Relaxing

Things are finally starting to settle down here (a little bit) and when the weather is nice Monkey likes to 'relax'. It's kind of like planking but not as extreme.

Dance Your Legs

Monkey very much enjoys music and plays the piano, harmonica and drum with much enthusiasm and frequency. We also just completed a six week singing class through our local children's choir with some of Mrs. Z's friends and their own little 'animals' that Monkey very much enjoyed. Typically, he spent most of the class time exploring the room, trying to play their pianos and, our favorite, standing directly in front of the instructor and scowling at her. Thankfully Ms. L did not object to his scrutiny and understood that he prefers to watch and analyze before he is ready to participate. He was very focused and on task any time drums or jumping were involved. We did see a dramatic increase in singing here at home though, and he really loved learning new songs and games. If enough people sign up, we will be doing another six week session over the summer which we are really looking forward to. Lately he has been asking all about guitars: playing guitars, having guitars, Aunt B's guitar... so we will see what the birthday fairies bring. ;)

We have actually been taking short videos of Monkey for the past... year or whatever... since we last posted a video. But it is becoming quite clear that actually editing and making those videos presentable is not a realistic goal here in the zoo under our present conditions. So here are two completely unedited and raw piece of video from a few weeks back. You can see that Monkey has a solid command of the English language as a tool to command others; and no, we do not generally condone tossing musical instruments but we make exceptions for certain harmonicas. (Ha ha, just kidding.) (Sort of.) Someone (who shall remain nameless, but they know who they are) taught him to stamp his foot while he plays the "bouncy song" (video 1) on the harmonica, which he interprets as "dancing your legs" (video 2).