Just Stuff

It seems Winter has finally arrived. We've gone from an average of high 40s to mid 50s to freezing, with a windchill this morning of 2. Lovely. Thank goodness Fidget doesn't fight the coat, hat, and glove bundling too much. When I'm done dressing her, she does resemble the kid in the snow suit from A Christmas Story.

We've begun a new session of Music Together, and we've moved to a different day this session, so we have a new teacher. (LOK: She's a former dancer who studied with NYCB and Alvin Ailey, and she reminds me much of Miss J. ) I'm hoping that this session Fidget will learn to participate actively in the class a little more. As the session went on during the fall, Fidget learned to walk and became much more interested in roaming the room, as several children did. She would never really do the activities with the kids, but she would stand and watch at times, and I knew she was picking it up because she would do some of the motions on her own later. I would catch her "practicing" some of the motions when we listened to the cd in the car, and later she would repeat them at home. After the first class last week, I thought she might do the same this time...observe more rather than actively participate. But she actually participated some in today's class...

Every class starts with a "hello" song, and we sit in a circle, everyone hitting their knees to the beat of the song. Fidget never does this in class with the song, but after we began the first MT session last fall, she would do this at home or in the car when she wanted me to sing or play music. She'll hit her knees as we do with the "hello" song. If I do sing with her but then stop, she'll look at me and nod her head as if to say, "Keep going, you didn't finish the song!" She started doing this in class today. As the teacher got her guitar out, Fidget walked into the center of the circle and slapped her hands to her knees and nodded her head. She knew what was coming.

She did roam the room some again today, but not as much as in the past. And for a class that has a special "hello" song to start, you know there has to be a special "goodbye" song to end. Well, as soon as we started singing the "goodbye" song today, Fidget walked up to several of the children in the class, touched their bellies, waved, and said, "bye bye." It was really sweet to watch.