Tomorrow evening is Rowan's music recital.
She is completeing her second year as a participant in Music for Young Children.
And I am filled with dread. Or pride. or is it dread?

Last year at the recital, the little girls played hand bells.  Four girls in their puffy pink frocks, Rowan in her twirly patchwork bohemian brown and blue skirt.  Four girls decorously ringing bells. Rowan with her bell at rest... on her head.

Last summer, Rowan took a six week ballet class after asking to dance since, well, birth.  She hated it.  While the other girls in their frothy pink tutus stood at the barre, Rowan in her black bodysuit and hot pink/ black and turquoise tutu freestyled in front of the wall of mirrors. After the first class she said "I already KNOW how to dance, why couldn't we just DANCE".
 This isn't new.  It started in the WOMB.  When I was hospitalized at the end of the pregnancy, the nurses drew straws to see who would have to do the heartbeat checks on my child every couple of hours.  The couldn't catch her.  After one particularly long struggle, they called in the oldest, most experienced nurse. She was tough. She was not going to be defeated by a 36 week old fetus.  At the end of an hour's wrestle, I was nauseous and bruised inside and out and they still had no heartbeat read on Rowan. But they could hardly question that she was active and well! They finally got a written dispensation from the OB indicating that they did NOT have to monitor the fetal heart rate if all was well (and kicking).

So. Music recital.
1) Play handbells with group.
2) Play piano piece alone.
3) Sing theme song with group.
That is a LOT of conformity for my free spirited girl.
And given that we are now a month in on the Battle of the Boundaries in which every. single. thing. is up for a fight, this could be interesting. 

She danced her way through the theme song at rehearsal.

She has been working on her own version of a curtsy.

Part of me is proud of her strength of spirit and sense of self, her freedom of creative expression.
The other part is exhausted!