Ballet Girl, Baseball Girl

For the past several Saturdays, we've found ourselves enmeshed in an all-too-common, and fortunately for us, temporary, insanity--we've spent Saturday mornings, the ENTIRE morning, driving our children to and from their various activities, and cooling our heels while they perform them.

One activity is a definite keeper:

Our Sydney is a ballet girl, wouldn't you agree? She demonstrates one of those truths that I know about children and yet sometimes allow myself to forget--children, just like everyone, learn best when they're doing what they love. Sydney pays attention to her teachers, she follows directions, she takes turns, she tries her hardest--just what we want her to be learning. The ballet part is her business.

Willow comes with us to Sydney's ballet class, wearing her orange Sports Shorties team shirt that exactly matches the orange elevator down to the ballet studios:

She's happy to hang out in the hallway during Sydney's class, reading her latest Nancy Drew novel:

Then we head over to her sport:

 

Enjoy those photos, because those pictures of Willow, warming up with her dad, may be the only pictures that you ever see of that child playing baseball, for Willow has reminded us of another truth about children--children, like everyone else, do not learn well when they are not doing what they love. And what Sports Shorties has taught Willow is that she does NOT like team sports. She does NOT pay attention to her coach. She does NOT follow directions. She does NOT try at all. As soon as the coach starts to talk, a sweet, sweet man who is revered by all other children, just so you know, Willow retreats in a sulk to the sidelines, where she stays, facing in the direction opposite team play, until, exasperated, we drag her out.

Willow will not be showing up to the rest of her Sports Shorties classes. I don't have a problem with taking her there each week and letting her either participate or sit out, but watching her do it just makes ME too mad, so I'm calling that tuition done and gone in the name of making me a better parent. And, hey, our Saturday kid-shuttle just has to transport one kid now--yay!

In a few weeks Willow's ice skating classes will resume for the season. Ice skating, now, is a sport that Will LOVES. It's a solo sport, you know, and it moves you fast, and she's very good at it. It also has the virtue of taking place on a weekday afternoon, so it's not during family time, but part of normal homeschool time.

I doubt very much, however, that I'll have a performer in the ice show this year, but there is always Sydney's spring ballet recital to look forward to...