Da Da Da Da Da Da Da

I can't believe that the last day of school is in three weeks. I am very much looking forward to spending the summer with Liam. I love watching that personality of his come through. Although he is starting to look more like Mike, the poor thing has my stubbornness and impatience. He has spent the last few days trying to conquer the slide. As soon as he started to get it, he had to find ways to get up it quicker. He started skipping the middle step, spending more time that it would take to do it the right way trying to go right to the top step.
"Think he might be me?" I asked Mike tonight.
"Trying to skip a step then getting frustrated when it doesn't work? He's your kid."

A few weeks ago, Liam began clapping at the right times of "If You're Happy and You Know It." I've sang that song more in the past month than I have in my entire life. The first time he did it was after his Little People school bus hummed the tune. I sang the song and he clapped. Daycare confirmed that they sing the song everyday and suggested I also sing the "Stomp you feet" and "Shout hurray" verses. It is one of my favorite things to do with Liam.

When I am playing with Liam, there are two tunes I "sing." One is the tune from Pulp Fiction that plays before Vincent and Jules were about to off someone. (No clue how that started.) The other is the Chicken Dance. I have no clue how this started, either. I hate the Chicken Dance more than I hate most things in life. My mom and I had a somewhat mock battle over the Chicken Dance while I was planning my wedding. She was beyond upset that her oldest daughter was denying her the opportunity to do her favorite dance. I made it very clear to the DJ that there would be no Chicken Dance. My mother could not have been more devastated if I told her there would be no cake or kissing of the bride.
Fast forward a few years. When she died, Liam was four months old. However, he started blowing raspberries the following day, quite a few months ahead of when most kids reach this milestone. Mike and I knew it was my mom. It was the sort of silly thing she reveled in teaching babies to do. This morning I randomly started humming the Chicken Dance tune. At the time when you're supposed to clap, Liam clapped five times. That was the only time in the song that he would clap. On the drive to school, I sang it a few mores times. Each time, I'd watch him clap in the rear view mirror. Assuming it was the work of daycare, I let his teacher know the Chicken Dance had also caught on in our house. She looked at me confused. "We don't do the Chicken Dance. I'm not sure where he picked that up." It is nice to know, two weeks away from the one year anniversary of Mom's passing, that she won the battle of over the Chicken Dance. I've sang it more times today than I care to admit.