Andrej, Jessica, Kaiya and Tobi

Desperately needing a fun way to get Kaiya's energy out during these long, cold winter months, we decided to sign her up for a parent/child pre-ballet dance class. We go once a week, along with Kaiya's best friend Lucy and her mama, to learn how to dance "like real ballerinas." One of Kaiya's first words was tutu and she truly believes you must be wearing one to dance, so this class has been perfect for her. Even the daddies are getting into it, and last week Andrej took Kaiya and Lucy and met up with Lucy's daddy, so they could see what their daughters have been learning. However, clever Andrej was able to get out of participating in many of the dances because he was hiding behind the camera taking pictures. Somehow I figured he would manage to avoid dancing around the room like a butterfly.

Before Kaiya's first class a few weeks ago, I was a little worried at how she would do. Being that it was her first time in a class where she had to follow a teacher's instructions, I really didn't know if she would sit/stand still long enough to listen and understand the teacher. During the first few minutes of the class my worries proved legitimate as the first words out of Kaiya's mouth were, "I'll show you how I like to dance." Then off she went hoping, running and spinning around the room. I spent most of the first class wrangling her and explaining that she had to listen to Miss Kat, her dance teacher, and do exactly what she was doing so she could learn new dances. Thankfully, the class is made up of all two and three year olds so Kaiya wasn't the only rebellious student doing her own thing.

Even with all the wrangling I had to do, the first class was a lot of fun and Kaiya and I both enjoyed ourselves. I wasn't sure how much Kaiya actually learned, but later in the week we decided to practice what we had learned at class and to my surprise Kaiya showed me many of the moves Miss Kat taught without me even reminding her. I was so pleased to know that she was paying attention and learning even though it didn't seem that way during the class. She even remembered words to a song we learned and the motions that go along with it.

Our second class went much better as I think Kaiya started to grasp the fact that she is supposed to follow the teacher and not run around like a crazy girl. She was so cute practicing first and second position, plies and doing the motions to the songs Miss Kat taught us. Kaiya kept yelling out, "I'm doing a good job!"

As I mentioned earlier, the daddies went with the girls last week and I'm glad Andrej was able to experience dance class and snap these funny pictures of our little ballerina in action. Tutu cute!