Dance!

Today will be the kids' first dance class!

Yesterday I went out and bought their "uniforms" during the day. Corbin was required to have black pants or shorts and either black or white t-shirts.

Brooke was required to have tights and a leotard.

Both had to have the required dance shoes.

I went to Old Navy first, because I remembered as we got near that plaza that I was really quite impressed with their selection and prices for kids in the past, and I thought that it might be easier to find plain black t-shirts and plain black sweatpants of some sort there.

I was wrong.

I looked everywhere, and all that I could find were girls black stretch pants. They were plain black with a square pocket on the back and a black faux drawstring. I picked them up, looked at them, put them back down, and kept looking. But the more I looked, the less I found. So I went back to them. I looked at them again. I looked at the bottom, particularly, to see if they were flaired, and searched all over for something particularly "girly" about them, but to be honest, I didn't see anything that screamed "girl" to me. So I took Corbin into the changing area and tried them on him, and they look fine. Honestly, I wouldn't have put him in anything that looked like girl clothes. So I bought them. The tag inside of the pants is framed with pink, but otherwise they look fine.

I couldn't find any plain black T-shirts, but I did find packaged tees. Of course, they were all white, and natch, they were all too big. So I went to the counter with just the pants, and asked the woman if they had any little girls tights while I was there. She took me over, and lo and behold, not only did they have tights, but they had leotards as well! Hooray!

I bought a pale pink leotard and a blush colored leotard, and the tights came in packs of two, so I got white and pale pink. After a quick lunch, we went to Target, where Brooke had a holy fit. She screamed and cried, and snot ran down her face. It was wonderfully embarrassing. I was holding her by her elbow and that pissed her off. She kept pulling against me. I wasn't holding her super tight, but tight enough that she couldn't get away. I told her to quit pulling because I was going to let go and she'd fall. She pulled again. I let go. She fell.

You'd think she'd have learned her lesson from this, but no. We went through the same thing at the checkout, which I'm sure made me look abusive. Especially because she hit her head on the magazine rack when she fell. (Please remember, I did warn her [again] that I was going to let go.)

At any rate, I found ~A~ black shirt. As in ONE. Only one in his size. That's ALL. I also got a pack of white tees for Corbin. I hope they don't mind that the shirts have pockets on them.

At Old Navy, they did have girl's ballet shoes, but I think they were real shoes, and I didn't want to buy the wrong kinds of shoes. Shoes for dance are important. (and I didn't want to waste money when they'd just say she had to have X kind instead.)

So I had seen on the email that I got, that they were going to open at 2PM at the dance store (a store at the dance school), so we headed there next. It was closed, opening at 4. Apparently the 2PM only applied to today's hours. Not every Tuesday, mind ya. Just today.

We came home, kids napped, I yoga'd, and when Tim got home, we went back to the dance store. She recognized the kids by their names. I recognized her face. It was Kathy Hansen, the owner of the school. I figured there was a good chance that I had waited on her when I worked at John's Fine Foods, but I didn't know what she looked like. Having seen her yesterday, I definitely recognized her face from John's.

I said, "This is Corbin and Brooke." She said, "Oh I recognize your names from the paperwork." She was nice. I was really expecting her to be very slender and dance-like, but she was average sized, which made me actually feel better. (I knew a girl who was in dance, and she said that it was dance specifically that caused her to be bulemic because it was what they had expected of their bodies.)

I told her that we had clothes for them, and that they just needed shoes. She was really nice to the kids, and she seemed like she genuinely wanted to save us as much money as she could. For example, she looked for the shoes that were the most on sale because they are being discontinued, and she said she tries to size them a little large so that you don't have to buy shoes again anytime really soon. I realize that she's the one benefitting from the profit of the shoes, so as the owner she's going to want to sell me stuff and say whatever to make me think she's giving me a deal, but she was really nice to the kids anyway. She turned the A/C on and off about half a dozen times for Brooke. And not because Brooke was asking, but because she just thought she looked cold. (She was sitting right in front of the A/C while she got fitted).

She found ballet shoes quickly enough for Brooke. When it came time for Corbin, however, it was far more difficult. She spent probably 30 minutes alone on Corbin. His feet are, and always have been, wide. REALLY wide. In fact, finding shoes for him as an infant was always difficult, because it's hard to find "wide" shoes for babies. Then, take into account that one foot (his right, I think) is one entire half size bigger than the other, and it's a real issue.

With ballet shoes, the soles are really narrow. She finally got his foot into a size 13, and when it fit the width of his foot, it was just plain too long. She was afraid that he'd be tripping on the toes. We finally settled for the size 12's, and she said she really didn't think it would get better than that, but that if I wanted to go other places to see if I could find something better (or special order some), she was okay with that, too. But really, since the class was going to be tomorrow (today), it wouldn't have been wise for me to try that. And they looked okay to me. Tap shoes went much more easily for Corbin. It was just a matter of finding the right fit for both kids, because those shoes are more "normal". Since I signed them up for the dance classes, I also got a $5 voucher a piece. As it turned out, Corbin's ballet slippers cost $10 because of the sale on them (orignally they were like $40), so his shoes were essentially free! I was pleased that I got 4 pair of dance shoes for only like $50.

So, when we got home, I took a bunch of pictures of them dressed up, that I had intitially planned to use for potraits. The pictures themselves came out okay, but I'm disappointed with the lighting. I've adjusted them as best I could, but the more light I add, the grainier they get, so this is the best that I've got. Next time I'll have to add more light, maybe hang the backdrop somewhere else and use natural light for the pictures.