My sleepless beauty

I mentioned that Dancer performed last weekend. Among other roles, she danced two of the fairy variations in Sleeping Beauty (on different days). When she came out with a tiara and tutu I thought immediately of the last time she'd been dressed like that, when she was four and pranced around the house in dress-up clothes, hoping and waiting for the day she'd be a real ballerina. She was beautiful then, but is more beautiful now.

Here she is during bows: second row, center. Smiling, with the big girls. She will be training with Miami City Ballet this summer.

Of course, taking 16 hours of dance class a week plus rehearsals (plus schoolwork) doesn't leave much free time for things like sleep. And after five performances this weekend she was very, very tired on Monday morning. But she got up and went to school, and to ballet. Because that's what dancers do.

Dancer, I am so impressed by your hard work, so in awe of your energy, so pleased by your attitude. You make me proud.

Uncertainty

At midnight tonight Eldest's two final projects are due. We haven't heard from her in a week; she's pretty much incommunicado in times of stress. I doubt she's had much sleep, and she's a kid person who needs her shut-eye.

A while back I read Dreamland by David Randall, and learned all kinds of tidbits about sleep. There was a whole chapter on insomnia, another on the relationship between sleep and aha! moments, another on apnea and sleep disorders. Apparently the research shows that the number one factor in how many fights a couple has is how much sleep the wife got the night before. And the number one cause of friendly fire in battle is sleep deprivation. Lack of sleep affects our judgment in significant ways. But apparently the professors at Eldest's prestigious institution haven't read up on this particular body of research.

There's not much a mom can do to make life easier for her stressed-out offspring from a distance of several hundred miles. I've been thinking of her for days, knowing... well, knowing that I don't know how she's doing, and praying for the best.

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Not-knowing is a maddening thing. Then again, there's a lot less uncertainty in life these days than there used to be. When people left Europe to immigrate to America, the family they left behind didn't know for months, perhaps years, what became of them. If someone headed west to the prairies, there was no way of knowing how they fared. Goodbyes in those days were truly goodbyes; you didn't know if you'd ever see that person again.

Last week I went somewhere with Snuggler and Little Guy, and forgot my phone. Snuggler wailed, "But what will we do if..." I looked at her kind of oddly, realizing that being a digital and cellular native has its drawbacks. "We'll do what we would have done 15 years ago," I replied, "We'll figure it out. If we need to."

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Dancer called this morning at 7:50; her express bus broke down on the highway, leaving the passengers stranded on the desolate fringe of East Harlem. I told her that as long as she stayed with the other passengers while walking to whatever other bus route was nearby, she'd be safe. It was inconvenient and scary, and she was likely to be late for school, but hey -- she was safe.

Dancer was already walking with other people. In truth, she would have been okay even if she hadn't been able to call me. She's resourceful and sensible, and I think being in this kind of situation is how one becomes resourceful and sensible. Travel is one of the very best tools there is for learning how to come up with a Plan B. Buses and trains break down, get delayed, cause missed connections. It's nice to be able to call Mom, but after you've gone through that kind of thing a few times you stop calling and just figure out how to handle the situation. You realize you can deal with that level of uncertainty.

Odds and Ends

Little Guy and I went down to Lincoln Center this morning to see the dress rehearsal of Babes in Toyland. Getting out the door was a challenge, since I had a project that HAD to go out before I left. So I said to Little Guy, "I need you to be self-running today. Here's your school list. You do your job, so I can do mine."

He was pretty good about it. As we got close to departure time and it became clear I would need every possible second, I said, "Can you get me a pair of black socks and my brown shoes?  And find my keys and my cell phone and put them in my purse." He did that. Then I told him to pack his bag with everything he'd need (we were going to do math on the train), and to get himself ready. I sent off the project with no time to spare and we ran to the train. And we made it to the show. I felt like we'd made it somewhere else, too, perhaps to a higher plane of cooperative living. At least for a morning.

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Dancer's Nutcracker opens on Wednesday. Tonight she is going to see a friend who has the lead in a different Nutcracker, and tomorrow night she'll see a teacher dance in a still different version. From there on, she will practically live at the theater through December 16.

