... do you want to dance...

... or something similar?

Here's a post I wrote a bit ago but failed to actually publish. So, you're getting more content this week, but some of it may be past its expiration date. See if you can tell which is which!

Lately the girls have been "going to dance class" and doing ballet in the kitchen. This involves K running and twirling and L chasing after her, spinning occasionally but mostly just running with little feet that thump across the floor like small pile drivers pounding some resisting post. (She is particularly good at standing on her toes, something she has over her older sister!) They've been pretty good at playing together, and more importantly, at playing together in ways that don't require parental intervention, playing this way for up to 10 minutes at a time, at which point usually L begins crying loudly, histrionically, reacting to something that K may or may not have done. And then M or I will go and see what's happening.

Yesterday, when I just wanted to sit and read the paper, the girls wanted a "dance instructor." M was already reading the paper, so she somehow escaped notice though she was sitting not 3 feet away from me. (It's a relationship moral quandary that doesn't support too much consideration -- do I point out to the girls that their mother is also available to act as dance teacher, thereby winning me a few short minutes of paper-reading time but costing me untold relationshipal brownie points, or do I just suck it up and make another espresso and teach them everything I know about dancing. Which should take about 15 seconds.

I chose the latter. And after that espresso I suggested they do an "envelope." *

K: What's an envelope?
L: What a enbelope Dada?
M (glancing up with a wry smile): (unspoken, but clearly stated: what the hell is an envelope?1?)
me: Here, I'll show you.
(I swallow the last of the espresso and consider how many more I can have, given that it's Sunday and I'd like to fall asleep tonight sometime before Tuesday. I stand upright, arms spread, then wave them around and bend at the waist, folding over so that my arms are now pointing somewhere toward my feet (though I'm not flexible enough to actually *touch* my feet!). Then, as gracefully as I am able, I straighten up, hoping my back doesn't go out, and finish with a flourish of hand/arm waving that approximates something I might have once seen in a production of the Nutcracker. Maybe.)
M (risking her camouflaged perch on the window seat): Wow. That's quite an envelope!
K: Yeah.
L: That quite a enbelope Dada.
K: But how we do that?
me: Come here, I'll show you. Point your toe out, put your arms out like this... (I walk her through it and she more or less gets it, though given her lack of practice and my superior experience, she's nowhere near as graceful as I am.)

This buys me a minute or two until they're ready for the next "practice thing."

Ah, Sunday morning....

* Why "envelope?" Uh... because I saw one on the counter? It's really none of your business!