When I started to ponder the precious moments in my memories for this challenge, I began to think through all my travels and the amazing things I’ve seen…but my mind kept coming back to memories of time spent with my kids. More and more I’m using my phone’s camera to try to capture these little moments that I want to remember in future years.
A magical day
Whether it’s a once-in-a-lifetime event like a day at Disney World (pre-pandemic), or just exploring some new-fallen snow in our yard this winter, I will treasure these memories of my kids learning, exploring, and growing. And I often learn so much by seeing things from their perspective!
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.
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.
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 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?
