The Sidewalk Chalk Fashion Show Runway

Don't laugh if you knew this already, but fashion shows are kinda complicated. You walk here, you pose for this long, you walk somewhere else, you pose, you walk fourteen other places and pose there, you look in the right direction, your face has the right expression, you don't watch your feet and also don't fall off the runway, you smile at the audience but ignore the emcee who's talking her head off about you while you're right there...

See? Complicated!

I don't know about the adult amateur and professional models who are participating in the fashion show, but my four-year-old needs plenty of practice.

Fortunately, we live just a few houses down from a fabulous park, and even more fortunately, we homeschool, and so we can visit this park during school hours.

Why is it so important that we go to the park during school hours?

Because during school hours it's just us and the toddlers at the park, and the toddlers don't play basketball.

While I drew a copy of the fashion show runway on the basketball court (a great quad exercise, by the way--at the gym later that night I climbed onto the elliptical, started up, and then was all, "Ow, ow, ow! Why does it feel like I've already exercised these muscles today?"), the girls added some decorations of their own:

Stegosaurus, by Willow

Bunnies, by Sydney

Sydney's bunnies were so awesome that Willow, upon seeing them, accused me of drawing them for Sydney, at which point Sydney then drew a few more just to demonstrate her bunny-drawing aptitude. Ahh, sisters!

In case you've never modeled in a fashion show before, here's what Syd's runway debut will look like:

She and another four-year-old, who will be modeling a dress crocheted from unraveled sweater yarn, will enter the runway together from the steps at stage right as soon as the stage manager motions them on. They will walk to upstage center and pose:

Willow invented this pose, by the way, and taught it to Sydney, and will teach it to Syd's partner at their next dress rehearsal. It's called the T Pose, and it's the one that I chose from all of Willow's possibilities--the P Pose, the H Pose, the W Pose (which involved the children each standing on one foot), etc.

The girls will then walk to center stage, turn completely to stage left and pose, and turn completely to stage right and pose:

They will walk downstage to the end of the runway and pose at downstage center:

They will walk all the way to downstage left and pose:

They will walk all the way to downstage right and pose. They will walk back to center stage and pose left and right again. They will walk back to their original mark at upstage center and face the audience again for a final pose (I'm having them blow a kiss, a tactic that I unabashedly stole from Toddlers and Tiaras). And then, and this is actually the trickiest part, they will exit not from the stairs they used to enter the stage, but from the stairs at stage left.

Wouldn't you want to practice that?