Real dance class

For over a year, Glitter has watched her sister go do dance class every week. For over a year, Glitter has peered through the window at her sister's dance class. For over a year she's played dance class with her sister at home.

The dance studio doesn't take students until they are at least three by the start of the school year. As soon as Glitter turned three she started asking when she would have her own dance class. She pulled her socks up as high as they would go and pretended that they were tights. She found dress up shoes and pretended that they were dance slippers. She made the electronic keyboard play songs and danced to the music. She practiced her sisters dance recital routine with her and memorized it on her own.

This past summer as soon as she heard that I might consider starting her in dance, she started begging for dance class in earnest. I waited until Sparkle was five years old and out of preschool before starting dance, but it was a different situation with Glitter. I saw that the studio would be offering a class for Glitter's age group back-to-back with a class for Sparkle. I secretly registered Glitter as well as Sparkle for fall dance.

Then last week I told her, that she would start dance class with her sister. I took her shopping for tights and a leotard. She was thrilled. She was overjoyed. She could talk of nothing else. Wherever we went, whoever we saw, she would announce that "I have *real* dance clothes and I'm going to *real* dance class." She told the man standing next to us in line at the post office. she told the cashier at the museum. She told the mom in front of us at the grocery store. She told the neighbors when we saw them at the mail box. People that she would normally be too shy to even say "hi" to, got to hear her wonderful news.



Finally the day of anticipation arrived. After all the hype in her mind, I wondered whether the actual dance class would fall short of Glitter's imagination, but I need not have worried. She has a wonderful teacher who is awesome with young children. There were only four little girls in her class. They got to pretend to be kangaroos and jump around. They got to wave squares of colored fabric as they danced around. They got to rock baby dolls asleep. Whatever the teacher did, Glitter copied as fast as her little mind could follow. She was incredibly obedient and attentive to her teacher. (I've never gotten anything close to that level of obedience from her!) I was so happy and proud of her.



Now I have two dancers in the family.



P.S. After Glitter's dance class, we had to wait during Sparkle's dance class. Glitter kept her dance clothes on and pranced around the waiting room. Some big girls arrived and warmed up for their class. Glitter started copying them and they found her cute too!