Movers & Shakers

I'm so excited because I've enrolled Riley in a class at the community center. This is the only class that is for 2-3 year olds that is like a dance class because she LOVES to dance. They talk about shapes, colors, movement and run around, play instruments, throw bean bags, etc. She is very good at listening to the teacher and following directions, except when immediately following running around they have all the kids sit down for a story. That lasted all of about 2 minutes and then Riley gets up and starts quietly jogging around in the back of the class. I go chase after her and make her sit down and listen to the teacher--try to show some respect--and this time she holds still for about 60 seconds before running around. She's fairly quiet but distracting, but I gave up. The class is entitled Movers and Shakers and chasing down Riley usually draws more attention than than it is worth. She listened really well except for during story time and I was pretty proud of her. Determined to teach her how to behave I praised her for listening when she did and talked to her about not listening to the teacher during story time and how we should listen next time. blah, blah, blah.
Later that night her aunts came over and asked about her class and in a sad voice she replied "I didn't listen to the teacher read a story." Gosh I didn't realize how much I scolded her or that she actually was listening to me. We had to coax out of her how much fun she had 'running around' (her favorite way to describe any fun time). Her 2nd class went great--no stories in movers and shakers until the 3rd class, which was this morning and during story time Riley jogged around again and totally blew off story-time. So much for making an impression with the previous lecture. What can I do?
Regardless of what I should do, I sit back, amused, wanting to take a picture to capture the moment, but not wanting to appear to encourage the insubordination of my offspring. So we went to Ginny and Bri's house afterwards where Riley really got her groove on.


As I type, I hear Emma starting to cry over the baby monitor. When we put her in her crib 30 minutes ago she was asleep but Riley was still awake at 10pm at night! We hoped Riley would go right to sleep or at least be quiet so Emma could sleep, but I guess not. Better go help Michael with the girls . . .
Now (the next morning) I check my computer to see the unfinished blog post about Riley's unending energy, well I guess I'll wrap up this post significantly more exhausted and less amused.