Happiest Child on the Planet

I think we are in the presence of the happiest child on the planet – and once again it all started with the Wii. For Christmas, Michael’s Grandma gave him a copy of Wii Music. He immediately fell in love with the drums. Even though he still likes to just mess around with the menus and bop from activity to activity, he did spend a while taking the drum lessons and learning how to use some of the controls.
After a few weeks of ‘practice’ with the Wii, Michael decided it was time to beg for ‘real wii drums’. In other words, he wanted a real drum kit. An electronic one just wouldn’t do. I guess mostly because it didn’t look anything like the drums on the game.

Steve, being the wonderful father he is, sacrificed one of his guitars to trade for the drum kit. His Mom (the same Grandma that gave Michael the Wii music game) chipped in the difference. They hadn’t said anything to Michael about getting the drum kit, but when Steve was leaving with the guitar, Michael asked him where he was going. Steve told him he was going to the music store. Michael’s immediate answer was that ‘Daddy is going to the music store to get me a real Wii drum kit!”. I guess he was right!

When Steve got home and brought in the high hat cymbal, Michael was literally dancing around it in excitement. Even though he wanted the drum kit, I don’t think he was really expecting one to appear in his house. Michael was supposed to stay upstairs with his Uncle and Grandma while Steve put the whole kit together. He was so excited he just had to keep running downstairs to check on the progress. I don’t think he’s ever been so excited about something.

The best part of all was when he immediately was able to generalize the lessons from the video game to the real drum. He sat right down and knew how to work the foot pedals, and what each of the parts was called. It was so exciting to see! He didn’t quite get to bed on time last night and I’ll give you one guess as to what he wanted to do first thing this morning.