Our Flat is Alive...With the Sound of Music

First off, welcome to all those of you who are taking the time to read this. I know i have a lot to compete with (ebay, work, news websites, music download sites...) and chances are if you're here now you're neglecting some other, more worthy task. So don't forget to send that email/pay that bill/return that phonecall/ring your mother....!

I don't know about you, but our home is currently resounding with the energising, high-pitched tones of Dame Julie Andrews. Again. And again. The other day, in an effort to carve out a few minutes of peace for ourselves, jay and i had the bright idea of introducting our music-loving toddler to "The Sound of Music". We figured he'd get off on the musical numbers. Boy did he! Not only that but we taught him to use the rewind button, so now when the "Do Re Me" segment is over (approximately 7 and a half minutes later) he can simply press a button and voila, in Julie Andrews own words, 'start from the very beginning'. Lucky us. It's not unusual to have 17-odd goes in one sitting. Our downstairs grouch of a neighbour Dan (a single, childless, anal-retentive fellow in his mid-thirties) is going to love this latest development. Really.

Unfortunately, four days in and Egg shows no signs of tiring of it. In a sense it's backfired. I find myself doing the laundry, adopting a posh British accent, and enquiring of the socks, "When you read you begin with A,B,C....when you sing you begin with _____" , and wondering why they are not in fact answering me back in a singsong fashion. But then, i could just be losing my mind.

A few of you have been honoured with an impromptu acoustic version a la Egg upon phoning our home recently. Dear Uncle Foaud rang the other day and asked Egg how he was doing. He was met with the mostly in-tune response of "Do Re Me Fa So La Ti Doooo". The preferred method of singsonging this for Egg is trouserless, sitting on his little stool in the kitchen and accompanying himself with a toy xylaphone. I'm not sure why this is so (the trouserless part) but it just is.

(Unfortunately this may be something i'll have to delve into deeper at some point, given that a few weeks ago i was in Cafe Nero alone with the two boys and while trying to calm a purple-faced starving and screaming Noah by frantically jiggling him on my lap, i watched in horror as Egg began disrobing. He got as far as mostly freeing himself from his bright red dungarees and was working on his nappy fastenings in order to flash the world his manhood before i truly grasped what was going on. I jammed him in his pushchair - not caring that he was half naked and it was the middle of winter -and grabbing Noah under one arm like a football, propelled us out the door in a tornado of bare legs, howling, cappucino foam and cookie crumbs...attracting great interest from the other patrons in the crowded cafe. That was when it suddenly dawned on me that i was 'ONE OF THOSE MOTHERS'. You know what i'm talking about. The ones that the rest of us ( i confess to this previous behaviour) would observe coolly while sipping a latte, and subtley roll their eyes and think 'can't they control their own children?'. Well, quite frankly the answer is NO. A loud, resounding NO. Egg is far too gone, and has at the ripe old age of 2 and a half, mastered the ancient art of manipulation. It goes something like this:

(me) "Egg! Put your trousers on right now!" (best authoritative expression...)

(Egg) "No Mama" (stubborn sweet smile.....)

(me) "Mama will give you a yummy treat..." (pleading eyes.....)

(Egg) "What yummy treat?" (a raised eyebrow and piqued curiosity....)

(me) "A CHOCOLATE treat!" (stronger pleading face....)

(Egg) "Okay. Give Eggie treat." (self-satisfied smile....)

And that's how it goes. A lot more often than i'd like to admit :)

Anyway, aside from a burgeoning love for Julie Andrews, Egg loves all things musical. A friend of ours made the unwise decision to leave his small, albeit grossly expensive guitar here last week. A fact that hasn't gone unnoticed by Egg. Nevermind that it's worth approximately £800 or so, due to it's smaller size, this 'baby guitar' in Egg's mind, is for him. Jay has three other guitars here at home, two being electric, and Egg has already sussed that if plugged into Dada's amplifier, the sound will be amazing. So he does. I'm not quite sure i can do justice to the double sensory overload of first hearing a screeching guitar, then racing upstairs to be confronted by a blissed-out toddler posing legs apart on the landing, and happily strumming a guitar almost as big as himself, clad only in Winnie-the-Pooh nappies.

Last night Jay took Egg to his first 'gig'. A live performance of a pop/punk band called 'The Howling Bells' over in Piccadilly Circus in a Virgin Megastore. Egg was the youngest person there, and even got a shout out from the stage where he was perched on jay's shoulders clapping away and having the time of his life. He even got a picture with the lead singer and came back ecstatically clutching his signed cd and raving about the 'drums, guitars, singing, etc.'. Rock on Egg.

Anyway, this morning is MY two hour 'me time' slot and yet here i sit tip-tap- typing-away when i could be a) having a bubblebath b) reading a magazine c)going for a walk...all manner of delightful things.

No offense, but i'm outta here!