Starry Starry Night

13 November 2009

I was terribly excited .. doubly excited since both Peanut and Sweet Potato were performing at the school year-end concert. Last year, Peanut was in an Indian costume dancing to an Indian tune and though he hardly moved on stage, his fans in the audience (namely, his paternal grandma, Wati and I with a toddling S.P who had no clue what was happening) were extremely entertained by him and his fellow classmates.

One year on, though yet to completely overcome his stage fright, Peanut in his '60s rock' get-up was noticeably more confident and enjoyed himself as the night progressed. On the video playback, I could even see him mouthing the lyrics as they danced to the song "That Thing You Do". It's just so comical to have my 4 y.o singing, "Breaking my heart into a million pieces, like you always do-ooh".

Sweet Potato ... that one is a born performer. Totally unfazed by the bright lights and the loud music. First he explored the stage, studied the backdrop, wandered from one end to the other end, completely oblivious to what the rest of his class and his teachers were doing (one or two were dancing, the rest were just standing around in a blur ... they could barely remember the dance steps .. but really nobody cares, they just look too adorable even as still dummies - it takes an audience of parents to truly appreciate the dance item; we celebrate every move, mistakes included). After about 5 minutes, SP decided to dance and nothing could stop him henceforth. He clapped, he swayed, he jumped, he squatted, he swayed his bum, he waved and said "hello" to the audience. To top it all, when the dance ended and his fellow performers were huddling to move away from the stage, he stepped forward, took a bow and said, "Xie xie" ('thank you' in Mandarin). No photos to show because: (1) there was just too much movement! (2) I was totally unprepared for that last act; no one else did that the entire night (3) I was too busy/flustered with the video recorder and trying to coax it to record more as it kept flashing a red signal indicating that ... you guessed it ..... I had ran out of tape ...aaarggh!!!