I've always found that song to be sad. I'm serious.
A friend of mine had a smiliar experience with her daughter over the same song. The child got so hysterical over the "poor meatball"--she needed a hug to get through it.
This is funny, because I recall thinking that song was hysterical as a child.
Perhaps you're creating a new generation of sensitive, meatball-loving (meatballs have feelings, too!) people. This can't be a bad thing.
ha! about halfway through the meal, as three uneaten meatballs sat on her plate, I said to her, "do you know what makes meatballs really sad---when kids don't eat them and they have to go in the garbage."
I swear she sat there and ate meatballs until her gut practically burst. seriously, what is with all the meatball sensitivity?
Maybe you should explain to her from where meatballs come and tell her that when it got "lost," it was actually returning back into the wild (you know, with all the other "wild" cows). Although I doubt she'd get past the part where the cow is pent up and fed steroids.
Best stick with "If you're happy and you know it."
I just love getting lost in the words of your world.
Adorable. And this reminds me of being in preschool and feeling badly for the color brown, because no one ever named it as their "favorite color"...so I adopted it as such.
Yeh, it's something all kids must go through. Bunker Monkey cries at all sorts of strange things, to my mind anyway; then ten seconds later will turn around and pretend his toy trains (obsession, don't ask) are dying in a fire. Nice. Sociopath.
Hubs also enjoys teasing the kid, to the point where I sometimes have to remind "everyone" in the house (read: hubs) that the rule is "no teasing". Is it a guy thing? Oh wait, no - I do it too. It is kinda fun (well, until I have to do damage control with an upset kid. Oops!)!
I completely identify with Juney. It took me 30 years to realize that the lullaby "Hush little baby" from my childhood had always made me feel guilty that someone thought all I wanted to be happy was to be bought larger and grander things to replace the broken ones. That this level of guilt, however indefinable at the time, was formed in toddler-hood is mind-blowing, but utterly true. Little kids with that level of empathy never outgrow it. Watch out - today it's meatballs but soon it will be people and you'll find you have raised a Red Cross relief worker.
I just linked back to your old post about the bus graveyard and the most significant ways that your life has changed since having kids. That was a truthful, epiphanic post, and I am in such agreement about the increase in absolute delight, in smiling, in happiness due to being in the always entertaining company of our children. Then I noticed that you had received 0 comments on that post! Unbelievable, given the beauty of the writing and your readership. I don't have the time to research this right now, but, seriously, did your readership/commentary increase suddenly soon thereafter?
[ed.: back in January 2007 we updated the template with blogger and lost the haloscan comments for every post prior to the switchover date. They are still out there somewhere, but I have no way to connect them to the posts they are related to]
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My son's always talking about his brain thinking things, as though it's like a separate entity. It's a bit creepy.
I love looking at old video of my kids talking. It puts me in my place though-- I was so impressed that neither of my kids used "baby talk" but were very articulate instead. Then time passes and I hear their baby speech and I have no earthly idea what they're saying.
"On Top of Spagetti" is the straight line between boring and hilarious in my house.
My brain didn't like the concepts of "poor" or "lost" either. In fact, if my parents ever tried to surprise me with something, and I didn't wholeheartedly love it, I'd break down under the weight of how sad that was.
I know I will wish for the grunting and pointing days, but for now, being able to tell me what he wants would be FABULOUS. ~sigh~ I'm welcoming myself to the Terrible Twos.
How does Junie feel about the Teddy Bear Picnic song? It used to make me bawl.
Ah, yes. The sensitive soul. My son has one of those--he too doesn't like any reference to death, loneliness, etc. Even if it is seemingly illogical, such as in a spaghetti song. (And my son is ten, so she's not likely to change).
Too funny! My 2.5 year old daughter freaked out the exact same way over that song a few weeks ago. Even sadder was when we would finally get her calmed down and she would say with a trembling bottom lip, "sing it again" and then, of course, my husband would and the whole cycle would start again. It was pure insanity, but funny!
