The Stardom Boys' Must List

Holly has a subscription to Entertainment Weekly, a magazine that publishes a weekly "Must" list, a set of films, TV shows, books, etc. that MUST be experienced. So I figured I'd publish a version of the Must List for the boys. Given that Holly and I are big pop culture-heads, it's no surprise that our kids will likely be exposed to a lot of pop culture as they grow up (although hopefully, we can shield them from the tiger-blooded Charlie Sheen for a while). Here goes:

Film

Well, the boys still haven't watched many movies. I think Max and I sat down to watch Cars in two sittings in January and Cinderella in two February sittings. If memory serves, Leo joined us for Cinderella, part 1. Movies with Max are interesting. First of all, I was warned that after watching Cars, Max would be obsessed and need all sorts of merchandise. That was definitely off-base. Max certainly had a hard time with some of the faster and more anxiety-inducing moments, like when a police car was chasing Lightning McQueen (our hero). Max kept nervously asking "What's happening?" and "Is he going to get him?". I only had to distract Max through one scary point involving a psychotic combine harvester. Regarding Cinderella, the anxiety came back as Max worried whether the cat would catch the mice ("Why is the cat chasing them?!" "What is he going to do?!?!?"). Worse yet, though, was trying to explain to Max why Cinderella's family wanted to be mean to her. Yikes. Anyway, we're easing him into it. Max really wants to see Snow White but I'm not quite ready to go down that road just yet.

Music

I'm a little embarrassed that my sons seem to be completely foregoing kids' music for grown-up music (or, as a friend of mine calls it, kids' music in 2020). Max got into the habit of requesting a small number of songs from our collection so much that we created a playlist just for him on the iPod. It currently consists of:

Boom Boom Pow (Black Eyed Peas). Yes, the classic persists. Leo even sings "Boom Boom Boom" and "Get get get" now. Full disclosure: I was too slow on the uptake to get a clean version of the song. One day, I heard Max say "Jackin' my style I'm on election now" and I immediately ripped the clean version off of iTunes to replace what I had. Oops.

I Gotta Feeling (Black Eyed Peas). I think Max started listening to this one because the easiest way to find Boom Boom Pow was to go to the Black Eyed Peas playlist and this just came up. One week, at our Saturday playgroup, Max was wandering around shouting "Tonight's gonna be a good night" at the top of his lungs for quite some time. This was met with a few laughs (friends) and stares (strangers). He also pretends he's the drummer, slapping his lap with his hands, but not really to the beat. Leo mimics him and it's awesome.

Forever (Chris Brown). Max doesn't know about the whole Rihanna thing and I'm not telling him. He demanded this song once he realized that in the intro, someone counts "1, 2, 3, 4!". In fact, for a while, he called it "1, 2, 3, 4". Since then, he's actually picked up on some lyrics. Kind of. "It's you. And me. Moving at the speed of two-a-time-a-T." Now even Leo tries to make the sound before the drumbeats, that Max once called "someone's cellphone".

Nothing Better (Postal Service). This is probably my favourite on the list, although it's bordering on getting overplayed :( Max keyed into this one when he realized that the word "surgeon" is in the song. Was that last summer already? Maybe. Definitely when Max was in a "doctors rule!!" phase. I believe he was also once playing surgeon with Auntie Laramie and, inspired by this song, wanted to repair her broken heart. It was cute.

Wishery (Pogo). Weirdest song on the list? Maybe. This guy slices and dices movies/TV shows and splices the shred of audio and video together to make music. Max's recent interest in Snow White made me think showing him this video was a good idea and I guess this is what happens when your dad exposes you to electronic music in your youth. We'll see how that turns out.

Leo's been piggybacking on this list a bit, but he's also really into many of the songs we're learning through his Hush-a-Bye class. "Sleeping Bunnies" is one of his favourites (kids lie on the ground and then spring up and hop around), as are some Row, Row, Row Your Boat variations (when I ask him to row now, he sits down facing me and grabs my hands so that we can row together...super cute:). The class has also given me a couple of lullabies that have been worth their weight in gold. Leo's really keen on joining in at circle time whenever we go to playgroup - he really loves to hop, clap and dance along. Plus, he and Max love playing band together at home.

TV

Yes, the kids watch TV. Let's get that out of the way. Leo is almost solely infatuated with Elmo's World, a 20-minute segment in the Sesame Street of today, which doesn't quite look like Sesame Street of old. I think Gordon, Bob, Luis and Maria are still alive and kicking. Not sure what happened to Olivia and Linda though. Leo's also really keen on 4 Square, a Canadian 20-minute show broken into four parts to expose kids to rhythm, rhymes, movement and song. They always have a couple of episodes on planes, which is nice.

