Dancing & costumes

For those of you who don't know, Taipan is very fond of dancing lately - and not just randomly grooving to music (though we still enjoy that); he likes to do choreographed dance moves. It started with a video called "I Gotta Go", which is all songs, and all about going to the potty. And about half of the songs have dance moves that go with them. He watched that video over and over and over, and does The Potty Dance, the I Gotta Go dance and the Pull Down, Pull On dance all the time - at home, at the park, at the store, etc. (Y: It's fun seeing the looks we get as our son is singing "Doing the Potty Dance" and dancing in public... I think people really think he needs to go!)

One day he asked me if we had any more videos with dancing. So we pulled out an old Wiggles DVD and did those dances. And a week or two later I went to the library on a hunt for videos with dances. One of those was a Sesame Street video - some sort of dance party hosted by Big Bird. And on that video were a ton of previews for other Sesame Street videos, one of which is Zoe's Dance Moves ... and he watched that preview over and over and over and then asked me if we could get that video. So we requested it from the library and picked it up about a week ago.

He loves this video - it's hosted by Paula Abdul (she actually does a great job), and she and Zoe choreograph a routine and put it together into the "Everything Dance", which consists of ballet, African dance, Asian dance, the Silly Willy Nilly dance (by far Taipan's favorite dance), tap and hip hop.

The time Zoe and Paula spend in the dance studio in interspersed with footage of all kinds of people dancing. And there are costumes. Last night he said that he needed a costume, and that we could buy one. Of course buying things is often my solution, but this time I said, "or we could make one!". So he said ok - we can make one. And he told me he wanted a cat costume. Ok, now time for me to think. Um, cat costumes need ears and tails. I can do that! So I got a headband, put some construction paper ears on it, got one of Yuta's old ties to use as a tail, and voila - our cat! And he wanted whiskers, so we painted those on too.


Taisim also wanted part in the fun, so we gave her a plain headband - she was not dressed, so I couldn't stick a tail on her. Though when she got dressed a bit later I went to find her another tie and learned that Yuta has not one, not two, but THREE bolo ties in his closet. Flashbacks, anyone?


Taipan kept asking what my costume was going to be, and he repeatedly suggested that I be a dog, but I didn't know how to do dog ears. Let's face it, Yuta's the creative one in this family. I'm sure he would've come up with something had he been here. So instead of making a costume, I told him I could be a Starbucks worker! I was already wearing black pajama pants and a black tank, so I added one of Yuta's aprons and I became a barista.... exactly what Yuta wanted to see when he got home from work.


A bit later we went downstairs, and a catalog with some Halloween costumes happened to be sitting on the counter from the mail Yuta brought in, so I showed it to Taipan. And we remembered about the Spider-Man costume Grandpa gave him last Christmas. Taipan wanted to put it on (this is the first time he wore it), and I put it on so it zipped up in the front like a jacket (OOPS!).


And then Yuta fixed it:


Dancing and costumes are fun. He also wants dance shoes, so we've talked about how you can use sneakers for dance shoes or dance barefoot.

Taipan's cousin loves costumes, and when we go visit him in Florida next week maybe he can play with Jason and try some of those costumes out too.