Charlotte is becoming a great songwriter. She has always enjoyed songs and singing along when other people sing, and singing along with the radio. But lately she's actually composing new lyrics and notes. And it's hilarious.
I remember when the "Dark Horse and Cherry Tree" song (sorry, can't give the artist or correct title....I can never remember..you know the one I mean) came out a year or two ago. that song was on every radio station all the time, and I would hear Charlotte in her car seat behind me singing "woo-hoo, woo-hoo, No-No-No-No" along with the radio. Like most children (and many adults, for that matter) frequently do, she accidentally mixes up words and verses. Her alphabet song, until recently, has always had quite a few more "jake-elemeno-pee" verses than the original.
Charlotte's music evolved from repetition, and repetition with mistakes, to making deliberate mistakes. Admittedly, she has a couple of examples to follow. My husband and I frequently change the words to songs to make the kids laugh, or to get their attention when speaking voices won't. My husband is better at it than I am--I don't rhyme well on the fly, and I have to work hard enough to do the singing that it doesn't allow much brainpower left for the words.
In the last couple of months, she has taken to actually composing new songs, with music, words, and, occaisionally, choreography. She has watched a fair number of Christmas movies, read several Christmas books, and they talked about it during children's liturgy at church yesterday. So last night, Charlotte took one of her baby dolls, wrapped it in a blanket, and ran around the house singing (or maybe chanting) "Jeee-sus is Boo-oorn" at the top of her lungs, holding her swaddled doll up above her head like Father Gary does during a baptism. Eventually the song morphed into "Jesus at School" and then "Trystan at School" and finally "Trystan is born", but mostly, it was about Jesus. This lasted for probably 20 minutes or more. The baby doll was wrapped, unwrapped, carried, paraded, and snuggled all around the family room and kitchen.
It is really hard not to simply bust out laughing in joy at her. I don't want to make her feel self conscious, because her performance was wonderful and creative and completely silly but non-destructive (and entertained Trystan, and didn't involve the TV, etc, etc).
It must have been a lot of effort for the plastic Jesus (who besides the blanket was stark naked), because eventually Charlotte carried him upstairs and tucked him into Trystan's crib to sleep. She made me promise to be quiet so I wouldn't wake him up. Later, Charlotte informed me that Jesus's parents, Mary and Jofus (her pronunciation), were coming to visit soon. I wonder if she expects the fire department to bring them, like they did Santa Claus a week ago.
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