Annie

I'm a stay at home mom. I love it. Before that I was an elementary music teacher. I loved that too. Well, most of it. But if you'd have asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up, I probably would have said something more along the lines of "starring on Broadway!" Yes, although the reality of that life does not appeal to me in the least now, as a kid I liked the idea of singing and dancing for a living. Or maybe it was just that I wanted real life to be more like a musical! Come on, haven't you wished at least once that everybody would burst into the same choreography in the grocery store? Or we could just belt out a melody whenever we felt it coming on? 

I love and always have loved a good musical. Phantom. Les Mis (my favorite). Miss Saigon. The Music Man. West Side Story. Guys and Dolls. My Fair Lady. And the one that got me hooked: Annie. I remember going to see it at Fair Park in Dallas Summer Musicals with Weezie (a family friend.) I wore my Annie dress and carried my Annie doll. And I knew every word to every song. Still do. :)  So it's been especially fun for me now that Lily has taken to Annie the same way I did. We've been watching it pretty much everyday (sometimes more than once) and listening to it in the car too! Lily is singing along, and it's so cute to hear her make up her own words when she doesn't quite understand what's being said! She even uses the soap dispenser in her bathroom as her microphone! The other day she was singing "Tomorrow" and instead of "clears away the cobwebs and the sorrow" she sang her own version, "There's a wave that's coming here tomorrow". Josh and I just laugh. Her favorite song in the car is "Hard Knock Life." She's pretty good at that one also, but she insists on yelling it rather than singing. And Josh is picking it up too. Next time you see him, ask him to bust out a little Annie. 

The other night I put Lily to bed and assumed she was asleep until I heard her belting "Tomorrow" from behind her closed doors. She kept singing the same phrase for probably 20 minutes so Josh and I finally got out the video camera to document this unusual occasion. I'm not kidding she kept going for so long that I finally went in there with the night vision on to see what she was doing. And she was just lying in her bed singing away. This is the first bit of video I got- I'm just standing right outside her doors filming. I'm trying to get her to sing on camera for me but so far she hasn't wanted to cooperate. We'll see!