1 Mother 2 Another

The votes are in, and apparently we’re a hip group of mommies who know our
own minds. Last week’s poll focused on your baby’s music, and those who
voted all said Baby gets to listen to whatever you want to have on the
IPOD! No tuning in to the purple dinosaur’s greatest hits, apparently.

I
totally understand where you’re coming from; our generation of parent
seems to be unwilling to give up intricate music and sophisticated lyrics
for Pumpkin, and a whole genre of music affectionately known as Tot Rock
has sprung up in the past few years to meet this need.

Earlier this
year I wrote a blog lamenting the crappy music choices available to babes
these days and said we’d mostly stayed with adult music she seemed to
enjoy bouncing to, with a few notable exceptions (see previous
entry).

But we’ve had friends with great music taste give
us CDs of kids’ music that’s bearable (high praise indeed, I know), and
Madeleine does indeed seem to enjoy songs that are geared specifically
towards the munchkins’ mosh pit, so we’ve girded up our musically snobby
loins and ventured into the multi-billion dollar world of toddler music.

The
verdict? They don’t all suck.











Brady Rymer is apparently a huge hit with the swing set set, and we’ve got
his album
I Found It!. I think it’s great, while Brian is still less
than enthusiastic. Madeleine loves dancing to the title song, while
“Cooking Saturday” and “Under the Bed” are my favorites. This is an easy
CD to put on and enjoy, an infectious selection that you won’t get sick of.

Charity
Kahn and the JAMband is a bit more rockin’, and their
Rock Your Socks Off is definitely for a get-up-and-wiggle kind
of time. “Jump Into the Middle” is a jumpin’, wild good time for everyone
and a great representation of the whole album; not a lot of slowdown time
here, so it’s perfect for getting the energy out with a decent rock-ish
sound.

Our favorite by far though seems to be Justin Roberts.
Definitely more stripped down than the other two artists, his albums have
some real gems for lyrics that will keep adults laughing as well; he’s got
a wry, tongue-in-cheek way of looking at things that kids get and
appreciate without sounding dumbed down. Yellow
Bus is the album we listen to over and over and I find myself
singing it at odd times (and not in an “I hate this and can’t get it out
of my head” way). The title song is a kid’s stoic wait for his school bus
to show up, only to find out 14 anger management- and philosophy-filled
hours later that it’s Saturday. “Tickle My Toes” is a rollicking plea to
get out of the tickling chair and probably Maddie’s favorite song right
now. We don’t have his newest album Meltdown,
but his earlier Way
Out contains the gem adults will love, “Doctor Doctor”, that
starts, “When mom said ‘Ice cream’ I knew something was wrong ‘cause I
knew the short cut and she was taking the long”, and continues with the
kid’s desperate negotiations with the man with the needle.

We’re
still digging through the enormous, lucrative genre we find ourselves
unwillingly a part of. And believe me, for every Justin Roberts I’ve found
there are ten albums I wouldn’t inflict on my neighbors’ annoying dog. You
just gotta brace yourself with a shot of Kool-Aid, put on the headphones,
and do it.

Why is it that most cds of baby music sound as if they were not just written for babies, but written and recorded by babies as well?
 
I received a cd of “Christmas Music for Infants” last month.  Intrigued, I looked at the songs listing: what new songs had been written with the baby POV for Christmas?  “Aren’t Swaddling Clothes Tight”, perhaps, or “Time to Wake Mommy and Daddy”?  Imagine my surprise when I learned that Christmas music for infants is the exact same music adults listen to, with one very important difference; baby Christmas music is played on rinky-dink instruments and about half speed.  Apparently, that’s what makes it baby music.



Have studies been done of which I’m not aware, proving babies don’t have the capacity to listen to and enjoy complex musical arrangements?  Why is the original Mozart composition supposed to be so good for an infant before birth, but must be reduced post-natal day to the melody line played on a cheesy synthesizer?  Will counter-point and multiple strings cause some developmental delay or meltdown that I’m not aware of?
 
Now, I understand that in order to calm a soothing baby, you want slow, low, mellifluous tunes rather than a scorching rock song.  So I do see the reasoning behind some of the baby “Lullaby” albums.  I still say, though, that just because babies can’t vote with their wallet is no reason to skimp on the production values.  After all, mommy and daddy have to listen to the thing over and over again, too.
 
And I recognize the need to choose songs with simple melody lines and lyrics that children can learn quickly so they might sing along, and that having these songs recorded by children will make the music feel more accessible to my daughter.  We’ve got a cd of favorite bible camp songs from my childhood that I already can’t listen to all the way through without feeling a bit of a diabetic coma coming on, but I know when Maddie’s three it’ll probably be on heavy rotation.  And of course we’ve got our Raffi cd that, if Abby’s son Isaiah is any indicator (see previous post) will be with us for years to come.  But at least his songs are interesting and varied, and not played on one plastic Casio!
 
So my husband and I are drawing the line and deciding for ourselves what constitutes “baby” music.
 
