At some point during our marathon dance session, there was this:

Mixed into the playlist of kids music for Maggie, there is Lady Gaga. I wonder how Maggie will perceive Gaga’s music once she’s grown.

— Mr Topp (@mrtopp) March 3, 2013

This got me thinking: what is kid’s music?

I’m not sure I have an answer. For me, kid’s music is divided into three categories:

• Music produced with the intention that kid’s listen to it.
• Nursery rhymes & lullabies.
• Music I associate with childhood.

I’m not a fan of the first category; it seems to be made up of songs which nobody would buy for themselves, but are expected to buy for their children. And outside of two songs (Twinkle, twinkle little star and Teddy Bears’ Picnic), Maggie seems to prefer music made “for adults” to that made with children in mind.

The second category is hard to separate from the first, but I do so for three reasons:

1. The songs tend to be traditional.
2. The songs tend to be short.
3. They tend to be sung by parents, rather than played recordings.

There is something nice about these short rhymes that everybody knows, sung by a parent. They connect childhood to childhood.

It’s the third category that I find most interesting. Because the songs I associate with childhood go beyond the Raffi and the nursery rhymes. It’s filled with pop songs from the late 50s and early 60s, and it wasn’t until I was well into adulthood that I realised that my childhood had not been spent listening to children’s music, but rather the songs that my mother liked from when she was a pre-teen and a teenager.

And as a kid, it was these songs that I would listen to repeatedly. I thought they were for kids — for instance the sountrack to Stand By Me was surely in our house because Stand By Me was a movie with kids in it, so they were kid’s songs. Right?

Wrong.

In fact, the album is full of big hits from when my Mom was 12 years old, written for adults. Or at least teens and tweens (which is really the target audience for most popular music). It’s like a movie coming out now (or in 2016) where the soundtrack is basically The Greatest Hits of 1989 (or at least A Bunch of Awesome Songs: 1987-1992). I would totally buy that. My Mom totally bought that. And those songs are the soundtrack of my childhood now; kid’s music.

All of which makes me wonder why we waste money on kid’s music — music that we don’t particularly want to listen to. Maggie likes it, to be sure, but she likes the things we like better.

And I’m pretty sure that one day she’ll hear Lady Gaga and Beyonce singing Telephone, and think it’s a fun song for kids.

You can see it larger on Flickr.

That’s a photo of Karen’s hands on our friend Josie’s belly. It is February 2010. We are in Canada, staying in a spare “guest” apartment in the building where Josie owns a condo.

Karen is pregnant, but we haven’t told anybody yet. She will spend the entire trip with “morning sickness” that lasts all day, every day, justifying our decision not to actually stay with any friends or family.

Josie is also pregnant; everybody knows this — she is well beyond any thoughts of hiding it. It will be exactly one month before she gives birth.

This is our last time in Canada as non-parents.

The photo was taken nearly three years ago, but it’s very easy to remember. It was in the midst of the Vancouver Olympics, and we were at a restaurant/bar to watch the the hockey semifinals with friends.

A month earlier, we had been in Sofia, Bulgaria. I had to spend a month there for work, and Karen had joined me for the first two weeks. We realised that she was most likely pregnant near the end of our first week there. She went to the doctor’s on returning to London, and called me to tell me that yes, she was definitely pregnant. I was standing on a subway platform in Sofia at the time.

Now we were in Toronto. Spending time with an old friend who was also expectant. We touched the belly. I would get quite accustomed to putting my hands on a pregnant belly, later that year.

Canada won the hockey game. I do not remember a minute of it, though I know I watched intently and cheered. Other friends were there, too.

But I remember this moment. I don’t even need the photo.

Here it is:

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream

Row, row, your boat
Gently down the …

POLAR BEAR!

I think I find her version more entertaining than the traditional one.

So I have finally got around to looking through the photos I took while at Disneyland Paris in … um … June. (Yes, I’m slow at getting to photos. I’m trying to get better. Really.)

There are a couple of good iconic-looking photos of the park (as above). A number of photos of Maggie getting increasingly distressed from standing in queues — apparently a one-and-a-half-year-old (it’s weird to call her that, but she was at the time) is not meant to queue. A LOT of photos of Maggie asleep: in my arms, in my arms, in my arms. On a bench, on a bench, on a bench.

And then comes the slides.

Here is Maggie, seconds before the faceplant:

I was taking her picture, all smiles, as she went down the slide. She turned a bit on the way down, I snapped and snapped. And this is the moment when I realised it was all going wrong. You can see she is trying to put her hand down, but there is no slide there.

That hand caught air, and she fell face first into the ground.

But Maggie? She’s a trooper. Two minutes later, here she is:

With the second birthday comes the two year health visit. This consists of a ten minute meeting with a Health Visitor – a poor job description, as I had to visit them – during which I reassure her that Maggie holds a pencil the right way and is reasonably balanced on her scooter (although she does like to crash, and dislikes moving quickly). I, in turn, am reassured that she is “hitting all her development milestones”, and is not so short that I should be worried. Though she is pretty damn short.

