About That Recital

Going into this year's dance recital, Alexis was ready to bring the thunder. She spent hours poring over hairstyle ideas on pinterest. She carefully laid out her costumes three times. She even tried on her jazz shoes, which she hasn't worn in months because everything in life is better without shoes, and decided they were too small.

That's a fun thing to tell your mom at 10:00 the night before your recital. For real. It's fun because your mom will laugh and laugh and laugh as she tells you to figure out how to cram your toes into your shoes because NOPE. No new shoes for you, child!

She did get fancy hair, though. Just to make it interesting, I didn't use any of the pinterest ideas Alexis found. Instead, I hit up YouTube and came across something SUPER easy. I mean, you guys, this took about 15 minutes. That includes 12 minutes of holding down the hairspray button so that I could turn the kid's hair into a helmet that will never move.

All of that preparation led to a minor problem -- we were ready too early before the recital. In fact, Alexis was backstage and ready to go a full half hour before she was required to be.

I'll wait.

It's okay.

I know a few of you just passed out from the shock of hearing that *I* was early getting anywhere. I assure you, it does sometimes happen. It just doesn't happen very often.

All that extra time led to Alexis finding some extra butterflies in her stomach. The were angrily fluttering about and making her super nervous, so I set up wifi on my old phone and handed it to the kid. There's nothing that sucks up all of her focus quite like Instagram. Within seconds, she went from OMG SO NERVOUS to asking everyone she could find to be in a selfie with her.

And with that, I had all the entertainment I needed for the next several hours.

Alexis spent all of her backstage moments posting photos to Instagram or texting me to report on every little thing that happened. Her play-by-play was really very fantastic.

I suppose her performances were pretty fantastic as well. Maybe. (Definitely.)

After the show, Alexis was walking on clouds as she excitedly reported everything she hadn't already texted and some of what she had texted. All the words. ALL OF THEM. There were no words left when she was done because she used them all.

And it was fantastic.

(It's a good thing I have figured out how to enjoy things like dance recitals because I'm pretty sure I'm stuck with them forever.)