Justin Roberts and Emerging Joy–Part 1

I am emerging from blog hibernation. I have been working on the baby quilt. I have been taking pictures along the way and I will post them once the quilt has been gifted. I have learned so much along the way and I will do things so differently the next time around. The quilt sandwich has been assembled and I will take it to the Portland Modern Quilt Guild (PMQG) meeting tonight. I am hoping for suggestions from those with so much more wisdom and experience about how I should quilt the top. More updates to come….

Even though I have had my foot to the pedal here it has not been quiet. Justin Roberts has arrived. The new Jungle Gym CD arrived a week ago and we have listened to it in its entirety at least ten times now. We have listened to Obsessed by Trucks probably close to fifty times. Henrik figured out how to replay a song on the CD player a few months ago and he will listen to some songs over and over again until he has memorized all the lyrics. Obsessed by Trucks is that song on this CD. It is also a mandatory dance song. D-O-G is another of his favorite dance songs from the Not Naptime CD.

I find myself in the same position now as I was when we first received Pop Fly. I had bonded so tightly with Meltdown! that I didn’t really like Pop Fly when it first arrived. It took me a while to warm to Pop Fly and now I think it is my favorite. From Scratch and Henrietta’s Hair are two of my favorites from Pop Fly, but the whole CD is just amazing. We have very strict CD rules in our house. The music has to appeal to all. We, the adults, do not bring any kid’s music home that we don’t enjoy also. If Henrik is going to listen to a single song 5-10 times in a row, we all have to like the song. I really can’t say enough about how Justin Roberts’ CDs appeal to all age levels.

I still remember our first introduction to Justin Roberts’ music. I had sold some CDs at Rainy Day Records in Olympia after Henrik was first born. I bought a few kid’s music CDs with the credit. The Best of the Land of Nod Volume 1 was one of the first couple I bought. Each day through those early months with Henrik were mirror images of each other. I spent nearly the entire day (and often into the night until I was too tired and thought I would fall asleep and fall off) on an exercise ball with Henrik in a sling. I would put a selection of CDs in the changer, hit play and bounce.

I spent the early 90s in Seattle and Olympia and my music collection was very grunge inspired. It wasn’t really suitable for soothing an incessantly screaming baby. I also had a good selection of folk music, but I was getting bored. We had no TV reception at our house so I was completely dependent on NPR and CDs to get me through the day. I began a quest to find music that was both kid and adult friendly. The Land of Nod CD was enjoyable, but I was in such a zone of sleep deprivation that I wasn’t really “listening” to the songs. One day Rob said, “Have you listened to the lyrics of that ‘Yellow Bus’ song? I love it!” I really hadn’t, but as soon as I did it changed our music library forever. We immediately got Yellow Bus and then added in Not Naptime, Way Out and eventually Great Big Sun.