Strong genes! Peta Murgatroyd and Maksim Chmerkovskiy’s 3-year-old son, Shai, has rhythm just like his parents.
“He has started dancing,” the New Zealand native, 34, exclusively told Us Weekly after the Monday, September 28, episode of Dancing With the Stars. “I don’t know if I would call it dancing dancing but he’s trying. He’s 3, so I can’t expect that much but he’s trying to do the Cha Cha right now and he did a little bit of Waltz the other day.”
While the toddler is “having fun” dancing, he also “just doesn’t stop talking,” Murgatroyd joked.
“I’m infatuated with the emotions that he’s experiencing now, like the surprise of something or the sadness of something,” the actress explained to Us. “When he watches a movie now, he can really process what he’s feeling and it’s really fun to watch.”
She and Chmerkovskiy, 40, welcomed their son in 2017. While quarantining with Shai amid the coronavirus pandemic, the couple are having a “really hard” time keeping him busy.
“He’s running amok in the house right now where I’m trying to keep him occupied,” the Faith, Hope and Love star told Us on Monday. “It’s been, like, 10 months since he’s gone to school, so we’re just trying to keep up with the new things that we can get him to do. … He’s happy and healthy, so that’s the main thing.”
Shai has come a long way since March 2018 when Murgatroyd exclusively told Us that it was “too early to tell” if he’d be a dancer.
“He loves music,” the season 22 winner said at the time. “We’re trying to introduce him to that every day. … He sits on our hip and we take him around the room and dance with him.”
As for Murgatroyd’s season 29 celebrity partner, Vernon Davis, the former professional football player, 36, exclusively told Us on Monday that his kids have been asking him to teach them how to dance.
With reporting by Kayley Stumpe
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