The power of family dance party

When Graham was about a month old we were still figuring out the whole family of four thing and Griff was having a hard time with the transition.  I remember that earlier that week Griff had taken out the egg carton from the fridge and in the time it took me to change a diaper he had cracked all twelve eggs on the kitchen floor.  Then came the writing all over his walls, dumping all the dog food on the floor...he was acting out big time.  Needing to get attention at any means possible, he was driving me to the brink of insanity and to be honest I wasn't being the mother I wanted to be to him.  

So after a completely awful week at home with both boys all day I had reached my breaking point.  But, instead of getting angry with him as I had been doing all week I decided to stop the cycle.  It was 4pm and Dad was going to be home soon to give me a break and Griffin was at his worst.  So I put Graham down in his portable cradle in the living room, turned on some music, picked my boy up in my arms and we just danced.  I picked him up, threw him in the air, swung him around, turned him upside down and bounced him all over the room.  I remember Graham looking at us with such a perplexed look on his face but Griff was giggling uncontrollably.  We danced and danced until we were both exhausted and finally a slow song came on and that sweet boy put his head on my shoulder and we just rocked bank and forth.  Something happened at that moment, I felt all of his anger and frustration and hurt just melt away.  He snuggled up to me and we just rocked back and forth for three slow songs.    I will never forget that moment as long as I live.  In that short time we had begun to heal his broken heart, and their was a HUGE shift in him after that, it was incredible.  

 So anytime life is crazy or I feel like we haven't connected with our kiddos we break out "family dance party".  Griff loves it and Graham just laughes and squeals along.  We have learned as a family and a couple to reset when things get crazy.   Sometimes instead of dancing we might just say to each other, " wanna start over?".  And all of us, the littles and bigs take a deep breath and push aside our frustration or anger or resentment and start over.  It's awesome because whatever we were so upset about is usually so silly and not worth it, starting over reminds us of what's really important.  It teaches forgiveness to our littles too, something that all of us struggle with! Sometimes it's hard to start over or jump up and dance your booty off when you are mad, but when we are done we are better connected and always have a smile on our face. 

Last night we ate an early dinner and had a little time before the tub so I asked Griff if he wanted to do family dance party.  His face lit up and all four of us danced our buts off, Graham even showed us some sweet moves!  It was so fun and we got some of our extra energy out before bed!  I hope we can keep up this tradition for a very long time, who knows I may even get to embarrass the hell out of my boys when they are teenagers.   I'm kinda looking forward to it!