She Gets the Joke

Well, it's dance recital season, and all three girls (and myself) were getting into the act Monday and yesterday at rehearsal for this weekend's show. While the girls were on stage doing their numbers, Brigid was dancing in the aisle, waving her arms, swaying her hips and bopping up and down. She loves, just loves dancing. She'll be up there before we know it.


Meanwhile, Margaret and Patricia have been truly enjoying both tap and jazz this year. It's great exercise, and they seem to have a knack for it. Patricia has always been good at tap. And although Margaret dropped out after her hula baby year, she wanted to get back into it a few years ago, so I'm very happy about that. And this year is their first in jazz, and they just shine. It's such a good experience not just athletically, because both teachers -- Susan and Nancy -- work the kids hard, but also because it's good socially. It builds confidence and the girls have made some good friends through their dance classes. When they went to St. Peter's, they may not have known the kids in public school, but they knew a lot of kids through dance class. Now that they go to public school, they already had a lot of friends there because of dance class.
And I get a lot out of my jazz class -- both exercise and an hour to laugh and play with adult women. This will be our seventh recital. What's really fun is doing the mother/daughter dance that opens the show. It's a tap number, and although I don't take tap I was able to learn this one and it's a lot of fun being up there with the girls. Nancy (the tap teacher) has asked us to dance all four nights of the recital.

Brigid has been "saying" a lot more words, or at least words that sound like words, lately. I've been saying to her "I (pause) love you!" and now she says something approximating "love you" after I say the "I" part. It sounds so cute, and she gets a kick out of saying it because I give her all this praise. We're working on the "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "Patty Cake." She repeats things you say to her -- in her own language. And she'll hold a phone to her ear and say, "H'woe" for Hello. That's very cute.

We're also working on body parts. She can point out her eyes, nose, hair, ears and mouth. She knows her hands and feet, fingers and toes. It's so much fun to see her eyes shinning as you play "where's your..." and have her point to hers, then yours. She also takes great glee in trying to pick my nose for me ... turnabout is only fair play. I'm always picking her nose.

Brigid is also a ham. I mean a bone-in, spiral-cut, 100-percent porcine ham. She'll do things just because she KNOWS you're going to say, "Awwww, how cute. What a cute baby." She'll tilt her head sideways; she'll lay down on a pillow and "go nigh-nigh;" she'll come up and hug your leg and put her head on you thigh so you go, "oh, sweet baby." Then she'll look up at you and smile this pixie smile. She KNOWS she's being cute. She "gets" the joke. It's so much fun having a baby who plays along. She'll stand in the doorway of a room she knows she's not supposed to go into if the door was inadvertently left open and she'll laugh this fake impish laugh, as if to say, "Anyone? I'm here, I'm going in. Anyone? Here I go. Anyone?" And you'll come upon her and she doubles up, laughing, like, "hahahaha. You caught me!" It cracks me up.

Our baby is growing up, way, way too fast. I got her a front-facing car seat the other day. It makes a huge difference for her to be able to see where she's going instead of where she's been. But it takes some getting used to as far as her comfort in falling asleep in it. We went to Albany on Monday when I had a doctor's appointment. Just she and I. She was trying to fall asleep and would keep startling herself away when her head would bob because she's so used to the reclined position of the rear-facing car seat. But otherwise, it was nice to be able to see her face, to engage her in conversation on the drive down. She was good as gold, and napped for a while down; she napped the entire ride back, which was nice because I didn't have to entertain her when I was concentrating on my driving. I got one of those mirrors to clip on the rear-view mirror so I can see her without turning around. I think it's easier getting her into the seat as well, so there's less frustration on both our parts. Yes, she's growing up.