What a Character

Character

• 7a. a person marked by notable or conspicuous traits: quite a character

Conspicuous

• 1. obvious to the eye or mind: conspicuous changes
• 2. attracting attention: striking a conspicuous success

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Lately Miss Thing has been demonstrating some...character. Most notable is that demonstrated with all things musical. She does indeed love to sing, dance and play instruments. I would not go so far as to say that she is adept at any of the activities, but boy does she love it.

Her favorite instrument is the kazoo. We Santa gave her some rhythm instruments for Christmas. She was very excited. She somehow managed to break the drum on the tambourine on Christmas Day. Who knew it wasn't strong enough for a two-year-old to stand on it, eh?

What is obvious to most is rocket science for some.

It took her a while, but now she is most capable of kazoo-ing (new verb, alert the dictionary people!). Granted, her kazoo sounds most like a goose and least like music, but hey, she's got the whole blow air + hum = sound thing down.

Small steps, people. All towards an eventual band member, indeed.

Let's just hope she will one day realize that the humming is to be dropped.

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Dancing, more aptly called moving-to-music has always been a favorite activity. This is most likely because I like to sing songs to her and move to them as well. I mean, if you're going to be singing children's songs, then you should be moving around like an idiot. The movement goes right along with how you feel about what you're singing in the first place...right?

She's had a variety of favorites along the way, but right now Wheels on the Bus is the Number One Hit at our place. You can ask her what anyone/anything does on that bus and she will tell you:

The Guga on the Bus says "Chicka-boom, Chicka-boom."
Uncle Brent on the Bus says "Rub noses, Rub noses."
Pop-Pop on the bus says "You're a Stinker-Pot!"
Geat Ganny on the bus says "Wheeeeee, Doggies!"
Uncle Mike on the bus says "Trouble, trouble, trouble!"
Zorro on the bus says "Catch the ball, catch the ball."

Some of my favorite verses include:

The airplane on the bus says "Go higher, go higher."
The books on the bus go "Read, read, read."
The trains on the bus go "choo-choo, choo-choo."
The Kassie on the bus goes "Don't you peek!"

You can ask her for anything and she will come up with an answer for their bus-ride.

Recently she's been attending a dance class. I have no idea what they do in there because parents aren't allowed. The teacher is Russian, so I can't really ask what they do either. I have found out that Miss Thing pays attention very well and works very hard for fifteen minutes, which the teacher tells me is twice as long as most students her age.

Then she plays.

While the other kids are still having class.

Yeah....

So I'll be picking her up after fifteen minutes from now on.

Yesterday she went to class dressed like so:

"So pretty, Mama!"

I asked her to show me what she learned in class and she took a long, oh so long, time staring at her feet. She then demanded "Mama, help me!" and we ended up with this:

First position-ish.

I asked her what she did with her arms at class, since she was very sure of her feet/legs, and she began to move them up and down like so:

Then she ran around in circles, in a so-not-ballet fashion.

I'm pretty sure that was the play portion of the lesson.

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Singing is her most favorite activity. I blame attribute this to The Wonder Pets. For the uninitiated, A.K.A Those Without Children, The Wonder Pets are three little animals who save other animals using teamwork. In addition, they sing their entire day/story/event. An entire show, sung by Linny the guinea-pig, Tuck the turtle and Ming-Ming the duckling. Every show is entitled The Wonder Pets save the insert animal name here.

What they really need is a The Wonder Pets Save the Parents show where we are made immune to the melodies and therefore do not dream in Wonder-Pet-Song all night long.

You know, just to provide us with a slightly larger chance of sanity.

Miss Thing adores these characters and spends much of her day singing things to me because of them. The most amazing thing to me is that she can truly improvise (on a two-year-old level) with her words. As for the melodies, well...let's just say that she either wouldn't make the cut on American Idol or she'd be one of those "human-interest"/"get ready to laugh" segments.

A perfect example of her new-found ability to sing about anything/change words at will is the blessing.

Yes, the blessing.

She knows one, learned from her cousins, that goes to the tune of Frère Jacques. The words are as follows:

God our Father, God our Father
We thank you, we thank you
For our many blessings, for our many blessings
A-men, A-men.

One night we were all sitting at the table, hands clasped as directed (she likes film-work too, apparently), eyes closed and waiting. She sang her usual blessing with one small change...

Amen, sister!

Amen, indeed!