Must be the subversive Dad thing. This summer, our very sensitive 6 year old daughter was distraught when her grandfather caught a Goby...and then kept it for bait instead of "returning it to it's beautiful Goby family in the lake" (direct 6 year old quote). I wasn't there, but I got to witness the hysterics that followed thanks to my husband's need to video her.
Good luck on the walking thing. Our son is 6 months old today and I am looking around at all of his sister's small choking hazard mess and dreading the amount of wrangling that will come.
Sometimes hanging with my 3.5 year old is like hanging with my friends who'd drop acid and then ask a sober person (like me) to be their guide. Meatballs are more sensitive than one can ever imagine without the aid of hallucinogens or youth.
I love this glimpse into your life current and 3-years-ago.
My son improvised on the spaghetti song last summer: "On top of spaghetti, all covered with POOP/I lost my poor meatball when somebody POOPED." Maybe Juniper would like that version better?
yes, she would.
Yes, these moments make for good stories to repeat when they are 16.
What I wouldn't give for a Twitter feed of Juney's brilliance, a la M. Pants (http://twitter.com/ben_yes).
Personally, I think her sentence made plenty of sense. It might be irrational, but then that's simply emotion talking.
Ha Ha - one of the last times I saw my nephew (who's 3), he was having a clumsy day and got a few bumps and bruises. Just off the cuff, in an attempt to make a joke, I said, "You're fallin' apart" and then he burst into tears and collapsed to the floor. My sister pulled him into her lap, soothed him and asked him what was wrong. "Auntie Abe said I'm falling apart, I don't wanna fall apart".
Then he spent some time on my lap, being soothed, telling him that falling apart was purely optional.
The words to "On Top of Old Smokey"are even more disturbing, but perhaps not to a four year old.
I've said it before, but it bears repeating: language acquisition is weird.
My mom has a plethora of stories like this, about me. I turned into a social worker.
Years and years ago, my then-4-year-old had that reaction when we sang that song in an Italian restaurant. The waitress was dumbfounded. And so were we...
Our girls (21 and 24) are sensitive to a lot of things and I don't think that's a bad thing.
I found your beautiful blog via your auto industry post. No need to reply or follow me or whatever. 
When she gets a little older, try the "Found a Peanut" song. You know, the one where you eat it and it's rotten and you throw up but you die anyway...
Wood sneezing on the meatballs killed me. I love your family.
I'm 28 and can kinda understand her logic
As a child, and to this day, I feel sad for puppy in "Oh where on where has my little dog gone..."
And "Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home, your house is on fire, your kids are all gone..." could very well make me tear up on a bad day.
So, yeah.
I love that she calls you pops. How cool is that. I also can't read "Jibber-Jabber" in one of your posts now without hearing it in a Mr. T voice.
My child breaks out in hysterics at that song. I mean full-blown sobbing. We had to ask the guy at the kids' music day not to sing it anymore.
It's so damn catchy and I accidentally started singing it once and it wasn't pretty.
I take it as an indication that she is compassionate. For meatballs, anyway.
When I was little, like more little than Juniper, my mother used to sing me "You Are My Sunshine" and I would cry every time at the end of the song, the line "Please don't take my sunshine away." My mother thought that her singing was so awful it made me cry, but I distinctly remember it actually being the thought of someone taking me away from her that made me cry.
My son has recently decided that he loves that song and asks me to sing it several times a day, ad infinitum. Every time I do, at the end of it, he grins at me and says, "I'm your sunshine. Don't take me away."
Hilarious, how two people sharing so much DNA could have such a totally different reaction to the exact same thing.
The logic of kids is hilarious. They get things into their heads and no matter how you try to convince them otherwise, they won't budge.
Brace yourself. Juniper may make more sense now, at nearly four, than she will at fourteen. It's hard, being the parent of such a wonderfully sensitive soul.
Have you ever noticed how MOST "traditional" nursery rhymes/songs are really truly gruesome or terrifying? Just think about the lyrics to Clementine, Rock-a-bye Baby, Three Blind Mice, etc.
Someone always seems to be dying, falling, chopped up. Way to send the kiddos off to sleep!
