The Journal Times Online - Racine, Wisconsin

“Da Whee-oo, da whee-oo, da whee-oos
“Round-ee-round”
This is the refrain of the car.
“Da Whee-oo, da whee-oo, da whee-oos
“Round-ee-round”

Travel is filled with a duet version of this song.

Henry starts: “Da whee-oos”
I continue: “On the bus go”
He picks up again: “Round-ee-round”
Me again: “Round and round, round and round”
Henry: “Da whee-oos”
Me: “On the bus go”
Henry: “Round-ee-round”
Me: “All through the town”
Henry: “Yay!”

Wheel (or whee-oo) was one of Henry’s first words. “The Wheels on the Bus” is his favorite song.

Over the past few months he’s learned a few more songs.

This is another one of my favorites:

“Tink-oo, tink-oo i-ya tar
“Ow-eye un-ner ar
“Up-a eye
“Di-mon kiy”

That’s his version of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

He spent a weekend with my parents and came home singing “No-me no-me,” in a very specific melody.

I asked my mom if he’d done that while he was with them. She said he hadn’t.

For nearly a week I heard that four-syllable song continuously.

When we went to visit some friends I figured out what it was: Baby Henry’s interpretation of the end of the alphabet song.

There’s something almost magical about this verbal discovery phase.

Every day he learns what name belongs to a thing, a person, an action. He names everything he sees.

He tries out new words and concepts. For a while, everything was yellow. Every car is a green car. Anything in the sky was the moon.

This baby singing is exploration of a different type. It’s Henry putting a sound track to his life, and ours.

He loves to listen to music, loves to play with the piano and the guitar.

I wonder if this is how my parents felt, when I was fascinated with a little electronic keyboard as a child.

A few years later, when I was in second grade, they bought a piano. It was magical to have this huge instrument in the living room, and to learn how to make music come out of it.

I wasn’t the greatest piano student as a child, but I always loved to play. I still do. Some of my favorite nights have been those spent with husband Scott on the guitar, me on piano and both of us singing like crazy to Beatles tunes.

I need to take a few bucks and buy a book of kids’ music, so we know the chord changes and notes to the songs he loves to sing.

It seems like a quaint, old-fashioned thing: the family sing-along, with mom at the piano and kids gathered around.

That’s a tradition that’s worth reviving.

While my parents never had sing-alongs at the piano, we sang along with them to the Traveling Wilburys, Stevie Winwood and Van Morrison that my father loved.

Someday, Henry will learn the magic of the record player and play some of the albums we have: Sly and the Family Stone, The Beatles, the “Goonies” sound track.

I loved music, and I loved exploring my parents’ music collection.

Henry’s too young to do that on his own, but his musical experiments are letting me have that experience again. Instead of poring over my parents’ albums — what does Steely Dan sound like anyway? — I’m listening to Henry discover melody
and rhythm.

Whenever he starts singing, I listen.
He mispronounces words, gets lost in the middle and meanders around, making up his own baby lyrics, but I can always tell when he’s done.

Henry finishes every song with “Yay!”