Songs and Lamentations

I took William to the doctor in late February for his twenty-four-month checkup. He is an extraordinarily healthy baby. Part of the checkup involved an eye exam. “You should see a specialist.” The other two kids have had similar issues. The specialist is Dr. Ostor, a pediatric ophthalmologist who has seen Matthew twice and Maxwell once before. Usually, any concerns noted by our primary pediatrician are resolved by Dr. Ostor. It’s always the same: “Your doctor saw an anomaly, but upon closer examination, we conclude nothing is out of the ordinary.”

Dr. Ostor never remembers that we have met before. “Hello, I’m Dr. Ostor. Pleased to meet you!” I once reminded him that we’d met, but he mumbled an apology and we moved on. Thus we meet one another for the first time every time we see one another.

He explained that almost all toddlers are near-sighted and that they almost all have astigmatism (the degree to which your eye is not a perfect sphere). Most toddlers have astigmatism on a scale from −1 to +1 and that astigmatism resolves by the time they reach seven or eight years of age. William measures 2.5 on that scale and thus needs glasses. As if he weren’t difficult already…

Part of the exam included dilation, so William got sunglasses as a lovely parting gift.

One pre-dilation shot. On the way home, he wasn't sure about how these things work. But then he channeled Roy Orbison...

Matthew has begun to sing.

Matthew’s teacher, Ms. Wanda, is a baseball fan and has taught all her students the words to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” so we sing that together. He knows all the words, even though he doesn’t know what Cracker Jacks are or what strikes are. But his heart is pure and he can belt it out.

Since he watches Mario Brothers’ videos of live-action play, he has begun to say Mama mia! like my grandparents used to, but without hand gestures. Naturally, he associates that with the ABBA hit “Mamma Mia” but calls it The Mario Song.

Recently on the way to school, the radio was playing Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” I showed him how to bob his head to the beat, as Wayne and Garth did in Wayne’s World. So now we do that.

The babies are in on the act, too, and are up for a rousing rendition of “Patty Cake, Patty Cake,” especially the “roll ‘em over, roll ‘em over” part. I can only conclude that we are weeks away from booking national tours as a new family singing sensation. I don’t want to brag, but we will rock the hell out of “The Wheels on the Bus.”

I don’t really hear the lyrics of any song. I hear the melodies and harmonies and I make up my own lyrics, many of which are not pornographic or scatological. Curtis is appalled to hear me sing because he knows all the words.

Without any prompting from me, Matthew has begun to do the same. Recently he’s been singing “Jingle Bells,” where each syllable is poop:

Poop poop poop poop poop
Poop-poo-poop poop poop poop poooop,
…

You probably don’t need me to provide any more. But I can tell you that other people do notice when you’re walking down the aisle at the grocery store with your kid singing poop-substituted lyrics of famous Christmas carols.

Matthew got a lot of Spiderman-themed birthday presents. So I start off the theme song from my days as a youth watching the cartoons:

But of course, even though the whole thing is a minute long, I can’t remember all those words. Funny, though—I can remember the words from the Spider Pig parody.

Well, apparently this is the version Matthew knows because he interleaves lyrics from both versions into whatever he sings. He is my little shadow…