Toes in the Grass: Bad romance, white liars, and other suitable song material

It all started innocently enough. A little twang here, courtesy Old Crow Medicine Show; a little rock 'n roll there, thanks to The Boss. So how did Evan wind up singing along to Lady Gaga? (Guilty party sheepishly raises hand.)

I'll make the weak case that it's not entirely my fault--the first song I ever remember hearing was Cat Stevens' "Moonshadow," not "The Itsy Bitsy Spider." I am forever grateful that my dad raised me on a healthy dose of The Beatles, The Who, ELO, CCR, Elton John, and a ton of other great artists. Add those to a bevy of Disney, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Broadway tunes, plus the country and Christian artists I discovered in junior high, plus all the music Nate brings to our CD collection--Ryan Adams, the Felice Brothers, really old country (all the good stuff about mama, trains, trucks, and drinkin'), and (ack) The White Stripes--and Evan has one heck of a musical collection, with nary a kids' sing-along CD in sight. (Oh, he's learned the classics from parents' day out and preschool, with all the little hand motions, and I'm trying to teach him some of my favorite songs from Sunday School--I'm not so anti-kid as that.) And nothing was sweeter than the first time he sang "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" while sitting on top of my parents' kitchen counter, but there's something especially endearing and oddly reassuring--more about that in a minute--about seeing him slapping his knee in the rear view mirror to a bluegrass song about getting arrested for hauling an illegal substance down I-65. (And in case someone wants to nominate me for Bad Parent of the Year, track 2 on the same CD is called "Highway Halo," and it's as pure as a 1600's church hymn. It's also Evan's favorite song on the entire disc.) There's nothing wrong with being a little eclectic.

Back to that "oddly reassuring" part: There are so many reasons I'm glad Evan loves music--one, he's good at it. It's a great thing to feel confident in your ability to do something especially well, and someday Evan will need that if he doesn't make IU's starting lineup. And two, it's something he shows true interest in. Evan is constantly changing his mind, running here and there, and getting fixated on the most random things for an impossibly long time. But turn on a CD or a country music awards show, and he's there. In the moment. Running to grab his cowboy hat and his acoustic guitar. Paying razor-close attention to exactly how Brad Paisley positions his fingers, or how Charlie Daniels holds the fiddle. It's amazing, and reassuring that somewhere in his fuzzy little head, things are starting to connect. Along with loving the tunes, Evan also loves instruments--at last count, we are the proud owners of one keyboard, one violin, two saxophones, two trumpets, three guitars, a set of maracas, and a real drum (Daddy's idea). And the unusual amount of patience Evan shows when playing them or watching someone else play is nothing short of miraculous.

Despite not being able to describe in detail what he did during the weekend--beyond telling me that he swam and floated and rode Casey, everything else gets lost in translation--it's also wildly encouraging that Evan has the memory of an elephant when it comes to tunes. I know it's easier for everyone to remember song lyrics than basic prose, because of how the human brain memorizes words set to music. But this is my here-there-everywhere-mile-a-minute Evan, and it's amazing what music brings out of him. Turn on the radio (because I'm going to get an earful if I don't), and he immediately starts singing along to Miranda Lambert, or George Strait, or, um, Lady Gaga. (She might be a freak show, but her stuff is catchy.) Granted, he might only pick up on half of the lyrics, so it comes out: "Heyyyyy, white liar, truth comes blah blah blah blah time." But it's more than he can string together during a normal conversation on the playground. Maybe this is a case of learning to sing before learning to talk. Unfortunately, there are a few songs Evan loves that I can't stand, like the last three Carrie Underwood singles. Evan's like me in that it takes him a nano-second to realize which song is playing on the radio--one note, and it's all over. If I don't want to hear him yell, "I want 'Cowboy Cassanova!'" for the next 20 minutes, I'd better pray I can tune in the station I just passed.

Once upon a time, I also harbored some minor hatred towards Taylor Swift (Nate liked her constant hair flips a little too much)...but here and now, I'll admit I owe her a huge debt of gratitude. Were it not for Miss Swift, I might well have suffered brain damage long before now from banging my head repeatedly on my car's steering wheel. Back when Evan was weaning off the binky (but still firmly addicted), he'd have one in his mouth, take it out, and throw it on the floor of the car as soon as I pulled out of the driveway. Then he'd scream until he got it back, throw it down again, scream, etc. It got to where I kept about 10 binkies in the front seat, and just kept passing them back in the hopes that we'd make it to SuperTarget, five minutes away, without doing bodily harm to myself. Then one day, Evan started dancing to a Taylor Swift song at home, and whenever it came on the radio in the car, he didn't seem to care so much if his binky was just inches out of reach. So I bought Swift's sophomore album, and "Love Story" basically saved me from going insane. Binky down? No problem--pop in Taylor! Two weeks of Taylor, and I threw out all the binkies. God bless her and her 6,000 sundresses.

Of course, with Evan's rapidly expanding vocabulary, I have suddenly realized there are some songs we can no longer listen to together. (Say, many bluegrass songs with double meaning. If you can't think of any, check out OCMS's "Mary's Kitchen." It has a great beat, but you'll never think about sausage the same way.) Case in point: Last night at Kroger, I found a new line of greeting cards for moms like me--the harried, the sarcastically humorous. I don't know where the Hallmark writers spotted us, but they got our daily stroll through SuperTarget down pat: The front of one card showed two moms, each pushing a shopping cart with a kid in the seat. One child is sweetly singing "E-I-E-I-O," while the mother smiles proudly; the other child is belting out: "Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me!" That mother, like me, is suddenly rethinking her iPod playlist. The inside reads: "Wishing you a day with no Bad Mommy moments."

In closing, all this musicality ties in nicely with one of our new favorite shows: Last week, Evan started holding his thumb and index finger at right angles to form an L, or the "loser" sign featured in the "Glee" commercials. Lovely. We have the theatricality episode protected on the DVR, especially for Lea Michele and Idina Menzel's fantastic rendition of Lady Gaga's "Poker Face," which Evan loves. (Me, too.) And all those p's in "P-p-p-po-ker face/p-p-po-ker face"? They've been great for his speech. You should hear his annunciation of "porcupine," "penguin," and "popcorn." See? Mommy of the Year. :)