And Some More Thoughts On His Love For Music, And Mine We walked onto the patio area at a recent family wedding reception. The band played “Friend of the Devil,” one of my favorite Grateful Dead songs. But what happened next changed things. My son and a few of his cousins began dancing, and I mean dancing hard. It became apparent that the adults of the group were not the intended audience. The set list shifted. The band followed “Friend of the Devil” with “The Wheels on the Bus.” My son is no music elitist. The band played to the kids, and he loved it. It’s not your normal cover band one-two punch, but it paid off. A 2-year-old, a 3-year-old and a 4-year old were all shaking their bodies, moving with everything they have to the banjo on this Charleston, South Carolina patio, while the adults stood back laughing. My son’s love for music is a beautiful thing. When the music moves him, he dances with his whole body, bobbing his head and shaking his butt. It looks both ridiculous and liberating at the same time. If you happen to witness it, you cannot help but laugh. Jamie is a huge Talking Heads fan. Sometimes he will say “Hi, hi go!” out of nowhere, which is actually a reference to the song “Swamp” on the album Stop Making Sense. He’ll begin bobbing up and down immediately, as an instinctive reaction while the first few notes of this song play. He is only 22 months old, but his love for music dates back. He began kicking on a regular basis as he heard the same Straight No Chaser song, while my wife was still pregnant. Watching the way Jamie enjoys music is a reminder of the power of the art form. It can maintain a high level of personal meaning through childhood and early adulthood. There comes a time when we become busy with the stresses of school, work and family. It is important to hang onto it through all the various stresses life brings our way. Music can be reduced to the pop songs playing as background noise as we run errands, or the smooth jazz that plays as we sit in waiting rooms. It can become the detail that is glossed over while fretting about something else. To call it “the soundtrack of our life” at this point would overinflate its importance. I know I spent a lot of time obsessing over the guitar notes of Jimmy Page and the immaculate vocals of Robert Plant in junior high and high school. A friend brought me into a whole new world when he bought me Led Zeppelin...

I’ve written about the misery of being a Chicago sports fan before, but Super Sunday seems like the perfect time to revisit the topic–just in time for America’s number one secular holiday. I want my son to grow up a football fan. I don’t necessarily want him to play, but it is an absolutely thrilling sport to watch, and one that you can garner a lot of enjoyment from. That being said, how in the #^$%#^%$ do you interest a young toddler in a game your home team likely won’t be a part of for a long, long time? How do you even attempt this as a responsible parent? Won’t you be inflicting years of heartbreak and disappointment? Wouldn’t Chicago baseball be a…um…nevermind. This is all aside from the fact I can’t interest Jamie in anything that doesn’t involve the ice queen of Arendelle. Maybe I tell him that Elsa’s underneath all that padding playing QB. The ball is really made of ice, and the defense is trying to stop its spread, and prevent an eternal winter. The Bears aren’t doing their fans any favors. Instead, they brought bad to a whole new level in 2014. Here’s to hoping that Ryan Pace and John Fox can turn that train around, but it probably won’t be for a long, long time. It is also difficult as a fan to take interest in a game involving a team that will be making their sixth appearance in the Big Game over the last 14 seasons, versus a team with the coach who left his previous job as his team landed in a heaping mess. I’ll have the game on because well, I can’t not watch. For one thing, the commercials are always entertaining. Apparently, this year as a dad, apparently I have more incentive to watch the ads than in the past. Despite not liking the teams, it should be a pretty good game. Maybe by kickoff we will stop having to hear about whether or not the balls are properly inflated. Maybe we will stop having to listen to press conferences ripe with double entendre. Hopefully there is enough material for the announcers to talk about otherwise. If all else fails, I might just root for another power outage. Watching the power go out in a major stadium might just be enough to keep Jamie interested....

