I enrolled Harper in her first dance class last week. We talked and talked about it for weeks leading up, how excited she would be to be a ballerina and how wonderful it’d be to dance. We went to the studio to find out information and when Harper found out that we would not be dancing that day, she wouldn’t stop crying until I told her we could go get her dance outfit. So three days later, we went to her first class.

As soon as she put on her outfit, I had tears in my eyes.

When did this happen? When did she officially become a little girl? Almost all of her baby features are gone. She’s still got a little chub in her cheeks, but that’s it. And it kills me.

At dance class, she was so excited. When the teacher let all the girls in, she ran right in with out looking back at me. She went right to the X on the floor that the teacher pointed her to and with all the other girls in their tap shoes, starting tapping a foot. I was beaming.

That lasted for about 20 seconds until she realized, I think, that I wasn’t going in with her and she burst in to tears. And she cried for the entire class in her teacher’s arms. It was heartbreaking and I wanted to scoop her up but I also knew that if I did that every time she tried new things and got scared, she’d never follow through on anything. After the class and all of her hyperventilating, she told us that dance class was so fun and that she wanted to go again. Kids are weird.

Today was her second class. We talked about it all week and I tried hyping her up so that she wouldn’t be nervous. As soon as I opened up the door for her to go in, she looked at me with the biggest bottom lip in the world. But I told her to go ahead and I shut the door behind me and watched her through the glass window. For five minutes, she whimpered and looked sad and cried and stuck to her teacher’s legs. But then, just like that, she wiped it off and joined in with the rest of the girls. By the end of the class, she was doing everything that was asked of her (for the most part) and smiling and being the crazy goof that she is. And I couldn’t have been more proud.