Finally A Concert!

 Benjamin has been participating in various bands for a long time now with no opportunity to perform due to Covid.  Most practices were online or with a ridiculously large number of restrictions and all without hope of ever performing anything they were practicing.  However, today finally, there was a concert.  They divided the bands up into 4 bands so the stage was very uncrowded and the audience had plenty of room to social distance and it was so fun to see them play!  Benjamin had a short snare drum solo in one of the songs he played with the concert band and his percussion ensemble band piece was so fun to watch.  (His solo starts at 0:23 in the second video)  I'm so glad he enjoys music so much.  The video quality isn't great because I was trying to film while Peter was trying to see if he could climb into my lap and jump off the chair.  Again and again and again.  Each time he grabbed my arm for leverage and then I had to grab him so he wouldn't kill himself.  The end of the second video comes when I didn't grab him just right and he got a little hurt after all.

It was so funny to see Peter after I told him that we needed to be quiet to hear the music because if he yelled, we had to leave.  He nodded gravely and indicated the he understood.  Then he looked at me, shrieked and immediately waggled his finger in the "no" sign.  Then he babbled nonsense in a whisper and smiled.  Then he shrieked loudly again, waggled his finger and began to whisper and smile again.  He did this 4 times.  Christian and I were cracking up while innerly cringing at his repeated screams.  Without any words, he was clearly saying, "Okay, let me see if I understand you clearly, screaming is bad, whispering is good, correct?  Okay, let me check one more time, screaming bad, whisper good.  Just to confirm..." and on and on.  He does this a lot, actually.  We'll tell him not to bang on the table at dinner and he'll bang on it, shake his head and finger no and we'll say "that's right, don't do that" and he'll do it again and again while always emphasizing that he understands what you're asking.  It's equal parts aggravating and adorable. 

Today Peter and I went running again and when we came home, he decided it was his turn to push the stroller on a run.  He took his little blue elephant, placed him in the smaller stroller, and pushed him around the back yard.  So adorable.