i had an awesome day yesterday, courtesy of music.
i kept the twits home yesterday again, instead of going out for big fun, since we’re on our second cold of the season already, but they must have been feeling better because they weren’t whiny and didn’t need a nap for the first time in maybe two weeks. i managed to keep them occupied with quiet stuff all day, legos, coloring, cleaning, cooking, (ask me about my leftover-blueberry-bagels-and-cinnamon-pecan-donuts-and-eggnog-and-rhubarb bread pudding. i’m a genius!) and we listened to a bunch of good music all day. every now and then one or the other of them would hear a song they liked, sing along with me, and then want to hear it a few more times and have me teach them the words.
i hit the iowa city public library a few weeks ago, and they have an awesome selection of music. i picked up a bunch of albums that i now need to own, like “blues rags and hollers” by koerner, ray and glover. spazmonkey is really rankled that he can’t speak peckerwood – he desperately wants to sing along with “linin’ track,” but can’t understand half the words, and i couldn’t help him much (apparently, 75% caucasian isn’t good enough, because i couldn’t understand much of what they were singing, either.) seriously, he was transfixed the first time he heard it, and has demanded to hear it over and over and over (and there are only three other songs that, between him and dramaqueen, have shared that honor – madonna’s “i’ll remember,” erasure’s “always,” and nirvana’s “in the pines.” if you’ve never heard a three year old do a kurt cobain impression, you’re really missing out. positiverolemodel almost forgave me for the madonna and erasure after that.) so i found the lyrics online, and now i’m debating whether or not to share with him. actually, i know i will, because having the kids sing along with me is too damn much fun, but it’s going to be interesting when he sings it at school. then again, maybe they’d like the idea of moses smotin the water with a two-by-four. yay, god!
trogdor always likes it when i sing to him and dance with him – and seriously, there is nothing more gratifying than singing and dancing for a baby and having him look at you adoringly like you are THE MOST AMAZING SINGER EVER. it’s going to be a sad, sad day when he realizes i kinda suck. but he was really impressed with everyone singing together. it probably won’t be long before he’s trying to sing. after months of refusing to tackle that “babbling by six months of age” milestone, he suddenly made his peace with consonants two days ago, and just started tearing up some syllables. “da da DOO duh-da zha BEBEBEBEBEBBEBE ga thpppfffttt!” and once it started, it didn’t stop. for the first 24 hours or so, he at least shut up for food, but now not even that makes him pause. i’ve had to go back to wrapping a burp cloth around him for every bottle like he’s a damned newborn, since sucking and talking at the same time doesn’t leave much room for swallowing. i did NOT sign up for another motormouth, dammit.
then, there’s my banjo. oh, lordy, i have found my instrument. after playing the fiddle and mandolin, and dabbling a bit in the upright bass and guitar – and further back in history, the piano and recorder – i am HOME. it’s the first time in my 31 years (26 of which have included some form of music instruction) that i’ve really made steady, noticeable progress in skills, that i’ve been able to (or finally really tried to) memorize songs, that i can just sit down, play a song by myself and sound GOOD. i’ve puzzled over the things that make those other instruments difficult, but really, all banjo-player jokes aside (how do you know the stage is level? the banjo player is drooling out of both sides of his mouth! why do banjo players wear kilts? the sound of the zipper scares the sheep!***) there are plenty of things that make the banjo difficult, too. it’s not that it’s easier, it’s just RIGHT. it feels right. nodamnsense – player of guitar and banjo, dabbler in fiddle and mandolin – is about as good as articulating it as i am; after a long pause, he says, “yeah. it’s just FUN.” (and i’m not exactly making a case for the cessation of banjo-player mockery, am i?)
then, there’s evilgremlin. calling him “blunt” is kind of like calling south park or david allen coe “a little off-color” instead of “horrifyingly tasteless.” this is the kid who once asked me to pull my shirt down over my pregnant belly because it was “kind of disgusting.” when i explained that i wasn’t about to replace my outgrown XL maternity shirts in the last two weeks of the pregnancy, he helpfully suggested that i not leave the house so as not to gross anyone out.
so you know this kid tells it like it is. and when he got home from school, and heard me playing “clinch mountain backstep” on my banjo, he said, “mom? you sound really great on your banjo. i mean, that’s a cool song, but you’re playing it REALLY well. it sounds awesome.”
i. rule.
this early-morning post brought to you by the fact that trogdor finally caught the cold, and a runny nose makes a baby puke. sometimes at inconvenient hours. like 11 PM. and 3 AM. but hey, at least HE’S happy after he pukes! it’s the one drawback to my favorite season, fall, aka, whythefuckdoihavewhitecarpet.
***(okay, so that was originally a crack at scotsmen. but thanks to nodamnsense, it’s now a banjo-player joke. rocking the utility kilt, keeping it real.)
