Bitter with the Sweet
Saturday was one of those Chock Full ‘o Fun days.
* A friend was bringing his 4 year old son, Phoenix, by to spend the better part of the day with us while he (friend) attended a conference in town.
* At 10 am, Kate had her first ballet class.
* At noon, we were off to a birthday party for one of Kate’s friends at school.
* At 6, April (sitter extraordinaire) was arriving to hang with Kate while MRA and I went to a post-golf tourney dinner party.
Phoenix couldn’t have been easier to accommodate. Sweet kid and no trouble. Kate, on the other hand…
Ballet class was a disaster. I made the mistake of hanging out in the room. I know… I know… Mistake. Then she didn’t want to participate, so I joined in with her. (likely mistake #2) Then she opted out again, but I stuck with it – damnit, I was going to show her what a fun time we were all having. She wanted to sit with Phoenix while he played on my iPhone (mistake #3 for me to hand it to him in full view). Made her sit apart. Protest. A “talk” in the hallway. Tears in the room. Enough! We left with 10 minutes left in the class and steam shooting out of my ears.
What do you do? I was disappointed with my normally game-for-anything kid who WANTED to take ballet lessons. I was angry with myself for not being able to right the situation. And, I was stumped. Why didn’t I know what to do? Should I have pushed her harder and MAKE her participate or pull her earlier before we upset the class too much?
BLAGH!
I fumed for another 30 minutes until it was time to leave for the party. Now here is where I fell in love with the kid all over again. I mentioned to her that Phoenix won’t know anyone, so it will be up to her to introduce him to her friends.
By god, she did.
She went up to each of her friends at the party and said, “Grant, this is my special guest, Phoenix.” To others, “Ava, have you met my special guest, Phoenix?”
I shit you not, she drug him around and made sure everyone met her Special Guest.
Screw ballet. I couldn’t have been more proud of her.
It was a year ago this week that we took Kate to her first ballet class. It it weren’t for her amazingly engaging teacher, I probably would have left with steam spouting through my ears too. Now she loves it and has made lots of friends with the other kids in class. As have I! I am quite lucky to find wench-worthy companions from this group of women I met through something not very wenchy.
Kate had a relapse after a few months and again refused to participate. So, I pulled her out of the class, put her street clothes back on and made her to sit with me on the street corner until her dad showed up with the car. We didn’t chat or goof around. We just sat there in silence (except for the occasional and barely audible snarl from me). It took about 10 minutes of this before she asked if she could please go back to ballet class.
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