Thing 2 arrives December twentieth, three days before her sister. It’s just how it worked out, Fiance N is coming with Thing 1, but boyfriend D isn’t coming with Thing 2. Thing 2 will be here for Christmas, but back in SC with boyfriend D for New Years. Thing 1 and N will stay with us through the new year.
Thing 2 and I are going to oodgey-goodgey our favorite theatrical entertainment and see The Washington Ballet dance The Nutcracker at Warner Theatre.
photo cred: The Washington Ballet
We’ve seen this particular ballet before. (More than once, even.) But how could I pass up the opportunity when I haven’t had Christmas with my baby at actual Christmastime in two years?
I left her a message asking if she’d like to go. I got a text back within three minutes that read: Dude, yes!! I’m sorry I didn’t answer, I’m having a deep talk with Anna. (Her BFFL, who just recently returned to SC.) But I would absolutely love to go!
I’m so excited we’re going to the ballet!
I’m so excited both my babies will be with me for Christmas!
YBW is excited he doesn’t have to go to the ballet with me. (Yet…The National Ballet of Canada is coming to the Kennedy Center Opera House with Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale in January…I asked him the moment he got home if he’d go with me…cross your fingers!)
He doesn’t hate the ballet, but he doesn’t love it…he goes because he loves me and I suspect he secretly gets a great deal of pleasure experiencing my absolutely pure ballet joy.
Thing 2 was a ballerina for six years, then figure skater for two. (I’ve always considered figure skating as ballet on ice.) She didn’t do it because of me. She did it because she announced one day at the age of two that she was going to be a prima ballerina when she grew up. (How the eff did she even know what that was at that age?)
The kid was a natural. But when the ballet studio changed ownership it became a place where she grew increasingly uncomfortable. She announced she was finished. I searched for another school, but she had lost her passion. It had become tainted for her.
I wonder if she really even remembers that.
We share this deep love for the ballet, and together we will be as little girls joining Clara on the night of her astounding dream.
We’re going on the twenty second of December, it would have been my mom’s seventieth birthday. Somehow that makes it even more special to me.
Bolshoi Ballet’s Nina Kaptsova Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy 2010
therobynbirdsnest 
One of my favourite classics. thanks
Me too!