Lately, Phoebe asks to read the Fireside songbook before bed. Sometimes we look for animals. There are two birds in the introductory pages that we especially like to talk about and a nice lobster across from "Cockles and Mussels."She likes to turn the pages herself and demand, "Sing this one! Sing this one!" She doesn't understand, "I don't know that one," a response I remember finding very frustrating when I was a kid leafing through my parents Fireside songbook.
The other night she discovered "Oh, Susanna!" Big hit. She seems to like the fast ones now. I can't get more than the first few words of "Scarborough Fair" or "Au Clare de la Lune" out before she's saying, "No, Mommy. I don't like that." With "Oh, Susanna!" on the other hand, she asks me to sing it again and again, while she chimes in on the last word or so of each verse: ". . . on my knee," she'll sing with a big smile.
