And the girl loves music!

For a girl from a musical family, it came as a great shock that my baby daughter initially seemed to have no interest whatsoever in music. In fact, I had to entirely squelch my instinct to sing lullabies and hum tunes to my little girl because it made her agitated, at best, and downright mad, at worst.

Around 6 months old, or maybe a little earlier, we started playing a lullabye CD for her at nap time and bedtime, as a means of easing her transition to that place she warded off like a penitentiary... the place of rest and repose. At first, K and her "evil hand" - that fitful little hand that always had to be motioning or grabbing at something or moving here and there, keeping her brain awake and alert - would not relent to sleep until at least 7 songs had passed. If we were lucky, she'd yield in 4, but it was hit or miss. Over time, we got into a little routine, and sometimes she'd even be ready to hit the crib by song 3. This continued for quite a few months until we realized that the musical bedtime routine was actually working against us and not for us. She'd figured it out and decided that the music pointed directly to the path of the sleeping chamber; thus, it became the enemy once again. We moved on to reading books and performing other routines, and I basically forgot about the music.

In the car, too, K was generally a terror any time before her 15-16 month marker. She has always been utterly indignant to be kept confined and immobilized, and so, trips in the car, with the carseat facing backward (the INDIGNITY!), strapped tightly to the unit, and probably sweltering under the layers of clothes her well-intentioned Mommy put her in -- made her furious. If we were lucky, we had about 20 minutes to get where we were going before a major meltdown would occur. In general, we had more like 5-10 minutes before hell would break loose from within the small but fierce baby.

Armed with our current knowledge of The Ways of K, many things now make sense that were utter mysteries to us a year ago. Knowing her as we now do, a few things are very clear. Number one: the kid's brain never stops running. Give it just about any kind of fuel, and you've got a concoction potent enough to postpone bedtime for an indefinite period. As it turns out, K is SO attuned to music that I believe it probably just overwhelmed her when she was tiny. When we travel in the car now, even great distances with eyelids drooping, she will NOT permit herself to fall asleep as long as there is music playing. Just when you think she's finally going to give in and let herself go, a song will wind down and come to and end, and her little head will pop back up, asking for "More Music!" I wonder if her agitation as an infant was due to her little head just trying to process the sounds and make some sense of them, not being able to just relegate them to background noise. Of course, this noise sensitivity was our enemy in more than just the musical aspect. I'm sure her grandmothers will readily tell you that being present in our house at naptime or bedtime was like being in lockdown: don't make a move or a sound or one of the wardens will come down on you... only because we were always living in fear of a prison break attempt from our most vociferous and indomitable inmate!

So, Number Two: K must feel free to occupy herself, observe the world around her, and take charge of what she's capable to take charge of. Otherwise, she morphs into a Tasmanian devil. Now that she's in a carseat that faces forward and has a tray to hold her activity items, she's not even akin to the insane baby of last year. Armed, too, with an entire iPod of music, she's almost 100% happy in the car with every ride.

Another thing we've learned about K is that, with her, there are two emotion settings: Happy and Irate. There's almost no transition between the two, so the utterly irritated K can materialize at a moment's notice, anytime something isn't going the way she anticipates that it should. And, thing Four: whatever she does, it's with great drama and volume. So, those many months of her babydom where we were utterly in a spin because of her dramatic flare-ups and screaming fits -- well, they were probably just small things that she couldn't communicate about and was unable to tolerate even momentarily. I'm still convinced that there were many circumstances that would have just blown over with other kids that, for K became incredible calamaties. I am thankful every single day that she can speak now and communicate what's going on. Generally, her flare-ups these days are over things that are very small issues - she's just got a built-in intollerance for things not going according to her plan, and I imagine she's always been this way.

So, back to the music: K requests it. She demands it. She knows it and she knows what she wants. Nearly every morning, she will hop up onto our bed, scoot toward the center against the headboard, and request "Jack and Sally" interminably 'til we start playing the Nightmare Before Christmas CD that she loves. And she can tell you the songs she wants, too -- whether it's "This is Halloween,""What's This?!" or "Jack's Lament." When we're going to take a car ride, she'll immediately say "Proclaimers - 500 Miles!," and she can tell you, by sound and by request, the songs from the album Sunshine on Leith, whether it's "Cap in Hand," "My Old Friend the Blues," "500 Miles," or "Sunshine on Leith." (I've had the album for 10 years, and I still don't know what Leith is...). She also likes OK Go!, though she doesn't know their song names.

A few weeks ago, we took K to a function sponsored by B's company. It was essentially an Indian cultural event to promote the concept of the value of the Asian Indian workforce within our technological employment pool. We already like many aspects of Indian culture, so there was no need for a hard-sell to us. We were just there for the wonderful food and regional ethnic music and dance. I'd been looking forward to it for weeks, and B and I both wondered how K would do. At not even 2 years old, it's a bit much to ask her to sit still through a program in an auditorium past her bedtime. She enjoyed some of the food, but her enthusiam was initially curtailed when the house lights dimmed. She started to cry at the darkness, but, thankfully, soon there were things to see on stage, including a woman playing a sitar. From that point on, K launched into a running commentary about the things she was seeing and hearing, thankfully much to the amusement of B's coworkers, who were sitting in front of us. K's play-by-play went something like this:

“People! Dancing! People dancing! Instruments. Instruments. Man. Girl. Sitting. Dancing. More. More People! Instruments. More instruments. Girls. Spin. Weeeee. Weeee. More people dancing!” Then, when everyone would clap, she’d clap and yell, full-volume - “YAY!!! YAY!! DANCING!”

One dancer was wearing a very elaborate head garb, so Kirienne figured she was a princess. Then it was “Princess, dancing. Weee! Princess. Spin. More!!” She did a lot of bouncing up and down and weaving side to side on our laps. It was very cute, and that little baby lasted almost the entire performance before finally admitting fatigue. "Go home now," she said after about an hour. So, go we did.

She had a similar commentary in her descriptions of the floor B put in our guest bedroom... "Daddy saw wood right there. And then this and that. Over here. Right there. This wood and this wood. And painted walls. Purple right here and purple right here. Over here, this right here. And this..." She went on and on for minutes on the days we would come in to check the progress of the room. If there's something she really likes, you'll definitely hear about it.

As of today, K can sing the entire alphabet song, but it has to be her idea. Her tone isn't really quite like singing, but I think she's moving in that direction. I've been able to sing a note and get her to repeat the note, so I'm excited that sometime in the near future, she'll actually start singing. That will really be something, and I think it will make her very happy. She knows the words to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and she really enjoyed a new, simple little book I got her today called Dream Pillow Lullabye. There's some sheet music in the back, and I was sight-singing the tune. She seemed to start singing it herself once I was done. Precious!