Up up away!
My child is climbing. In general we are pretty safe since there’s not a whole lot she can climb on around here – no stairs, not much furniture, some toys. But she’s already proved to us she can climb stairs when given the opportunity (at someone else’s house), and she can climb on and off her bed mattress at will (about 6″ off the ground). Unfortunately she now thinks she can get off all furniture the same way, I caught her trying to slither off of our mattress the other day, face-first. Sweet. I need to figure out how to teach her to go feet-first. Her favorite toy, the Learning Home, has some little attached “shelves” – I don’t know how to explain it, but there’s one round part about 3 inches off the ground. She now spends a lot of time standing on that little platform, gripping the roof of the house, leaning forward and cackling with glee. Den said he nearly had a heart attack the first time he saw her doing it, but then he realized there’s not much he can do about it. Today while playing a basket turned off by her leap frog music table, so she took the opportunity to try climbing onto the table. Den caught her.
One of our nicknames for her is now “Monkey.” I also call her “Goose” pretty regularly (for “silly goose!”).
If books are one of her loves, music is another. She loves her music toys. She’s always liked things that make noise of some sort, but now it is specifically those toys that sing a little song, her favorites currently being her singing bear, camera, and the learning home. She knows exactly what buttons do songs and goes straight for them. I tend to sing along with them now, since the words get stuck in my head, and she’ll often stare at me, fascinated, as I do so. As soon as the song ends – or in many cases about 2 seconds before the song ends – she reaches over to press the button again, then turns back to watch me. Just this week she’s started swinging her arms back and forth, twisting her upper body left and right, in a kind of very primitive baby-dance. Also clapping, as we tend to clap and say, “Yaayyyy!” when a song ends. It’s so adorable! I clearly need to learn more kids songs. She loves it when I sing it to her, but we both get tired of The Itsy Bitsy Spider, Patty Cake, and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I have a very small repertoire.
Might I suggest The Wheels on the Bus? Endless, and my daughter really likes the “swish swish swish.” :)
I second Wheels on the Bus… you can pretty much make up the verses as you go and it never fails to stop a total meltdown in its tracks.
Kindermusik is an awesome class for you and your little one to learn new songs. I would highly recommend it if you have one in your area.
My kids like Christmas songs all year long! My 3 year old was singing Rudolph yesterday. Other favorites: You Are My Sunshine (not all the verses though, they are kind of sad!), Where is Thumbkin, Frere Jacques, Alouette, Baby Beluga, 5 Little Monkeys, church songs, some Sinatra and a random song from Little Mermaid. :) Oh yeah, and the fight song for my alma mater.
You should get her some Barney DVDs or even the wiggles!! :)
Barney has some really great kids songs and the wiggles are fun to watch because they dance too..Noelia LOVED those when she was 10+ months old,and now she knows all the Barney and wiggles songs and sings along and dances to them ALL.
Noelias favorite musical DVDs are:
Barney
The wiggles
Imagination movers
Signing time *all DVDs* (the songs are educative,catchy and super cute!!)
You can also get audio CDs of all of those,so you can also put them say,in the car etc
We have a few Barney CDs in our car,and we have made our own wiggles CDs too.Noelia LOVES music,so every DVD we have is some sort of movie or show based on that ;)
Id recomend Barney to start off with though,his shows are colourful,cute and its just one song after another..Kate will really like him Im sure ;)
The above post was me (Gina) btw…I have no idea why I apeared as anonymous :/
“The Music Man” cd with Matthew Broderick is pretty awesome. So are the “Beethoven’s Wig” cds. They both have a lot of variation and the lyrics are entertaining. I’m also a big fan of Ella Fitzgerald singing Gershwin.
http://www.amazon.com/Disney-Presents-Music-2003-Film/dp/B000088E62/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1302176530&sr=8-2
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dpopular&field-keywords=beethoven%27s+wig+&x=0&y=0
http://www.amazon.com/Oh-Lady-Be-Good-Gershwin/dp/B000004711/ref=sr_1_2?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1302176642&sr=1-2
Screw all that. Just put on Pandora Toddler Radio. It has the cutesy kid stuff (and links to lyrics) but also includes some more adult-type stuff like oldies and motown and the beatles so you don’t lose your freakin’ mind.
Best of all, it’s FREE!
http://www.pandora.com