Sunday, June 13, 2010

Second Week of Summer

The second week of summer was fun.  We went to the bookstore for story time, went to the playground, got new books at the library, ran in the sprinklers, and had two little girls over for a play date.

Yesterday, we went to the Three Rivers Arts Festival, a yearly tradition.  It is held the first two weeks of June, every year, and every year, you could bet your life savings that it will rain those two weekends.  No kidding!  Sure enough, this year was no exception.  Luckily, it was so hot and muggy that the off and on rain felt pretty good.


(Since the fountain at The Point wasn't on, we needed to find another fountain to complete the tradition!)




(If you are going to be downtown, you must make time to chase a few pigeons).

Last year, Dylan was still in a stroller.  This year he was on foot, which meant that we looked at a lot less art.  Maneuvering a 3 1/2 year old boy who likes to touch everything through a huge crowd, and in and out of art booths without having to buy something is no small feat!  I did manage to see an artist whose style I loved.  She takes photographs and digitally alters them with Photoshop and she also manually alters Polaroids while they are developing to get a really cool effect.  I think I'm going to have to play around with Photoshop to see if I can figure out how she does it.


(We got to see Miss Rosa, from PBS Kids, who told the kids a story about going on a safari.  Dylan has been recreating it all day today).


My favorite part of the day was when we went to an African Rhythm and Dance workshop.  Three lovely ladies and a guy taught the adults and children a traditional African welcome song, and a dance.  Okay, it was mostly just the kids who were brave enough to go up front and dance.  Do you want to guess if my attention loving kid was front and center?

(The three ladies in black shirts were leading the workshop.  Look closely.  Do you see Dylan?)
I don't know if he will always dance so free and uninhibited, but for now, he dances with pure joy and abandonment, and I LOVE it.  At one point, the ladies starting leading the kids around the tent in a conga line.  Dylan had his back to the crowd, facing the drummer, in his own happy world of dance and didn't notice.  He was the only one up there dancing for a while!

Watching the little kids dancing, I thought "How awesome it must be to have no inhibitions!  To simply do what makes you happy, not caring how you look, or who is watching".  I wonder why we lose that, as we get older?  When, and why does that happen, and how can we stop it from happening?  I really hope Dylan keeps dancing.  He makes it look like so much fun, who knows?  I just might join in.

8 comments:

Brooke said...

Sounds like a fun week!
I love that kids can get up and boogie down without a care in the world. It is so cute to watch ;D
My oldest son (at 5) has already become so modest that I doubt he would dance in front of a crowd.
**sniff, sniff**

Anonymous said...

What fun! I love it when my kids dance with reckless abandon, and am glad that Dylan had so much fun doing so!

blue china studio happy said...

What a fun time you had! I love that Dylan got up and danced.

Lisa @ Boondock Ramblings said...

To dance so freely would be so nice!

Love the fun he had and the fun you let him have! :-)

Burgh Baby said...

I'm pretty sure we were there at the same time, or close to it. Craziness!

feather said...

oh, i have the african beat in my head, now! what fun!

The Girls' Mommy said...

I think about that a LOT. I'm watching it happen with three of my girls (they ar SO shy lately) and watching it not happen with Abbie. Its fascinating.

Lindsay said...

How fun! Great picture of Rosa...those photos sound really cool, especially the polaroids.:)