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Once More With Feeling
drop-in centre canada
(Sep.01.10)
When you have a baby you have to sing. Much like changing diapers, it’s non-negotiable. Babies love music. All music. You, the parental unit, must provide this. So sing. The lyrics don’t matter. Just sing about anything.
My wife is great at this. She always sings random cute songs to our daughter based on their current activity. My songs, like my singing voice, were flat, out-of-key and always a variation of the classic Spider-Man theme.
Diaper change. Diaper change.
Time for Daddy to diaper change
Wipe your poop. Clean your butt.
Re-apply rash cream.
Look out!
Here comes more poop.
Realizing my decidedly thin musical repertoire, we signed up for a music class. Every Tuesday, my daughter and I found ourselves in a church basement alongside a dozen other babies and our instructor with his acoustic guitar. Among the parents, I was the only father.
The class began with a song saying hello to all the babies and briefly acknowledging the presence of the parents. It wasn’t our music class after all. Though, it was the parents who provided the singing. If you can call unenthused, pitchless mouthing of words singing.
Among classics like the "Hokey Pokey" and "London Bridge" there was a whole set of new songs I had never heard. Songs like "Zoom Zoom Zoom", "All the Babies Love Bananas" and "Baby Shark," which is the jovial retelling of a traumatic near-miss shark attack.
A lot of the songs required choreography. The movements were quite simple and easy to perform. That is, until I realized, I was supposed to aid my daughter in performing them and not showing off my own singing/moving coordination.
Midway through the class the instructor would empty a large duffle bag of instruments onto the floor. Time for a baby jam session — a.k.a. the babies salivating and gnawing on various musical instruments. Occasionally one of the babies would shake a maraca before placing it into their mouth.
Many of the babies seemed oblivious to where they were. These babies slept, breastfed or cried for the hour. Not my daughter. She loved music class. With each class her enthusiasm only grew. Her little head bobbled to the music not unlike a bobblehead or perhaps Stevie Wonder. During some songs she would stand up and bounce, her knees syncopating to the tunes.
The class always ended with the unfurling of a giant rainbow-coloured parachute. The babies watched as the parachute rose and descended above them. Their tiny little pupils engorged, the babies just blissed out like they were at a Pink Floyd laser light show.
When it was over, we’d sing a goodbye song and leave with our tired babies. To this day, weeks since my last music class I’ll still randomly hum a few bars from a music class song. And we still sing them to our daughter. We just don’t pay some stranger to show up with a guitar.
Distracted Daddy is a working father with a one-year-old daughter, a focused wife and a flatulent pug. When he’s not distracted he blogs about poop, parenting and other things at distracteddaddy.com.
This is the first of five posts by Distracted Daddy over the month of September. Check back next Wednesday for more!