Our Bavarian dance group held its annual Christmas party today - things went well as far as the nativity play the kids put on - a relief since the past month of "practice" was devoted to this and I was hopeful that my little drummer boy wouldn't blow it somehow. I just heard an ad for the arts on the radio praising this sort of thing for kids because it teaches them to pay attention and follow direction and to work as a team. Makes sense now because they really did rise to the occasion and pull it off very nicely. Josh is definitely looking to these boys for examples of how to behave. They all sat nicely at their own table to eat and as long as the big boys behaved well Josh did too - until he saw one older kid throwing food around and followed suit by tossing a pickle - I was told later on by the non-food throwers. This week has been exciting in general - he's to the point where he WOULD bounce off the walls if he kept going and going so I tell him OKAY, you've got five seconds to go crazy and he rolls on the floor and does his white-boys-can't-dance dance for five seconds and then takes a breath and walks away a happy but no longer crazy boy.
So Santa comes into the party after much anticipation and you have wide-eyed staring, backing away, stiff legs while sitting on his lap and a few tears -well maybe from the little kids.... but not from Josh! When his name was called he bounded up, made himself at home on the lap of laps and after he described the "real Santa" he saw on the way home from hockey practice today he went on and was practically a commercial for the Hess truck set that's being offered up this year. "...the one that has the dump truck and can pick stuff up and has lights..." yes, he's seen the commercial and has memorized the finer points of the product. His gift from Santa this time was a swell stein for root beers or Shirley Temples and "hum vee" cars. Then one of the other kids did get the Hess truck and Josh was quick to make friends with that kid and fortunately the other kid wasn't too possessive of it and let Josh take it all around the ballroom we were in for a spin. He can't get over how nice his new friend Tyler was to let him use his new truck and how one of the grownups who works there won a set of 6 cars and called Josh into his office after he realized they were gone and was really crying about it being gone - only to give him the whole set.
Again and again tonight people come up to me and talk about what a riot Josh is and even he teenagers who would normally think it un-cool to hang around with a little guy were playing with him while we were wrapping things up at the party. We had a wad of paper "ball" and a branch of Christmas tree "bat" and he had pitchers throwing to him across the dance floor - I've pretty much given up on trying to get him out of things like that unless I've given him ample notice and until it's obvious that things are wrapping up so we don't have a melt down like we did once leaving a birthday party where I had to pick him up off the sidewalk outside the bouncy-place as the staff was trying to leave for the night.
Today Dima had the "day of days" that he's been looking forward to - decorating and prepping food for tomorrow at Nana and Pop pop's He was literally counting down to this all week. He definitely has an artistic slant on things and is very into aesthetic details. I'm hoping things went well there so he'll be invited back again.
No comments:
Post a Comment