Some random culture-related and bear-related things:
1. Russell and Silas like to use their K'nex toys to make all kinds of things, but one favorite (especially of Silas') is to put an eye up on a stick, usually with a foot at the bottom. It took us a little while to realize they call this an IPod (eye-pod).
You can see another example here.
2. When Silas went to the emergency room last month to get his chin glued together (see billing peeve here), he was quite the cheerful little patient, spending most of his time singing "I've Been Working on the Railroad" and playing with his dust mite. Nevertheless, the nice emergency room people gave him a stuffed toy. "Would you like to play with Big Bird?" they asked. "Duck!" cried Silas in delight. "He knows Big Bird, doesn't he?" the woman asked David, and when he replied Silas probably hadn't seen Big Bird because we don't watch TV, she was amazed. I'm so proud of my child's ignorance.
3. We spent the first few years of little-kid-dom playing mostly folk, classical, and other gentle music, I suppose so as not to fry their tiny brains or our shattered nerves. Now we're playing more rock music again. Silas has always liked any music (I recall him, as a tiny little guy, waking from a nap to an old party tape of mine playing "Head Like a Hole" by Nine Inch Nails and immediately starting to bob his head to the music), and Russell seems more willing to branch out these days. Today they wanted to hear Piggies (the Beatles song from the White Album) over and over. But anyway, the down side of dragging out more rock music is realizing just how much of it is NOT what you want your little kid singing along with, even by our relatively loose standards. We played a Best Of album of Timbuk3's the other day, and got to the song called (I think) Assholes on Parade, which basically goes "there's assholes in [this], assholes in [that]" for several minutes straight. Once it started playing, David and I looked at each other and decided taking it off would draw more attention to it, since the kids seemed absorbed in something else. But suddenly Russell looked up, wide-eyed, and exclaimed, "They said Russells!" Umm... that's right, honey!
Comments
Another album that we're not going to play for a while is Me, by the Mekons. The song "Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough" has some lyrics that the B*sh junta would *not* approve of:
So it's off to the not-to-be-played-except-on-the-oggOmatic bin for this album, at least until the bears are old enough to not be little profane parrots.