Oh, the hazards of being a Music teacher's kid. Ain't no hope, baby. Mommy has a concert to do. I love that I sing to my baby all day long, though. Ok, I'm actually hired to sing with everybody else's "babies", but it's still free music for my kiddo! Maddie, as the poor unsuspecting child of two Music teachers, now enjoys the post-birth benefits of Mommy's job. The Halloween Songs video is just one example (and just 3 of the dozen or so that she knew at least parts of for the month of October). As any General Music teacher will tell you, there's a poor supply of half decent Thanksgiving songs. You get your "Over the River's" and such, but really we all know that Turkey Day is just the preamble to Christmas...and "Over the River" is on the Chipmunk's Christmas album anyway. But I digress... we're singing over here, kid, enjoy the free concert!
I heard the coolest story on NPR - when do I not hear the coolest story on NPR? - about a study that suggested that babies pick up language and speech patterns in the womb. They studied German and French babies' crying patterns and noticed that German babies preferred to cry in a descending tone - much like the speech/sentence structure of the German language. And the French babies crying patterns ascended, mirroring the tones heard in the French sentence structure. How. Cool. Is. That???? And my grade school teachers thought my talking was disruptive to the educational process! Ha!
Link the full story right here.
Two good baby-noise-response stories:
When you're a high-risk pregnancy girl, you get all sorts of special treatment (yay!) including non-stress tests for baby. You go in twice a week towards the end of your pregnancy and they strap a fetal heart monitor on your tummy. Every time you feel baby move, you press a button attached the monitor, and out feeds a ticker tape of your baby's movement vs. heart rate represented in a bizarre graph. Once (and I stress this: ONCE) Maddie was not particularly active. The nurse was concerned that she wasn't moving enough, and that something might be wrong, as her heart rate was low. After pokes and prods, turning this way and that, and drinking the forbidden nectar, FULL-SUGAR-CAFFEINATED SODA, she was still...well, still. The nurse said, "I hate to do this..." and got out something that looked like the buzzer that you get with the board game "Taboo". She laid it on my stomach and basically sound-tasered Maddie. This horrible sound that I could feel as much as hear turned on, and Maddie jumped about 2 feet, taking my stomach with her. "Ow" would be an understatement.
I'm also ruefully reminded of the time we were gifted with tickets to the the Trans-Siberian Orchestra at the Wachovia center. We invited along Cathy, a friend and fellow Music teacher along. She was, I think, about 7-8 months pregnant. All of us forgot how loud and bass-laden these concerts can get. Poor Cathy's baby. (Sorry Ashley!) Poor, poor, Cathy! The little girl either loved the music or HATED it, because Ashley beat the snot out of her mommy from minute one of that concert till we decided we were all deaf and headed home. Great orchestra. Overdone sound. (Or maybe I'm old.)
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