There are certain songs that remind me of being pregnant. I first felt G flicking gently in my stomach to ‘Love today’ by Mika. R preferred ‘The sexiest man in Jamaica’ by Mint Royale so I’m not sure what that says about her! ‘Ruby’ by the Kaiser Chiefs reminds me of being ridiculously sick at Stratford station one morning last June. ‘The sweet escape’ by Gwen Stefani takes me back to the cricket Twenty:20 final at Edgbaston last August, the point at which I started enjoying being pregnant for the first time. ‘Valerie’ by Amy Winehouse transports me back to when I was first on maternity leave and we were busy sorting out our new house. ‘Big girl (you are beautiful)’ by Mika reminds me of laughing our heads off every time we went for a growth scan and found out that the girls were as big as singleton babies at the corresponding stage.
We recently did a search on on i-tunes to see which songs had our girls’ names in them. The name Grace has been immortalised in song form by Supergrass, Jeff Buckley, U2, Robbie Williams, Mika, Jethro Tull, Crosby & Nash and Big Country. The ‘wooo-oo-ooh Grace’ bits in the Supergrass song make it my favourite.
The Ruth songs are far more obscure. Our particular favourite is ‘It’s the truth Ruth’ by the Big Bopper. Other artists with a Ruth song include: Natty, Buddy Rich Big Band, Kyle Eastwood, Lamb, Hot chocolate, Klute and The Vard sisters. If you’ve heard of more than two of them you know a lot more about music than I do!
R and G haven’t really started noticing music yet, but I have the radio on most of the day to get them used to hearing it. The only time they react to music is when I sing along, especially if the song involves making a funny noise, e.g. the uh-oh-uh-oh-uh-oh-no-no bits in ‘Crazy in love’ by Beyonce or the woo-hoo’s from ‘The sweet escape’. Grace like it when I dance and do funny actions to a song, but that’s probably because she likes the movement rather than the music itself.
It will be fascinating to see what music they like as they grow up. Dh is convinced that one of them will be a goth and can’t wait to play ‘The happy goth’ by the Divine Comedy to them in that embarrassing way that dads do.
If they share my musical taste they will like everything from the Rolling Stones to S Club via Pulp, the Beach Boys and Madonna with a bit of disco thrown in. I pretend to be cool about music but I actually have the musical taste of a G.A.Y. devotee waving his glow stick (stop being rude ladies!) in the air. If they take after their father they will appreciate an eclectic mix of Divine Comedy, David Bowie, 80s classics and early 90s dance music.
Either way, they are in trouble!