Tiny Dancer

Some of you may know that during one of our first ultrasounds, Roo’s arms and legs were moving like crazy and we joked that we had a Tiny Dancer. Well, today Ellie had her first dance class. We signed up for the Wednesday morning Nurturing Baby class at the Creative Dance Center. There were 8 babies (ages 2-15 months) with their parents. Emily from our PEPS group was there with her daughter Olive, which made it nice for me not to have to walk into a room of strangers.

What a blast. We had so much fun, and I was very impressed with how well Ellie did with this very new experience. I’m gonna have to bring Jeff along at some point so he can take pictures and participate. I know he’d get a kick out of it.

The first song was very free-form. I just held Ellie and danced around the room. As the class went on it got more structured: twirl fast here, swing slow there, jiggle across the room, fly up high, reach down low. The instructor encouraged us to hold the babies in different ways for each song or part of song so my arms and back will get stronger in this class, that’s for sure. We played with musical instruments such as castanets and maracas and with long swatches of colored cloths and ribbons. Some of the songs were group songs where we all danced together. The Virginia Reel was particularly challenging for my mommy brain. Other times we just had the babies on their backs or tummies while we sang songs (none of which I knew) and patted the rhythm on different parts of their bodies.

I discovered that although Ellie doesn’t generally like tummy time, she is a flying superhero when you put her on a ball. She had her belly on the ball and held her head way up in the air. I was so proud.

The last thing we did (and our favorite) was to put Ellie on her back in a middle of a large blanket. The lights were down low and a soft lullaby was playing. Then we slowly dragged the blankets/babies around the room. She watched with huge eyes as she moved around and passed other babies.