Harvest Day Parade

Some days I stress out about our school choice decisions. And some days I stress out about how hard it can be to get things done and work to improve a school.

And some days, I am so happy and proud to be a part of it.

Wordless Wednesday - little football fan

newest mimic

I've been giving Andrew short shrift lately, but we'll make that up soon. For now, I'm just wondering if we have a new mimic in the house.

Andrew has been following Elizabeth's path in music, with the exception of not getting quite a much kid's music and getting far more exposure to popular music at an earlier age. He happily sings Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Itsy Bitsy Spider, and the ABC song. He loves Music Together and requests/demands we play the CD or sing the songs. I'll often hear him singing to himself songs from Music Together, and he loves dancing. He might even have more moves than Elizabeth.

We keep one Sesame Street CD in the car, and he often demands Elmo. Sometimes when Daddy gets a little tired of the kid music and changes from CD to radio, hoping no one will notice, we'll hear a little voice pipe up from the back, "Hey! Elmo!" which is the cue to change it right back, thank you very much. (Elmo only sings one or two songs on the whole CD, and we rarely watch Sesame Street, but that Elmo has a magnetic appeal - his presence on diapers probably has something to do with the indoctrination since birth).

So last night, Eizabeth, Andrew and I were eating dinner, when he suddenly yelled, completely out of the blue, "COLD AS ICE!" Dumbfounded, I just looked at him, then hesitantly sang, you're as cold as ice, you're willing to sacrifice our love? Which caused Elizabeth to say, hey, cold as ice/sacrifice: that rhymes!

Rich was out to dinner with friends, so I texted him and asked if he'd been listening to Foreigner lately, but he was as puzzled as me. I doubt Gee is that into Foreigner, so it's a mystery. We weren't actually eating anything cold, nor was there any ice on the table. Who knows?

But I thumbed through my iphone and not surprisingly I have it on there, so we cranked up the music and boogied our way through clean up and had a dance party before the bath. Which is not a bad way to end the day.

You know how some poeple don't like musicals because they think it's silly that people randomly burst into song and dance? Yeah, that's kind of my ideal life.

And the dancing queen herself - ugh, I should use this picture on AwwwClutter to demonstrate how awful our hallway is right now!

Musicology

I've been planning since this blog began of doing a post on Elizabeth's and her music - from the time (at 6 months old) we drove 2 hours singing The Wheels on the Bus over and over and over again to keep her from crying, to the endless loop of Old McDonald (~12 months), to Music Together (1-3 years old), Sesame Street CDs (2-3), our salvation of discovering how kid friendly the Beatles are (2.5+), to her love of Michael Jackson (3.5-now), our girl has got it going on when it comes to music.

She's always been a highly verbal kid, and has picked up (from Daddy) an ability to mimic. So, it was a given that she'd pick up song lyrics. We listen to music a lot, either on the radio, our ipods/CDs, or satellite TV. And we don't really censor our music much. She's not listening to heavy metal (from Rich) or too-explicit lyrics, but she is exposed to everything. And we are mostly ok about that. It's very cute to have the radio on in the car and hear her singing along. One of her first favorite songs was The Plain White Ts 1,2,3,4: There's only 1 thing 2 say those 3 words 4 you, I love you! She also loves The Black Eyed Peas, and it is a little disquieting to hear her singing My Humps (my humps, my humps, my lovely lady lumps), but it is a catchy song. I chose to believe The Black Eyed Peas are fairly intelligent people and have a healthy sense of humor about themselves and most of it is toungue in cheek, but maybe I am just deluding myself. She - and her friends - love all the Peas catchy songs. She loves Pink (Get This Party Started). It's also kind of surprising to realize how kid-friendly Culture Club's music is. When I was a young teenager, Boy George was shocking and the potential ruin of society. Now, he's kind of quaint and the music is charming.

Of course we worry now at pop cutlure, how over-sexualized it is, how nothing is innocent, how much raunch there is in every day life. But still, a broad exposure to a variety of music works for us.

Rich has been a wee bit disturbed by Katy Perry and her California Girls, a song Elizabeth adores. Daisy Dukes, bikinis on top. I asked her what Daisy Dukes were and she said, don't be silly mommy, daisies are flowers.

Luckily, her tastes are still fairly wide, and she still loves listening to Sesame Street CDs and Backyardigans and Music Together, and it's really just the music - she's not exposed to any of the videos, or Disney tween shows and has no idea who Miley Cyrus or Hannah Montana is, and we'll keep it that way. But she does love some Miley songs, and heck, so do I - they're catchy and singable and have a good beat.

Which brings us to yesterday and grocery shopping. HT has small little kiddie carts for kids to push which have, until recently, been the bane of our existence. She'd always want to push them and have products on her cart but halfway through the store she'd get bored. Or, she'd ram my ankles with the fricking cart, causing crippling pain. But she's now old enough to really handle the cart herself, and she enjoyed trailing along with me, putting the interesting purchases (cookies, fruit) in her cart.

We rounded a corner and crossed in front of a 20 something woman shopping with her boyfriend, who saw Elizabeth pushing her cart and smiled at how charming she looked and exchanged a glance with her boyfriend. But then, my proud mommy moment instantly shifted. HT was playing Party in the USA by Miley Cyrus over the speakers, and the young woman's indulgent smile turned into a look of alarm as she heard my sweet girl singing at the top of her lungs (with accompanying gyrations):

I put my hands up
they're playing my song,
butterflies fly away
nodding my head like yeah,
moving my hips like yeah!

Wordless Wednesday - bedtime

I can never quite manage Wordless Wednesday properly as I think everything needs a caption. I could do a whole series of pics on what we find when we go in at our bedtime for the final check on Elizabeth. That's a marker (!) in the left hand (she's a lefty) and there's a small notebook still clutched in her right.

No like

It's happened. We've made the leap from generally correct spoken English to picking up habits of speech. And it just happened this week.

Here for example, is what happened to Elizabeth at school today, verbatim: "well, I was like doing an art project and bent down when my paper like fell on the ground and when I stood back up I like banged my head on the desk."

AAAAUUUUGGGHHHH. Seriously, I did not think this started at this age! But Rich and I both say it (though generally not 3 times in one sentence), and, like, you know, it's not the worst bad speech mannerism she could pick up, you know?

We'll keep our eyes and ears on this.

Meanwhile, said sentence explains why she came home with a "head injury report" from school today, but all appears fine. School seems to be going well these days - I think we did just have a hurdle to overcome, and now things have settled down. Fingers crossed it like stays like ok.