This is a true story. While Fia was in the womb, a friend of Lill's came to visit with a date. His date was a psychic. (Ugh!) And we were introduced, and like everyone that came into Lill's for those 9 months, Trelle mentioned how I was expecting. After having met the psychic for all of 3 minutes, she informed me that my child was going to love music.
I still doubt her ability. Maybe she saw me tapping to whatever was playing (I was because I wasn't interested in what she was saying) or whatever. But she was right.
At 3 years old, Fia can sing, and does... a lot. She likes kid songs, like Row, row, row your boat and Twinkle Twinkle. She likes her genre like Laurie Berkner and other children artists. And she likes my songs. A few Beatles, an Owl City, and more. Her favorite movie right now is Fantasia 2000. (If anyone sees the original Fantasia, that would make an excellent gift.)
I'm not giving any credit to the psychic. But it is memorable. She called it. But I knew that (I push it on her enough) and I can tell you a few other things that Fia will get into. Reading, science, snide comments, and other things that she will pick up from me.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
Fia's music
So the odd thing, is ever since I got my Facebook, I'll post whatever. But the 2 times that the post seems to have taken more space than I think I should allot in Facebook, I'll post it over here. It's almost resparked my blogging interest.
Tonights story is Fia's music. When she sleeps, we put on some music to drown out the external noise of the cars and whatever. But what we let her listen to is the situation. We haven't found a great radio station that we can just turn on and forget. So we are cool with making our own mix for her. I have enough mellow stuff to fill up a while.
Her stereo takes a USB, so we just buy a 2gig jump drive and hit 'random' and let it play.It has 20+ hours of music. So repeating isn't really an issue. But a few weeks ago, something broke. Turns out it was the jump drive. So I went onto Amazon and bought another 2 gig jump drive for about $7 total. And after WAY TOO MANY problems getting it, I finally got it today and had to fill it up.
I have about 15 gig of music on my hard drive. But not all of it is "sleeping to" music. So I went through it all tonight to fill up her jump drive with only the mellow stuff.
Wow. I never remember all the things I like from my music selection until I go through it piece by piece. In my last post, I mentioned a funny quote from a fwd I got. Same email gives me another quote that is applicable here. "I love every song in my iTunes. Until I put it on shuffle, then I love about 1 out of every 15 songs." And that's what happened tonight. Except I'm not focusing on those songs that I don't care about. I'm focusing on those 1 out of 15 songs that for whatever reason, I stopped listening to them.
Existentialism on Prom Night by Straylight Run is 1 song that I forgot ever existed. The hook of the song is, "Sing like you think no one's listening" and I like how those lyrics and that message is played out. It made me think of another song about how awesome singing is. Sing, by The Dresden Dolls is all about how, whatever the circumstance, "just sing". Both those songs came out at about the same time. And I liked the message of both of them. But I haven't thought about either song in years. But I bet you tomorrow at work, I'm singing about singing. Not sure which song. But it'll happen.
Tonights story is Fia's music. When she sleeps, we put on some music to drown out the external noise of the cars and whatever. But what we let her listen to is the situation. We haven't found a great radio station that we can just turn on and forget. So we are cool with making our own mix for her. I have enough mellow stuff to fill up a while.
Her stereo takes a USB, so we just buy a 2gig jump drive and hit 'random' and let it play.It has 20+ hours of music. So repeating isn't really an issue. But a few weeks ago, something broke. Turns out it was the jump drive. So I went onto Amazon and bought another 2 gig jump drive for about $7 total. And after WAY TOO MANY problems getting it, I finally got it today and had to fill it up.
I have about 15 gig of music on my hard drive. But not all of it is "sleeping to" music. So I went through it all tonight to fill up her jump drive with only the mellow stuff.
Wow. I never remember all the things I like from my music selection until I go through it piece by piece. In my last post, I mentioned a funny quote from a fwd I got. Same email gives me another quote that is applicable here. "I love every song in my iTunes. Until I put it on shuffle, then I love about 1 out of every 15 songs." And that's what happened tonight. Except I'm not focusing on those songs that I don't care about. I'm focusing on those 1 out of 15 songs that for whatever reason, I stopped listening to them.
