When Audrey was born, I vowed that I wouldn’t succumb to the idea that you had to have a slew special “kid stuff"… Truth be told, I think most kid necessities are just ploys to get people to buy more things they don’t really need. But that's just me.Don’t get me wrong, we bought baby things -- a crib, a nice rocking chair, a lovely high chair. I buy toys and clothes for the girlies + loads of kid's books, trying to be mindful of quality and giving anything handmade bonus points... But there are entire categories of things that really don’t need “kid” versions in my opinion. Specifically I get irked about “kid food” -- Once the girlies started eating solids, they ate mostly (I do have some picky girlies) what we ate, just simplified and mashed up (but I have an whole entire other blog about this topic, so I won’t bore you with that here) and “kid décor” – I'm a big believer that you can decorate an entire nursery from Urban Outfitters to great effect and still have a useful room when your kiddo is five…
But perhaps my greatest peeve is “kid music.” In fact I once wrote an entire post about this topic on Design Mom, and I stand by my original statement that music was an ever-present aspect of my own childhood and “kid music” was never part of my parent’s MO. To them, all music was kid music. We listened to what they listened to and loved every minute of it.
There are a few exceptions -- the great Dan Zanes and Elizabeth Mitchell are examples of the kid music genre that manage to break through our otherwise air tight fortress of The Beatles, Vampire Weekend, Sondre Lerche and The Ting Tings (our girlies current faves.) And we’ve recently found another anomaly in Laughing Tree’s new collection of lullabies, which is totally mellow and lovely -- perfect for when we're gearing things down for bedtime.
Now for the giveaway...(were you wondering when that would come ;-)
Laughing Tree has kindly given me two CDs to give away to my readers. Just leave a comment on this post by Sunday, November 8th at 6pm CT and I’ll announce the winners on Monday!
p.s. -- Laughing Tree also donates 10% of the profits of the CD sales to the work of Sweet Sleep, an organization that build beds for some of the world's poorest children in places like Moldova, Uganda and Haiti. ) V. cool, no?
