Ah, the joys of a "musical" family

Princess (4 years old) was clamoring to “help” me in the kitchen as I prepared eggs for breakfast. As she dragged the chair over to the counter I hear her humming a snappy little tune … Brrrrrrrum ba bum brrrrrrrum ba bum da da da da dum. A quick musical scan of my cerebral files reveals that she is humming a phrase from “76 Trombones” (…thundering, thundering, all along the way ….)

We listened to the cd soundtrack in the car the other day and the boys pulled out the movie to watch last week so we are now in full musical mode for a while in our house. I love it!

This incident reminded me of two other smiles from the past that were brought on by watching one of my favorite musicals or listening to the soundtracks in the car. Before I must give a quick "disclaimer" regarding Meredith Wilson's The Music Man. I do use the skip button when we listen so we don't have to repeatedly hear the Lord's name in vain (in Iowa Stubborn) and we ALWAYS skip over The Sadder But Wiser Girl (let me tell you THAT is not what I want my three boys meditating on). As far as "Shipoopi" goes, we usually skip it, not because any of us can really figure out what the "philosophy" is but because the word shipoopi invariably starts a string of toddler/grade school/junior high humor that I would just as soon do without. There, now on to the other cute stories...

**July 17, 2004

My 3rd son (4) was standing by me as I put the computer disk into the CD-ROM drive.

“I want the Fresno one,” he said to me.

I didn’t hear it clearly at first so I asked him to repeat himself and then I still had no clue what computer game he was talking about.

Apologizing to him I told him I didn’t know what CD he wanted. It turned out he didn’t want a game but rather a music CD that we had been listening to in the car the day before.

“You know, Mom. The one that goes “I hope I get my raisins from Fresno ….”” (which, in case you haven’t seen The Music Man lately is from the song The Wells Fargo Wagon).

Hmmm, looks like that movie has a special appeal to 4 year olds.


*** April, 2004
We just put the video The Sound Of Music in for our sick kids to watch. Remember how it begins with quite a few aerial shots of the mountains and the Austrian countryside and then finally closes in on Julie Andrews who begins to sing "The hills are alive with the sound of music"? Well there is (almost) no sound during those opening shots ... just some birds and then gradually some more nature sounds and then the music softly begins. Well my kids are always telling me to turn up the volume at the beginning and I tell them that it is on, there just isn't any sound in the mountains right then. Well right after Julie Andrews sang her opening line #2 son turns to me and says "You know when the mountains were so quiet? That's when they were DEAD!" It was just too cute.