disappointed

I am so disappointed. Really. The Babe and I had a date tonight. I signed us up months ago for a class through our park district called "Mommy and Me Princess Up-do's". It was a class for the two of us, I was to learn how to do fab new hairstyles on my beautiful girl, and she was to love having said fab hairstyles.

Let me start by saying that this class ran from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm. If it had been at 2:00 in the afternoon, we may have had an entirely different outcome.

Even though I signed us up ages ago, and have been looking forward to it ever since; my recent realization that The Babe and I don't get enough time for us caused me to *really* look forward to tonight. I've been talking it up to The Babe all week... our special date, just the two of us. She was excited to go, too.

Well, I did learn fab new hairstyles, and I eagerly await when The Babe will allow me to do them... but, some were complicated. Some took a bit of trial and error. Some didn't turn out as well, but will improve with practice. All of them required The Babe to sit still, not move, and don't touch the hair! Obviously, that's not so much fun for a 5 year old for an hour and a half. Why I thought that would be fun for her is beyond me. It's so obviously not fun that I really don't know what I was thinking... I guess it just seemed so girly and sweet; a perfect 'mommy and me' outing.

Adding insult to The Babe's injury, they chose little girls as "models" for some of the styles, to sit at the front and let the instructor do her hair as an example. The Babe really wanted to be a model. She raised her hand politely each time to volunteer, but was not chosen. Now, there were 12 girls, and only 4 times did they call for models. It's not as though everyone was a model but her, but she was very disappointed.

So, towards the end of class, sad at not being chosen as a model, tired because it was past her bedtime, ready to go home... my poor, sweet, little girl cried. It wasn't a "throwing a tantrum / not getting my way" kind of cry. That would have made me angry. It wasn't a drama kind of cry, either. She just sat there quietly with tears rolling down her face, not having any fun, crying, asking to go home. I made her wait so she could get her goody bag of hair clips and tools of the trade, I made her say a polite "thank you" to the teacher, and we drove somberly home.

I had such high hopes. I had the best of intentions... and The Babe feels robbed of her date with mommy. She told her daddy through her tears when we got home: "I sat still. I didn't do anything fun." And then I was teary, too.

She did ask if I could do one of the hairstyles on her for her ballet class tomorrow... so maybe all is not lost. *sigh*