Last Tuesday was parent observation day at L's dance studio, so I followed her into her acro class, where she proved that she is indeed a rubber band who has no bones. The contortions that kid can do are just very, very wrong. We then went over to ballet where she informed me that her ballet shoes were missing.
Those are her one pair of dance shoes that actually *fit*.
Her class did a little dance to part of The Nutcracker Suite and L performed beautifully. In her jazz shoes. L has a knack for the graceful movements of ballet, but a hard time paying attention in the quiet, slow-moving class.
We checked at home for the lost ballet shoes and panicked because the studio was closing for the Christmas break and had notified all the parents that the contents of the Lost & Found box would be donated to Goodwill at the break. So today we finally got a chance to go over to the studio to look for her shoes before they closed everything. The shoes had her name in them, so chances were good they'd been turned in.
The lady at the desk hadn't seen the shoes.
The shoes weren't in the classroom.
We dug through the huge pile in the Lost & Found and we made a few interesting finds. One pair of L's tennis shoes I hadn't realized she lost. One pair of black velour pants that I had bought to go with her dance team uniform that I also hadn't realized she lost. Darn kid. There were all kinds of really neat and expensive things in that box, but no ballet shoes.
As we were preparing to leave in defeat, L checked her folder where they put ads and notices and someone had filed her ballet shoes there for her.
Thank goodness.
For Christmas, that child is getting new jazz and tap shoes, a bigger dance bag, and individual bags for each pair of shoes with her name clearly marked, so that maybe she can do a better job of keeping up with her things. And from now on, I'll be checking that Lost & Found box periodically. Just in case.
