Snowman Music

One day a couple months ago I randomly decided to play our Tschaikovsky's "Nutcracker" CD. As soon as he heard it, Caleb exclaimed, "It's snowman music!" At first I was confused as to why he called it "snowman music", but then it occurred to me that they must have heard this music on their winter-themed Baby Einstein DVD (which, by the way, they haven't viewed in well over 2 years).

When we first started listening, Caleb would ask, "deh deh?" at various times throughout the piece. (Yes, we are working on getting them to ask "what's that?" in lieu of saying "deh deh?" but it's turning out to be a long, grueling process.) He wanted to know what was making the noises at different times throughout each piece. Hearkening back to my days in the school band and orchestra, I attempted to guess which instruments were making which noises and relayed my dubious knowledge to Caleb. Our conversations sounded something like this:

Caleb: "Deh deh?"
Me: "Ummmm... I think those are violins."
Caleb: "Deh deh?"
Me: "Those are flutes."
Caleb: "Deh deh?"
Me: "Ohh, I don't know. Cellos?"
Caleb: "Deh deh?"
Me: "That's silence."
Caleb: "They're resting, Mommy."

Caleb and Joshua ask to listen to "snowman music" on almost a daily basis now. Caleb is now pretty good at identifying the intruments on his own. Whether or not they're the correct instruments is debatable, and I fully accept responsibility for any errors he makes in the identification process. The part that always seems to fascinate him the most, however, is the silence (probably since silence is such a foreign concept to our boys!) Caleb still likes to ask "deh deh?" when the music stops, and he and Joshua will proceed to discuss between themselves the fact that the lack of noise is silence and that it means that "the instruments are resting."