We were pleased to see a nice article about Dancer's ballet school the other day. If you are interested in coming to see her dance, tickets are available here.

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Andrew spent most of yesterday at the police precinct filing a report about the bank fraud. He came home with many stories to tell. You can learn a lot about your neighborhood by sitting around the police station for a day, y'know.

The money that was stolen has not been refunded by the bank yet. Our new accounts, however, are functional, and my new credit card arrived today. I can sense that fiscal functionality lies somewhere in our future. The bank says it needs the police report and various affadavits before they can reinstate the money (though they do know it was fraud), and for some reason seem to think seven to ten business days is a reasonable timeframe for approving the refund. 

I remind myself that this is a three-week liquidity issue, not a permanent loss. That means this is not a crisis, just a massive inconvenience. I can make it into a crisis if I allow myself to panic or stress. But stressing too much over a temporary problem is likely to do more long-term damage to my mental and physical health than the actual fraud. 

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It's been a month since the hurricane. Yesterday Little Guy and I walked through our local park. The cleanup is mostly finished. As you can see, a lot of trees had to be removed:

Unfortunately, the trees can't be reinstated in three weeks. The damage is done, and the best we can do is replant. It makes me sad. But it also reminds me that most of the problems I face in life are pretty small compared to a hurricane.

Wonder and wondering

I took Dancer to a podiatrist today. Her infected toe was becoming an infected foot, and despite our no-insurance situation it was clear we needed to tend to this ASAP.

Dancer was heroic about the procedure used to drain and excise the yuckiness. She flinched a bit at times, but otherwise managed to look normal and pale. After she was disinfected and gauzed and given prescriptions and foot-care instructions, I took her to the waiting room and went to pay. She said she was okay, but a bit woozy.

She was the last patient of the day, and we went down in the elevator with the doctor. He looked at Dancer a bit curiously, and inquired how she was feeling. She said she was okay. Her foot didn't hurt much. She still looked pale.

We reached the ground floor, and as we came off the elevator Dancer suddenly reached for me and said, "I feel sick!" I stopped and put my arm around her. We moved carefully toward the front door. Outside, I looked for a cafe where she could sit down, but there were none nearby. She was sweaty and gray and clearly heading into shock. Then she said, "I think I'm going to pass out!" And there on the sidewalk of lower 5th Avenue in the middle of rush hour, she did.

I stood there, arms gripped around my insensible teenage daughter, thinking Hmmm. Never done this before! I looked around for a place to lie her down, but there was no bench or building ledge in sight. I didn't want an ambulance -- I already knew why she'd fainted -- so I stood there as if slow dancing. A woman passing by thought I was giving my daughter a hug and said, "Aw, how sweet!" It was such an incongruous comment that I almost laughed aloud.

As some point while wondering whether the faint would last longer than my arm muscles, I was able to rouse Dancer a bit. She'd been out cold for (I think) a bit less than a minute, and couldn't bear weight on her legs for another couple. When she was able to lean on me and move, we slo-mo'ed ourselves back into the building. We went back up to the doctor's office and I sat her down in the air conditioned waiting room. I don't think the receptionist quite got it when I told her what had happened. She showed me where to get water, but then went back to her work.

Dancer sipped the water and I wiped off her face. She slept/drowsed for half an hour. Her color returned. When she seemed stable we went around the corner to find some juice. And then we came home. Slowly.

There are many things in life that happen that you've never considered could be on your to-do list. Slow dancing with my daughter during rush hour certainly hadn't been an idea I'd knew was possible.

Oddly, it reminded me of an event on the train down to the doctor's office. Two ancient Chinese men got on and rather impishly said they'd like to "do their show". The one warbled in Chinese, while the other stomped his cane down the aisle, reaching out with his free hand as if to grab his way up from drowning, making tortured faces. It was oddly charming... and thoroughly entertaining. I've seen a lot of subway performances in my day, but never anything remotely like this. (Afterwards the singer launched into "My Old Kentucky Home".)

