Dancing Queen

Ellie loves to boogie. As you probably noticed in the video we posted from that concert we attended back in September, dancing has long been a passion for our little girl. She loves to dance. And boy does she dance! There's music pumping through the intercom at the grocery store: Ellie's dancing. A car pulls up to a red light with rap music blaring while we're at the corner waiting to cross the street: Ellie's gettin' down. Music on a tv commercial: Ellie boogies. I start singing, humming or sing-talking (as unmelodious as it may be): Ellie dances. Dance, dance, dance. Sometimes it's only the music in her head...and our girl is movin' to her own beat.

It's not just how much she dances that is so entertaining, but how she dances is equally hilarious. The child of two very white, fairly soul-less parents, poor thing dances a bit like Elaine from Seinfeld - arms flailing, hips rocking, shoulders turning, feet stomping...all seemingly independent of one another. I absolutely love that Ellie jumps up and starts dancing at the hint of any music, and her dancing technique makes the process all the more adorable. When she hears a song that gets her really excited, she dances by running around in circles and or holding someones hands and running in place. It's just too cute.

Ellie has a passion, not only for dancing, but for music in general. Lately, Ellie has been treating her parents like her personal jukebox, especially in the car where she shouts out her musical request repeatedly and incessantly until you start singing. Sometimes she'll just say "sing!" but most of the time she has a specific request. Her current favorite is "Dinah" ('I've been working on the Railroad') which I swear we've sung more times in the past two weeks than any other song in our lives. And the very moment our thrilling "Dinah" rendition has concluded she belts out an enthusiastic "Nain!" (again) "Dinah! Nain!" with a huge grin on her face until we start singing again. And you can't get away with just one parent singing while the other one takes a little break. If only one parent is singing, she'll interrupt with "Mommy sing!" or "Daddy sing!" until the silent parent also joins in. What can I say, the girl loves a duet.

We seriously need to buy a kids music cd!