People who try

Yesterday Skipper performed with her taiko class in public, in front of probably 80 people at the end of the harvest festival at her school.  She worried about it, but she didn't balk. She was obviously nervous during the performance, and seemed pretty lost, but I don't think that's outside the realm of normal for a five-year-old with exactly three taiko classes under her belt. She was very, very proud of herself.

Last week, as Skipper was talking about something she was going to do, she said "... because I'm a person who tries new things." I wanted to take a moment to shed a few happy tears, but I just said "Yes, you do try a lot of things." And she does, damnit. She tries new things on a daily basis, lately.

In other news, Duchess is wrestling with a lot of Big Things about adolescence and self-presentation and who she wants to be in the world. She's started dressing differently, consciously choosing clothes she identifies as more sophisticated, and spending time making her hair as straight and sleek as she can given her limited tools. She struggles with how to present and identify herself at school- is she going to try to hang out with the Cool Girls, or is she going to sit with the Nerd King* and make up silly songs? Only time will tell. In the meantime, she also tries new things.

*He's back! Turns out the Magic TAG school is much less flexible than this one about letting him skip school a ton to pursue his own projects. So he's back, though he's in a different class than Duchess, and she spends time with him at recess whenever she can. This exposes them both to ridicule, both because of the cross-gender friendship, which is not really socially permitted, and also because he is very short and Duchess is very tall, so they look silly together in a way that calls attention to the gender problem... Of course the Nerd King handles this with his usual aplomb, which gives Duchess some courage.