I wondered where the men had come from, and why they came to this city. I wondered about their wives and children and grandchildren. I wondered at the sharp sense of humor that led them to take a lead from the hip-hop dancers who fill the train with "showtime", and at whatever poverty it was they were trying to escape. I dearly wanted to take a picture of them, but didn't want to offend.

It's kind of marvelous when unusual things lead you to think, Hmmm. Never saw that before! And while I do hope that I don't ever have to do the Fainting Foxtrot on Fifth again, in truth it wasn't an utterly awful experience. Not nearly as bad as changing the bandage on Dancer's toe tonight. Urp!

Weekend update

Thursday was Snuggler's birthday. I had written a long post, but lacked a photo to go with it. I still didn't take the picture, but the important thing I wanted to way was this: I love you, Miss Eleven!

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Yesterday I took the train up to Albany and met Jenny, who graciously hosted me overnight so that I could see Dancer in her performance this morning. We had a conversation that left me with many nuggets to chew on. After the show Jenny dropped us at the bus station, and now we are home.

My girl is back!

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You may have figured out that this means we now have a full house once again. The quiet was nice while it lasted, and the laundry was delightfully minimal for a while there, but I'm glad we're all in one place. We've never had such an active summer before. Most of the kids and I are heading to Vermont on Thursday for a family reunion. 

It's been one of those live-at-the-ballet-studio kinds of weekends, what with dress rehearsal and performances and all. Very exciting for the girls (and a handful of boys). And then last night at intermission, Dancer came down with a violent stomach bug. How fast can you say, "Change of plans?"

Except ballet is one of those odd worlds where they actually want -- nay, expect -- you to show up no matter how you feel. And tonight is the gala. And guess who's determined to perform? Though I suppose I'll have to wake her up if that's going to be an option...

Hmmmm.

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Snuggler has her last soccer game of the season this afternoon. Little Guy went to cheer her on. He owes her some fraternal support; they're going through a sibling rough patch that's mostly of his making. We'll see how it goes; I asked him what positive and encouraging thing he could say to her if the team lost, and he looked at me blankly.

Hmmmm.

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The bathroom floor was dutifully destroyed, and then re-tiled. We're still waiting for the tiles to set, though we can walk on the boards covering the floor. Unfortunately, something went wrong when the Super re-installed the toilet, and it leaks whenever it's flushed. So we still have just one toilet for seven people (soon to be eight, when my dad arrives). That will be the case until Tuesday, because the Super has today and tomorrow off.

In case you wondered, several years ago I determined that the maximum number of potty-trained individuals you can have in the house without needing a second bathroom to prevent at least one crisis a day is... six.

Hmmmm.

Wish us luck.

Dancing through the weekend

The morning after Eldest arrived home and the kids all scrunched together and chattered and laughed endlessly, Little Guy threw up. The following day Eldest was laid flat. No vomitting, but every ache imaginable and high fever. She slept for 2.5 days. The day after that, Snuggler succumbed. I was praying like mad that Dancer wouldn't catch it. Because, you see, Dancer was performing this weekend. She's spent three months preparing, and it would have been beyond sad if she got sick.

The cast of Stars and Stripes (Balanchine)

Usually I'm pretty good about adding the "Thy will be done" clause at the end of my prayers. This time around I shot heaven an eyebrow-raised look of warning, the kind my kids know means Did you hear me? After giving up three precious days of Eldest's vacation time to a bug, I wasn't in the mood to deal with a bitterly disappointed child moaning on the sofa. And lo and behold, she didn't get sick.  So thank you, God. (And yeah, I know my attitude stunk.)

So my middle child danced all weekend, three or four pieces in each show for five shows. Me, I did the backstage thing: called the show, did fast changes, and sewed up costumes that fell apart. Except I'm not a seamstress. But there are times in life when you're the best in the room at what you don't know how to do, and so you do it.

What I am good at is solving problems in a pinch. So when someone gets bright red lipstick on the front of a white leotard and there's half an hour before it needs to be worn again, I'm your girl. Option #1: Wite-Out. But we only had the tape kind on hand. Option #2: well, I didn't know. And then just before we needed to put the leotard on the dancer I spied a roll of medical tape -- the cloth kind that ballerinas use on their toes -- in the dressing room. So I tore off a piece and sewed that over the stain. It worked.

