Recital time!!!!

Okay, feeding is going well overall.  We're still having the occasional battle, but we seem to be in a groove lately and are rarely fighting negative behavior.  We have added creamed corn to her food list.  She's making more of an effort to move food around her mouth, and she enjoys her regular texture snack.  She'd prefer it to always be cucumbers in ranch dressing (and we can hold the cucumbers if we like, ha ha!), but I can generally talk her into at least taking a bite or two of other things.  I find it helps a great deal if her brother is having a snack at the same time because he's a great model for her, although the boy doesn't like ranch dressing at all.  Seriously, he spit out the cucumber after he dipped it.  Too funny!  Her daily snack isn't as daily as I'd like, but she had an ear infection early last week and was too miserable to deal with chewing.  She is okay, now, though.

What I really want to talk about, though, is the dance recital.

Wednesday was our dress rehearsal.  I was stressed big time getting there.  I'd picked Sarah up from school because of how late her bus drops her off.  I stopped at the Wendy's right by her school to pick up dinner for Sean and me, and I had the worst time at the drive through.  There was no line, but the person at the drive through couldn't hear me.  I don't know if the speaker wasn't working right, or she doesn't hear well or what happened.  I was pretty frustrated, though, and I ended up having to give my order THREE times.  I ended up with the wrong drink, but I'm surprised that was the only thing wrong with my order.

Anyway, I ran around like a crazy woman trying to get the kids ready, bathroom visited, Sarah's hair up (just a ponytail this year, I decided) costumes packed, dance bags double-checked, camera bag packed, car loaded. We did not get to the rehearsal on time, but neither did most people.  Thankfully we were there in plenty of time to start.  I got the kids in costume okay, and that went fairly well.  The dress rehearsal, as usual, was a bit rough.  Dances had to be repeated (although, for me, only the family number, understandable considering it was the first time we've all performed it together).  However, the best part was, SARAH DID HER DANCES!!!! She always dances with an instructor on stage, but this year she really just need one for focus.  She did so well at the rehearsal I was scared to say anything here or on Facebook because I didn't want to jinx it.

It was the usual screaming and running around to get everyone ready for the recital last night.  Add the horrible storm going on outside, and it was extra stressful.  We still got to rehearsal earlier than planned, which was good because Little Miss was being a major pain about putting on her costume.  She was in major bossy mode, and wanted to bark orders at her brother, rather than just listen to Mommy and get her darn costume on.  I was furious with her, and at one point I said to her "What needs to happen to get you into your costume?" UGH  Finally I told her she couldn't wear her crown (the headpiece) without the costume.  That seemed to satisfy her.  Good heavens, had I realized that, I would have opened with the crown argument!  Of course, I ran into the oh so fun "nosy kid" issues last night.  A child from my son's class who doesn't really know Sarah and her issues asked why she was wearing a pull-up (we normally use diapers but we're all out and I snagged a few pull-ups from my parents' house the other day).  I normally don't put her in pull-ups or diapers much, but I was not risking her having an accident during the recital.  Anyway, since the kid was only 3 or 4, I went with the simple explanation.  I told her it was because I didn't want Sarah to have an accident.  I was happy that she was satisfied with the explanation because I was not in the mood to discuss further.  Don't get me wrong, I don't have a huge problem with the kid asking, she's just a little girl, but sometimes I just hate having people notice.  Thankfully the kids who are actually in Sarah's class are really good with her.  They're pretty helpful and seem to understand her.

Later that night, Sarah ripped the flowers off the front of her costume.  You couldn't really tell on stage, and to be honest, whatever.  I wasn't thrilled about it, but there wasn't anything I could do about it.  Seriously, though, other than refusing initially to put her costume on, that's about all she did wrong the whole night.  I can deal with that.  She was so cute when it was time to line up for the finale.  She was holding hands with this one girl, R, who is her age.  I'm not sure if they were told to do so, or did it of their own accord.  Either way, R has always been pretty helpful with her, and she and her sister N (also in Sarah's dance class) came to Sarah's birthday party.

Oh, and I won the "cool mom" award, I think, at least with the little kids.  I spent a fair amount of time Thursday printing out coloring pages of various characters to entertain the kids.  At the dress rehearsal, there were a ton of fights over coloring books, and I figured if we had a ton of different pages (and in popular characters), things would go much better.  I had Dora, Diego, Sesame Street, Wonder Pets, and Disney Princesses for the kids to color.  I think almost everything got colored, and I'm glad.

Sean did awesome as well!  He seemed kind of stage shocked at the dress rehearsal, but he was basically fine last night.  There were two kids (sisters) from his class last night that didn't show up to the recital.  I have no idea why, but I hope they are okay.  Anyway, he did very well in both of his dances, and even adapted to the missing dancers.  One of them was his partner for ballet.  Another girl was the other sister's partner, so at the last second the teacher told Sean and the other girl to dance together.  They did, which I think is pretty good for their ages (four and five).  He was so cute.  He wore this adorable dragon costume for ballet and let out a yawn just before ballet, and the whole audience just melted.  I'm importing the video right now, so hopefully I can get some of the video onto YouTube soon.  Anyone at the rec reading this, please order the DVD.  We work very hard to make it look nice, and the quality should be much better this year.  If you didn't order one last night, there is still time to go ahead and order it.

In other news, she has done great with her brother.  She's been getting things for him when I ask, and the other night, they traded v-readers.  It's this e-book reader they both have.  I was in the other room folding laundry, so I didn't hear the conversation, but I came back and saw they had traded.  I guess each one wanted the book the other one was "reading."  I wish I'd been present for that conversation.  All I know is there wasn't any screaming involved, and they proudly told me they were playing with each other's v-readers.

How's that for a happy blog update? :)