Josh Renaud's weblog detailing the exploits of his family in Ferguson, MO, USA. Starring Yoli, Jadzia, Ludi, Josie, and Joseph Renaud.
Today I posted my second multimedia project for stltoday.com. It’s a trivia quiz about Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
The show has always had a special resonance for me. Long after I had stopped watching it, bits of it remained strongly in my memory.
Continue reading “It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood”
A story from Yoli:
A few days ago, the girls were listening to Christmas music, when the song “Happy Holidays” began playing.
Ludi heard the word “happy.” She lifted her head and opened her eyes wide and began saying “appy appy appy,” which is her way of telling us she wants to sing “Happy, happy” (a Christian preschool song).
Yoli began singing the song and changed the lyrics to include Ludi’s name: “Happy, happy, happy happy happy. Happy is my Ludi, my Ludi, Lu Luuuuu…”
Then Jadzia asked Yoli to sing the song with HER name, too. Yoli complied.
“Happy, happy, happy happy happy. Happy is Jadzia, Jadziiiia Marieeeee…”
Jadzia began screaming.
“No, you’re doing it wrong! I’m not happy! I’m sad!” she exclaimed. “Sing it with ‘sad!'”
Yoli asked “Why are you sad?”
“Because somebody pushed me.”
“Who pushed you?”
“I don’t know. Somebody!”
Hear Jadzia, the world’s future music superstar. She belts out the classics, like “Twinkle, Twinkle,” and mixes in some of her own new material, like “Mary had a Donkey Kong.”
In the last month or so, Jadzia has become an exuberant singer.
We have always been a singing family. We started making up songs for each of the girls when they were born. Yoli and I also both share a long history of working with children at church, so we each have repertoires of Christian children’s songs (in English and Spanish respectively).
All this time we sang, but Jadzia never joined in. And then she began singing snippets of “Twinkle,Twinkle” a while back. And before long she was singing the whole song. And suddenly she was singing pretty much every other song she’s ever heard in her young life.
We haven’t yet shot any video of her singing yet (though we plan to do it soon), but she sings really loud … especially if she thinks Mamá and Papá are ignoring her.
The exception to this is when “strangers” are around… She kind of clams up until she’s had quite a while to warm up again.