The Songs He's Singing

January 2011, driving through Angel's Camp

About a month ago, hubby and I were laying in our bed listening to the sounds of Aiden on the baby monitor singing himself to sleep, "Happy Birthday to you baby Aiden, Happy Birthday to yooooouuuu!" We had just taught him the song earlier that night in anticipation of his quickly approaching second birthday. As I lie there I was thinking about how amazing it is that my baby can sing songs now. It's something that just developed in the last few months, I haven't kept track too much of all his developmental milestones in the past year. It's the baby book's fault, I'll blame it because it only has a page to fill out every month for the first year, not the second, third, fourth and so on. So maybe I'll try and do a better job of documenting memories on here because I'm sure one day while Aiden is walking along his college campus checking out the girls he's going to wonder, "At what age did I first learn to sing? And what were my favorite songs? "  Yeah, I'm sure he'll wonder that. :)
Well my sweet boy, your current favorite song happens to be "Daddy-O" by Frances England. You request it every time we get into the car and you sing along excitedly. "D-D-Y...Oh how I love you....Oh how I love you...Daddy O!" You are simply precious. You also love Elizabeth Mitchell's "Kitchen" song where you do a perfect rendition of the, "Shoo ra loos!" Another favorite of yours is "Itsy Bitsy Spider" complete with all the hand motions and you love when we sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star " before bedtime. I must also add that you LOVE singing the Bob the Builder theme song with your hardhat on and an enthusiastic "Yes we can!" at the end. Even though before I had a child I swore up and down that I would never use the TV as a babysitter from time to time and my views on childhood commercialism are completely anti-television and electronic games, I'm only human and a momma needs her peaceful showering/getting ready time in the mornings :)
I'm always feeling like there are so many things I want to teach him that it makes my head spin. I never feel like I am teaching him enough because he absorbs everything so quickly and is able to learn so much all at once. He amazes me. Lately, we have been going through a wonderful book I received as a gift from a good friend for when I was beginning to teach pre-school. It's called Round and Round the Garden and other Action Songs. It's an action song book with all the classics like, "The Wheels on the Bus",  "Five Little Ducks", "I'm a Little Teapot" and many more that I hadn't even heard of until now. The book has beautiful illustrations and diagrams showing the exact hand motions that go along with each song. It's brilliant and we use it all the time! Through using actions songs for learning, you can teach so many things such as letters, numbers, new words, animal sounds, body parts, fine movements and so much more!

When you go over to our piano and request a song for Mommy to play it's always, "Jesus Loves You." I play and we sing it together. You almost have that one down pat too. When we are just hanging out at home, we listen to Pandora's Music Together station and some of you're favorites to dance to are, "Bo Diddley Beat", "If You're Happy and You Know It" and another Brazilian song, (Don't know the name) of one of the Putumayo World Music for kids albums that we love. We heart the Putumayo collection. It exposes us to many different languages, melodies, rhythms and beats from various cultures around the world. It also gives us a break from the typical kid songs and after a while you sound like you can speak 5 other languages, (even though you can't) just by singing along with the songs :)
Some of your other all-time favorite music to grove to is the Fiddle and Drum albums from mommy's Music Together collection from my pre-school teaching days. "Clap Your Hands", "Biddy Biddy" and you sure can shake that little booty of yours to "Everybody Loves Saturday Night!"
I hope I can always inspire music in our home throughout your life Aiden. I also hope that during stressful times when we may be on the brink of a meltdown, we remember to turn up the music with song and dance instead. :)