First, the lullaby thing.  Early on we knew we wanted to make a lullaby cd a part of Maddie’s nightly routine.  One of the best gifts she was first given was a homemade lullaby cd from our friends Todd and Bev (other parents with impeccable music taste).  The album had Debussy, Saint-Saens, Billy Joel, Sara Mclachlan, and more.  Elated and liberated from the “kids” section of the music store, we used their gift as a jumping-off point and piled additional songs onto her lullaby album, which includes all of the above plus Sara Groves, Ginny Owens, and The Beatles, to name just a few.  And guess what?  Every single song is either instrumental or an actual lullaby.  As a funny side note, I’ve seen Billy Joel’s “Goodnight My Angel” on a few “lullaby” cds, but they are all dumbed-down instrumental versions!  What do people see in his lush piano and subtle but buoyant strings in that piece that will cause an infant to wake screaming?
 
So that solved our nighttime music.  As for the daytime thing, we’ve found a couple of CDs we really love – one is “Catch the Moon” by Lisa Loeb, and the other’s “Stationwagon” by Sara Groves.  “Catch the Moon” is Lisa’s version of a children’s album: just her and her guitar for the most part, singing favorites like “Oh, Susannah” and “Big Rock Candy Mountain”.  We use some songs from it for Maddie’s soothing mix (daytime fussiness solver!) and some for her play mix, when she wants something peppy to jump and roll around to.  “Stationwagon” is billed as an album for parents; it’s all songs Sara wrote in celebration of her two kids, and covers topics like a mother’s worry, the marvel of a sleeping baby, and her desire to raise independent kids – just not too independent.  (She says her husband told her she puts the “mother” in “smother”).  Her lullaby “Morning Will Be On the Other Side” is on Maddie’s lullaby CD and is one of our favorites.
 
And in case the classical section seems intimidating, start with easy ones like Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf”, written by him to teach children about the instruments of the orchestra, or Saint Saen’s “Carnival of the Animals”.  Both have a story narration to them, the latter written by the funny poet Ogden Nash, and are short and fun to listen to.

We’ve got other CDs – the Raffi, for example – but these are a couple gems we found and I wanted to pass on.  And if you have a gem of your own, by all means let me know!  Pass it on!  We say, throw out the cheesy synthesizer music and raise your child on the classics the way they were originally written! 

After all, a child raised on the Beatles and U2 is a child raised right, or so says my husband.

You know you’re a parent when you hear “Beluga” and don’t automatically think “caviar.”  My girlfriend Abby has a few thoughts on the subject of that baby-culture phenomenon/parental lifesaver known as Raffi – click to read more and enjoy!

Jennifer

My sister Jess gave us a copy of Raffi's album "Baby Beluga" claiming that her friends with children purported that the title song had magical properties. We tried it out one day while stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic at the Lincoln tunnel with a screaming baby Isaiah in the back seat of the car. My friend, Meg, was also in the back seat and had exhausted her extensive bag of baby entertainment tricks. For anyone who has experienced the screaming baby in the car, I need not tell you how incredibly stressful it is, especially when it is your first child and you are sure that you are causing permanent damage. For the rest of you, may you be spared the feeling of helplessness behind the wheel along with the tense shoulders and headache. It seemed like nothing we could do would soothe the baby, short of stopping the car, plucking him from the offending seat and comforting him, preferably by ripping open my blouse and letting him nurse. Paul was inspired by our desperation to pop Raffi into the cd player, and soon Isaiah quieted, much to our amazement. Mind you, it was only the “Baby Beluga” song that worked. As soon as "Biscuits in the Oven" came on, Isaiah he started crying again. For 30-40 minutes, we listened to the song on loop until we had to decide which was worse: the song or crying. The repetition cemented the lyrics into our mushy parent brains.

Those lyrics came in useful soon after that car "ride" through the Lincoln tunnel, on our first big trip to Vermont. It was Memorial Day weekend and Isaiah was 5 months old. As dawn broke one morning at my dad's house, I sleepily nursed Isaiah in bed. After he finished nursing, he started shaking and trying to get his breath. I woke up my husband with four heart-stopping words: "The baby's not breathing." Paul administered CPR and suctioned out Isaiah's nose with the blue bulb syringe. When we could hear him breathing again, we grabbed our bags and raced to the ER, jittery with adrenaline and fear. Hours later, the doctors could find nothing wrong with Isaiah except for a bad cold. Still, he was checked in to the Rutland hospital for 24-hour observation. Outside of the procedure room of the pediatric ward, Paul and I waited for the nurse and technician to take chest x-rays of our child. We responded to Isaiah's cries by doing the only thing we could think of-- singing "Baby Beluga" at the top of our lungs. This time the crying didn't stop, but it calmed us to do something, even if it meant making complete and utter fools of ourselves. At least Isaiah could hear our voices and know that we were nearby. (Happily, the incident turned out to be a febral or fever-induced seizure-- terrifying for the parents, but harmless for the baby. And, if you are wondering, we didn't need to do CPR. Isaiah would have begun breathing normally on his own after the seizure had passed.)

Isaiah has outgrown the seizures, but not his love for Baby Beluga. After a year or so of its absence, there has been a resurgence of the song in our household. Isaiah recently turned 3 and has a cd player on which he listens to cds during his quiet time. (He gave up naps just before baby Joshua arrived on the scene.) The favorite cd? You guessed it, Baby Beluga. For days after he got the cd player, I could hear him in his room as he carefully listened to the song over and over again, teaching himself the words. Now he sings/blurts it everywhere he goes. Sometimes Paul and I join in, which inspires baby Joshua to coo. Just in time. We've got some long car rides coming up.