A couple weeks ago, I purchased two tickets to the Prince and Princess Ballet that BYU was bringing to our little town.  The flyer that came with the tickets instructed the princess and princes dress their very best.

For a while now, I’ve been wanting to do a girl date with Lacy where we dress to the nines and do… whatever.  Anything at all!  This ballet seemed like the best place to fulfill that dream, and yesterday -a few hours before the ballet -I went up to my mother’s house and snagged all of my old formal dresses.  After my son went to sleep, my daughter ran toward me.

“It’s just YOU and ME!  Just YOU and ME!”  She squealed.  I had told her that when her brother went to sleep, we’d paint nails and pick out jewelry and dresses.  We painted our nails first which turned out to be a very grave mistake.  As we made our way to my bedroom to try on dresses, I mutilated my paint job trying to zip my old dresses up!  But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get the dresses to zip up past the middle of my ribs.

Childbearing makes your ribs wider, right?

As I pulled on my favorite dress -one I had made myself in high school (with a great deal of help from a neighbor) -I was sad to feel that the sleeves had tightened and ever more sad (sadder?) to realize that it wouldn’t fit at all!  It had been rather big in high school, and I assumed it would fit better now!  My daughter tried cheering me on.

“Do the zip up, mom!  You can!  You can do it!”

Not to be defeated, I sucked in with all my might, and FORCED that zipper all the way up!  And guess what?  It went!  I was ecstatic!  In a burst of triumph, I let the breath I’d been holding out and….

the zipper popped.

Wide open.

Broken.

It was then I decided perhaps my old dresses were going to stay hanging in the closet until Lacy turns 13 and pulls them out to make fun of my formal style.  I remembered when I had grabbed my old dresses that my sister had some dresses hanging in the same closet.  There was a chance that they might fit! I called her and asked her permission.  She granted it.

“Guess what?” I said to my daughter as I hung up the phone, “Julianne said I could wear one of her dresses!”

“IS SHE DEAD?!” My daughter cried out, horrified.

“Um, no.”

“Okay!” She said and went back to bopping around my jewelry box.

I spent the afternoon fixing my daughter’s dress.  It’s a size 8 and way to big, and there was a heart-shaped hole in the chest area that looked WAY to big on her tiny body.  I took some white sparkly material and stitched it in the heart hole and made sure to tie her dress back nice and tight.

She asked for me to do her hair “all spidery” which meant she wanted me to use my 3-barrel waver.

And I couldn’t influence her choice of shoe. No, I could not.

Of course my husband called to say he wouldn’t make it home to watch our son while Lacy and I had our girl date. He asked, “Is there anyone you can get to babysit?”
Ha, ha.
The entire female population of our small town was attending the Princess Ballet.
Enter: grandpa. My Dad -THANK GOODNESS -took on Trenters so Lacy and I could go out. I’m so happy he did! Lacy and I had both been looking forward to our night for weeks. We spent it with my mom, my sister-in-law and my niece Elly.

Earlier that day, the dancers had given an assembly to the school kids. My aunt took Lacy, and the minute we walked in the door to attend the pre-party, she talked non-stop about…
Vallerinas.
Who wanted to correct her pronunciation? Not I!
“Mom, that girl was dancing and the boy looked like just wearing brown and he held her hips and she… (at this point she went into a fit of kicks)… can you do that on my hips so I might dance?”
“Sure!” I said, picking her up by her hips. I brought her up so her face was next to mine and waited for her to start kicking and turning. But she didn’t. She didn’t even budge.
“Aren’t you going to dance?” I asked.
“You’re doing it wrong,” she said, locking eyes with me.
“Oh, sorry,” I shrugged, putting her down.

I always was a disappointment when it came to dancing.

During the party, we were able to take pictures and talk to the Vallerinas and eat a little snack.
Lacy was dying to talk to the first vallerina we saw. But she was too scared. Can you see her, standing off to the side, begging to be noticed?

When the vallerina turned around, we got a picture.

The next ballerina we saw was Little Red Riding Hood. Lacy had seen her dance in the assembly and had talked of nothing else. Look how excited she was to MEET her.

I had accidentally changed the flash setting on my camera, so the next few pictures aren’t the best.

The ballerina on the left told Lacy she looked Giselle from “Enchanted.”  She might have given her a santa sack full of toys and gotten the same reaction.

I have no idea who this girl is, but a picking-nose princess? Priceless.

As we went to get a cookie and punch, we were served by Great JuJu -much to Lacy’s delight.

On our way into the ballet, we stopped to get a picture with our friend Aimslee -a fellow true princess. A few months ago, we took a picture of Aimslee and Lacy trick-or-treating together. They had both decided to be Cinderella without even consulting one another.

Her mother and I share similarities too -like how we both used ballet tickets to bribe our children.

Once the show started, Lacy was in Heaven. Little Red came out. The boy in the brown pants came out! I finally saw the “right way” to hold hips. Then came intermission.
The ballerinas invited the little princesses up on stage. My little princess was DYING to go, so I took her hand and walked her up to the stage.
As we neared the stairs that lead up to the stage, she looked up at me and said, “Mom, I can go by myself. You don’t have to hold my hand anymore.”
And I teared up.
Like a fool.
Then I hurried and pulled out my camera to get a picture.
This was all she would show me.

Then, to my surprise, she made her way -instead of INTO the crowd -IN FRONT of the crowd.

At this point, I shifted my camera from “picture” to “video” mode. I had no choice.

Throughout the rest of the performance, she kept begging me to let her run into the aisles and DANCE. I explained to her thirty times that it was the ballerina’s turn to dance and that dancing while they dance… is rude. But the intermission was really cute. Thanks to Kyle for letting me steal his picture from facebook. See the small, white, blurry tornado in the right corner? She belongs to me.

When we made it home, I snagged a few pictures of the girls.

And when we got home, she changed her dress, put on her red “ruby slippers” and danced while I streamed the Sleeping Beauty Ballet music over the internet.
Then she curled up with a book and her little brother.

I couldn’t leave this picture out. Those red shoes make her so happy.

I believe it’s time to start researching ballet teachers in the area.