Patriotic Program and Ballerina the Fish

Today was Kaylee's patriotic program at school since president's day is on Monday. It was just a 10 minute program where they sang a couple songs that they learned. Before we even left our house to take Kaylee to school I knew EXACTLY what was going to happen. Kaylee loves to be the center of attention. On show-and-tell day she would love to be first every time. During sharing time at church she would love it if she could always be the volunteer to help up front. She doesn't even mind talking to people at the post office when I go to mail packages. However, her outgoing personality shuts down if she has to perferm in front of a group of adults. All of the sudden she just goes into melt-down. This has happens with every performance she has had at school. Even if her friends are right there with her she thinks it is the scariest thing ever. Today she managed to keep from a complete meltdown. She just sat on the stairs and tried to hide. By the end she was waving her flag and sang a few lines of "Yankee Doodle".

After the program it took me a bit to coax a smile out of Kaylee and even longer to convince her to go back to class. I was really worried about what her teachers were going to have today with her emotions running high. When I picked her up after school she was in an amazingly good mood. I asked her about school and she said it was great and fun. They made valentine bags in art for their party on Wednesday. I was so thrilled that she ended up having a good day at school.

At Kaylee's school it is set up like a little storybook village with a big tree house in the middle. While we were waiting for the patriotic program to start Gabby had tons of fun playing in the little tree house. She didn't want to come out to watch Kaylee sing (Maybe she knew Kaylee wouldn't sing). She was pretty mad when we left Kaylee's school because she wasn't done playing yet.

Before the program I told Kaylee if she got up on the stage and participated in the program we would get her the fish that she has been talking about for over a month now. I really debated whether or not she really participated...but she did better this time than she has in the past. She is getting better and not completely melting down. At first Paul and I decided she didn't really earn the fish but then after a while we decided that she did much better today and hopefully she will keep getting better and better at performing...so...after school today Kaylee got a fish. She named her fish Ballerina.