Many of you already know about Emily and the stage.

I have written through her performances in The Wizard of Oz, The Sound of Music, Mamma Mia, Grease, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Hairspray, The Wizard of Oz (again), Glee.

You already know that her sister thinks that she’s famous. Isabella: “Emily is so famous that she could be up on the wall at Menchie’s, like Taylor Swift.” You already know that there is no place on earth that makes my child smile like when she is up on that stage.

But what you might not have known is that her baby brother made his stage debut last night.

It’s kind of funny, actually, how this happened.

Josh never expressed any interest in acting. While we were chauffeuring Emily back and forth to dance and play practice, we were driving Josh to hockey games and to the baseball diamond and to the karate dojo. And we didn’t really think anything of it. And then Josh went through kind of an angry stage, or something. Well, he wasn’t angry so much as, well, mute. He didn’t tell us anything. He wasn’t telling us what made him happy, he wasn’t telling us what made him unhappy.

And this his teacher stepped in and stopped my world.

“Josh has expressed interest in exactly three things: Harry Potter, baseball, AND THE THEATER. Have you ever thought of putting him into some sort of theater program?”

No.

I hadn’t.

So we searched. And we found a program that didn’t include his sister. A drama program just for him. And then, in the blink of an eye, HE WAS PETER PAN.

He was running lines and learning lyrics and perfecting his expressions in the mirror. He was excited about it. REALLY excited about it.

And then, last night, as I sat in the theater and watched my son I realized something that I didn’t know about him:

HE IS GOOD—A TOTAL NATURAL UP THERE ON THE STAGE.

And then, this morning, over a nutella sandwich, Isabella turns to me and says this:

“Mama. When do I get to be on the stage like Emily and Josh?”

Of course she did.

Hi, I’m Ali, and I’m pretty sure I am a stage mom.

And I probably couldn’t be happier about it.