Max is into quite a few shows and his tastes seem to vary from week to week. Please check the end of this post for the hierarchy of his likes:) I should mention that when Max last had a well-baby checkup, his doctor insisted on not exposing Max to more than 2 hours of TV daily. That really made me think - we tend to average 45 minutes or so a day. Has Max ever seen, say, 3 hours of TV in a day? Maybe at daycare? Maybe when he's sick? I'm thankful that most of our playtime happens away from the TV so that it's kind of out of sight, out of mind. With good weather around the corner, it's going to be even easier to dodge TV:)

Books

Both kids are crazy about books. At least once a day, I realize that I haven't heard from one of them in a while and it turns out that they've parked themselves by a stack of books, just leafing through them. I have a feeling that once Max learns to read, we'll lose him for hours at a time. Over the past month or so, we've hit the library more and more often (again, weather-related). I think right now, I have a dozen books checked out. The only bummer is that Max and Leo aren't entirely into the same books so it's hard to read a book to the two of them and keep both of their attention right to the end. Unless they're tied down at the table or something.

Leo's big love is lift-the-flap books. About anything. Seriously. Gardening? Are the flaps in it? Oh look at this book - I lift a flap to see...plankton! There was one book about a Rabbit trying to take a nap that Leo was asking for at bedtime every night for a while. We also have some large ones that are all in the same vein: opposites, colours, shapes, the alphabet etc., just with a different set of characters attached (e.g., Winnie-the-Pooh, Peter Rabbit, Arthur).

Max is definitely into longer stories now, especially those that are part of a collection, where he can get used to the characters from book to book. Arthur and the Berenstain Bears have been the easiest to find at garage sales and such so we've got a few of those on our shelves. However, as for my favourite authors that I like to inflict on him, the top of the list includes Amy Krouse Rosenthal (especially Yes Day and Little Pea) and Mo Willems (especially the Knuffle Bunny series). Max also loves Judith Viorst's Alexander books, that I grew up on, so that's kind of cool. To round things out, he's a big fan of most big Richard Scarry books (Busy, Busy World, The Best Word Book Ever, Cars, Trucks and Things that Go and What do People do all Day?), especially for reading in the car.

Online

Leo doesn't really get access to the computer, for obvious reasons. However, he certainly loved the iTunes 9 visualizer growing up (minbending planet/black hole making) and now, he likes checking out videos on the Sesame Street website. Max also likes Sesame Street, but he's not limited to wanting Elmo. He also likes Oscar and Cookie Monster (or, as Leo calls him, NUMNUMNUM) videos. He also used to check out stuff on the Treehouse TV website but most of his computer time has been spent at Starfall, which really helped him out with his alphabet sounds. I think his favourite letter was Z because of the whacked-out song at the end. Plus, he learned to use the laptop's track pad on this website, so that was pretty cool.

Stage

Well, nobody in this house has seen a play in a while, except for some of the creative play that happens in the living room every now and then. However, Max and I have been discussing acting a lot lately; what it is, who does it and where. He seems really interested in acting (not fireman-interested, or pilot-interested, but curious enough) so we'll have to see how that develops.

The Top 20

So I decided that I would try to rank Max's interest in a variety of TV and literary characters at this point in time, given that it seems to be changing all the time. Plus, I just like ranking stuff. Below is my Top 20 chart of characters/shows/book series that Max likes, in the sense of "if I presented Max with two books to read/shows to watch/toys to play with centered around these characters, the one that would attract his attention more would rank higher on the list". I tried to bounce this list by him and he confirmed most of it (THAT process was interesting...after all the hypothetical questions, I got "So when are we reading all of these books?" Oops.). He claimed Backyardigans were much higher on the list than I had them, but then I showed him a program this morning and he cried because it wasn't what he thought it would be. Oops again.

1 - Berenstain Bears
2 - Max & Ruby
3 - Dora the Explorer
4 - Arthur
5 - Sesame Street
6 - Franklin
7 - Chirp
8 - Dinosaur Train
9 - Harry and his Bucketful of Dinosaurs
10 - Handy Manny
11 - Madeline
12 - The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That
13 - Caillou
14 - Bob the Builder
15 - Backyardigans
16 - Winnie-the-Pooh
17 - Diego
18 - Rob the Robot
19 - Lightning McQueen (from Cars)
20 - Thomas the Tank Engine

I'll have to update this list from time to time now. And I suppose Leo will have his own down the line...