everybody dance now

before we can dance, we need to snuggle.
and drink lots of milk.
it's good for the bones.

john has recently developed a favorite song, and it's a doozie: everybody dance now.

it's not uncommon for him to walk up to his daddy and i and say, "everybody dance!" (and, as i realized the first time this happened, he does not mean that we should all join hands and dance together.) at that prompt, there are two appropriate actions as a parent:

whip out the iphone and youtube "everybody dance now" so the kid can listen
if #1 is not available, simple start singing. and dancing, of course.

fortunately for us, either one elicits grins and giggles.

several evenings lately, john and i have ridden home in the car with that song on repeat on my phone. every time it ends, i hear a sweet little voice say, "everybody dance? again?"

but the best came in the grocery story aisle. we were just running in for a single item or two, so i didn't get a cart - john just walked along with me. i could tell he was feeling like a big boy. and he was listening so well, and being so well behaved. (and of course, making friends with everyone in sight.)

so when we were in the canned vegetable aisle searching for black beans, and john turned his angelic blue eyes up at me, and said, "everybody dance?" i did what any self-respecting mother would do.

i sang everybody dance now and danced in the aisle with my two-year-old. and he was delighted. and i was delighted. and we got a funny look or two ... but mostly other people were delighted too.

the powers of a grinning two year old are myriad.

Comments

i'm furberizing my baby

ok, let's get this straight right off the bat: i don't know if i am literally following dr. furber's methods of sleep training. there are so many versions out there. but saying we're furberizing john is WAY more fun than saying that i'm letting him cry his little lungs out in an attempt to teach him to sleep on his own. it's night two of our efforts. he went right to sleep last night, which was great. and he slept for 5.25 hours (!!!!) before waking up at 2:30 a.m. when he woke up crying, i let him cry for 5 minutes before going in to soothe him. (the soothing barely works at all, by the way, but it's what i'm supposed to do ...) then i let him cry for 10 more minutes before going in to soothe him again. next on the agenda was a 15 minute stretch of crying - but he fell asleep after 8 minutes. so a sum total of 22 minutes of crying. not too bad for night two. i've heard night three can be the worst ... so we'll hold on to our hats tonight. mean

on lullabies

i am not a singer. if you've sat behind me in church, you know this to be true. (and i'm sorry.) a musician, yes. a singer no. and yet i find myself singing to john almost nonstop. and the beauty is, he seems to actually like it! (there's no accounting for taste. he also thinks i'm the most beautiful woman in the world. i'm no ogre, but i'm certainly not winning any beauty contests outside of my son's brain!) and actually, i've written some lullabies for john that are pretty nice. and it made me think: did your parents sing to you? do you remember what they sang, and better yet, if you have kids, do you sing the same songs to them? reply in the comments!

home

annapolis rock 1988 thirty years ago, my family moved from denton, tx, to a tiny rural town in the mountains of maryland. i remember being sad as we sold our things (we were packing everything into two old cars to drive north) and actually crying over the sale of our washing machine. transition does strange things to kids' emotions. yet i remember arriving, excited, into this strange green mountainous place, and i remember even more anticipation as we found a home ("the old taylor place") and got ready for school to start at smithsburg elementary. third grade -- the same grade john starts this school year. i remember meeting my first friend on a dusty dirt road - the "alley" that ran behind the high school tennis courts and athletic fields from our home just at the town's outskirts to her home just outside downtown. (if you've never known a small town downtown, that's probably hard to envision). it was an amazing place to be a child. 199

john's mom works

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