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Where Is Barney? Improv By My Daughter…
By KWiz | January 22, 2007
I have so much fun with my daughter (she’s 2 years and 8 months old as of Jan. 20th). While driving to school in the morning with her, I listen to the Steve Harvey Morning Show (it is the most hilarious show I have ever heard in my life!). This morning, as I was listening to the show, I heard her singing something as she sat in her car seat. I turned the radio volume down to hear her singing an improvisation of the English version of the well-known children’s song “Frère Jacques” entitled “Are You Sleeping?” To refresh your memories, here are the words:
Are you sleeping, Are you sleeping,
Brother John? Brother John?
Morning bells are ringing, morning bells are ringing.
Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong.
Do you remember? My daughter remembers. She remembers so much so that she changed the words to fit her immediate mobile (in the car) situation. Let me describe.
My daughter loves to bring stuffed animals and such with her on our 40-45 minute drive each morning. Today she brought her leopard, a pug dog, and Barney, gathering them in her lap for her leisurely trek to daycare. As always happens when she attempts to give all of her toys love at the same time, one, or all, of her animals (or M&M guy) ends up on the car floor. It was Barney’s turn; he ended up on the floor face down. To honor his temporary downfall (pun intended), my daughter sings:
Where is Barney? Where is Barney?
There he is! There he is!
He fell on the floor, he fell on the floor,
Ding, ding, dong! Ding, ding, dong!
When I heard the song, I cracked up in utter hilarity! Doesn’t sound funny to you? I found it to be incredible that a toddler has the presence of mind to take a song and create new lyrics to fit an immediate situation. In my mind, it’s pure genius and innovation! And it was funnier than whatever was going on during Steve Harvey’s Morning Show at the time (which says alot for her!)! I said to her, “Thank you, sweetheart, for making me laugh,” to which she replied, “You’re welcome,” chuckling herself.
She makes up songs like this frequently. One especially creative one comes to mind, sung to the melody of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” (She sang this as she was looking at the vacuum cleaner in the corner of the room one day.) It went like this:
Cleaner, cleaner, cleaner, cleaner,
Cleaner, cleaner, cleaner, cleaner,
Cleaner, cleaner, cleaner, cleaner,
Cleaner, cleaner, cleaner, cleaner,
Cleaner, cleaner, cleaner, cleaner,
Cleaner, cleaner, cleaner, cleaner,
I suppose she just wanted to give the vacuum cleaner special homage.
How incredible are our children? And if it wasn’t for our children (even if you don’t have them yourself), how dull and ordinary would our lives be? I often think to myself and sometimes say aloud, “What did I do for the first 40 years of my life?” (Of course, my marriage isn’t included here.)
Sometimes I wish it could stay funny this way much of the time…but then, how would we grow as women attempting to gain wisdom and understanding to be better mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, friends?
(And can’t we grow without those “terrible two’s”?)
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Topics: Parenting, Personal Development, Relationships | 1 Comment »
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August 7th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
I am 47 with a 5 year old daughter so I could relate to your post. They are such a joy! But, for me the 2’s were not so terrible compared to the 5’s!
Testing, testing…1..2..3. Everything is a Why? and a Whine and a Whimper. But Without her my life would be Well….WORTHLESS!