Girls' Afternoon at the Ballet

So the same afternoon that the boys went to the dinosaur museum, Gillian and I went to see the Nutcracker! The Pittsburgh Ballet does a lovely version of the Nutcracker yearly, but the tickets are WAY expensive and I think it's a bit much for a three year old. However, I found a local ballet school that was doing their annual showing at a nearby high school, and at a reasonable cost, so I got Bean and I tickets. I even scored us third row seats!

Gillian's fun started when I let her pick which of her THREE fancy Christmas dresses she wanted to wear for the afternoon. She's been DYING to wear one! She chose the "jeweled" one and was pleased as punch to put it on. She was even more excited when I put on MY dress. (Apparently my daily yoga pants aren't up to her fashion standards.) I even got out her special bell necklace that Grammy gave her and let her wear it for the first time.


Gillian did not stop talking the.whole.way.there. It was pretty funny for to her be the chatterbox. She's usually quieter than her brother! We got there about 20 minutes before 2:00 the show and the lobby was packed. The theater wasn't open yet, so we wandered about, used the potty, and admired all the other little girls in their pretty dresses. Finally it was about 1:58 and the doors weren't open yet! Um, hello? They did finally let us in but the show didn't start until about 2:20. Not my favorite part of the day, especially when we're skipping nap! G was very good, she played with her seat, her necklace, and checked out the program. But she wanted to know when the SHOW WAS GOING TO START!


We grabbed a quick self-portrait. Not too bad!


Once the show started Gillian was very interested in what was going on. I should have read up on my Nutcracker as I struggled with the details in spots, but we got the general idea. She got the whole broken Nutcracker part and wanted to know why Clara's brother was so bad. Ha. Towards the end of the first act Bean started to get antsy and wanted to know if it was over yet. Thankfully it wasn't too long until intermission. We stretched our legs and hit the potty again. Then Gillian wanted to check out the oversized Nutcrackers in the lobby for a bit.

We waited our turn and took a quick picture!

Gillian was REALLY into those big Nutcrackers!

Thankfully the second act was a bit shorter than the first! And Gillian saw her favorite part of the whole show! Before the Chinese dancers came on, a giant Chinese dragon came across the stage (with about 40 little feet under it) and floated about for about 30 seconds. The rest of the show, G wanted to know when it was coming back!! Glad she found something she liked!

All in all, I think G had a good time. For a while after the show, she wouldn't talk about it. And she told us that, "I don't want to talk about it." But finally, about 10 days later, she FINALLY started pretending ballet dancing! YES! I will say, it was so nice to spend a day with my little girlie. We definitely need to do that more often!