Tutu 2s

Last Friday was Kayla's first ballet/dance class.  We signed her up at the park district for this class in December.  It is for 2-3 year olds, and I'm not gonna lie, I was totally nervous that Kayla would just sit in my lap and not want to dance at all, or she would scream for 30 minutes when I left the room.

We went to her first class with her grandparents who were in town for her birthday party.  My fears were pretty much confirmed.  She was glued to my lap for the majority of the class.  As the teacher was pulling out props, I kept trying to convince her to get up and dance with the other little girls.  In the last 10 minutes she started inching toward the group a little more, so I felt like she would really enjoy the class eventually.

Oh my other fear, was that she would be the only girl in our pretty high end suburban park district who wasn't in ballet clothes the first class.  I was right.

So yesterday was week 2 of class.  She had her new ballet outfit from Aunt Meme from her birthday and Mommy bought her ballet shoes from Payless.  I went really early in hopes talking about class/waiting for class would get her more excited about it.  And she met another little girl so that helped too. When we got into the studio, she went right over to the stars with the other little girls.  She danced for a large portion of the class.

I have never been so proud.

Sure, she is VERY possessive and stubborn and didn't want to give back any of the props they were dancing with.  She ran over to me a couple of times.  It took some convincing to get her to keep her ballet shoes on.  And she is the only little girl that can't ACTUALLY jump (i.e. feet leaving the floor.)  But for the most part, she was awesome.  She is the youngest girl in the class and I think one of the few that are potty trained.  I loved every second of watching her.

Like the true observer she is, I sat and watched her stare at the teacher and the other girls and really take in what they were doing.  Studying the correlation of the movement to the music.  I watched as she would get excited for the next thing and look over at me with so much excitement and wonder and shake her head, "Yeah!"  At one point, they were using magic wands to "make castles," Kayla looked over at me across the room and said, "Castles!  Yeah!" Then turned back to the teacher.  I literally almost cried.  My little girl is growing up so fast.

And the tutus....they slay me.  (Kayla's is of course the cutest one.)  Here are the photos I snapped with my phone.  I took a couple with my camera the first week, but next week, parents aren't going to be in the studio with them so I don't think I'll get many more pictures...