Motherhood

5 K-pop Songs I Sing to My Kid

Mei-Mei2 Comments

One of the fun parts of having kids is being able to share your interests with them, things like Star Wars and superheroes.  I have been into K-pop for the better part of a decade, so naturally I am passing that on to my kid, too. Here are some songs that I sing to him (even though I don’t speak Korean haha).

DNA

by BTS

This song came out while I was pregnant, so my kid heard it a lot starting even in utero.  Though it’s a love song, the concept of a connection through DNA always seemed really fitting to me when talking about the relationship of a mother and a child.  Some of the lines translate to things like “We’ll be together forever, DNA” and “The DNA in my blood is telling me/That it’s you who I’ve been looking for.”  Since BTS is one of my favorite groups, I of course sing lots of other songs of theirs, but this one reminds me most of him.

Fire Truck

by NCT 127

This one is pretty simple: my kid loves fire trucks.  For a long time, he called them “wee ooh wee oohs” according to the sound their siren makes.  The chorus in this song simply goes something like “Whoop whoop whoop whoop fire truck.” I really have no idea what the song is actually about, but my kid thinks this phrase is pretty hilarious.

Lion

by (G)-Idle

This is the most recent release on my list; it came out last November, around the time my kid turned two.  One day when I was trying to entertain him, I sang the chorus and did some of the choreography and got the sometimes-desirable/sometimes-dreaded “More!” in response.  Now he asks me to sing the “Ba ba” song, and can even sing it a bit himself. The chorus goes: 

Bababa bababa bababa

It looks like a lion

I’m a queen like a lion

Ay-oh

Which is all just phonetic sounds and English words, including picture book staples “queen” and “lion,” so very easy for a toddler to pick up.

Lollipop

by BIGBANG and 2NE1

I sang a bit of this one to my kid one day, the part that goes “Lolli lolli lollipop,” and he thought it was funny, so I showed him the music video on YouTube and for some reason he absolutely loved it.  He’s never been interested in any K-pop video before, but this one is…some kind of special.

It was 2NE1’s first video back in 2009, so they are very young and the fashion is…interesting. I love 2NE1, they are my favorite K-pop group of all time, but this video is not good.  The best I can say about it is that it made me truly appreciate TOP’s charisma and visuals. But I guess I can’t be too harsh on it, because it was actually just a commercial for a cell phone. And it is colorful, repetitive, and dancy, plus it’s about candy, so I guess it would appeal to toddlers.  We like to put this on and dance around the living room sometimes when we are getting a bit stir crazy.

 

My Star

by Lee Hi

Ah, this one is a bit more personal.  I had just discovered Lee Hi around the time I was pregnant, and after my son was born I spent many, many hours in the dark of night singing to try to calm him.  After quickly running out of lullabies, I moved onto Rufus Wainwright, The Decemberists, and K-pop songs, and I happened to know a lot of the lyrics to this one from listening to it so much.  Again, it’s a love song, but it starts with the lyrics

넌 나의 STAR

넌 나의 SUN

넌 나의 MOON

Which translates to:

You’re my star

You’re my sun

You’re my moon

So I thought it was something sweet to sing to him.  I sang it to him so much that it became part of our nightly bedtime ritual: read books, put on sleep sack, sing My Star, turn out light, get in bed and sleep.  (When my husband has to put him to bed, he just hums it haha.) Nowadays, he cries when I sing it because he doesn’t want to go to bed! Hopefully it’s just a phase and I haven’t scarred him for life with this song.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #94: At Home

Mei-Mei9 Comments

One of the joys of being at home with a toddler is finding toys in the most hilarious places after the kid has gone to bed.

Cat tree or garage?
Parked cars
Cars on coasters
One of these things is not like the others…

My home is constantly devolving into chaos.  I’m good with it.

I love our old home, and I (mostly) love living in Ohio, where all four seasons can be beautiful.  Our home lets me enjoy all of that.

You can find more at home at the original Lens-Artist challenge.

 

 

National Poetry Month: Easter in Quarantine

Mei-MeiLeave a comment

I am never going to hold still for your Instagram pictures;

it will take me ‘til 4pm to find all the eggs you’ve hidden.

Maybe someday I will understand how this time 

has shaped the world we live in.

It will always have been part of my reality.

Right now I just want to run up and down

       up and down

              into the bushes.

We will all get haircuts eventually.

