She survived!

Today was the big day! Cakes had her piano recital this morning. She was required to introduce herself and her piece, play a solo piece and a duet. I was her duet partner, so this was my first recital too. Her solo piece was Yankee Doodle, and both her pieces were "traditional" so she had to give some background on her song rather than composer info like all the other students. After many weeks of emails between me and her teacher, conversations between me and Scott and several tearful practice sessions with Cakes, we made it to the recital. We got there about 30 minutes early and all the kids got situated, most of them played at least a few notes on the piano to familiarize themselves with a different instrument. Cakes did not, and neither did I. I tried to take her picture, and then my MIL took a few, but I could tell any little bit of attention was making her more nervous, so I didn't dare try to convince her to give the piano a try beforehand.



There she is trying to ignore everyone, but she was very excited to be wearing her new dress, shoes and headband (she made it with a neighborhood friend last week).

 She was the third kid on the program, which was good, because that didn't give her too much time to get nervous, plus she was sandwiched between all the other first-time recitalers. She got up, said her part very fast and was mostly understandable (or maybe I just understood her because I've heard her say it so many times) at any rate, she sat down and played Yankee Doodle, with only one tiny mistake. Then she bowed and I went up to play out Russian Sailor Dance duet. I messed up my first chord. Why? Because I didn't try out the piano like the teacher told us to. But, Cakes played perfectly. We finished and went back to our seats and before I knew it she was smiling and later mouthing to me that she was bored.

I should mention that the boys were an excellent audience. They sat very quietly through most of it; Silly eventually fell asleep and after about an hour and a half I went and stood in the back with Bubba because he was getting squirmy.

Soon enough it was all over. Gummy gave her a wrist corsage that matches her dress. I talked her into letting me get one picture (I was holding her candy bar for ransom).

She wouldn't smile so I told her she owes me a bite of her Twix. She wore the corsage for about 20 seconds. On our drive home (several hours later, but I'll get to that) she brought up her performance. Scott and I both told her she'd done a great job. She pointed out her one little mistake, saying she only messed up one little time. I pointed out that all the other students made mistakes, most of them big or multiple times, so to be able to say she made only one tiny mistake at her first recital is pretty awesome. She has seemed pretty content all day; I think it's a mix of proud of herself but glad it's over. I haven't dared mention (to her or Scott) that there's a year end recital too...

Between the recital and home we went to lunch at Red Lobster to celebrate Gummy's birthday. She brought everyone's favorite chocolate cake to eat after lunch. Bubba was pretty entertaining, insisting on using his utensils to cut up his biscuit and his chicken. Usually he likes to dip things, but this time he even used his fork to spread ketchup on his chicken.

Silly's word of the day was "lunatic." Not sure where that came from.

After lunch we went to a nearby park to play with Gramma and Gramma as Bubba calls them. It was a little chilly, and I thought to have Cakes bring herself a change of clothes, but I should have brought some for myself too. Oh well.

At some point Silly wandered over to the picnic table area and Scott went over to talk to him. Silly said he was going to stay there forever. Then he asked Scott, "Daddy, will you bring me some food next week?"