Tiny Dancers

One of my favorite summer activities is a street festival that takes place on Thursdays on First and Third Streets in downtown Rochester. This is imaginatively called "Thursdays on First and Third". I heart Minnesotans, despite the fact that "wry wit" was effectively culled out of their Scandinavian forebears a looooong time ago. Never forget that these are the people that find Garrison Keiller funny.

The name might be overly informative and slightly dull, the but the festival is so much fun. There are always two live musical performances and there are dozens of booths featuring local restaurants and artisans. And the fare is not your typical fried Oreo on a stick and cross stitched samplers, it's more like organic sustainably farmed fish tacos featuring local greens and cilantro salsa and burnished copper wall sculptures. It's seriously great.  

My kids love Thurs on 1st (name simplified for ease of use), and so do Tim and I. I usually meet my girlfriends downtown for lunch on Thursdays and try to sneak back with Tim if he emerges during daylight hours. Which he usually does during the summer, if only because daylight lasts until about 9 PM.

Treats from the homemade fruit pop stand. Addie is telling G to back.off.my.sicle.

My children have no notion in the world that running around a lamp post is kind of an odd thing to do.

Ads and G and I have been talking a lot about dancing lately. Addie is very into ballerinas, and princesses, and dancing ballerina princesses in particular, and if they can also have fairy wings and ride unicorns, then so much the better. Subtlety, thy age is not three.

Love this girl!

"Watch me stomp like a dinosaur"

I "blame" part of this obsession on this lovely book...and I actually do love this book and think it's illustrations are beautiful. Then Addie's "honorary aunt" Edith bought her the accompanying matching game, and the obsession was fully cemented. This was one of those presents that is a little "too good" as your child wants to play with it constantly. But there are worse things, and Addie did learn how to finally say her "Ls" as she said "Lilac". Though I do kind of miss "Why-wac".





Graydon prefers Giraffes Can't Dance, probably because of his current obsession with all things animal. Ask him what any animal says and he will moo. He's hasn't gotten the finer points down yet, but by goodness, he knows he likes animals.

I confess, I think the message of GCD is a little odd, because it's all about a clumsy giraffe that learns to dance and wows the other animals by being true to his inner rythymn. And yes, that's a great message, but is it really one that small kids need to hear? I've never met anyone truer to their authentic self than those of us under the age of five.

Still, between the two books, we've been talking about dancing a lot. And Thurs on 1st gave us a great opportunity to shake it out to the tunes of Jelloslave. If you're like me, you're picturing a college grunge band that took one too many jello shots. Nothing could be further from reality, as Jelloslave is actually an ensemble band of cellos and ecletic Indian instruments. Check them out here.

http://jelloslavemusic.com/

Not a great picture, but you get the idea.

 

 The kids freakin' loved it. Graydon and Addie got out the stroller and went right up front and danced like no one was watching them. They didn't care that there was a huge crowd of people cracking up at their moves. Soon enough a group of kids was up front dancing and I was smiling so hard that my face hurt. It was really beautiful and so much fun.

Busting a move

Still working it out

Giraffes may not be able to dance, but toddlers can.

And twelve dancing princesses could not be nearly as cute as twelve dancing kiddos.