Crazy With a Side of Hairspray

This week is Dance Recital Week in our house. You may also know it as The Week in Which We Eat A Whole Lotta McDonald's. Or perhaps The Week In Which Mommy Peers Into the Abyss. It's all kinds of crazy, with a lot of focus on sequins, hairspray, and tights.

My main job is keeping the girls' costumes, hairpieces, and bobby pins organized backstage. It's not glamorous, but it's key. Kind of like the guy that buys the pens Obama uses to sign bills into law.

But the bottom line, and the thing that takes the starch out of my complaining is this: my girls LOVE to dance. They love it, and I love watching them light up from the inside when they do it. I love that they're not afraid to walk out onto the stage and dance their hearts out in front of a packed house. I see the self-confidence dance has given them, and the pride on their faces as they walk offstage and hustle over to me to change into the next costume. So while keeping them in leotards/shoes/lessons might be pricey, the hairspray may be suffocatingly fumey, and ironing costumes makes me want to throw heavy objects (like, say, an iron) through plate-glass windows, I'll continue to do my part for just as long as they love to dance.

Here's a peek at a few of this year's numbers taken at last night's dress rehearsal. The photos aren't fantastic, since I had to creatively crop and blur to keep from showing other people's kids, but you'll get the idea.

Bear dancing classical ballet:

Bug dancing classical ballet:
Bug doing jazz:
Bear, looking frighteningly teenagerish, and dancing tap:
Bug, lyric ballet:

Bear, jazz:

We've got two more shows to go, if we don't OD on hairspray fumes first.