Music In Our House

One of the most common things that mothers of young children will say is that they're singing Nursery Rhymes all the time. They no longer know what the latest releases are but they know all the variations of "The Wheels On The Bus".

I'm like that too but I also try to share the music that I loved as a child, with Aaron and Adrian. When I was around Aaron's age, four and a half, all the music came from a records that my parents had. The record player was an extremely precious possession so we weren't allowed near it but my parents were more than happy to oblige us with whichever record we wanted to listen to.

Amongst the many records, I remember three favorites: 1) A Harry Belafonte album (but we only wanted to listen to the Banana Boat Song), 2) A Boney M Album (entire thing) and finally, 3) A children's one that had "She'll Be Coming 'Round The Mountain" as the first song. My mother must have been trying to share her old favorites with us because we know all the Elvis songs too.

With Aaron, I made a lot of CDs of all my favorite songs, including those from my childhood. So, he's very familiar with the Banana Boat Song, Elvis was an early favorite of his and he was singing "If You Want To Be Happy (For The Rest Of Your Life)" when he was two and a half. He was like a little old men and a source of great entertainment for all his grand aunts and uncles when it came to singing them a song.

I haven't been able to do the same for Adrian because Aaron has been monopolizing the CD Player and we listen to Jurassic Joe and his dinosaur songs most of the time. So, Adrian is good at those. Or so I thought.....

"Tik Tok" by Ke$ha came on the radio and all of a sudden, both Aaron and Adrian are bopping to it. Aaron can sing along! I don't even really know it. So, I eventually find out that not only do they know KeSha, they know Usher! Specifically, "DJ Got Us Falling In Love Again". Just imagine a baby voice, with baby pronunciation singing "Eyes eyes eyes..."

Guess what Richard has been doing whenever it was his turn to watch them??

I don't have a problem with it although, now that I think of it, I haven't exactly listened or examined the lyrics yet. Who knows what they could be singing about! Kids don't go into details anyway, they just look cute singing.

Meanwhile, I've been going through a Muppets phase - something I missed during my own childhood. Those guys were cool! And look, here they are with Harry Belafonte:



I want to balance their exposure to music to include more classical pieces, and I have tried (even with Adrian), but they just don't take to it as willingly or as rapidly. *sigh* Well, I suppose I can't have them liking everything that I like....