I did get to watch the performance from the audience on Saturday afternoon. It was a fine thing to see.

Family update

Little Guy has been taking a robotics class this semester. It's outstanding. What better activity can you imagine than to build something, program it, push buttons to make it move automatically, and then put your masterpiece into a ring with someone else's invention and let the two objects destroy each other? This is boy heaven. (Perhaps girl heaven, too, but no girls signed up.)

Thursday was the last session, and my parents arrived in town just in time to attend the observation session. Little Guy and his partner had built a robot whose arm flipped over its head, scorpion-like, to grab at the opposition. But what all the boys were in awe of was the rattlesnake robot someone else had built, which zapped out and bit at whatever came near it. Very cool.

At home we have an almost-complete Lego Mindstorms kit, passed down from my now-college-age nephew, and most of another kit passed on to us by my friend Kate. Little Guy had tried using Mindstorms a few times, but the projects were so complex he gave up after an hour or two. The software's also considerably older, and not as easy to use. But yesterday he pulled out the boxes anyway and started fishing around; he'd decided to make a robot, the one he said was hardest robot in the guide book. "I figure I can do one section a day, Mom," he said.

And he's succeeding. Whatever else they built in robotics class, they built up my boy's confidence. So far his new robot can rotate, and it has one arm that's supposed to claw at things. The arm isn't working yet; Little Guy has matter-of-factly analyzed it and has some theories on what needs to be changed.

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Snuggler has had a good time with Kiss Me, Kate. She's been hanging out with the 12- and 13-year olds, who tend to chatter less in the wings. Having funny, engaging older kids who've adopted her as one of their own has been a delightful solution to the impulse to shush kids her own age.

Thursday night Snuggler had her MRI. This was the last step in ruling out neurofibromatosis. I stayed in the room with her. She's always been sensitive to loud noises, and certain types of clanks and noises were clearly more stressful to her than others. There was one beeping sound that shot her heart rate up from 93 to 104 in a matter of seconds. I watched as she took deep breaths and closed her eyes to calm herself, and within another ten seconds her heart rate had dropped back to about 96. It was an impressive display of mind over matter. I exhaled, too: she has learned to cope.

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Big Guy started a class at the historical society last Saturday. It's free (a prerequisite, since he often can't manage activities even when he wants to go), seven weeks long (a manageable length), and there's no homework (which makes participation more likely). I am trying not to get too excited that he's trying this, because I don't want to be frustrated again if/when he stops going. Last semester he made it to four classes in a course on U.S. protest music. This class is on American revolutions that didn't succeed.

History used to be Big Guy's passion.When he was five he once opened a conversation with my mother by saying, "So who's your favorite Civil War general, Maman?" Later, when he was hospitalized at age seven, he went to the day room and drew pictures of the Monitor, of ironclad fame. A social worker asked him perkily, "Which TV show is that from?"

We don't see much of his history passion any more. I am grateful that we see it at all.

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Dancer goes into tech week next week. I remind myself that at least her tech didn't overlap with Snuggler's tech, and that it didn't even conflict with performances. She is excited to be dancing in three separate pieces for her spring performance, including an excerpt from Balanchine's Stars and Stripes, and the four cygnets piece from the end of Swan Lake. She's also in a new piece being choreographed by Brian Reeder.

If you're in the city and are interested in coming, drop me a line and I'll send you the link for buying tickets.

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And guess who's coming to visit? Eldest's spring break starts at the end of this week. We are sooooo missing her, and are beyond eager to have her home.

Can I brag a little bit?

The high school placement letter came in today.

Dancer was admitted to her #1 choice for a specialized high school (one ranked in the top 10 in the country, and Eldest's semi-alma mater*);

She was admitted to THE performing arts high school for their dance program;

She was admitted to a superb public high school affiliated with an Ivy League college, where she could take college courses in her junior and senior years.

