In the hours between school pickup and dinner, chaos reigns around here. I offer snacks and open the front door, making shooing motions with my hands. I encourage the kids to decompress after their day of learning. I suggest that they go outside, to march briskly around the grounds, breathing deeply and rhythmically. Or something like that. Capt. Von Trapp would approve, I assure you.

They seem to prefer vegging in front of the TV, and picking fights with one another. When I send them outside, invariably, someone ends up wet, someone ends up stripped down to underpants and/or covered in dirt (and I mean COATED from head to toe) and someone ends up crying.

Today, however, I had my A-game on. Once the outside "play" turned dirty and not-so-fun, I marched my little monsters inside and turned their new keyboard on. That sucker is programmed with 100 favorite tunes, and by golly, we were going to dance and sing. It worked for Fraulein Maria, and that is good enough for me.

We started off with a little Jingle Bells. Oh-ho! That was excellent! We scream-sang Jingle Bells fifteen times until we got bored, and then we moved on to Yankee Doodle. I forgot a lot of the words, but made up for it with interpretive dancing.

My son then requested something uptempo. Living La Vida Loca, the crazy muzak version, proved to be a butt-shaking, arm-flailing, white-man-overbiting good time.

I decided coffee would be a good idea, and left the kids to it. I kid you not - they sang and banged on the keyboard, and performed interpretive dances for a good two hours.

I would have never guessed that a polka would inspire choreography like we had going down in my living room. I laughed myself sick watching my kids perform a manic version of La Cucaracha. I would like to know who in the hell considers "Sakura Sakura" a top 100 favorite? It did inspire some good tai chi-style katas.

There was some raging, unbridled dorkitude going on, and I loved every minute of it. Watching my son, skinny chest heaving with exertion as he rocked out around the living room, I sent out a silent wish that these kids of mine never feel ashamed of expressing themselves, and that they always have this kind of joy and fearless invention.