Maia's busy holiday

Mom wrote this column recently about Maia's super busy holiday season...

Woe is to be seven, and a cute little blonde girl with too much to do.

The holiday season has become a very full plate for my daughter Maia – full of songs to learn, hair-dos and costumes to decide on, and schedules to juggle.

It started out innocently enough, as her music teacher, Renae Rike-Fee, started to prepare her second grade class for their annual holiday program.

She selected a bright and colorful production full of cheery music, and before long, we were hearing it at home so often, our kindergartner was learning the songs, too. The two girls could often be found sitting in their booster seats in the backseat of the family van, singing at the top of their little lungs the words, “Black and white, the perfect combination,” over and over and over...

Of course, the holidays wouldn’t be the holidays without dozens of activities all over town, and Maia would soon find this was not the only Christmas program she was to be a part of.

Maia, along with her brother and sister, spends her Sunday mornings at Liberty Evangelical Free Church’s Sunday school. As the holiday season approached, Maia came home with big news – the class was going to put on a Christmas program! She was very excited to be a part of it, and even more excited when she was cast in the role of Mary.

A letter in the mail revealed to us the dates, and we found that Maia would be faced with a busy week. The Lewis and Clark Elementary School program was on Dec. 14 and 15, and the church program would be on Dec. 17, with a rehearsal on Dec. 16. Busy, but not impossible. Maia had confidence she could be a bright shining star in both programs.

Then came a telephone call from J.C. LaBar, asking if Maia was still interested in participating in the Miss North Dakota Youth Pageant this year. Indeed she was – she has been looking forward to it since this time last year. She could hardly wait to find out when and where.

That is, until she found out when and where. Well, just when, really. The pageant is set for Dec. 16 and 17, of course. Frustration ensued, as Maia (and her parents) realized she had been overcommitted.

But wait! All was not lost. Faced with the difficult decision of deciding just which thing she should let go of, we made a few phone calls. Once all of the details were in place on the calendar, it was decided that, if it was important to her, she could pull everything off.

And indeed, this became her intention. All that was left was learning the music for not one, but three holiday performances.

The music for church and school had been selected for her, but Maia was left to decide on her pageant performance herself. First we fumbled through her favorite karaoke CDs, hoping to find a song she already knew to perform as her talent in the pageant, saving on what ever small amount of stress we could.

That effort failed, as nothing she came across seemed quite right. Then Dad stepped in, and together, he and Maia selected a song from her school program that she could perform at the pageant, as well.

Standing proud and tall in the middle of the livingroom floor, Maia belted out an excited song about a bird, flapping her wings and shaking her tail feathers and having a great time.

After a few unaccompanied dry runs, she decided to add the music, and popped in the CD Mrs. Rike-Fee had prepared for her. As the first bars filled our ears, Maia’s demeanor took a noticeable change. Suddenly she was nervous and unsure. She started to speed through the words – Dad tried to help her find the beat and slow down.

Halfway through the song, Maia threw herself on the couch, tears in her eyes. “I’m terrible! I shouldn’t be in any of them!” she declared, with the full drama of any self-respecting teenager.

The music cycled through as she wrapped her arms around my neck, letting out the frustration of stress catching up with her. I patted her hair, we reassured her together, but eventually it was the music that did the convincing.

She started to sing along, and eventually got up, finding the elusive beat as she went, getting more and more confident. Now it only remains for us to listen to the songs until the first bar brings on a bout of nausea for everyone else in the family and she’ll be fine.