Spiderwick

I don't know if I've mentioned this, but Naiya's teacher is so amazing! She adapted the books "The Spiderwick Chronicles" into a play for 2nd graders. She put together 3 different casts for 3 different days so that the kids could take turns playing different parts. Naiya was given the parts of Aunt Lucy, Thimbletack, and Mallory.
On the 1st day, she was Aunt Lucy, whose lines came at the end of the play.  There were several paragraph-long monologues to memorize, and she did awesome. I think Aunt Lucy was my favorite part to watch her play. She wanted her hair in a bun so she looked like an old lady, and they put a ton of baby powder in it to make it look white. I didn't get any pics of her playing Aunt Lucy because I had to run out of my own class for 5 minutes to watch her then run back down the hall.
 Most of the baby powder came out right away, but every time I touched her head a dusting of it fluffed out of her hair. It was really fun to tap her bun and watch it fly out.

This is at the end of the day, you can still see a slight ring of white around the edge of her bun.

She loved how her hair looked when I took it out, she said she looked like a movie star.

The next day, she was to play Thimbletack, a smaller part, but one she looked forward to playing. Her classmate who was supposed to play Aunt Lucy wasn't there, so Naiya was asked to play both parts that day. I was able to attend the whole performance since it was my short day at work. She did great with both parts!
On the last day, she played the character she most looked forward to, Mallory, the female lead. And again, she did great. I took the afternoon off work so I could watch her. I love my job and how easy it is to find someone to sub for me so that I can still (on those rare occasions) choose my kids over work. Naiya would have been heart-broken if I had missed her as Mallory. Darin joined me but we got there a bit too late to get a decent seat for taking pictures.

Naiya did a phenomenal job! And that's not just my biased motherly opinion, everyone commented on how great she was. There's just something so endearing about a pint sized cutie full of so much drama! She really tried to act her parts, not just say her lines (which she did awesome at memorizing). I won't be surprised if she takes up her father's love for theater, she'll do a great job if she does.