I've Got Something to Sing About

When we recently returned to Music Together after nearly a year off, we weren't so sure Clio liked it. Sure, she no longer seemed to be afraid of the teacher, Kevin, and she was into the hand stamps at the end of class, but during class she would just sit there, sucking her thumb. When it was time to dance, she insisted on being held. When it was time for instruments, she was more interested in choosing them than playing them. But a few weeks into the session, we discovered what she was actually doing in class when she suddenly belted out one of the songs at home: she was listening.

Songs play a big role in her nighttime ritual, and since our made up series of verses to the song Train is a Comin' (as reported on here), we've gone through many phases. Clio will request a song every night for weeks running, and then suddenly, just as I'm thrilling to a song whose words I know by rote and whose notes I can finally kind of hit, she moves on. We've been through Puff the Magic Dragon, The Rainbow Connection, This Land is Your Land, and many, many Christmas songs. I've also been reviving my favorites from grade school, and, like with music class, I finally understood the pattern of song choice when she sang All God's Critters Got a Place in the Choir from top to bottom: she requests a song until she has learned it by heart, then it's time to move on to something new.

With each song, she's enamored with a particular phrase, and this becomes her title of the song: in our current repertoire, Walking in a Winter Wonderland is "dream by the fire," I've Got Something to Sing About is "shout it out," and I Get By With a Little Help From my Friends is "key" (as in "try not to sing out of"). She recently requested the "banana" song, and as with these other key words, I was clearly supposed to know what this meant. As we drove to the airport for our trip to Minnesota, I found myself singing There's No Bananas in the Sky, Chiquita Banana, Yes, We Have No Bananas, Day-Oh, and Yellow Bird (Up High in Banana Tree). None of these was the particular banana song she intended, and as I racked my brain, I came up with something that was, apparently, even better: The Name Game. It's a stretch, but there is a banana in there. We went from Clio-clio-bo-bio to banana-fanna fo-Feleri to me-my-mo-Maddy, and on to Mommy. Clio committed this one, too, to memory, and I actually caught her performing it (to herself, in the mirror) last night while she washed her hands. A note on the first two rounds: there are two Rosa's that work at Clio's day care. Elsie and Oscar are both kids who go there with Clio.

Enjoy.