Eyeballs, Forks-- You Know the Rest

I nearly expired from the shock of boredom I experienced today when I caught some of the song lyrics on one of Jonah's kiddy tapes.

I love my blanket every day,
Every day, every day.
I love my blanket every day,
When I sleep and when I play.

Come. On. Are you seriously kidding me?

(Ha. "Seriously kidding." Oxymoron, much?)

Let's go out and play today,
Play today, play today.
Let's go out and play today,
Let's go out and play!

Great balls of flaming inanity!

Run like I do,
Run like Iiiii do,
Run like IIIII am doing nooooww,
Run like I do,
Run like I do,
Run like IIII am doing noooow.

Jump like I do...

Argh. That tape is teaming with inane, meaningless gibberish all sung to the same three tunes.

What happened to good old Mother Goose?

I am a musician. (Mediocre at best, but still a musician.) I play instruments, and I have since I was a child. I've spent many and hour playing in lessons, orchestra rehearsals, church services, recitals, and just for fun. I want Jonah to grow up with an appreciation of GOOD music. This tape is not furthering those purposes.

To top it off, Jonah memorizes things faster than you could believe, so he's constantly singing these stupid songs. It's a waste. A waste, I tell you. And (as much as I love to hear him sing) it makes my ears bleed. I've been on a hunt for some tapes of Bible verses set to music for him to listen to and memorize. The one I like the best is from a homeschool curriculum that puts out many memorization song tapes. The verses are simple, the references are included in the songs, and the music is quite good. The problem is, the verses are from a variety of translations. Nathan said we should only use songs that have King James Version verses. So when I went looking for those kind of songs, I found none that have GOOD music. They're all irritating and smarmy tunes played on various versions of a synthesizer. I'll end up with diabetes listening to that crap.

I haven't even been able to find good recordings of simple, traditional hymns for him to listen to. I can only find collections of saccharine and repetative and only vaguely "religious" songs. Doesn't anyone put out some good kid music?

So I keep looking. In the meantime, that particular tape is going to mysteriously get lost. Hmm... now that I think about it, somewhere around here I have a box of my old tapes (from back when I listened to tapes). I bet I could replace Stupid Kid Songs, Vol. 947 with the Les Miserables soundtrack and he'd be perfectly happy. So would I.