Well, we made it through all the concerts, sans-pox. Robyn was carefully checking her tummy most mornings. One morning she was disconcerted to find a "chicken pock". Then, I was disconcerted when she found that she could actually rub it off. Wonder what it was.

Anyhow, both the kids were very pleased with themselves, and enjoyed the concerts immensely.

First up was Lauren's concert on Friday morning. We hadn't a clue how it would go for her. She's far less predictable than Robyn. At her school birthday ring, for instance, she barely participated, and then at her actual birthday party she was the total star of the show.

As it turned out, she had a ball. She was totally in her element, so proud of herself and so confident. I was so enjoying her enjoying herself that it was only later, watching the video, that I realised she actually sang and danced quite impressively too.

There were two acts, each about 15 minutes long. The theme of the first was All Things Bright and Beautiful, and all the children came out wearing simple animal costumes. Lauren was a rabbbit with pointy ears she'd made at school and a fluffy tail. She sat down very firmly on her mat in the ring and kept sneaking little peeks at us to make sure we were watching her. Very cute. When it was her turn to dance to her song (Little Peter Rabbit Had a Fly Upon His Nose) she positively bounded into the middle of the "stage" (Sally's front verandah) to do her thing.

The next act was a Christmas scene and Lauren was an angel. She appeared with tinsel halo and little wings up in the air. And then her halo broke, and Peter and I both held our breath to see how she'd cope. She was cool. Looked a bit disappointed, but then coped perfectly well as an angel with a necklace instead of a halo. As Peter was saying, when we discussed it later, that although as parents we want everything to go perfectly for our kids, that's not important. What is important is helping them become people who can cope with life when it doesn't go perfectly.

Lauren is suddenly starting to cope much better with life, and it's good to see.

In the evening was Robyn's concert. My folks stayed on after Lauren's concert to see Robyn's as well. It was interesting how much more nervous and self-conscious Robyn was this year than last year. We all enjoyed it, though some of the songs they'd chosen for Robyn's group to sing were a little on the long side. I'd rather have had twice the number of short songs as with preschoolers the novelty value of each item kind of outweighs the quality! Robyn's item was Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with two other girls. They had cute stars on their heads, a bit like the things we used to wear about 20 (!) years ago at the local roller rink. Mine had little windmills. What were they called? Teenyboppers? Whirlyboppers? Teenywhirlers? Weird.

Next day, Saturday, was the last one - Robyn's ballet concert. I actually enjoyed this more than I'd expected to except for the last part, but more about that later. Last year this event was breathtakingly badly organised. For a start it got under way an hour late, was way too long, was very disorganised, and had little kids like Robyn waiting for hours for their part, sitting in a cramped gallery area where they were expected to wait quietly and calmly. Yeah right. The ballet teacher teaches at a lot of schools and gets all her kids together. Personally I think she should split the event and have one for the littlies and one for the older girls.

This year it had actually started by 2.15, and the preschoolers all went first. Robyn had fun, and looked no more out of synch than the rest of the group. Her group all had little purple skirts over their leotards with purple ribbons in their hair. Lauren enjoyed watching with me.

Shortly after that I went to retrieve Robyn. She was determined to stay until the end to get her certificate, even though all but one of her group went straight home. So I decided we would stay. Robyn and Lauren went and sat at the front under the stage with sme other kids and enjoyed watching the older girls. Then was the prizegiving, the start of Things Going Wrong. The first batch of certificates came and went. None for Robyn. Next batch. Pretty soon we were out of the realm of the ordinary types of certificates and into the special stuff. It was pretty clear that her name wasn't going to get called. I thought I'd got it wrong, that perhaps she wasn't going to get one because she wasn't going to Big School next year, but I heard other names from her class being called. Robyn was looking more and more anxious, then disappointed, then resigned. I quietly signalled her to come, but she was determined to stay, "just in case". The end came. No certificate. Robyn ran to me, trying to be brave. I became a Very Angry Mother and decided to go have a word or two with the ballet teacher.

"Robyn's in tears - her certificate didn't get called."
"Oh", she said, "didn't she get one?"
"No."
"Well I got the list from Mrs Palmer."
"She's in your class Taryn!"
"Well I'm sorry, but I'm not perfect!"

You got that right, lady.

Things didn't go too well from then on. For some unfathomable reason she doesn't give certificates to all the preschoolers, only those who are going up to Grade O, and for some reason Robyn's name got scratched off this list. But sheesh, what a stupid system. Why not just give a certificate to all the preschoolers. I'll happily pay for the damn things! I'll even print them out for heaven's sake! In any case, she's been teaching Robyn for 2 years and should have known she was going up to Grade 0 next year. Silly idiot. If it wasn't for the fact that it's so convenient having Robyn do ballet at school rather than using up an afternoon after school, I'd find a new teacher like a shot.

Anyway, we parted on reasonably good terms. I asked her to let Robyn know that she was supposed to have got a certificate but there'd been a mix-up. And to be fair, she was nice to Robyn. Gave her a big hug, apologised for the mix-up, and assured her she would drop the certificate off at school. Robyn was OK by the time we got home. But it really did seem unfair considering her determination to stay on to the bitter end.