We witnessed another delightful first today: Simon sang a song. We’ve been singing “Frere Jacques” for months around here, sometimes in French, sometimes in English, and often with on-the-spot, made-up words. We sing about the color red, we sing about Simon’s name, and we sing about lunch. “Frere Jacques” has one of those tunes that can be shaped to almost anything, a trait we fully exploit daily.
Well, today Matt started to sing a version, and Simon echoed him. He had the tune right, he repeated the words correctly, and even his pitch was good. We were thrilled. Then later in the day, I sang another version of the song, and when I finished, Simon sang it back to me as best he could. He had to fit in some of his own words, as “Whitworth” doesn’t trip off of his tongue just yet, but he did fit words into the correct tune and improvised until he got to the very end. His version seemed to be about purple diapers and poop. As we were changing his diaper at the time, we thought the improvisation to be wholly appropriate.
I was floored; moments like this put me in Simon’s thrall. Then the spell was broken, we all clapped and cheered, and Matt and I put Simon down for the night feeling a super-abundance of love and pride.