The rehearsal

Last night, Ethan had a group of singers over to our house to rehearse for an upcoming recital they're all giving. This is a group of all professionals, so it was an exciting event for the rest of us because we got to have our house filled with madrigals sung by fantastic musicians. While Ethan was out picking up one of the singers, another of them arrived as the kids and I were finishing up dinner. I knew of this woman, having heard her sing before, but had never formally met her. After introducing myself and the girls, we chatted for a few minutes about our children, who are of similar ages. This led Julia to join the conversation, and to my horror, she decided it was an appropriate time to tell this woman, who I was just meeting for the first time and who stood as a respectable figure in my musical life, the story of my water breaking the day she was born. In detail. As she sat there recounting what had happened ("Mommy felt like she needed to pee, so she went pee and then went upstairs, but then when she got upstairs she thought she needed to pee again...") I was inwardly smacking myself for having told her the story in such depth. I wonder who else has gotten to hear all the leaky details of my labor experience from the mouth of this kid.

Aside from that awkward little moment, the kids were quite well-behaved during the rehearsal. I took them upstairs to play in their bedrooms while the music was going on, so that we were out of the way, but we did take a few moments to sit on the top step and listen when the rehearsal first began. Afterwards, Madeleine couldn't be interested by any other activity. Each time I would bring her back in her room, she'd charge off, barging through her accordian door and carefully plopping her little bum back on the top stair. Luckily, it was close enough to bedtime that I was able to put her in her crib a little early, and with her white noise-maker running the singing voices were mostly blocked out. She fell right asleep, although from the looks of things she may have tried to escape from her crib before conking out: