My daughters cast a spell...

Last night we had a family over for dinner...the Stewart's.  They have two boys around Kami and Aly's age (9 and 7).  We weren't sure how the girls were going to do with entertaining boys, but we thought it would be a good time for them to start knowing how to adapt and interact with the peculiarities of the opposite sex.

When they arrived, the boys had brought over their "Build-a-Bear" stuffed animals to show the girls.  Our girls have their own, but they are naturally more girly.  I don't know exactly what their animals were, but they had a more masculine garb on that said, "Don't mess with me."  Classic Boy.

The girls took them upstairs to show them their rooms and to show off their bears...we watched them go and made our way into the kitchen to mingle and get the Mexican feast together.  In about fifteen minutes, things were ready and we called them to the table for feasting.  After dinner, they went down into the basement and started dancing together to some of the girls more upbeat music.  They were very concerned the boys would get bored, so they wanted the music to be more aggressive to match the aggression of their hearts.  They also put away their girly movies and had "Narnia" and "Spy Kids" ready should they decide to settle down and take in a flick.

As adults, we were neck deep in conversation about our stories of how we met each other and what brought us to the place we were today when I heard the music change downstairs.  It was a subtle change, but anytime you go from upbeat hip hop to Steven Curtis Chapman's "Cinderella", you know the atmosphere is changing.  I had one ear bent toward the adult conversation in the living room and one ear bent toward the basement shenanigans.  When I heard the song repeated for the third time in a row, I had a crazy thought, "The girls wouldn't be slow dancing with these two scrapping young men, would they?"  The minute I had the thought, I stopped our guests mid-sentence and said, "I think the girls are dancing with the boys."  The father of these boys said, "Na" and shook his head.  I got up and he and I proceeded to tip tow down the basement stairs to see if we could catch them in the act.  Sure enough, we peeked our heads around the corner and the girls were teaching these boys how to slow dance.  Everything from how they held their waist, to how they held their hand, to how to twirl them and resume the swaying posture.  It was enchanting.

Once they found out we were watching them they stopped dead in their tracks and we thought that was the end of that.  Embarrassment has a way of shutting down the freedom of a little person's heart unfortunately.  But to our amazement, they kept on practicing and about 20 minutes later, they came upstairs and danced in front of us like they were at a palatial ball.  Heidi video taped the event.  They were switching partners, dipping them down and twirling them around like they were performing for "So you think you can Dance?"  It was a moment when time stood still as these little wild boys became gentlemen and our daughters were courted like princesses.

Just a word to the wise, if you want to come over to our house, and you have little boys, be forewarned that my daughters may abduct them, take them to the basement, and turn them into little princes...not men in tights or anything, but something close.  

I love that my daughters have the strength of femininity to convert small ruddy boys into courteous and gallant gentlemen.