Existentialism on Prom Night by Straylight Run is 1 song that I forgot ever existed. The hook of the song is, "Sing like you think no one's listening" and I like how those lyrics and that message is played out. It made me think of another song about how awesome singing is. Sing, by The Dresden Dolls is all about how, whatever the circumstance, "just sing". Both those songs came out at about the same time. And I liked the message of both of them. But I haven't thought about either song in years. But I bet you tomorrow at work, I'm singing about singing. Not sure which song. But it'll happen.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
General thoughts about Dr Seuss and Childrens books
So I've been reading every night to Fia for about 2 solid years, and we have gone through a lot of books. The 'No More' series by Peony Lewis was her favorite for a while. The "Oakey" series was her favorite. Right now she likes "Charlie and Lola" and to be honest, Lynette and I like it too. But we have always included those stories that we read, or had read to us when we were children.
Slight tangent. I saw a collection of humorous thoughts, and one of them was, "Sometimes I'll watch a movie when I was younger and realize I had no idea what was going on when I first watched it." Specifically this rang true with Indiana Jones. When the 4th movie came out recently, I rewatched the previous 3 and realized that I don't like the movies. I could have sworn I did. I remember liking them. But I guess I was wrong. Cause all 3 never sparked true interest. Just mild nostalgia.
But back on point. That same theory can be adapted to books. Before I had a kid, I would have told you, and beat into your head, that I liked Dr Seuss. When Fia was young we read a select few of them as I thought was necessary. And we read and enjoyed books like, "The Cat in the Hat" and "I saw it all on Mulberry Street" but then when we expanded our horizons, I found that Dr Seuss made no sense.
Has anyone read "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish in the last 10 years? It starts out like you expect, with fish. Then less than 10 pages into it, the fish story translates back to land. "From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere." and that's the last line that makes sense to any plot. Any random page contains a short, meaningless story that makes no sense. Let me flip randomly and paraphrase a page. A lady calls Ned. She asks how things are in his bed. He replies by saying that he is not having fun and a cow, a dog, a cat and mouse are all in his bed with him. And the page prior and following have totally different stories. The entire book is like that. I firmly believe that Dr Seuss was heavily on drugs when writing this book. That would make sense. When Dr Seuss says, "Whoa, dude. What if this lady calls Ned. And Ned is in his bed. Duuuuuude. That'll be awesome."
I mean, some stories are cool. Cat in the Hat mostly makes sense. And I actually liked, I Saw it all on Mulberry Street. But we have read our fair share of Dr Seuss, and for better or worse, about half of his stories revert into a page-by-page mini-stories that are just there for the sake of rhymes and a string of 2-paragraph sub plots.
Hop of Pop seems to split the difference. It is that same page-by-page mini-story that is neither here nor there. But it is redeemed in the fact that every word is the very basics of speech that the beginning reader can latch onto.
And let me finish by saying that there are a list of stories that are very well written, have a good story, a great moral and are just straight-out entertaining for me and my daughter. Yertle the Turtle. Gertrude McFuzz. And others provide wonderful stories and great morals. I like those.
But those aren't the books that I remembered loving. I liked The Cat in the Hat, and even worse, One Fish Two Fish. It was horrible.
Slight tangent. I saw a collection of humorous thoughts, and one of them was, "Sometimes I'll watch a movie when I was younger and realize I had no idea what was going on when I first watched it." Specifically this rang true with Indiana Jones. When the 4th movie came out recently, I rewatched the previous 3 and realized that I don't like the movies. I could have sworn I did. I remember liking them. But I guess I was wrong. Cause all 3 never sparked true interest. Just mild nostalgia.
