Be still my heart!

Today was a very exciting day.

Today was Arina's first dance class.

We got the bun in fairly easily!

Even the smallest leotard and tights I could find were too big, and the shoes, ginormous! But she knew where she was going, and she was ready!

This dance studio has a special needs class, which I thought was cool. But it only had older kids, the youngest was five. I thought that was too old for Arina.

Plus, why should I separate her? There is no reason she can't go into a class with children her own age. "Typical children" her own age!

I will admit that I was petrified! I lay in bed last night with all kinds of thoughts running through my head.

I thought that maybe she would just run around the studio, oblivious to everyone else in the room.

Or she would just sit on the side, unwilling to participate.

But my biggest fear was that the other parents were going to not want her in their children's class. That they would be angry that a "special needs" child would be in with their "typical kids".

I'm honestly not sure why I thought that. I have yet to see any negativity towards Arina in the last year and a half. Not a thing. But I've heard the stories, and I know it does indeed happen sometimes.

When that door opened she was right inside. The knot in my stomach loosened a bit when she sat and stretched with the class.

(Sorry, these pics were taken through glass!)

There were a few times when she had to scoot her back over, because she would scoot closer to another girl to give her a hug. There were a few times when I wanted to go inside and talk to the teacher, after all, I forgot to tell her that she had Down syndrome (in case she couldn't tell!) and that she has very little speech. But her receptive language is right in her age group. I wanted to tell her it was ok to get her and put her back if she walked away from the group. That it might be harder to keep her on track. But I held off, I had to let her learn.

And for the most part, she did amazing! It was so hard for this momma to hold back tears!

Sometimes the wand went in the mouth, and sometimes when the teacher sat her down she would stand back up and follow her.

Her shoes kept falling off, (the teacher told me a place to get tiny shoes!) and yes, this dance mom cut her tights already. I never had a pair of tights uncut. I wanted to be able to pull them up so she didn't slip when class was over!

But after all my fears, I call it a huge success for my princess!!