 

Where you want to put a period, God and I put a comma.

This is not the end.

He is risen, indeed, and so have the hyacinths.

Up and down; world without end, amen.

Mine! Or I’ll help you not!

Mei-Mei7 Comments

I watched The Empire Strikes Back again recently, though this time it was on a big screen with the Cleveland Orchestra accompanying it live–that experience is always a pleasure.  We had left our toddler at home, but it felt like he was there with us as I watched the scene where Luke meets Yoda on Dagobah. If you are a parent or have spent any length of time around a toddler, you will likely recognize these attributes:

  • Likes sticks
  • Likes hitting things with sticks
  • Picky about food
  • Likes flashlights and will indiscriminately shine them in his own eyes
  • Short and cute
  • Speaks non-standard English that can be hard to parse
  • Yells “MINE” a lot, even for things that are not actually his

Yes, that’s correct: Yoda is a toddler.

In the scene where Yoda is introduced, he behaves exactly like a three-year-old.  This had never occurred to me until I rewatched it as the parent of a toddler. It is interesting how being a parent sometimes gives you a new perspective on familiar things.  I was immediately reminded of my kid, who this morning screamed “MINEEEEE” about a toy car and a banana peel.

yoda mine

But Yoda doesn’t maintain the toddler behavior for long.  He begins to speak and act (more) normally in his hut when conversing with Obi-Wan’s spirit, and we don’t see Toddler Yoda at any other point in the movie, or any other Star Wars movie (though he does still have his quirks).  So why the act?  

I had never really thought about Yoda’s extra-peculiar behavior in this scene before.  One theory is that Yoda’s quirks have become exaggerated after so many years of living in isolation on Dagobah.  But I don’t think Yoda has gone completely around the bend. I think it’s strategy.

As many parents will probably agree, I find toddlers to be the world’s greatest test of patience.  So upon meeting Luke for the first time, what better way to take his measure than go full on toddler and try to push all his buttons?  I guess I wouldn’t advise this strategy when meeting new people in real life, but I would think you can learn a lot about someone’s temperament by seeing how they interact with misbehaving children.  I’m certainly learning a lot about myself as I figure out this parenting thing. 

Therefore, as soon as he concludes Luke is unsuitable (no patience, reckless, too old, as he says to Obi-Wan in the hut), he drops the act.  The test is over, and Luke has failed. Although he does change his mind and agrees to train Luke, he was correct about Luke’s temperament, which is shown when Luke rashly abandons his training to save his friends on Cloud City, only to walk into a trap.

yoda child.gif

Yoda is shown in the prequels to be an excellent teacher of younglings and clearly has great respect for children.  “Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is,” he says when one young student provides an answer that the adults could not see.  So is it really any surprise to see him try to figure something out from the perspective of a child?

And you know he totally had fun doing it, too.

scary yoda

If you want to watch the antics of Toddler Yoda set to a catchy tune, please enjoy the Bad Lip Reading video “Seagulls!” which I wrote about previously here.

A New Avenger? — Hawk Guy

Mei-Mei7 Comments

Now that I have a kid, there are certain things that are once again socially acceptable for me, like ordering a Happy Meal at McDonald’s.  I admit I’m a kid at heart and really enjoy doing kid stuff like that again.  Right now, everything is Toy Story 4 branded, but prior to that I was happy to pick up some Avengers figures!  Yet my excitement soon turned to confusion…you’ll see why.

First, we have Captain America, a perfectly acceptable Happy Meal-quality toy.  When you push a button, he moves his shield arm.  Cool, right?

But then we have…well, I don’t even know what this is.  The bag said it was Hawkeye, but…?

He has a Tony Stark goatee, generic hair, and a squinty eye.  He does not have a bow or a mohawk, and is not wearing any costume that Hawkeye or Ronin wears in any movie.  His superpower: he lights up.  He LIGHTS UP.  WHAT?  Why?

Had they just made a generic superhero figure and didn’t want to waste it, so they labeled it Hawkeye because no one cares about Hawkeye?  Of course not, but that idea makes me laugh.  This is apparently the “Team Suit” version, though it barely resembles the team suits they wear in the movie.

Image result for avengers team suit hawkeye
For comparison, this is the Funko POP! Team Suit Hawkeye.

So, of course my kid doesn’t care at all and loves the Light-Up Generic Superhero.  And my husband refers to it as “Hawk Guy.”  Poor Clint.