Amelia

This is an adorable story about Amelia, but it requires a bit of background.

Amelia started taking ballet lessons this year from a woman who has a studio in her home.  She is a member of our church and has known our whole family for five years now.  In fact, when I was pregnant with Amelia, she told me I would be having a baby girl.  She was so sure, even when I was certain it was a boy.

Starting in January, the small group of girls in Amelia's class have been working on their routine for the Big Dance Show in May.  The dance is choreographed to have this group of girls having a little tea party.

As part of the routine, the girls use a tea set as props.  With Amelia's permission, we packed up her little, plastic tea set and brought it in for use during rehearsals.  The tea set has cups, plates, saucers, silverware in five different colors.  Each week when we arrive at ballet, the table is set with a tea cup and saucer at each chair.  The tea cups and saucers are all mixed up colorwise and it looks adorable.  And every week Amelia has to match everything up before she can go into the dance classroom.  It still looks adorable.

These cups have generated several funny stories that really demonstrate Amelia's personality quite well....



1.

A few weeks ago, the cups and saucers weren't on the table yet and the girls came to sit at the table.  The teacher passed out the cups and saucer willy nilly to each girl and the girls got ready to get down to practicing their dance.  Except for Amelia.  Amelia was not having any of it.  "No, no, no, no!  The cups are not together with their little plates!"

The dance teacher suggested that it might be fun to have them all mixed up one time for fun.

Amelia disagreed.  But, she was in a difficult position of having to disagree with an adult with her mama sitting right behind her shaking her head.

Amelia pressed on.  "The tea set is mine," she insisted "I should get to decide.  The cups and plates should match."

The dance teacher looked at me and laughed heartily.  She then whispered "she is SO related to your husband, isn't she?"

Why, yes.  Yes she is.

They switched the cups to be matching the saucers and all was right in Amelia's world again.

I attempted to have a conversation with Amelia on the way home about going the flow and listening to teachers.  I don't think I made much headway.



2.

A few weeks later, we were back at ballet and the table was set as usual - all willy nilly with no regard to the order required by Amelia.  She righted things as went off to dance.  When the girls came out to practice there was a problem.  ONE OF THE CUPS was missing.  Everyone looked around for it and someone questioned which cup color they were looking for.  Amelia surveyed the scene for a beat and announced that it was the light blue cup missing.

Again, the dance teacher looked over her shoulder with an eyebrow raised to say "A little engineer in training? She is so like John!"


3.

We were running late to ballet and we arrived the table was set, again with not a care to matching the cups and saucers*.  Amelia was in such a rush to get to ballet, she didn't stop to correct the disorganized place setting on the table.  When she came out mid way through the class to practice the dance she exclaimed, "Oh no! The cups!"

However, the music was already started and the girls were supposed to be dancing.  Part of the dance requires the girls to get up and switch chairs.  Amelia followed along with the dance steps.  I could see she was plotting something...but I couldn't figure out what.

Until it was time to move.  When she stood up to move to the next chair, she simply took her cup with her and left the mismatched saucer behind.  She matched this cup with the correct color saucer at the next seat and attempted to take the second cup with her again.  The dance teacher was onto her and made her leave the cups alone this time.  "Amelia!  Just dance!"

And she did.  But, she didn't like it.  As soon as the music was done, she hopped around the table and righted the colors with a big sigh of relief.

And the dance teacher looked to me and just shrugged her shoulders.  "What can you do?"




*For the record, I find it quite entertaining to watch Amelia problem solve her way through making her world organized the way she wants it.