What a playdate taught me about dancing

Often times it seems like we get diminishing returns on any more than one "activity" a day. Doing one thing usually produces more benefit than headache, so doing two things is pushing it. I lucked out and both of the playdates were at our house today, so that made things much easier. No getting everyone's shoes and socks and jackets on and piling them into the car. Today it was worth it to have two activities. 

I think my favorite moment of today was when during playdate #1, where we had my two kids (2 years and 8 months), and her three kids (5 years, 2.5 years, and 4 months), and I turned on "Let It Go" and all of us had a dance party. It was so fun! Dancing around felt like being single again except no one was secretly self conscious about their dance moves. 

It amazes me that dancing is so inherent to children. Babies just bounce to music, you don't have to teach them, they just know that you dance to music. It's only once we become aware that other people are looking at us and we care what they think of us do we stop dancing and get uncomfortable. None of the children at today's playdate had reached that stage. It was all fun. 

Sometimes being a parent means teaching your kids that people care what they do and that certain behavior should not be done even though it may be suuuper fun. And sometimes being a parent means letting your kids teach you that a certain behavior is worth doing even though people are watching and may think you're weird. 

I love it for several reasons. One, Peter was such a little lard bucket! I forgot what a chunk he was. Two, Henry's smile is killer. But mostly, I love it because in this moment my dad was singing We're Going on a Bear Hunt, complete with big exaggerated hand motions and bouncing up and down. We were in the middle of a crowded Costco, people were staring. But all Grandpa cared about was that those two little boys were loving it (I promise Peter loved it too, so much so that he forgot how to close his mouth). 

It makes me think that maybe things come full circle, and at a certain point we're old enough and wise enough to know that the kids were right about a lot of the things that are worth doing even though it's socially unacceptable. Who makes these laaame social protocols anyway? "Milk only goes in the cup and not on the floor". Okay Mom, good one. You don't even know what you're missing. 

I'm learning a lot from trying to let Peter teach me every now and then. Today we were reading Green Eggs and Ham, and I turned the page and all of the sudden Peter started grabbing the book and trying to yank it out of my hands. I tried getting him to stop and give it back to me and finally just let go. Then he turned the book upside down. On the page I had turned to, the characters were falling and the train they were in looked upside down. As soon as I let Peter take the book, he turned it upside down and pointed to the train. He was just trying to see the train in the right direction. 

That happens to me too often. I miss seeing the world through his eyes because I'm so busy trying to stop him from "misbehaving". 

Maybe I just need to... let it go. (See what I did there? Heh? Heh?)