I find enough of this stay-at-home stuff hard enough on its own without having Elmo, Raffi and the Wiggles on a constant loop in the background. No thank you. So...we listen to my ipod and we listen to the radio.
The kids of course prefer the upbeat tempo of pop music on the radio to the occasional Shins song that comes across on my ipod playlist. So, instead of the The Muffin Man, Haven learned how to sing Let's Dance by Lady Gaga. She quickly became obsessed with any Lady Gaga song that came on the radio or on the television. Given she was only 18 months at the time and not fully understanding that there is a huge difference between the lyrics of The Muffin Man and what Lady Gaga means when she says she's "bluffin' with her muffin.'" But in all honestly, we're fine it. We've got plenty of time ahead of us to talk about the different kinds of muffins that exist in the world -- and life's too short to pull the censorship card out in a world where our kids are exposed to all kinds of things we won't ever have full control over. As a general rule, we want our kids to be exposed to more things not less things and we want to talk them through it as best we can and give them the tools to critically think about the world around them -- not shelter them from it. But that's just us. I get there are a lot of people that wouldn't agree with me on allowing your two year old to learn the words to a Lady Gaga song let alone watch one of her music videos on TV. And that's totally fine. And it definitely stuns a few people -- like when Haven was about two and half and her play school teacher told her she could pick the song they were going to sing during circle time and she said, "I wanna sing Pumped Up Kicks."
Turns out, Ronan is exactly the same. He loves music too. He loves to dance. While Haven is going bananas in the backseat like a love struck teenager to One Direction, Ronan will put up with it and maybe dance a little -- but when a rap song comes on -- that's his joint -- that's when he really lets loose. Like seriously shake his grove thing as much as he can within the confines of the carseat straps. Jay-Z, Kanye, even the little rap solos that are inside most pop songs these days -- the kid loves him some rap.
So, when he was about 18 months old and heard Thrift Shop for the first time (which was barely on the radio back then -- I know, hard to imagine now) I thought his head was going to explode. So earlier this year, when he wasn't all over the place, I sure as hell had never heard of Macklemore and had no idea who he was. So we looked him up. Not gonna lie -- I assumed he was black. Well....he's not only a white rapper, but he freakin looks like Ronan. He looks like a 30 year old Ronan in a fur coat. Brian and I almost died.
Once the song caught on in popularity and was overplayed on the radio he heard the announcer say Macklemore so many times that he started asking for more Macklemore -- "I want Macklemore."
Well...my little Macklemore turned two today :) And we Macked out his room with some Macklemore merch and got him a Macklemore t-shirt to boot. Don't worry -- he liked his plastic t-ball and golf club set, too -- he's not a total baller/gangster/thug -- but he was definitely psyched about the Macklemore inspired gifts.
Happy 2nd Birthday, Ronan. Let's hope we can only be so lucky and that you'll be a pimped out strawberry blonde rapper from Southie and we'll just ride off into the sunset on your coat tails while you're makin' it rain. Love you little, man. You are literally my everything.
