More books ... and some music too

Today we resumed our Borders habit with lunch in the café and a little book shopping. I bought myself a Chinese page-a-day calendar on clearance for $4 and got two new books for Nora - Zen Ties by Jon Muth and You're Never Too Little to Love by Jeanne Willis. They are both great and the second would be a fantastic Valentine's gift for a little one if you're looking for something.


I was also at Borders last Monday (I had the day off for MLK day) with my 40% off cd coupon and bought 3 new cds for Nora. Nora has very little music of her own - just a few cds and some stuff that I downloaded from iTunes ("Octopus's Garden" - Ringo Starr, "Rocket Man" - Elton John, "Merry-Go-Round" - Antje Duvekot and "Yellow Submarine"* - Ringo Starr) - but I'd like her to have more. Sooo, I've added a new blog page for Nora's Music - there's a link in the sidebar to the left. If you have any suggestions for great children's music, I'd love to hear them!

* Paul has said that he wrote "Yellow Submarine" as a children's song for Ringo to sing. I'm choosing to believe this, rather than the alternate interpretation.

An unusual number of activities...

... and overload in the first two weeks of November.

In the past week I have signed us up for an unusual number of activities. First there was the baby CPR class on 11/10. It was the same day as the baby sign language refresher class, so we opted to do CPR this time (more important anyway, right?) and I'll work on some other way to get a baby signs refresher, perhaps a do-it-yourself sign of the day thing at home. Next I signed up for a transracial parenting class recommended by C at work - this is on 11/03. Then, as I was considering purchasing tickets for the Minhua chorus concert (also 11/10), I remembered that the Twelve Girls Band is coming to town in November (11/3) - I know this because of the public television fundraiser a couple of weeks ago.

I asked Rob which he'd rather go to - Minhua chorus or the Twelve Girls Band - and, no surprise he chose the Twelve Girls band (because who wouldn't choose the more expensive ticket? - kidding, actually I don't blame him, I'd rather see the Twelve Girls Band also).

For the uninitiated, here they are:

Chinese music concert

Rob received this at work today. It looks very good and tickets are only $15. We're going to try to go, I think. It will be a busy day for us - we're also hoping to take an infant CPR class earlier in the day.

Minhua Chorus will proudly perform a concert titled "Western Impression of China" at the O'Shaughnessy Auditorium at the St. Catherine. St. Paul, MN. Nov. 10th 2007.

China is a multi-ethnic nation composed of 56 ethnic groups. The vast variety of cultures from these ethnic groups has brought amazing richness and vigor to Chinese music which is strongly rooted in ethnic music. This concert will feature some of the most significant and popular classical Chinese folk songs, music, dances, and costumes from ethnic groups in western China. The concert with its poetic western Chinese theme will promise the audience lively visual and audio enjoyment.

If interested, please visit the website or call the phone number listed below for ticket info.

Western Impression

7:30pm, Saturday, Nov. 10, 2007

O'Shaughnessy Auditorium

St. Catherine College

2004 Randolph Avenue

St. Paul, MN 55105

Ticket & Info:

651-736-9853, 651-246-5735

http://www.minhuachorus.org/

Really?? Why??

So, I was catching up on my email backlog this evening and came across Tuesday's email newsletter from Cookie magazine. First, I want to say that I love Cookie magazine and one of the things I like best is recommendations for kid-friendly playlists of real music. So when I read "... listen to Rockabye Baby's lullaby versions of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, The Ramones or the Pixies" I got all excited and clicked on the link.

It is not nearly as cool as it sounds. It is all that great music (and more - U2, The Cure, Smashing Pumpkins...) on what sounds like a xylophone or something. WHY??? Is there some reason that kids can't listen to the original music as long as you keep them away from questionable lyrical content? And why is there a need to adapt the Beach Boys for children - does that really need cleaning up? It was practically children's music to begin with!

This is one for the mini-van list probably (i.e. things I say that we'll never do, but will probably renege on once there's a baby in our lives).

Music for Baby

Thank you so much to our wonderful Dec DTC Secret Pal for the marvelous musical gifts -- two Songs for Learning cds and a Little Tykes piano! I haven't listened to the cds yet, but I can tell you that the piano promises endless fun. I've played with it several times already. Nora's going to love it!

Back to Borders

It has been weeks since we've been to Borders. Seriously. WEEKS. At least three. I hadn't even seen the October issue of British Ideal Home¹.

