Nutcracker

Over the past few weeks Laurel has become interested in ballet.  She knows about it from the only TV show she watches ("Max and Ruby," an animated cartoon about rabbit siblings, based on the books by Rosemary Wells) because the big sister character is interested in ballet.  Despite her lack of exposure to these things, when I took Laurel shopping for bedding for her new "big girl" bed today, she was definitely drawn to all the princess and ballet stuff.  How did this happen?!

Anyway, back to ballet: last weekend I showed Laurel and Isaac a few videos of "The Nutcracker" on the Internet, and they liked it so much that they watched for at least half a hour.  Laurel decided that her old pink sundress was a ballerina dress, and now she likes to put it on and twirl around the living room.

In this video Laurel is dancing with a small plastic figurine of a dancing girl, much as Clara dances with her nutcracker doll.  She is talking to herself about nutcrackers as she spins around, at one point saying, "It's just a person dressed like a nutcracker."  She isn't dancing to "The Nutcracker Suite," however, because we don't have a recording of it; she had to settle for a symphonic "Joy to the World."