Expressly Elise

At the zoo with a friend!

One of my favorite expression to cross Elise's face is of complete involvement. To anyone else, it might be seen as merely neutral; however, this look is anything but. To me, it means she's engrossed and absorbed by the exciting activity of the moment--it's the only thing she wants to be doing right now. Yet she's patient--if the task includes gathering supplies and other preparation, she'll happily pitch in. To exclude her for any reason after she's mentally on board would be cruel, eliciting shrieks of injustice that could probably be heard next door. It's the expectation of participation, which seems to be Elise's life philosophy.

In fact, there's little Elise won't do (as long as it's not scary, like walking across a sewer grate, or a boring chore, like cleaning up her room). She joyfully insists on helping me scrub the bathrooms ("help"), stain stick laundry or rake leaves. There's no keeping her away from the kitchen while I make dinner, and she's always more than willing to pick people up from the airport, in her own purple car that she must drive in her dreams. Passive observer she is not.

And there's no getting past her, either, whether I'm sneakily trying (and failing) to make waffles all by myself for dinner after a long day (because sometimes you just don't want "help"), or have a chocolate. Elise takes notice, and then takes part.

Sometimes I try to talk her out of it. "You can't do the stain spray because it has chemicals in it that could hurt you." I inform the girl. "I will be super careful!" she counters (and I know it's actually true). "But sometimes we all have accidents," I reply. "I promise," she returns. She always knows all the right things to say, and I do think my refusal would come back to haunt me when I'm begging for my kids' help as teenagers, so we end up with an awkward arrangement in which I carefully set her up with the spray pointed away from her face (she gets it wrong every time on her own), and hyper-vigilantly let her help treat a few grape jam spots.

And there's nothing she considers beneath or beyond her, either.
Kalina, when Daddy and Grandpa are working to fix my tire (that has a rock embedded in it): Good thing there are boys! And good thing there are girls.
Me: Girls can change tires too, you know. Would you ever like to learn how to change a tire?
Kalina: No. (Girl after my own heart.)
Elise, smiling enthusiastically: I will! I will change a tire!
This goes for pretty much anything, up to and including being turned into a gopher (we have a thing about gophers these days, for no apparent reason) or exploring a sewer (we've always had a thing about sewers--when will it stop?!?), or learning to tie her shoes (which she hasn't, nor could she yet, but she's more than willing to give it a shot).

Today, we're all about glue sticks and holding pet mice--but what about tomorrow? I only hope Elise's enthusiasm extends to everything good and useful and nothing like cliff diving or lion taming. Fortunately, even then I'll have a trick up my sleeve. If I tell her she's required to go swimming with sharks, chances are, she'll stop before she even started.

Kalina Ballerina

I'll add a ballet picture when
I get one--my camera was
out of batteries! Until then,
here's our snow fun!

When Kalina began to dance, around the time she learned to walk, it was never the bopping up and down typical toddler dance. It was a somewhat graceful, side to side, back and forth shoulders type of thing. Her very own style.

As time went by, her dancing began to resemble ballet, with an uncanny ability to move with the music, and even keep a sense of rhythm. Much of the time, anyway (silly dancing also came into vogue). Seeing the Nutcracker inspired her further. And we always knew that sometime, she'd really have to take ballet lessons.

What better time than January? We signed up at a local dance studio, bought the necessary attire, convinced Kalina that she could neither eat nor sleep in the necessary attire, and attended the first lesson. I was able to sit in, but only because it's the first class of the month.

From my perspective, there's hardly anything cuter than watching a class of little girls attempt ballet. They were precious. At least mine was, and in the half-dozen times I was able to tear my eyes away from Kalina, I noticed that the others were pretty adorable as well. The mom next to me and I spent lots of the time giggling at the little sweeties--sometimes I wonder how the teacher was able to keep her composure.

From Kalina's perspective, it was a bit of a wonderland. They began by sitting in a circle and telling each other their names (Kalina wasn't the only new girl in the class), their ages and their favorite Disney princess. I secretly patted myself on the back that I'd actually introduced Kalina to the princesses in the past year, so she was able to answer Snow White. (Really, though, I think it's Cinderella, which is also the only movie she's seen.) A brief introduction to preschool girl pop culture paid off.

While the girls did learn a couple French ballet terms, much of the terminology was in Princess, probably to help motivate any girl who wasn't 100% on board. Therefore, their right foot was called their "pink skate" while the left was their "purple skate." A specific arm position was called a basket, and each girl got to tell the teacher what was in her basket (Kalina was not the only girl with kittens in hers--she's in good company). They pretended to be rocketships and elevators (okay, not so princessy, but that's fine--it was going a bit overboard), and could make their legs look like "pink diamonds." They also occasionally sprinkled fairy dust. Truthfully, it was a bit over the top for me, and possibly for Kalina, but the teacher was having fun.

The focus was on fun, but I was also amazed at the regard for rules and general intensity of the class. Even the "rest" time was spent pretending to be various animals. The kids were kept moving, and I think it's only their boundless energy that allowed them to keep up--I wouldn't have done so well. I wonder if one reason was that kids who are busy trying to figure out how to make their arms into "baskets" and "lace up their skates" might be less apt to try to hang from the barre, or tip it over. One girl, at least, looked fully capable.

Kalina smiled the whole time, although I think part of that was because twice during the class the teacher told them to smile and pretended to take their picture. I think Kalina thought they were supposed to keep smiling, which is also the reason she kept her hands in a "basket" for a good three minutes longer than anyone else. That awkward moment when you need to be told, "You can stop doing that now!" Like when your kid uses a sippy cup far longer than anyone else, or you're still cutting Cheerios in half at the ripe old age of 1.

Our little ballerina was pretty tuckered out after her lesson, but managed quite a few enthusiastic smiles while chatting with her teacher afterward. She then refused to change out of her ballet outfit until snacktime, when she had to choose between the two (and snacktime won). Is that the mark of a dedicated ballerina? I'm glad she still opted for a snack!