Doodle

Here’s Caroline as she prepared to go dove hunting with her daddy after school yesterday.

I guess she couldn’t find the baseball cap with the large bill.

Here’s a little video I took right before she walked out the door.

Going on a dove hunt from Big Mama on Vimeo.

I think she wonders on a daily basis why she has to deal with people who are so dense.

And here she is after a successful hunt.

It appears that dove attempted to trade liberty for security and found neither.

From the time I first knew I was having a baby girl, I dreamed of the day I could sign her up for ballet class and dress her in a pale pink tutu.

So as soon as she turned three years old, I signed her up for a weekly ballet class.

Which, soon after, became known as my weekly beating.

Oh sure, she loved the tap shoes and the ballet slippers. She loved the leotards and the tutus. She loved watching herself in the mirror as she performed all sorts of dance moves, none of which happened to be the same routine the class was actually doing.

But because I had a deep-seated need to see my baby girl perform in a dance recital, and am also constantly searching for ways to make my life more difficult, I signed her up to participate in the recital and wrote a check for upwards of more money than I care to admit to pay for the costume.

What I envisioned was a delicate little pink tutu with yards and yards of tulle. The reality was a hot pink costume with glaring polka dots complete with a huge neon yellow bow to wear on top of her head. It was a costume that would cause Charo to say, “Wow. It’s a little gaudy.”

And then as soon as the recital check cleared the bank, Caroline decided she didn’t like dance anymore.

I barely survived that year of ballet. In fact, it’s hard to talk about even now.

It’s as if some latent stage mother tendencies rose up in me and caused me to act like a crazy woman. Next thing you know I could have found myself sitting backstage saying, “Sweetie, put down the sippy cup and let’s get this eyeliner on before we take out your hot rollers and tease your hair.”

I wept with relief when Caroline announced that she was done with ballet.

But now, after a year off, she has decided to enter back in to the dance arena.

And I will support her because that is what parents do. It’s just like when my mama bought me those new roller skates with green wheels and a stopper because I had set my sights on becoming a professional roller skater.

I blame the movie “Xanadu” for that ill-fated career ambition.

When I went to sign her up for lessons, the instructor informed me that Caroline would have to retake the class for beginners because she sat out for a year.

Of course everyone knows the year you turn four is crucial for proper dance mechanics.

I was okay with it because it seemed to be dance studio policy, but on the day of her first lesson I noticed she was about a foot taller than any of the other little girls in her class.

And also, one of the only ones not wearing a Huggies Pull-Up since the beginner class is really more for three-year-olds, which explains why it was the class she took when she was three.

She thoroughly enjoyed the class the first week because she knew all the music, plus she was kind of the star of the show if for no other reason than that she didn’t tee-tee in her leotard.

But then after last week she told me she didn’t want to be in a class with babies.

Yesterday I called the dance studio and explained that Caroline was the only five-year-old in a class of three-year-olds. Was there any way she could move up to the class with the other five year olds?

They told me to show up for our scheduled class and they would evaluate her abilities to see if she could be promoted.

What exactly are we evaluating? Her ability to hold Barney in front of her while she points her toe out to the side? Or maybe her ability to pretend to be a firetruck as the whole class runs screaming around the room in their little ballet shoes? Or perhaps her proper use of the fake binoculars as they play the theme song from “Dora the Explorer”?

You just know that’s exactly how Baryshnikov got his start.

I gently explained that it’s not so much about her brilliant interpretation of Dora the Explorer leaping through the rain forest as much as the fact that she knows how to go to the bathroom by herself.

And with those kind of ballet goals, it’s just a matter of time before she wins the role of Sugarplum Fairy.

The other night I was reading a Bible story to Caroline before bed and it mentioned Jesus’s disciples. It had never occurred to me that maybe she wouldn’t know what “disciple” meant, so I asked, “Do you know what a disciple is?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s kind of like a friend. “

“Oh, okay”

“The disciples were Jesus’s friends while he was here on earth.”

“WHAT?! YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THAT JESUS WAS ON EARTH?!”

I feel almost certain that I have mentioned that detail at some point in the last five years.

While I was gone this past weekend, Caroline informed P that we are frequently victims of an unwanted visitor.

Specifically, an invisible cat.

On Saturday morning, she called P into her playroom and asked him if he could find her Elefun game. He looked around and couldn’t find it.

“See? It’s gone. The invisible cat took it.”

“The invisible cat?”

“Yes, the invisible cat that sneaks in and takes my toys. The cat took my Elefun.”

“What does the cat look like?”

“I don’t know. HE’S INVISIBLE.” (accompanied by a world weary sigh to indicate she is exhausted by the sub-par intellect of her parents)

She makes a valid point. (about the invisible part, not the sub-par intellect)

I just hate to tell her that the invisible cat has a name and its name is MAMA.

But as long as the cat is getting the blame, I sense a wholesale playroom cleanout coming on.

This past weekend we spent the day with A.J. and her family down at their ranch. Late Saturday afternoon, A.J.’s daddy found a tortoise and brought it back to the house to show Caroline.

And, like she does with all God’s creatures, she almost loved that poor tortoise to death.

I think the dog was waiting for a golden opportunity in the form of a dropped tortoise.

Shortly after I took this picture, she asked me if I’d like to hold her tortoise, whom she named Becky.

Yes. Yes I would love to hold that tortoise as soon as I find a butter knife so that I can saw my hands off after I finish touching it.

We spent the better part of thirty minutes watching Becky try to plot an escape route off the porch, but tortoise security was tight.

Then Becky came up with a brilliant plan. She pooped.

Not just any poop, but some kind of disgusting alien tortoise poop.

From that moment on, Becky was dead to Caroline.

And good riddance, I say, because I was a little afraid that we had found ourselves a new pet.

I prefer my pets without any type of shell. Or amphibious tendencies.

Fortunately, Caroline and P found a good way to pass the rest of the afternoon.

It’s a scene I imagined so many times as I folded all those precious pink dresses and dreamed of all the baby girl sweetness that life with a daughter would bring.