Thursday, October 29, 2009

Song Birds

Someone in our house is always singing. People may mock my horrific singing voice, but it somehow soothes the kids, strange creatures that they are. While traveling last summer, we discovered that when all else fails, I need to sing. We survived an otherwise tortuous drive through southeastern Ohio back roads thanks to my skills at concocting a 20+ minute medley of children's songs. R took note, and when we got home from vacation, any time both boys started crying she would nag, "Mom, you need to sing."

R unfortunately inherited both my singing voice and my incessant need to sing. She is always belting out some song loudly and off-key. After spending months admonishing Jeff and me when we changed the lyrics to songs, she has started doing the same thing. It is hilarious to hear what she comes up with.

She is not the only singing child. We discovered last weekend that M is a singer too. His favorite song is "Itsy, Bitsy Spider" and last weekend we got out a toy that played it along with two other songs. As inevitably happens when we get out a new toy, L and R spent the first half hour fighting over it. Once they had battled to boredom and moved on, M moved in. He had been studying them, and he didn't even waste time playing the other songs. He sat down, hit the button for "Itsy, Bitsy Spider," and started singing. And he did it over and over again until he realized I was watching. Then he was embarassed, picked up the first toy he could find, and stuck it in his mouth.

L is not there with the singing, but he excels at clapping. His favorite song is "If You're Happy and You Know It," and I sang it in a fit of desperation last Monday night when both boys were miserably sick and screaming. L reluctantly stopped screaming and started clapping along. However, while clapping, he shook his head "no." It looked like he was thinking, "I will clap, because that is what I am supposed to do, but I am not happy about it!"

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