Why don’t I own the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever? How can I consider my life complete without it?
Confession: I don’t like Dr. Seuss. At least not the beginner reader series Dr. Seuss. I actually can live without Green Eggs and Ham, and The Cat in the Hat is a snoozer. Although, we’ve recently discovered his ABC book, and I have to say, I like the sounds of the words on my tongue, even if they do trip me up a lot.
When I was pregnant with Doodles I read that by reading to/playing music to your child in utereo, s/he will connect to it and respond to it (as proven by the fact that the child will breastfeed more rapidly when they hear the music ex utereo). Doodles has two songs he wants to hear over and over and over again. “Hello Everybody” (from Music Together) and “5 Little Monkeys.” In the car, he demands, “Hello! Hello! Monkeys! Monkeys!” I fear Sugar Face is going to exit the womb, and instead of crying, will simply yell out, “Monkeys!” I’m slowly but surely introducing him to new songs by playing them in the car and saying, “Don’t you love that song? Let’s hear it again!” So as of today, at least, we’ve added “Cows” and “Busy Song!” to our repertoire. Now that I see that this method works, tomorrow we start to introduce the “Told Me Song” and the “Said Song!”
My child has a catch phrase now. Just as Arnold had “Whatch you talkin’ about?” and Joey said, “How you doin’?”, my child will say, with a slight giggle, “That’s funny!” to simply everything. Smack yourself? “That’s funny!” He smacks you? “That’s funny!” Drop something? “That’s funny!” Wake up in the morning? “That’s funny!” See a bus in the road? “That’s funny!” The kid thinks the world is a hysterical place. That is, when he’s not miserable, having a temper tantrum. I guess he’s my kid after all.
That child is obsessed with ice cream trucks. Doesn’t eat ice cream. Doesn’t even like ice cream to come near him. But a few times we’ve seen the ice cream truck in the park and he’s mesmerized by the sound and gets super hyper. Almost daily, he’ll beg me, “Ice cream truck? Ice cream truck?” He calls his toy truck outside his ice cream truck. And on the rare occasion we do see one, the second it drives away, Doodles looks up with me with his big eyes and begs, “More ice cream truck?” If I could conjure up a steady stream of buses, ice cream trucks, and ambulances, he would be the happiest child alive.
