Leilani is healthy again, after a fever that lasted 3 days. It made her cranky, but she had no other symptoms… Yesterday she felt so well already, that we decided to see the Nutcracker, performed by the children of the Kaua’i Academy of Dance and Gymnastics. Two of Chloe’s sisters were in the production and had sold us the tickets. They performed it in May because, sadly, the director’s father died during the production in November.
I guess you all know Andy and me, so you won’t be surprised that for a show supposed to start at 4:00 pm, we decided to go at 3:10 pm. Both of us finished a shower in record time, fed and diapered the baby, put on her cutest dress, stressed a bit, rushed to Lihue, and arrived plenty early Kauai time; it actually started at 4:25.
We thought it would be a good way to teach Leilani to be good and quiet through a performance. Since we weren’t attached to seeing the performance, we sat next to the door and were prepared to take her out. Children’s ballet atracts a lot of families, there must have been 20 babies and toddlers. Two screamed their head off through the initial anouncements until the director asked nicely for them to be taken out. Leilani slept until the music came on and then watched and listened, interested until a few minutes before the intermission. She was most fussy in the dark before the curtains opened and during the clapping and cheering. Whenever she started babbling we’d whisper for her to please be quiet. We took her for a short walk, and the 2nd half was not as easy, and we had to take her out 3 times, but for just a minute at a time. She realized that she was excluded because of her noise, immediately quieted down, and seemed eager to go back in. Even though we had to stand and hold her the whole second half, she saw more of the show than many toddlers who had to be taken out.
I was pretty surprised to see the children all dance flat-footed, I still remember all the pain from my early ballet lessons (I bet I could still walk on the points in ballet shoes). There was one teen-age dancer who was really good, and from the program we learned she is going to the San Francisco Ballet Academy.