American in Spain

Dancing Baby

April 15, 2010
Dancing Nora

Within the past week or so, we have noticed a new behavior in Nora. Whenever she hears music, from classical to bagpipes to hip-hop to rock, she raises her arms in the air and moves her body around. She's dancing! At first I was skeptical, because A) no one taught her this, and B) she moves around weird like that sometimes when there's no music. But after running a week of tests with various stimuli, I'm convinced that she really is responding to the rhythm of the music. It also helps that when she's doing her best to remain standing up, because her balancing muscles are not yet up to the task, her hips and torso sway around like she's a drunken Elvis. I know that dancing can be found in every human culture, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite this...innate. Turn up your speakers before pressing play. And feel free to dance along with her.

On the other hand, I was spinning her mother around the dance floor up to five days before Nora was born, so perhaps she got some in utero rhythm.