My Tiny Dancer

My “baby” girl is growing into quite the young woman. She is enjoying the first grade and just yesterday started ballet. She is a little bit too advanced for the class I signed her up for. The instructor is going to let her try the Pre-Ballet class on Thursday and see how she likes it. My girl just wants to dance so badly. She won’t care in which class.

Halle has asked me about being able to join dance class since she was old enough to know there were such things as ballet classes. She has danced to movies, radios, and TV commercials since she was a toddler. It hasn’t stopped yet. I refer to her as my “delicate flower”. She has the capability to play sports such as baseball. She throws footballs with Garrick and Isaiah. However her heart is in dance. She is thrilled that I said she doesn’t have to play baseball and can finally dance. Joy just radiates from her.

Her nickname “delicate flower” comes from her sweet yet sensitive personality. She is my cautious, careful, and emotional little girl. Hhmm, does she get it from me? LOL

She has surprised me the last few nights. She hasn’t woken up at night the last week. She sleeps in her own room but if she wakes in the middle of the night she tends to feel scared and asks me to come tuck her in. She has been waking up proud of herself saying “mommy, I didn’t even need you last night. I woke up but I just rolled over and went back to sleep”. I’m sure that her longer days at school this year have a part to play in this. But even so, I tell her how proud I am.

Our nighttime routine is to brush teeth, read a book, and then I tuck her in to bed. At this point, I sit on the side of her bed for two minutes. Just to relax her and let her drift off. It used to be five minutes. It began when we first moved out of my mother’s house. Due to space and so many people who spoil her, she became used to sleeping with someone. When I started “boot camp” in our new place to teach her to sleep alone, this was the compromise. I don’t miss those tough days in the beginning. But I fought through it all and we made leaps in progress.

I’ve been telling Halle that soon she won’t get even two minutes of me in her room at bed time. I’m going to have a new baby that will be quite demanding. She fortunately is old enough to understand this. She also has a baby brother at her dad’s house so she’s familiar with the needs of a small baby. So yesterday morning she says she wants to try going to bed by herself after her book. I agreed willingly of course, but I was a little doubtful. My delicate flower surprised me. She fell asleep and didn’t come to my room until 7:00am to get ready for school. We were both very happy and quite impressed.

My delicate flower/ tiny dancer/ baby girl is a big and brave little woman.