Friday night was Kaiden’s 6th Dance Recital.  It is hard to believe that she has been taking dance for six years now.  The first five years she danced for a studio called Bobbi and Helen.  This past year, we switched studios to Denise Wall’s Dance Energy - and after seeing the difference in the Recitals, boy am I glad we made the switch.  Like night and day!  She had two routines in this year’s show.  Above she is dressed in her Jazz routine outfit.  They danced to “Shake Your Groove Thing.” 

 

Her tap routine was “Going to the Chapel” and was a whole bunch of girls dressed in wedding gear and one little boy dressed in a tuxedo.  It was cute.  It is so much work getting her to dance classes every week, and a lot of times she complains about going… but every year after the recital, her excitement in dance is renewed and she wants to keep on going with it.  This year she commented that she would like to add either contemporary or hip hop to her lineup.  We’ll have to see about that!

When you have a small child in dance, you are responsible at the recital for getting up from your seat, dashing backstage and meeting up with your child after they perform to get them to the dressing room and get them changed for their next dance.  It’s exhausting.  After Kaiden’s tap routine Friday night, I ran backstage to meet up with her, only to be greeted by a little girl in a wedding dress, crying with mascara all down her face.  She looked like she belonged at a KISS concert instead of a dance recital.  She had slipped in her tap shoes, running down the hallway and fallen on her left hand and was saying “I fell mom and I broke my hand, I know it!”  Knowing my daughter and her tendency to be over-dramatic and to cry wolf, I basically told her to shake it off.  I got her changed, asked her to stop crying 300 times and we headed back to the theater to watch the rest of the recital.  On the way home, she said it was still hurting, so I took her to Walgreens to get an Ace bandage/brace thing and told her she probably sprained it and it WAS going to hurt for a couple days.  We headed home, washed all her makeup off and I put her in bed.  At 2am, she woke me up crying in her sleep and as I laid there I thought “I better get up and take her to the E.R. - I am pretty sure crying while you are asleep is not crying wolf… but actual pain.”

 

So I woke her up and we headed to the E.R.  We lucked out and didn’t have to wait in the waiting room very long and when they took us to the back, they let us have a room with a T.V. instead of sticking us behind a curtain.  They took Kaiden for x-rays and when the doctor finally came in and asked what had happened, he asked me if I wanted my “Mom of the Year” news… which he followed up with “It is broken MOM.”  Kaiden then immediately looked over at me and said “IN YOUR FACE MOM… I told you it was broken!”

 

She had a buckle fracture at the growth plate in her left wrist, which I could barely see on the x-ray, but the doctor could see very clearly… as he continued to give me a hard time about not believing my child when she said she thought she broke something… obviously the man has never had children… and definitely not an 8 year old drama queen!

 

They wrapped her up in a soft cast and sent us on our way, with directions to go see an Orthopedic doctor on Monday. 

 

Todd took her to the Orthopedic doctor today and she got a cast… a purple cast.  She has to wear it for four weeks, but that is okay - because it is a waterproof cast that she can wear in the pool, so we will not have to suffer and ruin four weeks of our summer!  She is not allowed to go swimming at the beach or any lakes while she has it on, because she cannot get sand down in it… but she is cleared for the pool… we’ll take it!

Here is some video footage that shot at the dress rehearsal Thursday night.  They practiced a couple times and we were there late, but it made the difference when it came to the real thing Friday night… we weren’t allowed to tape that.

 

Dance Recital - 2010 from soapbox.SUPERSTAR on Vimeo.

 

Dance Recital - 2010 from soapbox.SUPERSTAR on Vimeo.