And a few more things.

“We’ll see you next year.”
“Her next set of vaccinations will be in about a year and a half.”
“You need to start looking into schools now.”

What?

Yes, now. Schools. For my two year old. And so my internet research skills are now flailing helplessly over the needlessly over-complex school system that exists here in Great Britain. In an effort to figure out how things work, I looked at this article, from Good Schools Guide, which charges parents in return for making some little bit of sense out of the school system. Which I scoffed at, at first, but am now seriously considering.

The article begins:

Pre-conception

Consider the pros and cons of September birthday babes; research suggests their August counterparts remain forever in their schooling shadow…If it’s already too late consider a move to Northern Ireland

The article was not kidding. It is actually suggesting that parents of children born in summer ought to move to Northern Ireland. What kind of fucking crazy idea is that? I mean – if you want to live in Northern Ireland, great. But if you live in say, London, that’s one hell of a move because your child happens to have a July birthday.

After reading a dizzying array of league tables, Ofsted reports, and who-knows-what-else, I now have a short list of things to do (mostly iterations of “check out this school”). And I have suddenly become a much bigger fan of private schools, if only because they tend to have less complex application procedures and no confusing catchment areas.

On the other hand, money.

So apologies if I am confused and rambling. But I am confused, and it makes me ramble.

Who needs an education, anyways?

Two years ago:

And a warning:

Maggie is given a toothbrush, with some toothpaste, and expected to brush her own teeth. If she does a good job of brushing all her teeth (with an evolving view of what a “good job” entails), we rinse and are done. If she does not, I move in and do a thorough job, with all the screaming, kicking, and crying that entails.

All seemed well with this approach. A routine is being developed, and Maggie is a little person who brushes her teeth regularly. And then I had the misfortune of reading the following passage in What to Expect – The Toddler Years:

Give your toddler his own brush to do some preliminary brushing … Then do it yourself.

Moreover, the entire passage on toothbrushing implies that allowing a child to brush her own teeth the majority of the time is a strategy that will doom her to a childhood of tooth decay. Which makes me the Parent of Doom.

Where before I was a parent happy that his daughter was developing good habits that would lead to healthy adult teeth, in the full knowledge that her temporary milk teeth might get an otherwise “unnecessary” cavity or two, I am now a parent full of self-doubt, wondering if I have made a big mistake.

Going back now will be a difficult course. One does not easily wrest control back from a two-year-old, once it has been given away. And we are due to visit the dentist soon, and gain some invaluable professional advice.

In the meantime, Internet, I turn to you:

What approach would you take with these teeth?

I have never understood why parents put leashes on their children. I make arguments in my head about teaching children to behave in public, rather than having them tied up. Or that the leash is an alternate, emotionless extension of holding hands.

I don’t mean that. I mean that I don’t understand why parents treat their children like dogs.

Which is actually kind of funny, because — in London, at least — a child is more likely to be on a leash than a dog is. But I digress.

There was a kid on a leash, walking in the other direction. Maggie was in my arms.

“Doggy!” she yells. “Doggy!”

She starts to point at the boy on the leash. “DOGGY!” She’s excited. She looks back over my shoulder. “Woof!”

“WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!”

I know I shouldn’t. I’m sure it’s not nice for the boy at the end of that leash — not his decision — to be called a dog, and barked at by another child.

But I’m clearly a bad person – it’s just so damn funny. Five hours later, and I’m still laughing.

Woof.

Then there are nights when she does not want a bath. Where she is kicking and screaming before we are even in the bathroom, and she tries to slap away any hands that approach her, threatening her with washcloths.

Last night was particularly bad. She screamed — literally screamed — through the entire bath, and fought me the whole time. Complicating matters was the layer of food plastered to her face that had to be removed. There was no light, brief washing option available. It had to be thorough.

Several painful minutes later, it was done. She was clean.

“If you want to get out, Maggie, just unplug the bath and put the plug away.”

Maggie does not stop crying. She does not stop screaming. But she immediately moves to the end of the bath, unplugs the bath, and carefully puts the plug to the side.

Still screaming, the plug is placed beside her bath duck.

The screaming stops.

“DUCK!”

The plug is taken back from its place on the side of the tub. The flow of water out of the tub is stemmed. The duck is brought into the water. A smile is on her face. “DUCK!”

Yes, a duck. And crocodile tears.

And generally, I’m proud of myself for it.

There are too many days when I have to dip into my archive of photos, and more than a few days where the photos aren’t particularly great, but it’s actually a very hard thing to do. I’m doing it. It’s fantastic.

And then I found Jason Lee’s blog, Kristin and Kayla, which is his own project, which is similar, but much, much better.

And me? I’m back to thinking that I have a long, long way to go.