She will not be going to any of these, because she has chosen to go to a very fine Catholic girls' high school. But it is a fine thing to have such excellent options open to her. And I am very proud of my girl.


* In one of the quirks of life, Eldest is probably on the books as a drop-out because she went to college after her junior year, without graduating.

Four-kid update

We have medication for Big Guy. Whew! I mean, WHEW! Things were getting pretty hairy, since we'd run out of one kind on Saturday. Even though the half-life on it is quite long he'd come in yesterday afternoon saying, "Mom, I had a bad day at school. I was really irritable and depressed all day."

We still don't have insurance coverage for him, but Andrew dedicated five hours to dealing with that yesterday, and we're coming closer to a resolution. Rah! for Andrew. I mean, RAH!

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Snuggler has a part in the ensemble of Kiss Me, Kate! Once a year the children's theater does a big musical for the older kids -- many of whom have been doing shows for a decade -- and this year Snuggler was old enough to audition. That's exciting.

Now that our second semester schedule is beginning to gel (I couldn't sign up for anything else until casting came out, because we're talking 3-4 three-hour rehearsals a week), I can think about taking Snuggler to speech therapy. She has a recalcitrant 'R' sound that is significant enough to limit the kinds of roles she can get. We spent a year working on it to no effect; this is kind of our last shot, since we're expecting that she'll be in school next year and will have limited free time.

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Little Guy has joined the Cub Scouts. A friend once commented that 90% of childhood activities up to age 10 are determined by the outfit. I think this is true. This kid loves his uniform.

My brother sent us some money for Christmas, and I opted to spend it on having one super-cool activity for Little Guy in this last semester of homeschooling. So I enrolled him in a robotics class. He'd taken a class with these folks last spring and loved it. But when it came time to go yesterday Little Guy was suddenly paralyzed with anxiety. After a lengthy intervention I figured out that he was afraid that since he was going to be the youngest (the class is for ages 8-12) he'd do badly, or that the older kids would laugh at him. I pointed out that the advantage of being the smallest is that no one expects you to be the best. And we went through the usual "Even if you're scared, you can put your shoes on" and "Even if you're scared, you can walk to the train" kind of thing. 

When we arrived and saw the place and it was real, it was do-able. Which is why my core strategy for dealing with a balking child is to say, "It's okay if you're scared. We'll go, and if you get there and it still seems hard you can wait outside until you feel comfortable." Because usually the fear is mixed with curiosity, or interest, or desire-to-go. And unless you can get to the physical place where the child remembers the positive part of the mixed feelings, you don't stand a chance.    

When I picked up Little Guy after class he practically flew into my arms with excitement, and yammered on and on and on about the super-cool wind-up robot he had made. Robotics is now the best thing ever.

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Dancer's scholarship interview and exam is this afternoon. Pray for her. She really wants to go to this school, and unless funding comes through, she can't. 

 

Happiness for Dancer

Stage one of the high school results came in today, with good news: Dancer was admitted to both of the Catholic high schools to which she'd applied. One came with a nice-size scholarship and an invitation to interview for a 4-year, 2/3 tuition scholarship. The other -- her first choice school, more selective -- came with an invitation to sit for the scholarship exam next week. We need a goodly amount of financial aid, so if you're a praying person, please help us out with a request!

I am glad for Dancer. Proud of her, too. And relieved that we have at least two good choices for high school. The public school placements won't be announced until some time in February, probably after the deposit is due at these schools. Hopefully the scholarships will be sufficient to make a decision on what to do without too much angst.

Video footage of Dancer's Nutcracker

She's not in the cast shown in this, but she's doing some of the same choreography:

The Knickerbocker Suite

Fun stuff!


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Nutcracker!

It's getting to be that time of year. Dancer's Nutcracker is December 15-18. It's a whimsical, one-hour version, with more family-friendly prices than the big one. It's all centered in New York City; the Chinese scene (which she dances in the Friday show) is done like Chinese take-out, while Marzipan (which she's in all days except Friday) is a thoroughly enjoyable scene of pigeons in the park. The choreography is fresh and clever, and the dancers are from the pre-professional division of Dancer's school.

