Our Little Ballerina

As I showed you in my previous post, Sydney LOVES pretending to be a ballerina right now.  Mason gave her a tutu for her second birthday.  After a couple of weeks of not wanting to have anything to do with it, she has finally embraced her inner ballerina and wears it pretty much all the time.  She calls it her "ballerina".  I even had to set rules with her on when she could and couldn't wear it:

1.  You cannot wear your "ballerina" when you are eating.
2.  You cannot wear your "ballerina" when you are going potty...for obvious reasons. :)
3.  The "ballerina" cannot go to bed with you. (Although I've caught her with it on when she's "napping".)

This is the picture that started it all.  I asked her to pose like a ballerina not really knowing if she knew how a ballerina posed, and she came up with this.  Apparently she's paying attention more than I think she is. :)  After that, I decided I was going to look into getting her into classes if I could.  I wasn't sure if dance studios took kids her age.  My good friend, Elissa, has a daughter that takes all kinds of dance classes at a nearby studio.  She told me that there was an introductory class she could get into, so I signed her up!  For $27 a month, she gets to go once a week into a class where they just do the basics.  Tapping your toes on the floor, waving your hands in the air, and maybe a little turn every once in a while.  I get to go in there with her to encourage her to do the movements.  It's actually a pretty fun bonding time.  :)

This was right after we got back from her first class.  She had so much fun!  There is only one other little girl in her class and they became fast friends.  She was glued to me at first, but after she warmed up to what they were doing, she started joining in and giggling and running around with the other little girl.  She (of course) wore her "ballerina" to class.  Couldn't leave home without it!

Last week, when I took her to class, we ran into Elissa's daughter, Natalie.  Sydney loves "Mad-alie" (as she calls her) and Natalie is so good with her.  Here is a sweet picture I took of the two of them together.

 Sweet girls.  Maybe one day Natalie will get to teach Sydney...who knows?  :)

Needless to say, I think dance will probably be Sydney's thing (hopefully for a long time).  She comes up to me after she puts on her tutu and says, "Mom, look at me!  I'm beautiful!" and does her original dance move (the one in the first picture).  She's so cute, I just can't stand it sometimes! :)