Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens…

Those were the only words I ever knew to that song. My whole life! And I would sing them with such bravado and feeling, until I hit the “kitten” part, and then I would just sort of drop off and think, “What in the world comes next?”. And I’d hum – like someone who trips while walking down the sidewalk and then pretends to start jogging, like they did it on purpose. So I finally decided to look up the lyrics. On YouTube. And since Emily was with me at the time, this song is now officially one of her favorite things. We must have watched it 47 times before we both knew it by heart. The “strudel” and “schnitzel” part took a bit longer to learn (we kept mixing them up!) but, in the end, we got there. Now we sing it on our way to school every morning, along with the normal morning repertoire which includes the alphabet, A New Way To Walk, Counting To Four, and selections from Georges Bizet’s Carmen.

On a related note, Emily is very proud of her new newfound ability to autonomously navigate YouTube. It didn’t take much. After getting sick and tired of pressing the Play button on command after each and every one of the 5 bajillion viewings of Five Little Ducks today (four was enough to make me consider hari kari), I showed her how a simple press of the space bar will start the video over again. That blew her mind and bought me about 25 minutes of duck-free downtime.