Songs

Fingers crossed... Kala teeka and all that...

Music has soothed Rian from the beginning. I think babies are naturally drawn towards rhythmic soothing music. We exposed Rian to Teacher Sean's music factory class of 8 sessions and he seemed to enjoy the cacophony. Amit and me have always sung some songs to Rian to calm him down and his childhood favorites were Ba Ba Black Sheep and Twinkle Twinkle. It's no surprise that when he started talking, he picked up these rhymes from us. I have some super cute audio recordings of Rian when he was a 2 yr old.

As Rian started growing up, I started singing my favorite hindi songs to him. Brushing time was a challenge for us and Daddy typically had to jump and do a puppet show to get Rian to brush. During this time, I started singing "Sach mere yaar hain" from Sagar. Within 2 weeks Rian had picked up the lyrics on the sly. Once I stopped singing mid-song and he just picked up and completed the lines for me :-)

Courage bolstered, I moved on to "Aao baccho tumhe dikhaye" with an ulterior motive of getting Rian to say "Vande Mataram" in March. A week later Rian was singing the whole first stanza and he loves saying "Vande Mataram"!! Mission accomplished :-)

There is a 4-line verse his school song, and Rian used to hum it but would never say the correct words. He's become very mischievous these days. Last week he decided to bless Daddy - all 4 lines of the song, in perfect tune :-) School has made a big difference to Rian's personality.

It was not all easy though. We had a trying time with school. During that time, to give Rian something to look fwd to in the mornings, we started doing Pooja every day before leaving for school. I started singing one paragraph of Ganpati Aarti "Sukhakarta Dukhaharta". In two weeks Rian knew the whole first para :-) I'm very proud of this one. This kid loves Ganpati Bappa and Pooja and going to the temple. We were in the Indian temple last night, and I explained to him that he has to sing the Aarti for Bappa and he did it... in a soft voice. Then at the end he loudly said "Ganpati Bappa Morya, Mangal Murti Morya, Pudhchya Varshi lavkar yaa...". Guruji was very pleased, and I was beaming with pride.