Sunday, April 15, 2007

Band geek? Choir snob? Primadonna ballerina? The possibilities are endless!

We've known since she was tiny that Abby enjoyed music, but to see a talent for it emerging when she's still so young has been really amusing. Three cases in point:

She "sings" now and then in this high breathy voice without a lot of enunciation, and lately she's started to actually mimic musical patterns, albeit just two notes in a row, but still. She's been spot-on with pitch a couple times, too. And she's got rhythm, I think, anyway-she's been clapping along with songs lately.

She loves playing the musical toys we have: drum and tambourine and pianos. And Dan just got Guitar Hero for his Xbox, and she actually drags the guitar over to him when he's not playing so that he'll start, and she pushes the buttons and claps along with the songs. Sometimes he puts the guitar on her and they "play" the game together--I'll have to get my camera out next time he plays in case they do it again and she holds still; it's so cute to see her with the guitar on!

Dan also got Dance Dance Revolution. For those of you unfamiliar with the game, go to this video and check it out before reading the rest of this so you appreciate just how adorable this was. (The screen on the right is what comes up on the TV; you step on the arrows on the pad that correspond with the arrows on the TV as they reach the top row. This little boy in the video, by the way, is about a hundred times better than I am. I'm not sure which is sadder: that a 5-year-old is more coordinated than me, or that a 5-year-old has spent that much time in front of a TV. At least he's not sedentary.) I was playing it and Dan and Abby were hanging out. Abby kept walking around the pad and watching me. Then she went to Dan's bookshelf, pulled out a large workbook, placed it on the ground behind me, then stood on it and began stomping her feet around as she watched me.

So, which one will she go for in the end, I wonder? Instruments, which we hope to start her on early, either violin or piano, or singing, which she'll certainly get exposed to a lot thanks to my inability to hear a song I know and not sing along, or dancing, which I'd also like to get her involved in eventually? I'll have to make a guess and record it in her baby book and see in ten years which way she leans...