Tiny Dancer

I'm not a good mom lately. I mean, my growing fetus may be completely ignorant to my mom skills even though he/she is totally demanding and seemingly getting what he/she wants, but I am possibly the worst mom ever in outside the womb life.
I eat cocoa puffs for breakfast these days, and Amaya gets none (and yes, she lets me know about my unfair-ness).
I chew gum in front of her, but put her in a long time out after she finds my stash and consumes 10 pieces at once.
Every afternoon and other time when I am home I lay on the couch while she is being entertained by anyone or no one at the Palmer's house. I only go over to look about every 20 minutes. When she comes home, I make her play in her room, or watch a show. Good thing we have a lot of movies. If I feel really good-bad, then I take her to go get some food at Taco Bell. And the worst part is I feel absolutely no desire to be any different. It's exhausting to be any kind of social and I don't enjoy it. At all. I just want to hide, in my house, all the time.

So when I heard about Polynesian Dance Class, I thought, this may be a good way for me to boost some mom-points. Something totally for her, if she wants to do it, and she'll see some friends I never take her to see while she's there. Even though going to the class sounded downright awful for me, I figure I will only be feeling like crappy pregnant woman for a couple more weeks, right?
I talk about it with Amaya. We all know she doesn't totally love organized anything. She immediately gets excited and starts talking about it. When I pick her up from school she asks if we're going and cheers when I say yes, so I think, yeah, maybe this will be better than I thought. I'm feeling like super mom. Because this is what good moms do. They take their kids to do things that they like to do.
We arrive on the scene. Probably about 10 kids there. Amaya looks around kind of shyly, and then sees Mahea. Mahea holds Amaya's hand and walks around with her on stage. This seems ok, even if Amaya's acting a little shy. Pretty soon about 25-30 other little girls show up and the teacher is starting class. The teacher organizes the girls into lines and 3-5 year olds of all sizes are following directions perfectly. Everyone's an arm-length apart.
Except Amaya.
The second the teacher tries to direct her to a space on the stage (next to Mahea), Amaya goes and stands on the steps. With hands in mouth. Eyes downcast. Shoulders slumped.
No problem, I think. We'll just stay for the first class. If she doesn't like it, she doesn't like it. I'm not making her dance anything. If she decides it looks fun she'll join.
She runs down to me, and I tell her that we're going to leave unless she wants to stay. She goes back up. To the steps.
Then I think she's getting on the stage to dance. But no. She's walking to the back of the class where the windows are. Every little girl up there is shaking her hips and raising her arms on cue and Amaya's playing with the windows. After she gets tired of this, she walks to the curtains and starts pulling the ropes. At which point I know I'll have to stop her so the dance class doesn't get a curtain-call.
I walk over to the side of the stage and say, "Amaya? Do you want to go home? Do you want to dance?" Amaya sits down on the steps and starts crying, loudly. Not, "I'm a little sad" crying, more like, "I'm going to throw a tantrum" crying. I try to talk to her because I'm surprised by this new development, but she's not listening at all or responding in any way except for louder crying, so I take her outside.
At this point she throws herself on the ground and screams, "I WANT TO GO TO DANCE CLASS!" and is kicking her feet and desperately hiccuping. Of course, there's no way we're going back inside now so I'm taking (dragging) her to the car. She's getting louder as we get in the car, drive home, and when we get inside she demands to watch Dora. I say no. She screams at me. And into time-out she goes.
I leave her there for a long, long time. She's screaming her little heart out and kicking her legs on her bed for maximum effect. Jake asks me when I plan to take her out. I wait a little longer even after I hear she's quiet. I go in there.
She's asleep. Clutching her stuffed animal. I guess 30-minute tantrums are pretty exhausting.
Later I tried to ask her questions about what was going on. I don't get any answers. When you ask Amaya "Why" anything, as in "Why were you crying at dance class?", she says, "That's why" and repeats whatever you said. So in this case, she says, "That's why I was crying at dance class." She's really good at questions, but we've never worked out the answers part. She even seems to think it would be a good idea to go back to dance class.
Yeah, RIGHT. We're staying home and I'm going to be bad mom for at least two more weeks. Let's hope it doesn't last any longer than that.