I recently made it through a reading of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish without having my tongue tied by the infamous Dr. Seuss. Anyone who has spent some time with that book knows that this feat is either a parenthood right of passage or a minor miracle—I’m not sure which. We have been reading him this one before bed for a few weeks now, and the work is growing on both of us. It is a glorious 50-plus page book of tongue twisters designed to trip parents up and make them forget that they even knew how to read to their children. The first time I read it probably took twice as long because of tongue twisters such as: “I wish for fish with my ish wish dish.” Or “What good to a Nook is a hook cook book?” Or “You never met a pet as wet as they let this wet pet get.” I love the wild imagery throughout the book followed up with the repeated line, “These things are fun, and fun is good.” It’s been a few decades since I myself was familiar with the rhymes of Dr. Seuss. I am quickly regaining my familiarity. Jamie’s loving it, and getting really into what’s on every page. It really is interesting watching him hear these stories and watching him piece things together. Before we started reading One Fish, Two Fish, Jamie’s book obsession was Good Night Moon. I wanted to write a critique of some of the oddities found in the room, but there isn’t much left to say after this post from the Ugly Volvo. For months we read GNM to Jamie and he would finish sentences and say good night to objects in the room that the author never even directly pointed out. He also developed an unhealthy obsession with the mouse on the floor, which was a bit strange. As we picked him up to put him in his crib, he would say good night to every stuffed animal, inanimate object and even the frog-shaped humidifier. He’d refer to the book as “Night night moon.” But soon he became bored with it, and we moved on to the “Fishies” book as he likes to put it. Every night as we are changing him for bed he yells for “Fishies,” and is starting to point out some of the characters in the book. We’re moving through a lot of reading at the Brennan house. Maybe next week it will be some Silverstein. From there we can move on to Tolstoy or Nietzsche. These things are fun, and fun is good.      ...

My 22-month-old son has a girlfriend, and she is animated. No, not her personality. Her. He’s just starting to piece things together, and already he is obsessed with Elsa, from Frozen. As a father, I am trying to come to terms with this infatuation. Months ago, when his development wasn’t near as far as what it is now, my wife was changing a diaper and trying to pry a toy out of his hands at the same time. “Let it go, Jamie,” she told him. His response? “Let it go. Let it go. Elsa?” It has only progressed since then. The 501st time through the movie has only reinforced his obsession with the Ice Queen from Arendelle. Jamie will literally walk around the front room singing with Elsa to “Let It Go,” in grand fashion. I cannot deny that I owe the ability to change laundry, finish an email or clean the kitchen on various days to this Disney masterpiece. But at the same time, I am wondering what is with the outright obsession? And why Elsa and not Anna? My wife found herself in this very conversation the other day with friends, she said. After thinking about the question over the two princesses, I have no good answer. Anna’s the one that makes the sacrifice. A larger portion of the plot revolves around her. Yet this toddler is completely obsessed with her blonde counterpart. I am not sure what this suggests about the future. There are nights when we don’t want Jamie watching a 2-hour movie. There are nights where we would rather him play with toys, read a book, or interact with parents. Sometimes this goes over well, as intended. And sometimes there is a fundamental lack of understanding that only a toddler is capable of. There are nights where he will hold the TV remote, and hand it to us, asking “Elsa? Elsa?” And when he hears no, he falls apart and cries. I am only left to wonder how long this obsession will last?  It is cute and it is funny until the answer is no. I know kids go through phases with various fictional characters. Jamie’s first recognition was Elmo. He still likes Elmo, but it’s cooled. He also likes Buzz Lightyear, Mike Wizowski, Ralph (from Wreck it Ralph) and a handful of other fictional characters. But make no mistake. None hold a candle to Elsa. Is it the magical powers? Is it the catchiness of “Let It Go?” Just trying to bring some rationalization and understanding to an area where there is none. Frozen has engrained itself into the fabric of parenthood so deeply that it is impossible to escape. If you want...

