Sheridan's Debut Performance

Sheridan's class hosted a Holiday Tea & Sing... the children sang about 10 holiday songs (plus three songs about the geography they are learning: the continents and the countries in North & South America). Two songs were in Spanish. After the singing, everyone enjoyed the cookies the children baked in class. 

The Program

This was Sheridan's debut musical performance. I mean, c'mon. This is big, y'all. He's in his element, right?! His friends, music, singing, gestures for each song. He is going to rock. it. out.

Eat your heart out. That's right. He busted out with a tie and matching chucks.

He's been singing all of these songs nonstop. Every day. It took me a couple weeks to figure out what he was singing - Up on the Rooftop is definitely his favorite, followed by Cascabel and La Pulga de San Jose (which he actually calls La Guitarra because part of the song is about playing a guitar). 

Yep, you read that correctly. Sheridan is singing songs in Spanish. Don't even get me started on how proud I am of him...

So the moment arrives. The audience is standing room only (at least 70 adults in the room?), everyone is hushed, the children walk in and take their places...

And Sheridan... just... sits there. 

Sitting in the front, fourth from the right.

When I say he sat there, I mean that's all he did. You could tell he was just taking in the sea of people in front of him. And he watched his classmates sing around him.

Originally, we tried to hide and make sure he wouldn't spot us in the crowd, thinking he might be distracted. But then Gary felt that Sheridan was trying to find us in the mass crowd of people. So, we stood up and made sure Sheridan could see us singing along. He got excited. Gave us a few waves.

I love his waves here...

And you know what? I'm very proud of him for sitting with his classmates through the entire show. Because other kids were dropping like flies. Some of the other children either had to go sit down with their families or a teacher, and a couple refused to even be part of the concert.

His teachers were proud of him, too. After the concert, one of the moms (she volunteers in the classroom one day a week) said she's seen all the children practicing for weeks, and she pointed at Sheridan and smiled and said, "I've seen you sing these songs! I know you can sing them." Sheridan laughed.

As soon as we got to the cookie part of the evening he started singing to the whole room full of people. Stinker.

Grandpa & Nanny Airplane were there. So was Nonna, but I didn't get a picture :(

Some pictures of Sheridan and his classmates...

It's a big decision: the cookie, or the pretty girl?

How about both?

I definitely need to write a post about Sheridan's school. He loves it. We love it. They love him. Can you tell?

I'll post something soon...

My Little Drummer Boy

I'm not going to lie... these are not Sheridan's best (most intense, non-stop, feverish) drumming moves. But you get a little flavor of it. And his singing. There's a bit of a lull in the middle (I need to teach him to keep his eyes on the road), but it's worth watching to the end for his rockstar dismount.

A Very Musical Christmas

Sheridan loves music. Is drawn to music. Seeks out music. We sing to him every day, all day long. Poor boy... one day he'll realize what a poor singer I am and ask me to stop. Until then, I sing sing sing my heart out. And he plays all day long with every toy he owns that plays music (sometimes he plays 2 or 3 at a time - he's quite the Maestro!).

For these reasons (and because he absolutely loves and thrives in music therapy), Sheridan's second Christmas was FULL of music. He has enough instruments now that he will either (a) form his own one-man band or (b) form a family band.

My mom came over the morning of Christmas Eve so Sheridan could open her gifts (including a sweet set of wheels) and my dad and Gary's mom and brother came over to celebrate Christmas morning by having breakfast together and opening gifts.

Sheridan got everything from drums, a recorder, and zig zag blocks, to sandblocks, a xylophone, maracas, jingle bells, a parachute for musical games to... wait for it... a ukulele. He needed a child-sized "guitar" to go with our big family gift... an acoustic guitar.

I don't know what it is about the guitar specifically, but he is drawn to it. Almost obsessed with it at times - even during music therapy. Sometimes he tries to "escape" whatever we're doing in music therapy to sneak behind the therapist and strum her guitar. He loves it. Strum strum strum. He's actually getting quite good strumming the guitar, so we opted to buy one for the whole family (neither Gary nor I play at all, so I'm hoping to take a couple lessons to at least learn common chords in children's music).

One day, if Sheridan wants it, the acoustic guitar is his. That was my intention when I bought it. For now, he can enjoy strumming it... or strumming along with is ukulele. He LOVES his ukulele. Better yet, he loves strumming the ukulele, pausing only to bang the drum a few times, then returning to the strings.

I'm pretty excited about having so many instruments around for him. He's so happy and energetic exploring each instrument. Of course, one of his favorite things to do is "ride" in his big gathering drum while I push him back forth and spin him around while singing "row row row your boat..." - a little trick we learned in music therapy :) He also likes putting his Grover puppet in the smaller drum and pushing Grover around. Awesome.

I was bummed I didn't get more pictures of Christmas morning, but that just means we were having too much fun to take pictures! Here's what we did capture: