A Tentative Ballerina

We talked about ballet class quite a bit this past week. Gabriella had her doll house dolls playing ballet class, she picked a ballet book from the library and she continued to teach her Daddy the fine art of ballet. Gabriella seemed excited about her class this morning, but once she saw the girls already up at the mirror working on positions she planted right down in my lap. I tried to go and dance alongside her, but that was clearly not working so I sat back down and Gabriella sat beside me. She stood up during the free dancing with scarves, but decided she didn't want to join in after all. She stood up again to ask the teacher what the name of the music the girls were leaping to was. It was from the Nutcracker and Gabriella cheerfully informed the teacher that we have a book about the Nutcracker. About 10 minutes before the end of the class she stood up again. She stood there a moment and then slowly started walking over to the girls. When she got there the teacher invited her in kindly (for about the millionth time) and she giggled and took her hand and went on to dance with the other girls and have a good time for the final 9 minutes of class.

Can you find Gabriella?

She is the one on the right with the bun. Here she is (on the left) holding hands with another super cute little girl.

Questions from a 3 Year Old

Gabriella has certainly hit that 3 year old curious about everything phase. Here are just a few she has thrown at me recently...

• Do Polar Bears pee in the water?
  
• Why do you love Daddy?
  
• Do all fish grow?


• Is God a "he" or a "she"?


• Who names baby whales when they are born?


• How exactly did Juliana get born?


• Are you married to Daddy? Well then who am I going to marry!?

Juliana's 8 Month Update

At 8 Months Juliana Jayne...

• Wears mostly 12 month size clothes. 6-12 tops fit fine, 6-12 pants are too snug with a cloth diaper. 6-12 onesies don't work well at all.


• Enjoys eating. She has tried sweet potatos, carrots, peas and pears and she likes them all. She also really likes chewing on cold grapes in her mesh feeder. We're still taking food introduction pretty slowly per our allergist and our pediatrician.


• Has quite the interesting "crawl" It isn't hands and knees crawling and it isn't really army crawling. I guess I'll have to get a video clip. It looks more like swimming.


• Has several words: Mama, Dada (she also says Dad), Nuh Nuh (nurse), No and my favorite... El-la-la (Gabriella)


• Loves toys. She is really into Little People right now. She likes the castle and she really likes Noah's Ark. We fill the Ark up with the animals and she fishes them out one by one, carefully inspecting them as she goes.

Ballet Class Blues

Gabriella's first ballet class didn't go exactly as I thought. We walked into the room and I noticed Gabriella was looking a bit anxious. Before all the girls even arrived the teacher started showing the girls passe and then first position. Gabriella immediately stuck herself in my lap and said, "I can't do that!" Thus, while the other little girls galloped, learned positions and turned on tip toes, Gabriella stayed firmly embedded in my lap and would not be convinced to join them. She told me several times that she wanted to go home.

I've never seen Gabriella be like that in a social situation. Usually she jumps right in, introduces herself and never bothers to even look back at me. However, it seems that Gabriella has pretty strong performance anxiety and I think that was the issue today. She is rather unusually afraid of failure for a three year old. She saw the teacher asking those girls to do things that looked hard and that was that.

When we got home I explained the situation to Jonathan and he asked Gabriella to show him some of the dance moves she had learned. At first she wouldn't, but then he struck a random pose and asked her if he was doing first position correctly. She then helped him move his feet to look "like a pizza" (in a "V") and helped him get his arms in the right position. She certainly took everything in even if she didn't participate. Jonathan made a show of saying that he had never done ballet before and that it was sometimes hard to get his feet in the right place etc..

Does anyone else have thoughts about performance anxiety in children? Do you know of any books that feature a child learning something new and challenging?

Who needs toys when you have a sister?

Gabriella insists they were playing doctor. Apparently Dr. Juliana gives very thorough nostril examinations.

Japanese Festival

We decided to head to a local Japanese Festival for a little family outing today. They had live performances of martial arts and Japanese music as well as food, vendors and some games and crafts for kids.

Gabriella and Jonathan both decorated paper fans. Gabriella's involved a LOT of glitter.

Finally, a Birthday Party

Gabriella's patience was certainly tested with the two week delay of her birthday party. We finally had her party this morning and it went quite well. Two of the five little girls weren't able to make it, but we still had a lot of fun.

Here is the fabulous invitation Jonathan made. Our address and the date etc.... have been removed from this copy. This is one of my favorite pictures of Gabriella and I thought the invites turned out super cute. Jonathan made the tiara graphic from scratch on photoshop. Seriously. He didn't use any starting image and we don't even have a wacom tablet. He just "drew" it with a mouse (using lots of copying/pasting and making mirror images.) You can click this picture to see a bigger version.

Each girl got to decorate her own wand and tiara. I made the wands and bought the tiaras at Joann's Fabrics. -Note Gabriella zooming through the background.

Gabriella had a very methodical approach to tiara decorating... one big gem on each point and eventually she added a big foam star in the middle.

The fruit salad was pretty popular and of course Jonathan had to show off by doing the whole watermelon bowl thing. We also had pasta salad, chicken and... tiara cupcakes.

Tiara cupcakes with skittles for gems was a great idea... I just forgot that I have no skills with icing.

Gabriella painted special goodie bags for each of her friends. I cut a sponge into a tiara stamp and she had a blast mixing up shades of pink a lavender and stamping. As she made each one she would say things like "Iona will love this purple color" or "Grace would like a Sleeping Beauty sticker." We filled each bag with some non-candy princess items. Grace wasn't able to make the party today so we saved her bag for her. (Good thing we still had her bag, because I forget to take pictures before the others got ripped into!)

I have to say that this was probably the calmest preschoolers birthday party I've ever been to. While the girls were decorating tiaras and wands they were concentrating so hard it was nearly silent. They enjoyed quite a bit of dress up and tea party free play, which was also pretty calm. Lunch was full of please and thank yous. Obviously these kids' parents have done something right!

Thank you to all the friends that came to celebrate today! I may post a few pictures of the cuties later, but I need to ask permission from their parents first. So, last, but not least...

Princess Juliana....

The Queen...