Daddy Day and Mozart

So today I got to stay home with Yeva all day, and Natasha got to spend hers at the garden helping her grandma. Not a bad trade-off. Owing to some vicious wind, we didn't get to spend much time outside. So I'm sort left with this dilemma, what to do when there's no real tending required. Should I try getting something productive done and try amusing Yeva with some cartoons or whatnot? I decided to try something more worthwhile, so I cleaned all the clutter from our floor, gave it a good vacuuming and viola, enough play-space to try something. Music sounded like a plan. What to play? hmm... I wasn't really in the mood for Billy Joel or Santana, Yeva's usual dancing favs. I took a chance wtih some Mozart. A chance because Yeva is usually cool with Classical, nothing more, and occasionally gets annoyed with it. That can be annoying when you're in the middle of listenig to some Brahms and you get interrupted by complains about how she's not in the mood to listen to music.

So I opened a youtube of the Amadeus soundtrack, put it on full-screen so you could see the slideshow of screenshots from the film, and am met by the "I'm not in the mood for music, not in the mood for food, sleep, trullyalya, lyulyalya..." routine. *sigh* I leave it on though, and after a minute Yeva is watching contently. Another minute and she says, "krasivaya muzika"(beautiful music) and gets blissfully absorbed. When the piece finishes, I think it was around 6 or 7 minutes, she asks me with these sparkling little eyes, yeshyo muzika more music. So I open another Mozart piece and we go dancing for the next hour. Great! Then she starts getting tired but has trouble going down. I figure I should clean the kitchen and get her something to eat and let her watch Nihau Kailan hoping she might crash. Man, I was never a fan of this cartoon's music, but after spending an hour enjoying Mozart its beyond abrasive. Anyhow, the day goes on... we go to the garden to pick up Na, and I tell her about it.

After dinner, I put the music on and she gets a big smile and starts dancing again. After a few songs Natasha puts on Beethoven, moonlight sonata, and Yeva doesn't get more than 30 seconds into it before throwing a fit saying it's lousy music and to put the good stuff back on. Ok, she tries Vivaldi, four seasons. She's suspicious, but goes along with it for about a minute before calling it it garbage and demanding the real deal. We choose a random Mozart song and her face lights up. Now this isn't like a disk that she was remembering, or even a song we'd listened to earlier that day, just another piece composed by him. So I had to test it out a bit more. Chopin, Brahms, and a guy named Eric Whitacre were added to her reject list, but all the Mozarts passed. So I was curious what it was about Mozart's music that's the deciding factor for her, and surprised at how quickly she can tell the difference. It doesn't seem to matter whether it's a full orchestra, opera (to which she sings along with, very cute!), or piano. Though there are definitely some pieces she liked much better than others, she accepted them all so long as they're Mozart, but wouldn't tolerate anything else. I want to try getting a video of this tomorrow if she'll repeat it, and choose some songs I know she didn't hear today just to make it a" fair test."