Parenthood: Week 501 - Ollie & Hamilton

My children generally listen to whatever music I'm into. In the car or around the house, I'll put on a podcast they enjoy, or I'll listen to music. At some point I thought about deliberately exposing Ollie to certain musicians or artists. It was a nice idea, but with all the other things to do with Ollie when he was a baby, I ended up just playing whatever music I wanted to listen to. 

Most of the time, my children put up with the music that I play. I generally listen to the same thing for a week or two, sometimes even a month. My brain likes to dive deep. So when I was really into "Play With Fire" by The Rolling Stones for about a week, all my children heard that song a lot. They thought it was a really funny song and learned most of the lyrics.  

I'm really into the new Springsteen album Only The Strong Survive right now. Ollie has learned a bunch of the lyrics to this song just by overhearing me play this music in the car and around the house. It's hard to know how much they pay attention to the music I play, but it's a nice surprise when I realize they do. Ethan and Ollie know "Crowded Table" really well because of the couple of months when I was playing that song all of the time.

When Hamilton hit its peak popularity, Ollie was 3 or 4 years old, and I listened to the soundtrack every day for like six months. It was cute to see Ollie getting into this show, and it culminated in taking Ollie to see the show with us, which was a wonderful experience.  

I'm not going to get into it, but I had an experience with Hamilton that pretty much closed that chapter in my life, and I haven't been interested in Hamilton ever since. I watched about ten minutes of the movie version and was like, "yeah, I'm good." I still respect it as a piece of art. I'm just not into it right now.  

Interestingly, Ollie has gotten back into Hamilton. A couple of weeks ago, he was singing a song from Hamilton, so I reminded him that we had the book Hamilton's A Revolution with all of the lyrics. So for the next few days, he had his head in that back trying to learn lyrics. Then I showed him how to access the soundtrack album on an iPad, and he would spend time listening to the songs and trying to recite the lyrics.  

Every few days, he proudly proclaims that he had learned a song and is starting to learn another. I was doing the same thing when I was about his age. Instead of Hamiton, I was learning all the lyrics to The Little Mermaid, carrying around a book with easy piano arrangements of the songs; however, I was primarily interested in the lyrics. So I worked hard to find the lyrics to "Under The Sea." 

So yes. That is what Ollie is doing with his free time right now. It's fun to watch him dive deep and explore the lyrics, the structure of the raps and the vocabulary. I love that he's finding his own way in, and taking the time to go deep.