position

Now I'm willing to bet that I'm a pretty progressive person.  A progressive parent.  I guess.  I'm not sure what the benchmark of progression is or anything, but I'm pretty sure that I'm above it.

But when I was reviewing Jacob's summer reading list and saw a book called Hooray for Ballet that wasn't at the library and wasn't in the bookstore and wasn't online for anywhere cheaper than $155, I tanked the whole thing.  No way in double hockey sticks am I shelling out $155 for a ballet book.  For my son.  My boy child.

I begrudgingly got the other books for him, I bought them rather than got them from the library.  Books are pretty important in our house, and he has projects to do based on the books and I figured they would probably reference them throughout the year.  I say begrudgingly because it was mostly Eric Carle stuff.  I don't know why this guy is a famous writer/artist.  The books are terrible and the art is creepy and ugly.  Mostly the eyes and the people.  Jake likes the books but I think it's because he has them all memorized.  It isn't hard.  Most of the books have one or two sentences that repeat twenty times, the only thing that changes is the noun. 

Does a horse have a mother?
Does a cat have a mother?
Does a rabbit have a mother?
Brown bear brown bear what do you see?
Red bird red bird what do you see?
White dog, white dog what do you see?

Oh, and a children's book about Georgia O'Keefe.  Right.  I bought my five year old a book about Georgia O'Keefe.  And I bought it online so I didn't know what I was getting until I got it home.  Luckily it wasn't vaginal in the least bit.

So, $155 ballet book.  One of the little boys in the preschool will be going to kindergarten with Jacob and his mom searched the burbs for this book because she couldn't imagine paying for it either.  She found it in Norristown and color copied it for me.  Sweet.
Now the biggest problem was sitting my boychild down to read a ballet book.
Last night, after some attitude and arm crossing and huffs and puffs I got Jake to read it.

Dave and I have been pushing the "everything that you have is a direct result of us going to school and doing our homework" card with Jake the past week or so.  It seems to be working.  For now.
"You can buy Lego guys with homework", is what Jake hears.

Three sentences into "Hooray for Ballet" and Jake is totally psyched that he has to take ballet in school.  Oh yeah, did I tell you that?  All kids from K-5 absolutely have to take ballet.  Each day if I'm not mistaken.

The book talked about how it makes you better at sports and how danseurs wear pants instead of pink tights and how ballet is a lot of jumping up in the air.  I showed Jake his dance uniform and he was thrilled that he gets to wear "ninja pants" and if I would have told him that "the ballet is actually just acrobatic ninja-ing he wouldn't have given me such a hard time about it".

The book talked about Swan Lake, which I thought he would be totally bored with but apparently he's familiar with is. 
"Swan Lake!  That says Swan Lake, doesn't it?  I love Swan Lake.  It is a very famous movie staring Barbie and all her friends.  But boys can like it too.  It's not like other Barbie stuff.  Oh wow.  Swan Lake.  I love Swan Lake."

Right, Swan Lake.  A famous Barbie movie.  For boys.  He loves it.

Unlike the very famous Barbie movie, they put the real ending in the book, and he was totally thrilled with it. 
I was uncomfortable.
The moment passed.

And when Jake woke up this morning he told me he had a nightmare about scary dogs, but he fought them off using ballet.