The Ballet

The week before Christmas Joe and I took the kids (yes, both kids) to the Nutcracker Ballet at the Maine Center for the Arts! Yes, it was a risky move taking a two year old and a newborn to a fancy ballet that is two hours long. I'm not sure I really thought that until we were there. See, I thought I bought tickets that were right on an asile (I figured that if necessary we could make a quick exit)- but I didn't. Nope. Instead we were smack dab in the middle of a very, very long row of seats. I also got our tickets very high up in the balcony thinking that there would be plenty of empty seats around us (this would give us more space and keep us from disturbing lots of people). Again nope. Instead there were people all around us and no empty seats. And because we brought the car seat in with us we had to have Lily sit on Joe's lap for the first half so we had room for the carseat. So things didn't exactly go as planned. But do you know what else I didn't plan for? I didn't plan that our two children would be absolutly PERFECT during the full ballet!!! It's true- it happened! Lily loved the ballet and pretty much couldn't take her eyes off of the stage the entire show! She's been very excited lately about ballet, dancing, tutus, ballerinas, etc... which is why we decided to take her in the first place. And Eli slept the entire show (literally didn't open his eyes until we were leaving) even through a canon explosion! All in all it was a wonderful experience. I wish I could have taken a picture of Lily's face while she watched with pure joy and awe as the ballerinas danced across the stage. And I swear you have never seen a two year old clap with such excitement. So yes, it could have gone very differently. It could have ended with all of us in tears or tantrums. But it didn't. And I am so happy that we risked it because I will never forget watching Lily watch her very first real ballet.