April 2010 – Lemon Drop Pie

April 30, 2010

Meme’s the Word! (April 25-May 1)

Do you love a good meme or blog carnival? When I started participating in memes, I loved discovering other people’s blogs and having visitors leave comments on my own blog. Memes are a great way to publicize your blog and to find new and interesting blogs. At the same time, joining a meme can also be frustrating. Sometimes your visitors are so busy blog hopping that their comments look like this:

“Interesting post. Have a great day!”

Wouldn’t you rather have a comment with more substance? Mara from Weighty Matters left this comment on one of my travel posts:

“Whenever my sister and I would go on holiday together, we would play hangman. It was a bit harder for me, since I would be driving and had to do the words by heart, but it is a great thing to do.

Or make words from the numberplates you pass. I still do that now and will occasionally shout out a word that I will have made to the surprise and amazement of my passengers… “

Other times, it seems like the other bloggers participating in the meme don’t even make an effort to visit the other participants. (Do you hear the crickets chirping?) What is the point of meme participation if you’re not going to hop to other people’s blogs?

Let’s make the most of our memes! If you participated in a meme or blog carnival this week, put your link here!

Let’s have a couple of ground rules:

Link up using the direct URL to your meme post. If you participated in more than one meme, go ahead and link more than one post!
Visit a few links, and leave substantial comments. You don’t have to write a novel; just write a nice comment that shows you actually read the post!

Since this isn’t a usual meme, there’s no need to write a separate post for “Meme’s the Word.” Publicize this meme in whatever way you would like. If you love buttons, add the meme button to your side bar. Or you could add a little sentence to the bottom of your meme post saying something like this: “I’ve also linked this post to “Meme’s the Word!” on Saturdays at Lemon Drop Pie.”

Let’s go blog hopping!
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April 30, 2010

More Singing–Fiddle I Fee!

Skip to My Lou by Nadine Bernard Westcott

What happens when the farm’s all in order and there’s not much to do? What happens when the farmer and his wife say, “Take care of the farm. We’ll be back by two”? What’s a little boy to do…but have fun with all the farm animals…IN THE HOUSE! This hilarious adaptation of “Skip to My Lou” is so much fun to sing with your little one!

Skip to My Lou is a board book, which is perfect for toddlers. However, a BIG word of warning; one edition is missing a couple of critical pages. At the end of the story, the animals help the boy clean the farmhouse, and if your edition is missing these pages, the ending doesn’t make sense! This is a book I would recommend reading carefully before you buy it to make sure you have the correct edition.

Fiddle I Fee by Melissa Sweet

I absolutely love this folk song. I knew it as a song long before I received this book from–who else?–my music teacher mother. Composer Aaron Copeland includes an arrangement of this song, otherwise known as “I Bought Me a Cat”, in his Old American Songs. As is typical of folk songs, the melody and words vary from arrangement to arrangement. It is a cumulative song, adding a new farm animal with each verse. Melissa Sweet writes a sweet adaptation of this song; her illustrations are adorable.

Thomas Quasthoff sings Copeland’s arrangement of “I Bought Me a Cat.” At the end, Copeland includes a wife who says, “Honey! Honey!”

When Lily was almost three years old, she was threatening to give up her naps. Emmy was a newborn, and I really, REALLY wanted Lily to keep napping. I would sing “I Bought Me a Cat” as slowly and softly as I could. I added all the farm animals I could think of. It worked every time…Lily would fall asleep while I was singing this song.

I haven’t sung it to her in a while, so she has forgotten some of the words. Here she is, singing a couple verses for you.

(When I told her not to say her real name because I was going to put this on my blog, she asked me what I call her on my blog. So she introduces herself as Lily!)

For more books you can sing, visit Janna at The Adventure of Motherhood by clicking on the button below!