Search Results for: blog our little drummer

Learn From Your Mistakes

Last month my friend called to say she won tickets to a local Jingle Ball concert. It wasn’t the huge one held in New York City, but she told me that she was still going to be able to see live performances by Pitbull, Demi Lovato and The Script. Long story short, she and her husband went, danced and snapped a bunch of photos with their smartphones. I don’t even know if it was legal for them to take pictures of the acts, but at this point it doesn’t matter because none of the images were worth displaying—-in a frame, … Continue reading →

The Little Guitar

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I’ve talked about my son being interested in music before. He’s constantly surrounded by guitars, drums, pianos and other instruments on account of having musically inclined and interested parents, as well as an extended family interested in music of all forms. He’s been listening to music since he was a very young boy (in the womb, in fact) and it’s always been important to him. He dances and wiggles his pointer fingers when he hears anything resembling a beat (I can’t adequately describe how cute this dance actually is) and is always the life of the party (he had a … Continue reading →

Our Little Drummer

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My family and I have completed a big cross-country move. It was a trial — that’s for sure — but we made it. As we’ve relocated much nearer our families, we’ve had the opportunity to see our son around them (something that was very few and far-between over the past five years we spent away). There is, strangely, a difference between him with family members and him with near-total strangers and non-relatives. While he was known as “the happy baby” during his short stint in daycare, and has constantly been referred to as “the happiest baby ever” by anyone who … Continue reading →

Do You Know Your Kids’ Favorite Holiday Songs?

I think you can learn a lot about a person by finding out what sort of holiday music he or she likes (if any). This can be a great topic of conversation and comparison for a family too. Do you know what your child’s or children’s favorite holiday music is? Favorite songs or singers? Find out and see what you learn about your child… Expect kid’s tastes to change over the years—just because they love “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” as a young toddler, doesn’t mean they will still love that song as a teenager. In fact, they may get rather … Continue reading →

The 13 Nights of Halloween

Forget about drummers drumming, pipers piping, maids a milking and turtle doves. It’s Halloween, so bring on the marching mutants, dancing demons and singing skulls. All the dastardly icons of the candy-collecting holiday are on display for your viewing pleasure in debut author-illustrator Guy Vasilovich’s vibrant picture book, The 13 Nights of Halloween. The entire tale is can be sung to the tune of “The 12 Days of Christmas,” but that’s where the similarities end. There is no true love gifting foreign birds and golden rings in this book. Rather, Vasilovich counts down to Halloween by having a mummy present … Continue reading →

The Tin Whistle Drum Stick

If there’s one thing you must know about my son if you’ve been following this blog for any length of time at all (and I really mean even as recently as a few days ago) it’s that he absolutely loves music. Loves it with every fibre of his visible being. We played music for him in the womb (in part to help him un-breech himself); we introduced him to music early and often; we made a number of instruments available to him without reservation as early as possible. When I briefly studied in Ireland I picked up a tin whistle … Continue reading →

Where Did He Learn That?

Yesterday I took a deviation from my standard topic of young adults through real adults wrestling with writing papers, red tape in education, and their own internal motivation. I talked about a new middle school teacher and how excited I was for her students. I shed years writing that post, in part because it was like going back in time to middle school myself. Today I want to go back even further. “Where Did He Learn That?” is about my very young son. You can read the Fatherhood Blog for more information abut him, but it occurred to me (as … Continue reading →

The Drum Plate

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Eating is sort of a tradition in our family. I suspect it is everywhere, but somehow it feels like it’s special to us. From my earliest days on this earth I liked eating. My whole family likes eating. If we were to really think about it (which we tend not to) we probably eat to a fault. At any rate, eating is an activity that brings us together. We share food as well as stories. We laugh, we smile and we pass along a sense of family to the next generation. The dinner table is about much more than food, … Continue reading →

Joaquin Phoenix was only Joking

Last year, I blogged about one of my favorite actors, Joaquin Phoenix, who had apparently gone off the deep end. The two-time Academy Award nominated actor suddenly started appearing scruffy in public (maybe unwashed is a more accurate description) and acting strangely. He announced he was done with acting. That part, I wasn’t so surprised by. The Phoenixs have always struck me as a family that walks to the beat of their own drummer. But, his appearance along with the announcement he was beginning a rap “career,” caused me to fear the worse for Joaquin. After all, this was a … Continue reading →

Hee Haw Loses a Twin

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When I was growing up, there were only four channels and that included PBS, which when I was a child had THE most boring programming, even for kids. So, when Saturday afternoon rolled around, there was only one show to watch – “Hee Haw.” Yes, it was cornier than the cornfields that they told their jokes in, but the competition was – well, there really wasn’t any. The show, which started in 1969, was so wholesome that it made “Little House on the Prairie” look risqué. Even though it was cornball comedy at its best, there are some skits that … Continue reading →