So, today, armed with Nora's book list and the latest coupons from the Borders Rewards email, off we went. Rob missed the turn. Understandable, since we hadn't been there in so long. Finally we arrived and found it just as wonderful as we remembered. We drank coffee and read magazines. I bought Nora a book, The Story About Ping, and a cd, Sing Along With Putumayo. It was a lovely afternoon.

¹ Ideal Home is my absolute favorite decorating magazine. I never buy it, but I read it every time we go to Borders. The pictures are great, but it's a little frustrating that none of the products are available in the US. If I ever move to the UK, though, boy will I know where to shop.

Success and failure

Today is both a good day and a bad day.

BAD -- Rob and I have decided to discontinue our Mandarin lessons, at least for a while. Neither of us has been committing enough time to study between lessons and aren't progressing as we should. It made for classes that were stressful and unproductive. We hope to try again someday, but this is not the right time for us.

GOOD -- Even though we weren't feeling super-motivated this morning we did both go to the gym and exercise. Rob is actually very good about going and exercise is a habit for him. That's not so much the case for me, but I'm working on it (going to need to keep up with the little one!). I've found that music does a LOT to motivate me. My current playlist is:

• Crazy - Gnarls Barkley - 2:58 (I use this for warm up b/c I like it, but it will probably come off the list since it's really not a great exercise song)
• Get the Party Started - Pink - 3:11
• Crazy in Love - Beyonce - 3:55
• Yeah! - Usher - 4:10
• In da Club - 50 Cent - 3:13
• Pump It - Black Eyed Peas - 3:35
• Lose Yourself - Eminem - 5:20 (Possibly the best motivational, hill-climb song EVER!)
• Hot in Herre - Nelly - 3:48
• Rock Your Body - Justin Timberlake - 4:27 (cool down)
• Sexy Love - Ne-Yo - 3:40 (cool WAY down)

Two others on this playlist are Work It by Missy Elliott and Dirty by Christina Aguilera, but I usually skip both of them. I haven't decided yet if they are bad choices or if I just don't have them in the right place in the list.

If you have a playlist that you love (or individual songs that work really well), please share!

Mandarin DVDs!

It was another great mail day at our house! Nora continues to get more (and better) mail than we do! Today she received the Mandarin/English Bear in the Big Blue House DVDs I ordered from yesasia.

I heard about these from Denise in the December 2005 DTC group. We were talking about the lovely name Luna which led to Bear and his friend the Sun (Luna). Denise mentioned these terrific multilingual DVDs. I'm not a big fan of tv for kids, but this is a show I like and it's available in a version that will help Nora learn Mandarin. How great is that?!

As you can see from the photo above, I also ordered a CD of children's music. I haven't listened to it yet, but I'm really curious to hear what kind of Chinese children's music has a little Dutch girl on the package. Hmm.

Book Junkie

I think that I mentioned the December DTC group's children's book club once before. We are now on week 9. I'm a little behind... and buying out of order. I like to shop at Borders and our little downtown bookstore (mostly) because I like having them there and don't want Amazon to put them out of business. I do order board books from Amazon, though, because they have a buy 3 get the 4th free deal that includes most board books.

This afternoon we were wanting to go out for a bit, so I suggested a trip to (insert maniacal laugh here) Borders. Rob can always be convinced to go to Borders because he can get an espresso drink and a fancy pastry and read magazines for free. I think that's allowed, by the way, because they charge a fortune for coffee and put the magazines right next to the coffee bar. Besides, while Rob is reading their magazines, I'm off shopping!

Anyway, my intention today was to buy week one's book, The Kissing Hand. No, I'm not that far behind, like I said I'm out of order!

So, what I went in for was this:

What I came away with was this:

Of course I opened the Chinese music cd immediately and played it the whole way home (5 songs worth). Rob was not pleased, he doesn't like Chinese music and wanted to listen to NPR. I am pleased to say, though, that he does like Diary of a Wombat. I don't know if a child would like it or not, but we thought it was laugh-out-loud funny.

Gifts from China

Rob just returned from a business trip to Shanghai. I sent a whole shopping list and he came back with, well, some of it. To his credit, though, he did get the important stuff - a Chinese zodiac papercut for Nora's lifebook and some children's cds. Our Chinese isn't good enough to make any sense of the cds, but we did ask Nicole, our Chinese instructor, about them. She said that one is famous Chinese poems (that's the one with the man in the robe) and the other one is children's songs about Beijing. The interesting thing is that none of the children in the cartoons appear to be Asian, maybe they are visiting Beijing?