Parenting pop quiz

[dwenius]

Calvin likes to be sung songs before bed. Unfortunately, most children's songs (and many others) have nonsense syllables in them, so when he asks for them by name, it can get complicated. Try to guess what song Calvin means when he says the following (easy ones first):

• Cradle and all


• Fidlee-i-Oh!


• Rolling home!


• What dee see?


• Fair Jata


• Jelly Stream!


• Up a Rail?


• Manadeedee!


• What Where? What Where? (trick question)


• Tickle-tee-tin? (Bonus round. Consider the parent in question)

Comments

[dawn-guy.livejournal.com]

Rock-a-Bye Baby
Someone's in the Kitchen with Dinah
This Old Man
The Bear Went Over the Mountain
many vacant looks
Tom Lehrer's Irish Ballad

no signs that I can spot of Hush Little Baby, Moonshine Lullaby, Liverpool Lullaby, Swingin on a Star (a favourite with mine for swings, not bedtime), All Through the Night, or Highland Lullaby ("Sleep softly my bairnie").

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

You can spot the singing parents right off. Correct on all.

many vacant looks
* Fair Jata - as noted elsewhere, Frere Jaques
* Jelly Stream! - Row Row Row your boat!
* Up a Rail? - I didn't mean for this to be a trick question, but this is his other name for "I've been working on the railroad" besides Fiddlee-i-o.
* Manadeedee! - "Manah manah, deet-deeeee, dee-dee-dee!" or whatever it is actually called.
* What Where? What Where? (trick question) - "What will you wear Jenny Jenkins?", while he likes because it has the nonsense part, "I'll buy me a roly-poly, tildy-toldy, seek-a-double, use-a-cozza rollllllll, to find me."

I do sing Hush Little Baby (and Turaluralura, come to think of it), but he doesn't ask for those by name yet. Sadly, I don't know the others you mention. Time for some music research.

[anavolena.livejournal.com]

Fair Jata

Frere Jacques!

Duh

[kmhoofnagle.livejournal.com]

I do sing to my kid and these are mostly a mystery.

This old man and rockaby baby are the only obvious ones.
Jelly stream should have been obvious but somehow wasn't.

Note, Betsy, almost age 3 is only just now learning to say some song names. Scarborough Fair has been a favorite Thing Without a Name for ages. I think she likes Kumbahyah (sp?) only because it has always been easy to ask for by name.

Re: Duh

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

He got both of us for a while this weekend, asking for "follow fly? Balla fly?" which turned out to be "there was an old lady who swallowed a fly." He insisted that "papa turna mew-sook back on!" during dinner last night, and he won't leave my guitars alone, which is cute but leads to a lot of time spent tuning.

Sometimes the language learning can be maddening, because he will use some ridiculously advanced sentence structure with 23 month old diction, so you lose the one word you really need to make sense of things. Such as: "Mama, I would like some more krzploof, please!" And you say, "krzploof?" and he says "Ok! Ok! More?" and it's just tragic in a completely endearing way. We all keep trying.

Also, Betsy is absolutely angelic in the recent photos, and look spookily like you. Virginia also a cutie, in that gnarly newborn way. Hope y'all are continuing to be well!

[louiseroho.livejournal.com]

Try playing They Might Be Giants for the kid.
Then you'll get some really exotic requests like
"Fibber Music", "Bo-Bo-Bo" and "The One with Cows"