Tuesday, October 16, 2012

(Little) Miss Tambourine Girl

I've mentioned quite a few times how much Abby loves music. For now, her focus is on listening, dancing, and singing, though she has been known to pound out a few notes on the piano once in awhile. Of course, the piano is a complex instrument, so the best that she can do with it is make random sounds.

The tambourine, though? That's a bit more doable, and today she finally figured out how it's supposed to work.


She came up to me, banging gleefully, and kept pretty good time with me as I was inspired to burst out singing "Mr. Tambourine Man." (Or maybe it was just me, subconsciously setting time to the rhythm that she established. Humor me as I indulge myself in thinking that it was perhaps the former.) She has, in fact, on occasion, shown somewhat of an ability to find and keep a beat. She's just not consistent about it yet.



One thing that she has been doing consistently today, though, is saying her paternal grandfather's name correctly. He was still deciding on what he wanted to be called when one day, months ago, Abby identified him in a picture as "Papa." Her grandfather was happy with the choice. However, since papa, unaccented, means "potato" in Spanish, he asked that we have her call him "Papá" instead. Though Tom and I have been referring to him that way ever since, it has taken Abby some time to distinguish the difference in sound between papa and papá, and copy it. But then, randomly, yesterday, she mentioned her Papá, and did so with perfect pronunciation. Just before she approached me with the tambourine this evening, she was chanting his name over and over again, sometimes in combination with Nana's. Clearly, they've been on her mind lately.

Also, despite only having seen Elmo programming a handful of times on the television, Abby has picked up that annoying little ditty that Elmo likes to sing. (I know that I have Tom to thank for that, mostly, since he often gets the tune stuck in his own head and starts singing it in her presence.) I'll admit to some major bias here, but I actually think it's kind of cute when Abby sings it. First of all, she can't quite do it properly, since la-LA la-LA, la-LA-la-LA is a lot of  l's to handle, and her tongue can't move that fast yet. So her version is la LA la. Secondly, she tends to combine it with things that she's looking at or doing. For example, it's not unusual to hear her singing over her breakfast bowl in the morning, something along the lines of: "La LA la, la LA la, Corn Chex milk!"

She had me giggling like a little kid as Tom readied her for a shower this evening, though. As he pulled her diaper off and handed her over the edge of the tub to me, she chirped, "La LA la, la LA la, Abby's tush!" And as I rinsed the suds off of her tiny form, "La LA la, la LA la, Abby's chest!"

How can I not love it when she sings it like that?