But back on point. That same theory can be adapted to books. Before I had a kid, I would have told you, and beat into your head, that I liked Dr Seuss. When Fia was young we read a select few of them as I thought was necessary. And we read and enjoyed books like, "The Cat in the Hat" and "I saw it all on Mulberry Street" but then when we expanded our horizons, I found that Dr Seuss made no sense.
Has anyone read "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish in the last 10 years? It starts out like you expect, with fish. Then less than 10 pages into it, the fish story translates back to land. "From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere." and that's the last line that makes sense to any plot. Any random page contains a short, meaningless story that makes no sense. Let me flip randomly and paraphrase a page. A lady calls Ned. She asks how things are in his bed. He replies by saying that he is not having fun and a cow, a dog, a cat and mouse are all in his bed with him. And the page prior and following have totally different stories. The entire book is like that. I firmly believe that Dr Seuss was heavily on drugs when writing this book. That would make sense. When Dr Seuss says, "Whoa, dude. What if this lady calls Ned. And Ned is in his bed. Duuuuuude. That'll be awesome."
I mean, some stories are cool. Cat in the Hat mostly makes sense. And I actually liked, I Saw it all on Mulberry Street. But we have read our fair share of Dr Seuss, and for better or worse, about half of his stories revert into a page-by-page mini-stories that are just there for the sake of rhymes and a string of 2-paragraph sub plots.
Hop of Pop seems to split the difference. It is that same page-by-page mini-story that is neither here nor there. But it is redeemed in the fact that every word is the very basics of speech that the beginning reader can latch onto.
And let me finish by saying that there are a list of stories that are very well written, have a good story, a great moral and are just straight-out entertaining for me and my daughter. Yertle the Turtle. Gertrude McFuzz. And others provide wonderful stories and great morals. I like those.
But those aren't the books that I remembered loving. I liked The Cat in the Hat, and even worse, One Fish Two Fish. It was horrible.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Happy Birthday Fia
Our little girl is 3 now. It doesn't seem possible. She is growing up so fast. This year we decided to go low key and just spent the day focusing on her. We went to lunch with Grandma and Papa Cobb at 5 guys (or in Fia talk the place with burgers and peanuts) and had cake and presents. Then we took her swimming. It was a good day. She kept on telling us it was "the best birthday ever". I wanted to share a few photos and a cute video of her with h
er birthday cake.She helped make the cake. You can guess what happened next...
Monday, April 13, 2009
I love baseball game
Kaufman stadium, home of the Kansas City Royals, is just opening up after a $250 million renovation. I like baseball, and I was really interested in all the upgrades that happened to the stadium. Let me say, it is amazing. They took the fountain that has become the main feature of the stadium and made it better, the crown shaped scoreboard has become the biggest jumbotron that I have ever seen. If you want to go digging 2 years ago, I have a post of what it was when we went to a Royals game a long time ago. But I didn't actually take a picture of the new scoreboard.
I was also impressed with our little girl. I have been talking to her before naps. I'll try to bargain with her to go to bed for me, and with great success. I will tell her how she needs to go to sleep, cause when she wakes up we can: Go get Mommy, See Grandma and Grandpa, Go to get hot dogs. Whatever is true. I talk to her for a while, I ask her if it's time for bed and she says, "No, not yet." then soon after a bit more talking she says, "Time for bed" and i don't see her till morning. It worked so well that one night I bargained with her by saying that she needed to go to sleep so that she can wake up tomorrow, nothing more than that. And she did it.
So to take this back to baseball, I have been mentioning at bedtime last night and naps today that we were going to see a baseball game. She was excited at whatever that was. And by the time we were in the car to Kaufman, she was saying, "Baseball game! Let's go to baseball game!" We got there, we played at the new playground in the pavillion that is behind the fountain, we sat in our seats and Fia was glued to the game for about a half hour. She even said, "I love baseball game" and when everyone else clapped, she did too. She really got into it. I try to talk baseball with my friend Mike, but he isn't interested. His eyes glaze over like Lynettes eyes glaze over. So I guess if you can't have a baseball friend, you have to make one. Not in the introducing style, in the creating style.