Anyway, I LOVE that Juniper has a soft spot for meatballs. I think it's perfectly logical, if comical.
And don't worry. Fluency in Wookiee will come right back to you.
Oh and I forgot to say Congrats to Gram for those first steps!
I always loved the stage where they staggered about like little drunken sailors.
Over the holidays, one night around the dinner table, someone encouraged Iris eat a sprig of parsley to 'cleanse the pallet'. She got really quiet and sad and tense, looked me in the eyes and said, "but I'm not dirty inside".
"Of course you're not, Iris, of course you're not."
Ha! That song made me sad when I was a little kid too! When I hear the words I can still remember wanting to cry over the poor meatball.
Oh how adorable...and yet sad. Someone commented about how their child was devastated by fishing, and it made me think of this:
www.peta.org/sea_kittens/
Not that I have anything against PETA, but they take sensitivity to a WHOLE new level.
OMG, my 21 year old daughter still cries if I sing that song. No kidding. Sometimes I sing it...just to see if she still cries.
That song broke my heart as a kid, too. That and Puff the Magic Dragon, which I took literally at that age.
Oh my God, that song used to make me cry too!
I'm with you, Katie. Puff the Magic Dragon always did it for me - so of course my dad would sing it, and I would yell at him to stop after the first three notes.
Ha! I have a good one. Friends of mine, who have kept their kids' placentas (placentae?) in the freezer, were serving polenta for supper one night. Ho-ly, that was one upset five-year old...
Compassion always makes sense.
Mostly always.
I used to feel sorry for the fork, because it was on the left all by itself. The knife and the spoon on the right had each other.
Maybe the fork and the meatball should get together. Solve a whole lot of problems.
All right, I read this the other day and thought of my extremely empathetic 3 year old, who would burst into tears at "twinkle twinkle" before he could even speak words. I feared he would never learn his ABCs.
However, when he was 2, I introduced "On Top of Spaghetti," careful to call it "that old meatball" instead of a "poor meatball" since I know how he is. It went over just fine and I always pepped up the tune a little and told him how funny it was. At some point we stopped singing it.
So after reading this, tonight I broke out into song (even using the radio edit version) after dinner. He immediately broke out into sobs. Wow.
Please be sure to issue advisories as needed for future meltdowns. I already know "You are my sunshine" is a severe trauma-inducer, even when I change the last line to "you are my sunshine, hooray."
I am sure that my editing these songs probably isn't helping him any, but what else can you do? Try and build up resistance?
I'm sorry but the fact your kid is walking or doing walking-like things already completely freaks me out.
Wasn't he born last week? No, really. Wasn't it like a month or two ago? Is your kid some kind of prodigy or am I in some kind of time warp?
I had to come back and tell you that.
I have this feeling I'm going to be agog at each milestone. How does time fly? I just read today that we've been in recession for A YEAR! Wasn't it just last month we went into recession? I'm all confused.
She makes perfect sense.
Not only am I on the side of the overly sensitive meatball lovers, but I could never eat gingerbread people or animals either. And there were--and still are--a whole host of other things I simply can't even think about without becoming sad to the point of actual depression. I don't think this is child specific either--I'm sort of fascinated by the split in the comments between those who totally identify with Juniper and those who think it's just that kids are kind of odd (mind you, that's a fact I absolutely do not deny!). Some of us stay more or less like this throughout life, for better or worse.
I have been reading your Blog for a long time...
I had to post my 1st comment .... The meatball song made me so upset as a child... for the SAME REASON that your daughter amply communicated... My mom made up a new ending for me.... but this ended up causing a problem when I insisted that the music teacher sing the "happy ending" version. He must have thought I was crazy =)
for the record... Puff the Magic Dragon caused the same burst of unhappiness! I was devastated that Puff ended up all alone.
When my oldest (now 7) was about Juniper's age, he had the same reaction to that song. I was so shocked! He cried and cried. He likes the song now and doesn't seem to remember how he nearly started a foundation for lost meatballs.
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