Sometimes

Elise takes dance one afternoon a week.  Her class is only 30 minutes long, but it falls after school when I have all the kids with me.  So while thirty minutes isn't long at all, its an impossible amount of time for Ian to not run in the dance studio or Paige to start climbing the walls.  So usually, we just hang out in the car while Elise does her thing.  Ian can work on homework, or sometimes I'll even let him run along the sidewalk in front of the building.  I have much more peace this way, they don't have to kick us out of the dance studio for misbehaving, and my sanity is preserved another week without having to wrangle the three little munchkins in the waiting room.  So it seems like a win-win for everyone.  Except that Elise really likes for us to watch her dance.  So each week she asks us to come in and watch her dance and each week I have to tell her, "I'm sorry.  Not today, honey."  And she looks sad and my heart aches.  Someday she'll understand where I'm coming from.  But that someday seems like a really long time from now.  Someday she'll be hauling a passel  of kids around and she'll realize that it isn't always as easy as she thinks it is now.  But some days, she still just needs to know that we love her and love watching her dance, and she especially needs to know that she's worth the sacrifice it takes to do it.  So this week that's just what we did.  We all watched her dance.  And it was wonderful.  And we're all still sane.  Mission accomplished. :)