Someone looked at my video of Zoey dancing on Youtube.com and left a comment. all it said was "Garbage." Jerk. He also gave my video a one star rating. If you have some time today, go look at the video on you tube and rate it higher.
It all started when I bought her a new DVD/CD combo by They Might Be Giants called "Here come the ABCs." She loves it. We can watch the DVD and listen to the CD in the car. Fortunately, the songs are pretty catchy--the kind of good kid songs you don't realize is still on even after the kid is out of the car. I mean, I'll drop her off at school and will suddenly come to the realization about halfway home that I'm still singing along to them. The CD is great for all you parents that get a little tired of listening to various versions of "The Wheels on the Bus" or "Itsy Bitsy Spider."
Oh, but the DVD is another story altogether. Sure, it's pretty much the same songs that are on the CD--the CD I just gushed about in the previous paragraph--but watching the DVD just got really old really quickly. See, Zoey discovered that she really, really loves to dance. And the music is just so darn dance-able, that she just dances and sings her way through most of the songs. Which is great, cute and adorable and all that, but she insists that I dance with her. Now, this was fun, for the first week, and great exercise. But now I'm really tired of dancing to these songs over and over and over again. She's whittled down her repertoire to about three songs that we must watch, which means I'm also constantly playing VJ. I tried to teach her how to use the remote, but she wasn't interested. So we have to fire up the DVD player, wait patiently for the unalterable and unskipable opening bits (she especially loves it when the Disney Sound logo comes up), and then I have to operate the menu using the remote's really, really small buttons so we can pick and choose the songs she wants to hear. And here's the thing about Zoey: She takes forever to make up her mind sometimes. It tries my patience, and I have to remind myself not to get exasperated with her. Anyway, we inevitably listen to the D&W song, Fake Believe and E Eats Everything many, many times in a row, with Zoey constantly hounding me to "Dance about it" with her.
So, to sum up, CD good, DVD tiring. Additionally, Zoey's really taken with D and W. I mean, the actual letters, D and W. They're her new best friends. I can't help but wonder what some other people are thinking when they see a little girl having whole conversations with a letter. I have drawn a million D's and W's this past month, because she makes me. "Mommy, draw D! Make a sad D--draw his tears! Now make a happy D--because he found his crown!" "Draw W with D! Make him sad! Now make him mean!" It's a little bit odd.
This dancing thing doesn't seem to be going away. Now we have to also watch "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" over and over, of course, skipping through most of the actual movie to get to the way more entertaining Oompa Loompa songs. They have some keen dance moves we've adopted. Otherwise, meh on the movie and Johnny Depp's way to perfect teeth.
I have taken what I feel is the most logical course of action: I enrolled her in a dance class. Specifically, it's 1/2 dance 1/2 gym, which is perfect. I had to get her tap shoes, ballet shoes and a leotard. It's insanely cute. And she loves her new tap shoes. Actually, the tap shoes are a hand-me-down from my old department head and mommy mentor, Cara. She gave two pairs to me before Z was even born, and one of them fits. (Thanks, Cara!) Now, thankfully, we haven't watched TMBG in over a week. Not that I'm out of the dance macabre yet--she's now obsessed with wearing her tap shoes and dancing noisily with them in the front hallway (one of the few rooms in the house without carpet). And I have to put music in her CD player so she can dance to it, and so I can "dance about it" with her. But hopefully, with this new class she'll get to channel some of that dancin' fool energy at least once a week without me.
She's only had one lesson, and spent a lot of time during that lesson running madly around the studio while her teachers yelled, "Zoey, Zoey, Zoey! Wait your turn!" over and over again. But her hearts in the right place. At least for now.
Sarah took this video while we were on "safari" at the Natural Bridge Caverns Wildlife Ranch in New Braunfels. It was just a daytrip, and it was a pretty neat place to see. Lots of so-called wild animals, mostly of the gazelle/antelope type, with some deerlike animals and some ram thingys. Oh, and a few zebras as well.
The animals are car feed sluts--they know where the food is coming from if you know what I mean. They're not shy about looking you in the eye and sniffing up your hand. Unfortuntely, the passenger side window was stuck, so we could only feed them from the driver side, which means at times I was driving (no more than 5 mph), taking pictures, and feeding animals all at the same time, and sometimes with Zoey on my lap as well. Because we did what every other car was doing, and that was letting her out of her seat and into Sarah's or my lap while we drove through. Please don't call CPS. We had plenty of Brittney Spears jokes going already.
Anyway, I thought you guys might get a kick out of Zoey here. I know a lot of you haven't seen her in a long time, so you'll be surprised at her mastery of the English language. You get everything in this one little clip, some singing (to a They Might Be Giants song--more on that later), some gesticulating, and a right smackdown directed at my sister Sarah, who had the gall to suggest that Zoey sing a different song. Zoey really enjoyed the safari, especially getting to ride up front and play DJ. She did feed some animals, too.
