of times. Every time we had planned to have them practice, some thing or some one exploded... the girls DID perform tonight, but it was almost-not-happening RIGHT up until it happened. I'll explain, after this adorable video
(although shaky, I tossed my phone to a sweet 10 year old girl just before we started the music).
And this is not all the performing that happened tonight. As choir director, I had been asked to put together an upbeat song to be sung as Santa came in. I dutifully chose a song, got music, scheduled rehearsals, and....well, our choir has been...barely a choir. One Tenor and one Bass don't really make a choir. So we've had to cut what numbers we were going to do in the first place for the Christmas Program, and we definitely did not have it in us to do an extra song for the Christmas Party. So offered to let our family sing the song instead. Because it was a really fun song I picked!
But then I didn't hear back from the guy if that's what he wanted or not until just a few days before the performance, so we didn't practice in earnest until last minute. And we still had distract-a-girl Jane and perfectionist Emiline to deal with. And a wandering Adam. And a busy Eric that kept missing practices. But we (I) didn't give up ("you will stand up right now and sing this song or you will go to your room and NOT come to the party!")
Eric was supposed to come home early for his lunch break so we could do some solid practicing all together before I had my RS Presidency Meeting. And then, and I'm not sure why the timing on this became so very paramount to Eric, he comes home and says, "by the way, the guys are on their way over to clean the air ducts- we've got to move stuff out of the way so they can reach them." (Eric works in the office as accountant/bookkeeper/business strategist of a cleaning company) OK! It's 11:15, I need to shower, dress, feed kids, practice the song, AND deal with the vents....?? So we start getting to that and then Eric gets a 13 minute phone call he had to take about some financial aid stuff, and now he has to also fax some documents off in the next 20 minutes. Oh, and then the CD player starts acting up. So we didn't really practice with Eric. But he was going to come home early from work...(you can guess THAT didn't happen). My meeting went REALLY long, I barely had time to dress kids, prep food and head out the door. We practiced in the car. And we did run through it twice on stage before people got there.
But the fun REALLY began when we got there. The plan was to meet up with the ballet teacher before and get one last practice in. Well, she'd had a very special day, too. She couldn't get the music cut and burned just right, problems with tutus, and then kids and her husband beginning to explode (or get sick, again). So she wasn't able to come early, and ended up not even being able to stay for the talent show at all. So I had to call the routine- that I didn't really know. And I have a very specific Emiline that insisted on doing it exactly in the right order.
Remember how I was supposed to feed my kids lunch before that meeting? And it was a lot of rushing around after? Yeah. The party started later than planned, which meant dinner was later, which meant three very hungry children who were WAY geared up for performing. The length of the line brought Emiline to tears 7 times. I told Jane she had to choose one kind of meat to try (we had ham, turkey, and briquet). And that's when, she says anyway, she started to feel sick. Eric had noticed her acting a little glassy-eyed and was worried about her. He was just telling me this over my first few bites of food when she puked. On herself, and on Emiline, and their costumes. I'm so lucky to have a husband that doesn't flinch in the face of puke. He started cleaning Jane, the chair and floor, I tried to calm down Emiline, and then took Jane and Emiline's skirt to the bathroom for washing. The girls were wearing their leotards under their coordinating outfits for our song.
Perhaps that should have been enough to stop us. But Jane still wanted to perform. And the puke was mostly a result of all the phlegm she was coughing through activating her gag reflex. It was actually quite humorous, Eric and I kept passing each other to the bathroom and at the table. I finished cleaning Jane up and as I'm coming out, Eric is taking Adam to the potty (he's completely day trained!!) and as he is coming back out, Emiline has to go, and as soon as we get back, Emiline drops her entire cup of hot chocolate all over her leotard. And Adams' coat. And my feet. So we clean that up just as they start the talent show.
Emiline is slightly hysterical about having nothing to wear until she sees how quickly everything is drying, because in all my free time, I'm shaking all the wet clothes back and forth. Jane has her head in my lap "saving her energy" and Emiline is bouncing up and down, getting more impatient (and likely to knock something else over) for her turn on the program (they didn't announce the order, turns out we were last). In all her hopping, she knocked over her pumpkin spice cake and then squished into her ballet shoes she was wearing (because her boots had puke on them). Eric was nearing his breaking point- well, he was probably past it but he came back over the edge when I batted my eyes at him. And I just kept shaking their clothes, hoping they'd be dry enough to wear.
The primary began the show with a song and bells. All the little kids got a cute little bracelet with bells to ring during the song. Before the singing even starts, I hear the plaintive notes of Emiline's Tragic Howl, but I was dealing with Adam and couldn't get up there right away. She howled through the whole song until I pulled her off stage--her bells had broken and she had none to ring. At that point, I nearly called the whole thing off. But she calmed quickly and then we had two bells from a broken bracelet that Adam and Emiline fought over the rest of the talent show. And I'm still shaking their costumes dry.
And that's the prelude to what turned out to be the funnest time our family has had in a while. Definitely a bright spot and a special memory. ALL the kids really got their groove on and brought it for the performance, definitely the best anyone had performed it (except me). You'd have never known Jane was feeling so miserable! Apparently I birthed true showmen! And Adam only played in the curtains once!
We were all feeling a little high after performing, and it was so fun to share it together. We took our time driving home, kids eating their treats from Santa and looking at the best light shows in Gardner. One of the perks of delivering pizza is knowing where the best Christmas lights are. And then the kids went to bed really quick. Although, we did have to get an encore performance from Adam:
I really owe it all to my mom. I'm an easy and eager performer, despite my introvertedness, because I've been doing it since I was 2. Emiline started Harmony Kids with my mom at 18 months, Jane was 3. And they already knew a version of this song from way back then. I learned from her, though, how to pull something like this off, and why I would want to. Emiline's sunbeam teachers were amazed at how she bloomed on stage- she has a lot of anxiety in class answering questions or even having too much attention on her. And I love how Jane is learning to be told what to do and do it well (choreography, lyrics, melody, instead of making it all up). And Adam is happy to be doing what his family is doing. I also apparently learned how to keep my cool on performance days from her. This was a first for me. I remember how calm and together she always kept it- a stressed out director does not make for a fun performing experience. I would often get stressed out for her. This time, I was the calm center of the hurricane. I had no idea I had that in me. Thanks Mom!