It was retro-pricing night at "The K" and we got our seats for $5 each and parking for the same price. So I thought this would be a perfect night to see if Fia would enjoy watching baseball with me. I figured that if this works, we can go see 10+ games this year, just the 2 of us and we would have a great time. What I didn't figure was the weather to be drizzly, and 40 degrees or less. It was cold, she was bundled, and we were HIGH up there.
We ended up leaving the game at the top of the 2nd inning. (in my defense, it was a very long 1st inning) I wasn't too dissappointed. We went home to watch the rest of the game from the comfort of the couch. And the main reason for going was the if we did leave early, I wouldn't feel too bad for wasting tickets cause they were so cheap.
Last part of the story is the set up for these pictures. Lynette likes the 'smile shot' feature on our camera cause it takes 3 pictures back to back to back with 1 click. That way, you can choose which shot is best. Well, we didn't see it coming, but while playing in the playground I mentioned before, Fia fell down the slide, I caught her and Lynette had captured it all on film. I was really impressed with my reaction time, and Lynette didn't even think that she was taking a picture at the time. She hit the button, but when Fia lost her balance, she stopped thinking about photography.
I was also impressed with our little girl. I have been talking to her before naps. I'll try to bargain with her to go to bed for me, and with great success. I will tell her how she needs to go to sleep, cause when she wakes up we can: Go get Mommy, See Grandma and Grandpa, Go to get hot dogs. Whatever is true. I talk to her for a while, I ask her if it's time for bed and she says, "No, not yet." then soon after a bit more talking she says, "Time for bed" and i don't see her till morning. It worked so well that one night I bargained with her by saying that she needed to go to sleep so that she can wake up tomorrow, nothing more than that. And she did it.
So to take this back to baseball, I have been mentioning at bedtime last night and naps today that we were going to see a baseball game. She was excited at whatever that was. And by the time we were in the car to Kaufman, she was saying, "Baseball game! Let's go to baseball game!" We got there, we played at the new playground in the pavillion that is behind the fountain, we sat in our seats and Fia was glued to the game for about a half hour. She even said, "I love baseball game" and when everyone else clapped, she did too. She really got into it. I try to talk baseball with my friend Mike, but he isn't interested. His eyes glaze over like Lynettes eyes glaze over. So I guess if you can't have a baseball friend, you have to make one. Not in the introducing style, in the creating style.
It was retro-pricing night at "The K" and we got our seats for $5 each and parking for the same price. So I thought this would be a perfect night to see if Fia would enjoy watching baseball with me. I figured that if this works, we can go see 10+ games this year, just the 2 of us and we would have a great time. What I didn't figure was the weather to be drizzly, and 40 degrees or less. It was cold, she was bundled, and we were HIGH up there.
We ended up leaving the game at the top of the 2nd inning. (in my defense, it was a very long 1st inning) I wasn't too dissappointed. We went home to watch the rest of the game from the comfort of the couch. And the main reason for going was the if we did leave early, I wouldn't feel too bad for wasting tickets cause they were so cheap.
Last part of the story is the set up for these pictures. Lynette likes the 'smile shot' feature on our camera cause it takes 3 pictures back to back to back with 1 click. That way, you can choose which shot is best. Well, we didn't see it coming, but while playing in the playground I mentioned before, Fia fell down the slide, I caught her and Lynette had captured it all on film. I was really impressed with my reaction time, and Lynette didn't even think that she was taking a picture at the time. She hit the button, but when Fia lost her balance, she stopped thinking about photography.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Sophia sings the pre-school blues
You asked for it, you wanted it. Here you go. Sophia half-sings all of her songs on this video right here. Watch it again and again. You know you want to. One viewing is not enough. Act now and you and be entered to win an iPod. Certain restrictions apply, actually, nothing. Just watch the video. Stop reading all of this small print and just enjoy the video. She's cute enough, it's she? Well, isn't she?
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