Tiny Dancers

Parker and McKenna had their first dance class this week.
I took years and years of ballet and would be lying if I didn't say that was hoping this would be the beginning of McKenna's career as a ballerina.
As for Parker, I enrolled him in hopes that it would help us get his sister to actually walk in the door and to  burn off a fraction of his never ending energy.
Plus my kids REALLY need to socialize, they both cling to me the minute we meet new kids and I'm trying to avoid being that mom who is peeling my children off of my legs their first day of school.  

After I registered them I kept thinking about what it would be like to get McKenna ready for dance... the tutu, the shoes, the hair.
I had to keep pushing the thought out of my head because, as much as I am excited to do it with her, every ounce of me wishes I had two beautiful little girls to wriggle into ballet slippers.
Dance classes seem to be next on the list of bittersweet events in my ever-evolving life as a loss mom.  (quick break in my story to say that rainbows always remind me of Hadley)

So the evening of dance class I was trying to keep myself together while I got McKenna ready and showed off her complete cuteness to her daddy.

I eventually managed to get them into class without a trail of mascara running down my face.

So the kids barely moved through the door of their classroom, and I spent the first half hour of their dance career sort of dragging them around the room moving their arms and legs in hopes that one of them would snap out of their shy stupor and join in.  

Parker slowly warmed up a little bit.  

Actually little is too strong of a word.  

Parker moved once in a while without me lifting his limbs for him.  

McKenna continued to master her "I am not going to let on that I like a moment of this" face and I continued to pull them along as my ballerina dreams fluttered out the window.  

The last class exercise started with piano lullabye music which left me blinking back tears while the teacher began blowing bubbles for the kids to catch.  The bubbles seemed to cast some miracle spell on my children because they let go of me and started running around the room catching them.  I was thrilled with the fact that they were actually moving and smiling and just as I was feeling the all-familiar if-only-Hadley-were-here ache Parker ran up to me, pointed at the bubbles circling my tiny dancers and said...

Look Mommy, there is a rainbow in all of them.