Maybe it's Giants...

When I dropped Jacob off at nursery this morning, he went in with his customary shoegazing reluctance, where I have to drop a kiss on his head and leave before I persuade myself that we should really just go home again (I don't need very much persuasion).  I know that he's fine as soon as I've gone, he's always happy about going to nursery, happy while he's there, and reports happily upon his day; but those few seconds from me ringing the doorbell to him finding his best friends and diving headlong into whatever they're doing just tugs at my heartstrings, and make me wish more than anything that I could be a stay-at-home-mum.

This morning, the nursery manager laid her hand kindly on my arm (really, people shouldn't be allowed to do that, the gesture alone is enough to set me off) and reassured me by saying "Don't worry, he'll be singing happily to himself in a couple of minutes".

He loves music.  He gets into the car, and says "I want to listen to something please Mummy!", or we'll be driving along and he'll say "I loved that song.  What's it called?".  Although strangely, he's not at all keen on listening to music in the house, he does like to sing all the time.  He often sings in his sleep, and we have to wait to get him out of bed until he's been through his whole repertoire of songs.

Of course he loves nursery rhymes and theme songs for annoying CBeebies programmes, but he's also good at using snippets of songs he's heard in appropriate situations - for instance the "What's going to work, teeeeeeam-work" refrain from Wonder Pets gets sung all the time when he's helping us with a job.  He shunned most Christmas music except for the Glee Christmas album (the first one only, he wasn't having anything to do with the second one) and all he really wanted to hear off that was their reworking of Jingle Bells.

We've done a good job at forcing our musical tastes upon him, but we're trying to be remotely responsible about it and avoid songs with too much inappropriate content - of course Jamie likes to model himself on Adam Buxton and do volume control censoring - if you haven't seen this video then watch it, it's hilarious:

(And in a timely fashion, Jamie has just pointed me in the direction of this amazing site which reworks classic album covers using clipart and comic sans - it's awesome).

So Jacob's current favourites include Art Brut, and there's nothing funnier than being in another room and hearing the boy sing quietly to himself "Bang, bang, rock and roll / I can't stand the sound / of the Velvet Underground" in a very serious voice.  He also likes it when I play Scissor Sisters in the car, he thinks 'Take Your Mama Out' is funny because it has the word 'Mama' in it, and he generally loves Jake Shears' falsetto - "Listen to the girl songs Mummy, this your favourite song cos it's a girl song".

But top of Jacob's list of favourite bands for the last several months is undoubtedly They Might Be Giants.  It took us ages to work out what he was talking about when he kept asking for the "Little blue bird house song", but he's got the hang of most of the song titles now.  Our current difficulty is explaining the difference between band names and song names, he doesn't totally get it.  He can never remember how to say 'They Might Be Giants', so he refers to them in adorable fashion as 'Maybe it's Giants' ;)

Christmas is confusing

We're waiting until later in the week to put up the decorations, but whilst dragging them out of the loft in readiness, we found this tiny tree which used to perch on top of the freezer (which lived in the lounge, great for easy ice-cream-access) in our first house together. In pulling it out of its bag (I was in the loft, Jacob was attempting to climb the ladder standing waiting patiently at the bottom of the ladder), I knocked a stocking through the loft hatch and onto his head. Jacob shouted "Jeeeeeeesus!". He's not one of these kids who repeats inappropriate things as soon as you say them, he stores them up for freaking months before trotting them out and then waiting angelically for the backlash.

"We don't say Jesus Jacob, that's not nice," (hmm, need to rephrase that really...).

"Yes it is nice", he says, nodding earnestly.

"No, we shouldn't shout that when we do something wrong. We should say 'Whoopsadaisy!'" I say, wanting to actually shoot myself for having got myself into this conversation and for the banality which is now coming out of my mouth.

Luckily, he got distracted by something shiny and trotted off elsewhere. It's a hell of a confusing time, Christmas: mixed messages about Jesus for a boy being brought up in an atheist household, with very-religious grandparents; confusion about who-the-hell-is-Santa-and-why-is-a-strange-man-coming-into-my-house-in-the-middle-of-the-night?; lotsnlotsnlots of shiny things sprouting out of the walls; and random old ladies suddenly asking you what you want for a present but then not giving you anything.

And today was nicely rounded off with trying to explain to Jacob about spaces between words. He was nicely tucked into bed, when he spotted the 'Merry Christmas' banner on his wall, and sat up again, saying "Pick me up Mummy, it's broken". I looked round in confusion, trying to figure out what he was talking about. "The letters Mummy, it's broken". I realised he was pointing to the space between Merry and Christmas, where yes, it looked like a letter had fallen off. I explained about words, and spaces, and sentences. I picked up a book, and showed him the spaces between all the words. I picked him up and held him up to the banner, showing him what sound each letter made, and how none were missing. He said "No Mummy, it's broken".

I agreed, and put him to bed.