Music class

We signed Isaac up for a toddler-appropriate music class through the music department here at the university. How could we not, with his budding rock star/ukelelist/dance-machine talents? His class meets every Saturday morning for half-hour, and our first lesson was last week. His teacher's name is Miss Sandy, and the first lesson made it quite obvious that she had never raised, taken care of, or even been around a toddler for more than a half-hour previously. She opened the class with a big thank you to all of us for coming out "so early" on a Saturday morning, "on the day we're supposed to be sleeping in." This class is at 10:15, people. Isaac and by extension me had been up since 5:30. No. concept. of toddler behavior. The remainder of the first class showed further that she was just not in the know -- lots of activities where she would sing simple songs and implicitly insist that the toddlers sit on parents laps and clap their hands or whatever the whole time. Isaac was remarkably amenable to this, probably because it was so new and he was so exhausted. There were some fun things, like playing with instruments and holding hands and walking in a circle, but we really didn't get much participation out of Isaac, not even for family dance time. Dada suggested that Miss Sandy was trying to bore the fun out of music.

We weren't exactly looking forward to today's class, but we were going anyway because we have 12 weeks of this and it was NOT cheap. Luckily for us, today seemed to bring a new Miss Sandy to class. We had much less sitting this time, both because there was more walking and dancing and because Dada and I decided that if Miss Sandy was implying Isaac should sit and he wasn't having it, then dern it, we weren't making him, a sentiment shared this time by a mom of another rowdy little guy. It's not a big class and it's not in a big room, so he wasn't going anywhere. Having a well-rested Isaac also helped make it more entertaining for everyone. He spent a lot of his time after first breaking out of his shell running laps around the circle of sitting grownups. When that bored him, my darling showboat son went directly to the middle of our circle, by himself, and shook what his mama gave him, which Miss Sandy (among others) found hilarious. Toward the end he even caught on to some of the actions we were doing to the songs and made a big deal out of doing them himself, which few of the other toddlers did even though he is clearly much younger than everyone else. Now THAT's the rock star we know and love.