On stage

And by on-stage, I mean on "stage".

Our boys go to a in-home pre-school/daycare just a few houses from our house. We love the location, we love the teacher, we love it all. And, we love that the teacher does little parties from time to time. This past Friday was the holiday party. We heard all week about this party, and how Momma and Dada were coming to the party. And the boys told us how they were going to sing, and more importantly, how they were going to eat cookies at this party.

Friday morning spirits were high! We dropped the boys off, and snuck away to do have breakfast at a favorite place of ours. Then did a little Christmas elf work, and returned to the school for the party. We found the boys were ready and quite festive!

 Seeing that we were the first parents to arrive, we took the chance to take some pictures of the boys, their friends and their teacher. Not all the kids were there yet, but oh well.

 A gaggle of toddlers is just so funny to me. WAit, are they still toddlers? I don't know. A gaggle of 2-3 year olds are just funny to me. The teacher would ask a question and everyone would respond, but also jump up and down and yell.  Except for the littles one, he seemed generally confused.

 Parents trickled in and we got busy with a little crafting. Dada and Grady completed two trees.

 While Cole took a slower and very precise approach to his tree. I was not allowed to place any of the snowflakes, but I was handy at peeling off the backing. He was quite particular about the placement of blue, then white. And then darker blue. And then was not happy when we ran out of light blue for the top.

 I think he was still pleased with the results.

 Since all the parents were now there and the kids were used to a bunch of adults in the room, the teacher lined them up for the "on-stage" performance. Somehow these two missed the memo and went to sit next to each other on the floor.

 We made our way to the correct spot. There were some obvious jitters, and for a minute I thought I'd have to join Ben's dad to keep the boys standing in the front of the crowd, but they relaxed and the show began.

First, a Hebrew number with some quality hand-clapping.

 Then a Russian one that involved a circle dance.

 And then back in a line for the candy cane dance. At this point Cole decided that he was done performing. Or he realized that people were still watching. And slowly, ever so slowly, he started shifting back behind Grady, out of sight. Grady would notice this, and would step aside so that Cole was visible. Then Cole glared at his brother, and started his shift back into privacy.

 The performance ended maybe two minutes before my little dude was in tears. Poor little guy. So shy when it comes to crowds. His brother, on the other hand, loved the attention. Which is interesting because when it comes to one on one play, they are the complete opposite. For now. To keep it interesting they take turns every 3-4 months.

Then it was free play as parents snuck out when clingly kids weren't paying attention. You can't tell here, but Anna and Ben's parents just succesfully escaped. We enjoyed drumming, some more playing, and maybe another cookie before we, too, had to sneak away to work.

There may be a little video action coming your way soon.