{"id":4348,"date":"2011-07-25T07:12:59","date_gmt":"2011-07-25T11:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=4348"},"modified":"2011-07-31T22:58:23","modified_gmt":"2011-08-01T02:58:23","slug":"marshall-music-and-mommy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=4348","title":{"rendered":"Marshall, Music, and Mommy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Marshall,<\/p>\n<p>Of the many things I hope for you, a love of music is one of the most important. I don&#8217;t necessarily want to turn you into a Juilliard-trained instrumentalist. Not that it would be a bad thing, but it&#8217;s not for everyone, and I&#8217;m not going to push you down that road unless it&#8217;s right for you.<\/p>\n<p>No, what I really want is for you to love music so that it will always be there for you as a source of joy, entertainment, healing&#8212;whatever you need from it. I want you to feel comfortable making music, too, whether with your voice or your hands, or just tapping your toes. I also hope you&#8217;ll be able to dance without being self-conscious about it.<\/p>\n<p>Your musical progression so far:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a title=\"Your Mom, the Singer-Songwriter\" href=\"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=2595\">I sang to you often when you were an itty-bitty baby<\/a>. It calmed you during the nights when you would cry.<\/li>\n<li>When you got a little older, we sometimes played a game in which we&#8217;d sing single notes back and forth. Well, I&#8217;d  sing and you&#8217;d sort of shout, but it was cute. As you improved, the game became more complex, and we&#8217;d sing multiple notes (for example, &#8220;Nah nah nah NAH,&#8221; as in Beethoven&#8217;s &#8220;Fifth&#8221;).<\/li>\n<li>I hope I never forget that time in your father&#8217;s office when you danced like mad to &#8220;Heart of Rock and Roll&#8221; by Huey Lewis and the News.<\/li>\n<li>Last Christmas, I sang  &#8220;Jingle Bells&#8221; to you over and over again because you liked it so much. Just a  few weeks ago, I was changing your diaper, and you started to hum the song. You probably weren&#8217;t even aware that you were doing it. I was  amazed that you remembered so much of it! So when I finished the diaper change, I sang the song to you, and you started doing a silly &#8220;dance,&#8221; running around in a circle. At the end of the song, you said, &#8220;Agan! Agan! Agan!&#8221;  This quickly became a favorite game. After several  rounds, you would get so dizzy you could barely walk, but you&#8217;d stumble  around going, &#8220;Agan!&#8221; I caught the whole thing on video, so we&#8217;ll be able to show it to all your friends when you&#8217;re older. Mother&#8217;s prerogative. \ud83d\ude09<\/li>\n<li>Recently, you switched favorites. Now you request &#8220;Row, Row, Row Your Boat.&#8221; You can sing the first line (&#8220;Row, row, row your boat&#8221;). You ignore the part that goes, &#8220;Gently down the stream.&#8221; Next is &#8220;Mooey, mooey&#8221; for &#8220;Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.&#8221; Then you say, &#8220;Agan!&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I wonder what our next musical game will be. Whatever it is, I can&#8217;t wait to play it agan and agan.<\/p>\n<p>Love,<\/p>\n<p>Mom<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Marshall, Of the many things I hope for you, a love of music is one of the most important. I don&#8217;t necessarily want to turn you into a Juilliard-trained instrumentalist. Not that it would be a bad thing, but &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=4348\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[145,243],"tags":[517],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4348"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4348"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4413,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4348\/revisions\/4413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}