Emma had her first real “on-stage” performance at church last Sunday night, December 12th. She has been attending 3 year old children’s choir every week on Wednesday nights and she absolutely loves it. She loves to sing and the best part is that she gets to sing with her good friends! I am one of the teachers/helpers in her class and it is fun for me to get to watch her interact with her friends each week. We have been working really hard on learning our 3 Christmas songs for several weeks. They sang “Jesus is Born,” “Thank You God For Jesus,” and “Away In a Manger.”
Emma knew all of the words and motions and was very excited about her performance.
Emma and Nana at home before heading to the program:
Right before the actual performance we got to stand on stage and “rehearse.” The entire audience was already in the room and it was a great time for Daddy to take some pictures. Emma did great at the rehearsal- she sang all of the words, smiled, and did the motions. Here are a few pictures from the rehearsal…
Mackenzie, Emma, Adia (in back), Kinley, and Karter: (I love all of their expressions!)
Next we went out in the atrium for a few quick pictures before the program started…
Walker, Bo, Abby, Karter, Kinley, Natalie, Mackenzie, Emma, and Aubrey:
Ok, so then it was time for the actual performance. It did not go quite as well as the rehearsal 5 minutes before!!! It was if Emma knew this was the ‘real thing’ and she just FROZE! I kind of expected that this might happen. While some parents fear that their child will be a clown on stage, I always fear that Emma will freeze! :) A couple of things threw her off: 1) she didn’t get to stand by Mackenzie. 2) Mommy was on stage this time because I need to help out another little girl. Emma was jealous that I was holding the other little girl.
You can see in the following pictures that things slowly went downhill!
This isn’t looking good… very nervous!
Upset that the girl next to her bumped her with her jingle bell:
Then she dropped her jingle bell and had to go fetch it:
She finally gave up and sat down next to me for the remainder of the program:
We told Emma that we were so proud of her. She is such a funny girl- little things really throw her off. I’m so glad they did the rehearsal because at least we got to see her sing the songs and do the motions before the program. Next year I will not make the mistake of sitting on stage! We love you Emma and can’t wait to watch your choir performances for years to come!