Thursday, October 18, 2007

Gnus and Other Creatures

Last night I was getting the ducklings' jammies on them. (Actually D1 can now do this almost entirely without assistance, an event whose import of joy on both sides you could only understand if you knew my skills at child-dressing. When I first visited my family after D1's birth, with six months of mommyhood under my belt, my siblings all came down and lined up on the couch while I was changing the baby, not because they wanted to see me or the baby, but because they wanted to be there for the show. They were not disappointed.)

For some reason something reminded me of a snatch of song from an old British comedy duo and I started singing:

"I'm a g-nu, I'm a g-nu,
You really ought to k-now w-ho's w-ho."

Unfortunately that was all I could remember. And according to DOB, I was butchering the melody even on that part. But the ducklings were delighted and insisted on hearing it over and over.

Now, singing the same two lines of the song repeatedly, and getting even those wrong, gets frustrating after awhile. So when everyone was installed in their jammies, I went to Google and hunted up the lyrics. That was all well and good, but my attempt to sing them required me to make up half of the tune, and believe me, I'm no composer. D2 was satisfied, but I was not.

Then I went back to the Google results and great was our joy to realize we could watch the entire thing on YouTube. The ducklings were satisfied, except of course they wanted to watch it a great many more times than was reasonable, what with it being bedtime and all. How did we survive before Google and YouTube?

The gnu featured in a lengthy discussion D1 and I had today on mammals, or rather, Which Animals Drink Milk from their Mamas. Pretty much any topic we approach comes from the food angle. Earlier this morning we counted buttons into bowls and they became soup. On Tuesday we made an apple pie and saw the world. I should just make alphabet soup to round out the course offerings.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Two days without a post - thanks for the gnus.

Queen of Carrots said...

Ha, ha!

CappuccinosMom said...

Your children are so lucky to have you as a mom. Introducing them to fine culture. :) The gnu song was one of my favorite bed-time songs (yes, my dad sang us British comedy to put us to sleep).