Last week our church held a talent show.  I've managed to make sure I was out of town for the last couple of these, but we happened to be around for this year's extravaganza and The Dormouse really wanted to perform the piano piece she's been learning.

What's amazing about this video clip is the self-control she demonstrated with the tempo of the piece. This is the tempo it's supposed to be played at, yet I've never heard her play this at a reasonable speed before. Rather, she enjoys practicing it as though the keys were on fire and she couldn't run out of the building until she got to the last note of the piece. I'm posting this for her teacher.  See?  Success!  Sometimes they do listen to you.   

She also memorized it and had the guts to play it in front of people without the crutch of the printed music in front of her, so I officially cede piano awesomeness to The Dormouse as I was never, ever confident enough to be able to do that like she just did, the biotch.  Wait, was that out loud?


 The Caterpillar wanted to perform as well. This was a much more difficult proposition as I suggested at least a dozen things she could do and she either rejected them out of hand or wanted to do it, but refused to practice or plan in any way.  I suggested she do the dance routine she's been learning in dance class for the past six months and will perform at her recital this month - I even found a copy of the music they use, but for some reason that idea was right out.  Finally, we had a big fight about it and I told her she didn't need to perform at all if she wasn't going to prepare anything because the point of a recital or a talent show or any performance is to work on something really hard and then show off all your hard work and you can't just take up stage time with a microphone while people watch you hem and haw about what you're going to do.  Then two things happened: 1) I felt like a huge heel about it all, and 2) she agreed to practice a dance with me playing the violin for her music.  It was enough for me, so we threw this together on the morning of the talent show.

 I tried a host of bluegrass tunes that I know well, but none of those seemed to work for her style of dance, so finally I pulled some Celtic music off the Interweb and she happened to learn that the name of this particular tune is The Irish Washerwoman.  Once she heard that, she steadfastly refused to wear her tap or ballet shoes and wanted to dance barefooted because, duh, an Irish Washerwoman wouldn't wear shoes, MOM.  Except for her, for the first time in her life, barefooted meant "with stockings."  I suggested she take off her stockings before we left the house, but she didn't want to and I had lost too many battles at that point to care, so I was all eh whatevs.  That is why you'll see her sliding across the floor like a runaway ice skater occasionally.  Which is actually the only reason for this post today. So one day I am able to show her this and say, SEE? SOMETIMES YOUR MOTHER KNOWS STUFF. TOLD YOU SO.




The KingofHearts didn't bring any of his talents to the event. So when, at the end, the emcee asked if anyone else who hadn't gotten a chance to "show everyone what they could do," I suggested he raise his hand and do this:


He rolled his eyes and said, "I think there's been quite enough of that already tonight."