I am off to my Mother’s Eightieth Birthday Ladies Lunch.  My kids are pissed they are not invited and I am pissed I have to be in a car with my sister for seven hours today just for lunch.  I know, my Mom will be eighty once. Doesn’t make her any easier to tolerate.

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For his birthday Ryan wanted a MP3 player. My husband had one that he received from an office Christmas gift years ago that he never used. Ryan has fallen in love with it.  He has morphed into DJ Ryan Red, the name he chose for himself.  He wants to grow his hair long like Rapunzel, with glowing red hair, and be a DJ these days.  We have the body of a boombox we bought for a satellite radio before Aaron was born. The radio broke but the boombox works with Ryan’s MP3 player. Every night Ryan creates a dance party of new dance music, old punk, classic rock, do wop, whatever he has on the MP3 player.  Songs off I-Tunes have become currency in our house for appropriate behavior and for being helpful.

My husband does not dance. He doesn’t dance because of torture inflicted by a babysitter when he was three or four years old. He never ever danced.  Heck, he barely bopped his head on stage with the band. It was something I accepted about him because no one ever wants to inflict more trauma on the ones they love.

Ryan and his DJ Ryan Red bit has us as a family dancing often.  Usually bedtime is a super chaotic time around here with both boys running around, not getting ready for bed, and just general mayhem.  Ahhhhhhhh but the promise of dance party bedtime gets the boys brushing teeth and showering to the beat. They channel their wild before bed energy into dancing AND getting the bedtime stuff done. We usually finish the party with a slower beat song and a little light reading. It is so fun.

Tonight when we were having dance night my husband started dancing too.  Yes, dancing.  He was laughing and dancing with the kid who was not in the shower. After about five or six songs everyone collapsed on my bed out of breath. I wanted at that moment to bottle the good feelings to save for a bad day when everything was going wrong.  I looked at all of my redheads and said I wish I could save this moment to replay another day because this was as perfect and they all smiled back.