A Cousin's Love

Along with tree shopping, decorating, light hanging, cooking, baking, and present giving and receiving, the season includes school Christmas programs. I do not think that Steve and I have missed many school programs or recitials that either of our neices have been in, and I love that. But, unlike previous years and previous performaces, this year we had a very active Autumn to take along.

Now, I wasn't too worried about Autumn, she loves kids and most things that involve movement will hold her attention for a good amount of time, so I figured kids singing and dancing on stage would be right up her ally. For the most part I was right. The only thing I was worried about was the length of the program. I said most things will hold her attention "for a good amount of time", in a toddler's world this is about 15-20 minutes, if you're lucky.

This Christmas program was going to run at least an hour.

So, needless to say, Autumn did get antsy and bored and figgity and cranky. She wanted to stand, sit, walk, run, do anything except watch. Until we told her her cousin, Hollyn, was coming onstage to dance and sing. That got her attention.

Between songs, as the teachers and students were preparing for the next number, it was fairly quiet in the auditorium. There were the normal sounds of movement and adults and children talking, but not the loud, sound system generated noises of the preformance. It was during one of these quieter moments that Autumn decided to make her prescense known.

My neice was onstage with her class, non-chalantly looking through the crowd of people, trying to find her family. This was when Steve, noticing how antsy Autumn was getting, pointed her out to Autumn. We weren't sure if Autumn could see her in between all of the other kids wearing the same required colors of white and black. Then Autumn, in the middle of an auditorium filled with people, yelled "HOLLYN!", which actually sounds more like "HOWEEN!" in Autumnese, as loud as she could. She didn't yell it just once, but twice.

Hollyn smiled from the stage and pointed Autumn out to her friend standing next to her. Later, after the program had ended, she acted mortified by what had happened. But I know, deep down, she loved it.