The theater is relatively small, so there are no bad seats. Let me know if you're coming; I'll be backstage most nights except Saturday, when I'm on call for Snuggler and Little Guy's musical in a different part of town.

A newly-minted teenager

It's Dancer's birthday today, and now I have more teens than non-teens. This morning she opened a Facebook account; this afternoon she had a salon cut and got her ears pierced. Then it was off to ballet, with a batch of Death By Chocolate cookies to share with her friends.

Happy 13th Birthday, Dancer. I love you!

Smile!

Little Guy, the paramecium

(Yes, he can identify the innards: contractile vacuole, macronucleus micronucleus)

Snuggler, the tourist

Dancer, grapes

High school daze

We're going through the high school search process for Dancer, which means allocating most of this month to open houses. You see, our city has about 700 high schools. You can quickly reduce that to a more reasonable pool by using a 5-question screening quiz:

1) Can you get there?
2) Is there a metal detector at the door or are there posters warning you not to wear gang colors?
3) Is the graduation rate greater than 50%?
4) Do those who graduate go on to college?
5) Is your child even remotely interested in the subjects they teach?

Because Dancer is Dancer, we also look at when school gets out, how far it is to a train, and how long it takes the train to get to ballet.

After you've done all your searching and screening, you're allowed to rank up to 12 schools. The schools then look at various data (report cards, test scores, attendance records, essays), and rank you. Then a big computer plays matchmaker between the four hundred million trillion adolescents pining for the same 20 schools and the 700 schools that have expressed interest in the same 20 students.

At the end of the print run you are given ONE high school assignment. Or, occasionally, nothing.

On a separate track there is a group of "specialized" high schools, for which the admissions criteria boil down to how you do on The Big Test. This test (which is taken by, I kid you not, 28,000 eighth graders) will be given at the end of this month. Students who take the test get to rank all the specialized schools, too. If you score well enough you get into ONE of them. Maybe. There are about 4,000 seats available.

So if you go through both processes you might have a choice of two places to go to school.

Then, of course, there are private schools and church-related schools. In general those are out of reach for us, money-wise, but there is financial aid. Maybe. Those schools require different tests and different applications and interviews and forms and whatnot. Count that as track #3. If you're up for it.

I suspect the whole procedure is a plot designed to make us think the folks at the Board of Ed are smarter than we are, because they understand this and we don't. But don't be intimidated, for brilliance requires a degree of elegance, and that's an unknown quality in this process. Other words come to mind: convoluted, archaic, labyrinthine, tortuous. You can toss these words around a bit and perhaps improve your child's SAT score. It will give you something to do while you wait in the 5-block line to get into the open house for the school with 100 openings.

After all this, one hopes someone, somewhere learns something. Maybe even the kids.

Book club thoughts

Eight times a year my almost-13-year old and I go to a mother-daughter book club. This month’s read was the classic A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. The girls all loved it. The moms did, too. Like the other mothers, I was struck by two things: how different the book was than I remembered, and how fiercely determined and resilient Katie, the main character’s mom, is. Katie isn’t focused on giving her kids a good life in the present – that’s not in her power -- but on giving them the skills they need to survive and thrive through all of life.

Me, I tend to want my kids to be comfortable: physically and emotionally and spiritually. And so I was thinking last night, If convenience and comfort were plucked from my life, how would we fare?

• Are my kids scrappy enough to survive? Survive morally?
• Is my gut-level determination strong enough to hunker down and do what needs to be done? Or would I flounder in worry and fear and anger?
• Do we have the emotional wherewithal to stay focused on building toward something better, instead of wallowing in the losses or disappointments of the present?
• Is there a wide enough range of adult personalities in my kids’ lives that they are drawing on the strengths (and learning from the weaknesses) of people besides me?
• Can my children still find beauty and poetry in life when things are grim?

I’m fond of saying that a lot depends on how Mom reacts. This is true not only when a kid is scared or bleeding, but of other kinds of crises, including a mother's own struggles. I hold in my mind the image of Katie-the-mom, recently widowed, scrubbing floors in the building next door at 5am so that she can get some of her work done while her older children are home to watch the newborn before they head out to school. 

