No Parents Allowed

Natalie had a piano recital yesterday. Her teacher billed it as a "kids only" event. Apparently, in the effort to make it a "fun" recital and "low pressure", the kids voted to have "kids only" and no parents at the recital. Accordingly, Patrick and I planned to drop her off and stay home. Then, on Friday night, Natalie tells me, "What's the point of having a recital if the parents aren't going to be there?" In other words, she wanted me to go. So, I went. I was the ONLY parent there, except for her piano teacher and her husband. The parents did chip in to pay for pizza for the kids and many brought cookies and other desserts, but otherwise they all dropped off and picked up. No one else stayed.

Natalie played duets with two of the girls, both were younger than her and they looked and acted like it. On one duet, her partner needed the teacher to count out for her when to start playing. On the other duet, Natalie and her partner did not seem to be on the same tempo. If one messed up, the other still went along as if nothing happened, which meant that their timing was off. Still, all the kids seemed to enjoy themselves, and I guess that was the point of it.

Natalie's teacher did give out a couple of awards. Her students had to compose a short song and she gave awards to the two who she felt had the best compositions. When Natalie figured out that her teacher was talking about Natalie's piece called "Excited Boy", she made the face in the picture above where she was trying to hide her face in her shirt. She was all smiles under that shirt! She has made embarrassed faces before, but she's never tried to hide her face until now. She was pretty excited that her piece won! After everyone ate, I asked Natalie if she was still glad that I came even though I was the only parent. She nodded enthusiastically and said, "Yes." I guess in the end I was glad I was there to share this with her.

On another note, I finally ordered more of our everyday dishes and they arrived on Saturday morning. This is a picture of Natalie helping me remove the labels that were on each individual piece (although I bought a complete set). We actually only needed more bowls and small plates. It cost just a little bit more to get a whole set (of 8 place settings) than to buy the pieces individually, so I bought the whole set. I started out with 8 coffee cups from this shipment. Alex accidentally broke three of them between yesterday and today. For some reason, there are only 7 coffee cups left in the cupboard. Patrick and I are wondering what happened to the other coffee cups we had. These are the perfect size for a small helping of ice cream, so I thought we had about 4 or 5 already. We're still looking for the others...