November 15, 2005 - Tuesday
For the last few weeks, each morning before we leave for school Jeremy has been going over to the CD rack in the living room to find some "cello music" for the seven minute car ride. It's a little ritual that he seems to love, although the ritual extends to him opening the jewel case once we're in the car, putting the CD in the player, taking the booklet out of the jewel case, looking through it for pictures (ideally of the cello player), then re-assembling the whole thing again. Jeremy particularly loves multi-disc sets, certainly because there are more things and more things to open. In fact, he seems to like the ritual so much that I've often wondered how much he is really interested in the music.

Yesterday we listed to the Emerson String Quartet recording of Bela Bartok's string quartets (since the ride is short we rarely hear more than one piece or one movement) and today is was Yo-Yo Ma's Obrigado Brazil, which is a hodgepodge of different musical configurations of winds, strings, voice, ande percussion, all Ma's cello in the mix. Most of the pieces are shorter popular and dance-oriented tunes and the second piece we heard had a women vocalist singing samba. I asked Jeremy whether he liked that type of music or the music we listened to yesterday better. He said "the music from yesterday."

In the afternoon we listened to a little more of the Yo-Yo Ma. This time the pieces we happened to hear where instrumental and more melodic. I asked again. Jeremy started to say that he liked the music from yesterday, but stopped and answered that he liked all the cello music.

That's great, although I still think that he loves the ritual.


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