You’ve heard Annalie’s rendition of “Good Morning Valtimore”—now you can hear her version of “Hairspray”! The lines she’s (sort of) singing in this clip are:

What gives a girl
Power and punch?
Is it charm, is it poise?
No it’s hairspray…

As a tiny bonus you get to hear me sing too, and meet Annalie’s newest baby, which she named after one of her friends. Most of her babies are named after her friends.

Annalie singing “Hairspray” from bethany actually on Vimeo.

(In case you’re scratching your head over the title of this post, the character who sings this song in the movie musical is named Corny Collins.)

My mom and I took Annalie with us to see Hairspray at the theater a few months ago, and she loved the upbeat dancing and music, though she got bored with the story quickly. I got the soundtrack, and after we listened to it once in the minivan on our road trip to Omaha last summer, I decided that maybe I didn’t want my 3.5-year-old listening to some of the lyrics again and again lest she ask me to explain what “the flasher who lives next door” is or start talking about “Negro Day” (the movie is partially about civil rights in the early 60s). I decided we’d just take that one out of the CD player when Annalie was in the van.

Except Annalie LOVED the soundtrack and started asking for it by name. She especially enjoyed the big opening number that Tracy Turnblad sings, “Good Morning Baltimore”. Here is her rendition!

“Good Morning, ‘Valtimore’” & play-dough from bethany actually on Vimeo.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been drooling over the card designs at Purple Stork and making my own amateurish versions. Even though it looks to other people (Hi, Mom!) like it’s a frustrating process, it’s an enjoyable creative outlet. I’ve especially gotten lots of positive feedback about the Christmas cards. I intended to make another one this year, but then we ended up spending the entire month of November away from home, with no access to most of our photos. So I wasn’t really sure what we were going to do about cards this Christmas.

Then I got a handmade card in the mail from friends of ours, stamped with red and green shapes and their toddler’s handprints. Eureka! We could make Christmas cards this year. I’ve designed cards on the computer a half-dozen times, but never made crafty ones. And Annalie loves to glue things, so I was pretty sure she’d be willing to help out.

After some googling, I found something at scrumdilly-do! that seemed perfect for Annalie: a decoupage-like project called tin foil festive. I gathered foil, glue, tissue paper, sequins, and other supplies. I explained the project to Annalie with unnecessary enthusiasm (I had her at “glue”). She especially enjoyed painting the watered-down Elmer’s onto the foil with a sponge brush, all but cackling with glee. My mom and I helped her a little, but she did most of the work of arranging the tissue paper and sprinkling the whole thing liberally with sequins as a final touch.

I made the mistake of not telling Annalie at the start that we would be cutting up the finished projects into shapes to paste onto cards. When I did suggest this to her a day later she said skeptically, “Well, I like them big. I think we should leave them the way they are.” So that night after she was asleep, I snipped out one triangle and one rectangle and glued them to cardstock in the shape of a Christmas tree. I thought perhaps if she could see the finished product I could convince her my idea was a good one. (Is it just Annalie, or are all 3.5-year-olds so secure in their own opinions? And do all parents eventually resort to post-bedtime skulduggery like this?)

It worked! Annalie thought the finished card was very pretty. I don’t think it hurt that I promised her more glue and star sequins and little tiny jewels to decorate the cards with. Together with my mom, we slowly put together eight cards before Annalie got bored. So after she was in bed, I made another twenty or so cards while watching the musical Hairspray on DVD. We’ll make some more cards together with what’s left of the collages. Maybe we’ll even make some totally different cards, who knows? The point is, handmade cards are fun!

Making these with Annalie is definitely increasing my Christmas spirit, and putting me in an Advent frame of mind. Hauling out the Christmas CDs and playing them is also helping. The first one I listened to this year was Barenaked for the Holidays, BNL’s 2004 holiday album. It’s unusual in that it has Christmas songs AND Hanukkah songs on it, including the original “Hanukkah Blessings” which was composed by Steve Page, the band’s lead singer. The tune is great fun to sing, and the lyrics are meaningful, and you can’t ask for much more than that in a song, can you? Oh, you want it to include Hebrew blessings? OK, it has those, too. It’s a song about remembering, in this culture of commercialized Christmas, the blessings of Hanukkah, that the God of the universe performs miracles to protect and sustain His children. I think that’s a fantastic thing to celebrate and remember. So I’ll be walking around singing “Hanukkah Blessings” a lot in the coming weeks.

Happy Hanukkah!