How does Mom react when she faces her own despair? Her own anger? Her own disappointment?

And what do our kids learn from that?

Good stuff.

Oh, and for anyone interested in forming a mother-daughter book club, I highly recommend the book Deconstructing Penguins. 

Full house!

Company rehearsal on stage between performances

I flew out to Detroit yesterday and met up with my mom, and the two of us went over to the (lovely) Detroit Opera House to see the final performances of the ABT Dance Intensive. The program divided instruction into four groups: Yellow, Blue (for 12-14 year olds) and Green and Violet (for ages 15+). Each group had two casts for each of two pieces. Dancer was in the 'tall' cast for Blue, and they did a modern dance choreographed by Ahn Nguyen to Bach's Magnificat and then the prologue to ABT's Sleeping Beauty. It was quite good. Good as in Is my daughter really doing that?

I also got to meet Rhonda Smith, who brought her niece to the show. Rhonda is one of the writers featured in Daily Guideposts: Your First Year of Motherhood. She now writes for EEW Magazine, which is run by Dianna Hobbs, another Motherhood writer who runs a blog with great devotionals.Small world, eh? It is good to get to know more of the excellent people who inhabit it.

Afterwards Dancer and my mom and I went out to dinner, and Dancer happily filled us on all the details of the month that we hadn't heard. She had a grand time. And it was very nice to hug her again, and to see her wonderful smile.

And now we are safely home, and all five of my children are here. I am happy.

Blast it!

Today's round of chores consisted of washing the windows. Our apartment is several stories up, so windows are a bit tricky. There's the business of flipping in the recalcitrant windows (and making sure the kids don't flip themselves out), and we're still learning  the lesson that if you don't do a job well you get to do it twice. Or more. (Even I often have to do windows more than once. Those streaks are annoying.)

The one thing I haven't ever figured out is how to wash the screens. We have child guards on the lower portion of our windows, which prevent pulling the screens in. I'm not about to dangle out the upper portion of the window to scrub anything. However, we seem to be making progress in the resourcefulness department, because today Dancer and Little Guy came up with a solution:

The screens are nice and sparkly now. And the plants in the courtyard below are watered, too.

Dancing through the weekend

This weekend I spent quite a bit of time in the ballet world, since it was Dancer's spring workshop/performance.

I went down to the studio and folded programs on Friday night, picking up bits of wisdom from other moms. Last night I watched the show. It was good. Today I worked backstage, hooking tutus and snipping errant threads and learning that it's possible to keep a leotard from sliding off the chest by putting a piece of double-sided tape between cloth and skin.

I worked in the dressing room with the oldest dancers, the ones who are about to go out into the ballet world. It was impressive: the kids were incredibly focused and organized. Their talk was casual, relaxed, centered on which piece went well and what mishap occurred, whose costume fell apart or what finally felt fabulous. Some of the girls change in front of the boys, and some (I was relieved to find) do not. They hang up their costumes, set up their fast changes, come to you with scissors if they need to be snipped out of their sewn-up bodices.

Across the hall was the dressing room for the 14 and 15 year olds. The kids in there were different: focused when they needed to be, but playing popular music and chattering about school between pieces. They were ready when they needed to be ready, teared up a bit if they made a big mistake, and were already adept at stage makeup. Like the oldest group, they knew how to hairspray pointe shoe ribbons to make them lie flat.

The next-younger group (where Dancer was) was stationed furthest from the stage, where they exploded with excitement and giggles, and played Mafia and card games to kill the time. They brought laptops on the pretense of doing homework, and went on Facebook instead. Most of them still worried a bit about whether they'd get their choreography right, if they'd land that piroutte beautifully or exit in the wrong part of the wing. On stage their faces alternated between being solemn and smiling; they are still in the process of mastering the perpetual, glorious ballet smile. They are lissome and coltish, emerging with grace from the ranks of little kids into the world of serious dancers.

Brava, Dancer. You are beautiful, hard-working, and incredible. You make me proud.