Varied Musical Tastes

In the continuing theme of moving to Texas, I have put together a "Texas Tour" playlist on my iPod, completely made of songs about Texas places. Kit originally had the basic idea to do a Texas mix, but it turned into a fun little project for me. Most of the songs are pretty mellow, and we listen to it sometimes during bath time. The playlist features things like Patsy Cline singing "San Antonio Rose" and Arlo Guthrie singing "Streets of Laredo". Claire does not react much to those particular songs, but she seems to enjoy "Galveston", of which we have on old Gordon Calcotte country/surf version and a nice newer alt rock version by some band called Sparklehorse. Claire will sometimes say, "Let's sing about Galveston!" She also seems to enjoy the Lightnin' Hopkins blues song, "Goin' to Dallas", of which she will sometimes say, "That was a good one" when it is finished. Then again, these are two of my favorites, so maybe she is just tuning into that.

But Claire's real favorite music is The Countdown Kids and their renditions of toddler classics like "Old McDonald Had a Farm", "The Wheels on the Bus", and "Frere Jaques". She tries to sing along and occasionally clap. The Countdown Kids helped make the six-hour car trip back from Florida back to Atlanta in December more bearable by just keeping Claire occupied for a couple of hours. She also seems to like The Wiggles, who sometimes accidentally appears on our TV after Calliou or Curious George, but Kit and I try to avoid them just because they are kind of creepy and annoying.

Claire can even sing a couple of songs somewhat successfully all by herself, such as "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". It's just so sweet to see her sing; she concentrates real hard to remember the words, and she gets a big smile on her face when she finishes the song.

Barney for President

Tonight we watched the news coverage of the 2008 Iowa presidential caucus over dinner. There was a lot of talk about the race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination.

Claire was apparently paying attention, because after dinner, as she was playing with her Barney the Dinosaur stuffed animal, she started saying, "Barack Obarney! Barack Obarney!" over and over. She would do well in an actual caucus meeting.

Goodbye, High Chair

Claire has been recently resisting sitting in her high chair. In the last day or two as we started to put her in her high chair for a meal, she started to specifically ask to sit in a regular chair. "I want to sit there!", she says, pointing at one of the normal adult chairs. So we tried it out a couple of times, and Claire did just fine. We use one of Kit's big, thick pathology books as a booster to make things a little easier, but even that is optional. She doesn't mind reaching up high to grab her food, and she seems to revel in how big and independent she is becoming.

So today, as part of our massive and ongoing cleanup and de-cluttering efforts, we moved the high chair down into the basement "loading zone" area to eventually donate or sell. It's yet another step to Claire gradually becoming a big kid, and perhaps a fitting way to start off the new year.