First day of new camps
Today Cook dropped Skipper off at a new camp for the week. He reported that she did not freak out or cry, which is great progress. She reported afterward that she enjoyed her day and made several friends.
I took Duchess to HER new camp, an intensive dance camp that is really just a lot of dancing (ballet, contemporary, hip hop, musical theater, "movement improv") with two short breaks for changing clothes and eating snacks - no "camp" activities or structure. We arrived exactly at what I had understood to be the "camp" drop-off time, but it turned out that the time was in fact the time that the first class STARTED. Duchess was pretty anxious about the prospect of being the worst kid there, and she was already sweaty and flustered because we had biked there at a sprint, due to a forgotten lunchbox and a subsequently late start. In this state, she had to hurry to change into her ballet clothes (and putting tight stretchy clothes on a sweaty body is never fun), and then walk into a class already underway. The age group is 9-11-year-olds, so of course Duchess was the tallest kid there by at least five inches. The other girls, almost all of whom have been taking classes at this place for at least a year, looked like delicate little ballet elves with perfect buns and pointed toes, and Duchess came in like an Amazon, towering over all of them, her hair haphazardly clipped and sticking out every which way.* I thought she looked gorgeous, of course, broad-shouldered and radiant with life, but she felt pretty terrible about the whole scene, and I left her hunching cautiously over a barre, warily taking the fifth position. When I picked her up, she was devouring some of the food she hadn't had time to eat, and looking kind of feral and wild-eyed, but she said she enjoyed the classes a lot. She wasn't the worst kid there, and tomorrow we're going to arrive a little earlier. She's looking forward to it. Should you be curious, she says that she's best at ballet, but enjoys contemporary dance the most.
*This has been happening all of Duchess's life. Because she's so very enormous, she often looks oddly out of scale, like Alice in Wonderland.
I took Duchess to HER new camp, an intensive dance camp that is really just a lot of dancing (ballet, contemporary, hip hop, musical theater, "movement improv") with two short breaks for changing clothes and eating snacks - no "camp" activities or structure. We arrived exactly at what I had understood to be the "camp" drop-off time, but it turned out that the time was in fact the time that the first class STARTED. Duchess was pretty anxious about the prospect of being the worst kid there, and she was already sweaty and flustered because we had biked there at a sprint, due to a forgotten lunchbox and a subsequently late start. In this state, she had to hurry to change into her ballet clothes (and putting tight stretchy clothes on a sweaty body is never fun), and then walk into a class already underway. The age group is 9-11-year-olds, so of course Duchess was the tallest kid there by at least five inches. The other girls, almost all of whom have been taking classes at this place for at least a year, looked like delicate little ballet elves with perfect buns and pointed toes, and Duchess came in like an Amazon, towering over all of them, her hair haphazardly clipped and sticking out every which way.* I thought she looked gorgeous, of course, broad-shouldered and radiant with life, but she felt pretty terrible about the whole scene, and I left her hunching cautiously over a barre, warily taking the fifth position. When I picked her up, she was devouring some of the food she hadn't had time to eat, and looking kind of feral and wild-eyed, but she said she enjoyed the classes a lot. She wasn't the worst kid there, and tomorrow we're going to arrive a little earlier. She's looking forward to it. Should you be curious, she says that she's best at ballet, but enjoys contemporary dance the most.
*This has been happening all of Duchess's life. Because she's so very enormous, she often looks oddly out of scale, like Alice in Wonderland.
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