Self Portrait, and Sheldon Coopers 3rd Grade Program

I had a hard day. Top ten as far as melt downs go. I went outside (because I figured it was a better option than running away) to try and blow off steam by taking pictures, as the light was awesome, but found out my camera's battery was about to die. I only got to take one picture and decided this was about all I could manage. ( I love how my hands are so ugly they look like a 100 year old mummy's)

Later that night Ethan had his third grade music program. Just for back ground, Ethan is a VERY shy person. He is not just introverted, he down right painfully shy. He is open and fun around close friends and family, but if other people are around he clams up and tries to get away. It's been a real struggle for us as parents to know the correct way to deal with his particular situations as they come up since I am not shy and Eric is neither introverted nor shy.

A music program is basically the epitome of all that Ethan dreads. He has to sing, dance and talk (they had parts) in front of not only strangers, but LOTS of strangers. His singing teacher pulled me aside at Church (we are in the same ward) and asked if I thought Ethan would be interested in playing Aesop, since the original had backed out. I laughed to myself and told her she was welcome to ask him, but I doubted he would want to. She asked and he gave a resounding "No," and promptly ran away down the hall. He did agree to two narrator parts, so I was pretty excited to see him "perform."

Well, it was overly crowded as only all events in Scottsbluff can manage (if you are even distantly related to someone you are expected to drop everything to see your 2nd cousin 4 times removed 3rd grade music program). We did manage to get seats, but the microphones were a little on the soft side and basically Ethan whispered his lines. I couldn't hear a single thing he said, but dang if I wasn't the proudest parent there.

He hated every second of it, I could tell. He hated the singing. Some times (ok, lots of the time) he reminds me of Sheldon Cooper from "The Big Bang Theory." This was one of those times. He hated the dancing, but he did it. It wasn't the most enthusiastic performance, but he knew the words and the moves and he did it, begrudgingly.

He is on the back row, wearing a toga, between the girl in blue and the girl in green. Sorry for the wiggles in the beginning, I had a 3 year old on my lap.



In this one, the girl in blue (a girl from our ward that Ethan has a secret, even from him, "thing" for) was making him bust up. She is the best actor in the whole grade and was singing right to him, which made him embarrassed and happy and here is the result. Don't blink or you might miss it.