The Continents Song

My children like to select a song to play when we’re going places in the car.   Commonly it’s one they’ve heard before and want to hear again.   This is made much easier now via on-demand radio such as Pandora.   The one that comes with our cars is Slacker Radio but it works the same way.   I press down the voice command button and say, “play <insert name of song/artist/album>”.   I’m prompted with suggestions based on my search phrase and select the song we want to hear from the list.

Any time you select music in this way the following songs are ones that would match the same musical category in one way or another.   This is how we stumbled onto my daughter’s new favorite song, “Japanese Banana” by Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Sometimes one of the children will ask for a song I’ve never heard of before.   They don’t know the artist and they may not even know the name of the song, only the key line in the chorus.   It doesn’t hurt to ask and see what Slacker can find though so recently we have two new favorites, “Shake Shake Maracas” and “The Continents Song”—the latter being a guess on my part because the only lyrics my daughter was singing to me were continent names.

Sure enough, there’s “The Continents Song” which my daughter recognized immediately.    This evening after swim practice my children asked for that song and as it played my daughter said, “Asia is my favorite continent.”   My son had his own opinion and followed up with, “I like Europe the best.”

After the song finished a new song I’d never heard, by the same artist, began to play: “The States Song”.   This was a fast-paced version of the fifty states in alphabetical order.   My children didn’t have one favorite state though because as the song progressed they each would cry out, “California, I love California” or “Florida is my favorite because that’s where Nana and Papa live”.   There were other states that got on their top list—about as many as they could shout out given the pace the singer was moving at.

The Big Boy Update:  At dinner tonight my son voiced his displeasure by saying to my husband, “my ketchup’s warm and not hot.   I’m upset.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   Yesterday morning my daughter wanted to have yogurt for breakfast.   She can get it out of the refrigerator herself, but as we were running low and the few that were left were at the back of the shelf, she needed assistance.   She asked us what flavors were available.   My husband and I started saying outrageous options like, “mongoose flavor” and “pine tree flavor.”   She wasn’t interested until we got to “orangutan flavor” to which she replied, “ooo, orangutan?” in a tone that clearly said she’d made her selection.