Per my request, my mom took me and my daughter to the Nutcracker ballet this year. She took me many times in Boston while I was growing up, it was a special thing for us to do together. We probably should have waited until Kiddo was older to attend such an event, but she loves dancing now.
We got all dressed up, and found our seats. It was a small theater, so we could see really well. Kiddo loved the dancing, but couldn't understand why she couldn't dance on the stage as well. She also had a lot of questions about the plot in the beginning party scene, then the subsequent fighting with the mice. (That night, she reiterated that she hadn't liked the mice. I told her I didn't like it either. I only liked the beautiful dancing part.) I'm not sure the people around us appreciated her four year old behavior, but she really did very well.
She spent the first half of intermission dancing in the aisles, because she had dancing to express, and I hadn't let her in during the ballet. (More than once I had to grab her and sit her back down because the dancing in her soul would not be stilled!) After the ballet, she had a fun experience. One of the dancers is in our ward, so Kiddo got to go backstage to meet her, and get a picture with her. (She is also the daughter of Kiddo's Sunbeam teacher.)
Kiddo has spent the last three weeks since then trying to figure out how to dance on her toes. I keep telling her she'll have to wait until she's older.
