Obsession Still Going Strong

 

In case there was any question about it, let me say that YES, the girls' obsession with Sound of Music is still going strong. Kate still loves Phantom, and they got into My Fair Lady for the couple weeks we had the Netflix disk, but so far, there is no replacing "Usic" (Music) or "Ria"  (Maria). (Claire has always started at the end of words—first, she would just say the last syllable; now, it's the last two syllables. And if a word only has two syllables, the first letter is optional, apparently.)

 

We have a lovely book with the text of "My Favorite Things" and beautiful illustrations. A college roommate actually gave it to me years ago, but it has been more well-loved (that's parenting code for "destroyed") in the past few weeks than in the decade preceding. The song has been added to our repertoire of goodnight songs, too, though it took me a while to catch on to Claire's hysterical demands for "Oses!" It wasn't until she said "Oses. . .  Ittens . . ." that I finally got it. ("Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens," get it?)

Our favorite page is "Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes," mainly because of two girls in that illustration that I commented (once—but as many parents know, once is all it takes) looked like Kate and Claire. So now, every time we get to that page, Claire points and says "ats me!" and "ats Kate!"

We went to a showing of the "Frozen" sing-a-long movie last weekend, and Claire shouted at the screen the first five times Anna appeared, "ats me! ats me!" because (of course) she is the happy-go-lucky younger sister, and Kate is the, shall we say, emotionally complex older sister. The girls had already seen "Frozen" twice—once with each set of grandparents—and I was glad to finally see it with them, even if it is a Disney princess movie. I loved that it was a sister-love story, and I'm glad for them to go nuts for a movie with that theme.

But I'm also glad that a classic musical is still first in their hearts.