November 17, 2002 - Sunday
This is fascinating to me. It's about music and how our two boys enjoy it, but also about how different they are.

Harry's been interested in music from a young age, although he really had no choice. I played for him almost daily when all he could do was sit there and kick his legs. Yet as he's grown, his fascination with keyboards, guitars, and (the no-brainer) drums has emerged to suggest something more than a passing interest in music. But, with Harry, everything always seems deliberate and thoughtful and his approach to music is an overt example. Harry was a year and a half before he took even the slightest stab at singing, jumping in with "To-night" as I sang a familiar song. But, it took more than another year for him to feel comfortable actually singing a song (the ABC song) himself, a few duet tries at Twinkle, Twinkle excepted. There were song-like stanzas that he learned at his old daycare that may well have had a melody, but he always spoke them and never sang. It seems like Harry: intense, pensive, and obsessive and never flying by the seat of his proverbial pants.

Jeremy seems to have very little of that self-consciousness, at least when it comes to singing and especially compared to his brother. Jeremy's not as deliberate, as studious, or as practiced as Harry on the Sparkling Symphony, although maybe that will come. But for now he's more whimsical about the sounds it makes and here, as is typically, he walked up, played a few notes and started swaying and dancing. Harry used to do that a little, but not as freely and, I think, more self-consciously for a response. More interestingly given Harry's relative shyness about singing, Jeremy regularly sings along with songs on the radio or sung by mommy or me. He'll sing "Bah, bah, bah..." and clearly make an effort to change the pitch, often swaying and dancing some more like a future happy-go-lucky kid.


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