Music, in Small Packages

Every once in a while, it's important to step back and look at the really important things in life.

Today, that is Liam. (Not me, the younger one).

Tomorrow, Liam turns 13 weeks old. Today, he gave me a great present. Those who know me know I am an avid singer. I love singing to/with the kids and all four of the older ones generally enjoy my singing and often like to sing with me.

Liam... isn't really making much noise yet. Not surprising, he is only just reaching three months old. He's only just starting to learn that he can make noises through his mouth instead of back in his throat through his nose.

So, I came home, and he was in a happy mood. He looked at me and grinned, which is a present in itself, all the more so because he's been a bit wary of me since Sunday, when I shaved my winter beard into my rest-of-the-year van dyke (what most people mistakenly call a goatee), and this is the first time since then that he's looked directly at me and smiled. (The first time he saw me on Sunday, he cried. Since then, he'll smile but not look at me, or look at me but get a concerned look on his face.)

So anyway, since he was in such a good mood, I sat down with him and started singing to him. The Alphabet song, Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Londonderry Aire (Danny Boy) and Puff the Magic Dragon. Shortly into the first song, he started cooing along with me. As I continued to sing, he continued cooing, clearly trying to move his mouth with mine and attempting as best he could to modulate his tone.

He's a baby, of course, so it takes quite a leap of faith to call what he was doing "singing", and yet I'm going to take that leap. I could see in his eyes that he was watching me, enjoying me, trying to do everything I did, and just as pleased as pie that he was making noise. I'm not sure he knows that there was any difference between his singing and mine.

Time will pass, this moment will fade, and I'll go back to using this blog for the humor essays I intend it for. But for right now, I'm going to revel in the memory of the first time my baby boy ever sang with me.

Liam, the elder.

Humor Essay News

Have you ever thought to yourself "Sure, reading these essays is fine, but what I'd REALLY like is to download extremely poor quality recordings of Liam reading them aloud in a bored, tedious monotone, with all of the flair and excitement of an economics lecture, but with less useful content!"

Well if so, you're in luck! One of my friends has convinced me to try creating a semi-regular "podcast" consisting of me, reading my essays with the vocal equivalent of a deer in the headlights.

So far, I've only done the podcast for the first essay I wrote, and I have to say, it came out quite well... if you're a deaf person. Those who can hear, well, not so much.

But if you have iTunes or some other podcast downloading software, you can point it to http://www.switchpod.com/users/liam-humor/feed.xml to hear me in all my droning glory.

If the first podcast gets many hits, I'll upload the second in a week or two. If I continue to get positive feedback on them, I'll keep uploading them perhaps every other week until I catch up with the blog, at which point I'll upload them as often as I write new essays, which means about every other equinox.

I just ask one thing: If you try it out, stop back here at the main blog (http://liam-humor.blogspot.com) and leave me a comment telling me you did. And if you enjoyed it, mention that as well. If you didn't, just tell me you listened to it.

Liam.

A Quick Note About Blog E-mail

To those out there who read this blog via e-mail updates, my Mom recently discovered that along with losing the formatting, Bloglet (the people that handle the subscription form of my blog) sometimes truncates long paragraphs.

Which means if you're reading the non-formatted e-mailed version, and it suddenly doesn't make any sense, you've probably hit just such an omission, and would be best served (assuming you're enjoying the post) by going to http://liam-humor.blogspot.com and reading the full post in all its formatted glory.

Thanks,

Liam.