Shake your Groove Thang

I took Delaney to a Kindermusik Class today, our first. The class is marketed to kids ages 0 (really) through 3. It looked like most of the kids were around her age when we got there, which was a good thing. I didn't want to have the only walker in a class full of nursers. But in an effort to encourage more people to register, they are allowing people to sign up for blocks of 4 week classes instead of the standard 10 weeks. What I didn't know was that the 4 week blocks are inside the current 10 week classes. So everyone in our class was a seasoned 10 week-er and had been meeting and singing for weeks before Delaney and I, the sole newbies, arrived. Not only that, but I didn't get the download they sent via email with the songs and words and activities on it to get us up to speed. I should have called about it, but it's been busy around here.

So we went in green as a string bean and Delaney was a little clingy at first. I'm not much of an introvert (surprise!) and I love to sing even if it's just stringing words to what I'm thinking a la Buddy the Elf ("I'm heeere with my Dad and he wants me to sing him a sooong...."). As I'm trying to extract myself from Delaney's grip and beat on the drum I had been given, I noticed that Laurie the Teacher isn't having much luck getting the parents to sing along with her or after her or whatever she was asking them to do. Parents were singing in those hushy church voices so that their voice was never heard individually above anyone else's. At one point Laurie the Teacher even sang to the parents "It's alright for parents to sing la la la - lala. It shows the children that singing is fun la la la la " (Laurie sings everything a normal person would say. It's like talking to an opera star.) I always try to surreptitiously size up the parents when I go to these types of things, trying to suss out who potential mom friends might be. It doesn't look good for me in Kindermusik. Lots of turtlenecks, a grandma, a couple, and some moms way too young to remember the original Electric Company. I know, it's so superficial. Go ahead and judge me.

I decide I may be on my own in this class and I've already paid my $64 for these four weeks. Despite my lack of song and melody knowledge, I am going to sing my head off in this class because I want Delaney to know that singing IS fun. But more than that, I don't want her to be a wallflower. So I begin to belt it out like Barbra Streisand, songs I don't know about tigers and cats and dancing and jungles. Me and Laurie the Teacher are neck and neck for volume, though she's got me beat with melody. I have no idea where I'm going there. I do sound like Buddy the Elf. Laurie the Teacher looks at me with a quizzical, but encouraging smile. But Delaney loves it. As she sees me getting groovy, she begins to loosen up and takes the tambourine from the quiet kid next to her. I make her give it back, but inside I'm pleased. No breathy singing or hiding behind the big kids for us. I'm raising an extrovert.