It is time to take a quick trip down memory lane. Sometime around 2 a.m. on March 14, 2013 I learned something extremely important to my immediate future. I learned that my little, adorable infant son could make a noise so piercingly loud that no human ear was meant to hear it – and that he seemingly enjoyed shrieking in this manner. All my years of attending rock and roll concerts couldn’t prepare me for this air raid siren. My son had (and still has) the ability to melt your heart with adorableness. So how could someone with such an adorable disposition make a noise so unfit for human ears? I received some sage advice to not wish myself past this phase—that every stage of fatherhood will pass way too incredibly fast—something that is very true. He needed a way to convince his parents of his hunger. He seemingly needed a way to convince anyone within a 5-mile radius of his hunger, but that’s another story. Still, to wish myself past this phase didn’t seem right. It is not like when he stopped making that noise it would be followed with bouts of logic. Right? Fast forward back to present. (22 months old) Jamie’s vocabulary has increased immensely as of late. He has demonstrated his ability to continue hitting the high notes, but not nearly as often or to the degree that he did as an infant. He now has the other ways to tell us that he is hungry. For instance my wife found him the other day hanging on the refrigerator door saying “This? This!” He has also gone through and named every food that he likes for us in a hurry when he is hungry. “Bull Shish(Goldfish)! Eggs! Peezzaaa!” Sometimes this is all happening as early as an hour before he is supposed to eat. But boy, was I right about the logic thing. With the vocabulary does not come an immediate understanding of concepts. Mom and dad: “Jamie are you hungry?” Jamie: “No. Yes. No?” This type of answer is given for several types of questions when he gets flustered, and he is almost always meaning no. The questions “Are you ready to go to bed?” “Do you want to take a bath?” and “Did you poop?” have all received some variation of the same answer. And it is an answer that seemingly raises more questions. For instance: How am I supposed to interpret that? Why can’t you just give me a straight answer? Can I give you this answer later in life when you ask pressing questions about having a friend sleep over, or ask to use the car?  Jamie is almost 2. When...

Kids grow up so fast. Jamie is already 22 months, and it still feels like yesterday that we brought him home from the hospital. In that time frame, he developed from infant to little boy. He went from sleeping and crying to running and bouncing off the walls. I’m sure Jamie’s childhood will continue to feel like a total blur right up until the moment he enters high school, takes the car keys, and starts applying for colleges. He is growing into his personality every day. He is more and more vocal, whether what he is saying is in discernable English or Toddlerese. He is young and there is absolutely no pressure, but sometimes it is fun to analyze those developing personality traits to determine what he could be when he grows up. Here are a few of the possibilities, based on the evidence: A Politician—This theory is based on his answer to the question, “Jamie, did you poop?” The answer is usually something along the lines of “No, yes, no,” as he shakes his head violently from side to side in denial. Just because the evidence is sitting in his diaper (and sometimes alarmingly noticeable from across the room) doesn’t mean it came from him. He sticks to his answer no matter the mounting evidence. An athlete—Well, he’ll have to learn how to take the stairs a little better, or run without falling to make this a reality. He does sometimes favor his left arm when he throws, however, so maybe baseball is his thing. An actor—Jamie’s got a strong flair for the dramatic. The less sense that whatever he is saying makes, the more emphatically he will deliver the line. Meg and I are spending a decent amount of time staring at each other with puzzled looks as he attempts to convey some of his gibberish. Put on the song “Let it Go” from Frozen, and he will lift his hands and sing with Elsa. He has a flair for the dramatic. He also lives to make us laugh with goofy faces and silly phrases. The boy knows how to steal attention in a room. An electrician—One of his very first words was light. I suppose you spend that much time looking up, you’re bound to take note of the scenery. Lawyer – As his vocabulary increases, so does his desire to alert his parents to whatever he wants to do. The boy is already working on his powers of persuasion. Doctor — He loves his toy doctor set. He’ll walk around the house yelling “shot!” carrying his toy syringe. He’ll want to listen to your chest with the stethoscope. Here’s to hoping he develops some steadier hands...

Anybody who’s spent time around a 2-year-old understands that just because they grow up fast doesn’t mean that they automatically settle into a pattern of reason and logic. Our 2-year-old has a generally pleasant demeanor, and I count myself lucky as a father. But that doesn’t mean he won’t turn on a dime. Below is a list of the things that my son routinely asks for right before he’s about to lose it:...