Saturday goodness

It was a grey misty bone chilling day on the island today. Instead of walking around the village for the Dickens Festival freezing our fingers off, Em and I decided to hit up the local ballet school's matinee Nutcracker while Daddy and Ben stayed home and did boy stuff - you know, watching college football. The ballet school brings in 3 professional dancers for the major roles and I gotta tell ya, at first I was all - why would you hired professional dancers, give the local talent a chance to shine! After seeing the performance I must admit they professionals were AMAZING to watch and I believe really elevated the desire of the local gals to push themselves to practice harder resulting in extraordinary performances across the board. It was a two hour show with a 20 minute intermission. Em got a little wiggly here and there, but mostly enjoyed watching the show. It certainly did not hurt that one of her school's Kindergarten teachers (not hers) that she adores played the toy maker in the first act. He was a joy to watch and reminded me again just how lucky we are that (most of) our teachers are so committed to the local community. Em asked lots of good questions throughout the performance like, "Why are they dancing in dust?" (Fog in the dream scenes.) "How do they make the dust?" (With a fog machine.)

The Nutcracker!

Last night Ben would not eat dinner. Surprise! Daddy was intent on him eating just one piece of tortellini (which if you recall was ALL HE WOULD EAT about a year ago) or he would lose train table privileges. "I don't like it! It's yucky!" He said over and over through heaving sobs. At his wits end, Daddy starting breaking down the elaborate track that I built the other day and putting it away in the train table drawers. Benjamin starting shaking! He was so sad and upset. (Mommy was a little shaky and sad, too - it took me forever to built that dang setup!) When he finally calmed down, he ate some raisins and went to bed semi relaxed. He was up at 6:22 this morning and tiptoed into our room so as not to wake Daddy and whispered to me sweetly, "Mom, can I built a new track on the train table?" Yes, buddy, you can. And he did!! That kid recreated a sizable chunk of the track from memory all by himself before any of us got our lazy bums out of bed. Stud.

Rebuilding complete!