Emily's Dance Recital
Our 6-year old daughter’s dance recital is tomorrow. This is her third year of dancing and they have a recital every June. It’s really cute and the show involves girls as young as 3 all the way to fairly advanced dancers in high school. The audience is a bunch of proud parents with cameras.
Most people would think that I would be looking forward to this, but wrong. In fact, I am dreading it. Totally anxious about the 1 hour show. And here is the hard part to admit to myself and others, that while the time watching my daughter do her little dance thing is great, having my 2 year old will make the event stressful.
I love my kids (most of the time) and love spending time with the (most of the time), but my 2 year old can be terrible while some other event is going on. Some kids sit quietly in the stands while a swim class or something else is going on, or at least I’ve heard of these kids, but not mine. Emerson, our 2 year old, is a huge pain when it comes to that.
So while I look forward to my daughter’s dance show, the thought of chasing my 2 year old will make this a stressful event. Plus he has this crazy annoying screech he does when he notches up the brat factor a few scales.
And here comes the wonder of my wife. She arranged to have a friend watch our two boys while we go to the show (my in laws are coming up from NY for the show as well). This way, we can sit with a cup of coffee and relax while watching it. Wonderful. Then later in the day we are watching our friend’s one year old while they have something to do as well.
This is a great example of the polarity of being a parent of young kids. Events can be great like playing in the yard, flying a kite, taking them to the zoo, their excitement at watching a new event like a baseball game, birthday parties and parks, pools and riding bicycles. But they can also add a degree of stress to normal situations that parents are at times unprepared for like going through airport security and flying, taking them to practice of another child, restaurants that do not cater to little kids, shopping or walking in a crowded mall, basically any situation where they can 1) get lost, 2) embarrass you or 3) get in trouble/hurt.
Anyway, just thought I’d share my own personal experience with three little people who mostly don’t do what I say but still hug me when I get home at night.