Museum Monday (Kinda)

OK, it's been quite a while since M and I were off to a museum, but that doesn't mean we haven't been experiencing high culture.

Shortly before we went back to the States for the holidays I had the good fortune to observe M's ballet class.  Every Wednesday, M has a ballet lesson at school.  This is an optional "extra" that I'm really glad we opted for.  Our little fellow is all about pretending, and this "pre-ballet" class was basically non-stop pretending.  The kids went from pretending they were guessing what Christmas presents were to being cross [angry] giants to being horses to being elves and fairies to throwing snowballs at ice skaters all in the span of about 10 minutes.  Having taken many years of ballet myself I recognized the ballet step at the hear of each of these mini-scenarios.  And was my little boy in his element!  I think we spent just over 150 Euros for the entire school year (September-July), and man, was that money well spent!


After the ballet observation I headed over to the Concertgebouw for a free lunchtime concert.  This was my friend's idea, and I was grateful to have someone orient me to how this works. I enjoyed the string quartet so much that this past week I brought M to the Dutch Concert Choir performing some Rachmaninoff selections.  These lunch time concerts are about a half hour long, so certainly in the spirit of Museum Monday (i.e. short and sweet).  And although in the interest of full disclosure I must inform that M had a lollipop in his mouth for the entire concert, he was very well behaved and seemed to genuinely enjoy himself.  When the concert started he remarked, "it's just like church."  This evening when I asked him point blank if it was fun or boring he said it was fun and he wanted to go back when the orchestra was playing.  I may take him back in a couple of weeks for an open rehearsal, even though it will mean missing school.

We've also seen a little bit of theater.  While we were in Massachusetts we caught one of the final show's of threesixty Theatre's Peter Pan.  It was spectacular!  M was engaged through the entire performance and is still talking about it.  And, although it hardly classifies as high art, we introduced M to an important part of his cultural heritage, the Christmas Panto.  He can't get enough.