ROAR!

We find ourselves singing a great deal at the dinner table lately. And no, it’s not because the meal – while always delicious, healthy and wonderful – is so inspiring, it’s just that Aria seems to eat better when the family is engaged in song. It’s our fault for a number of reasons: a). we’re always listening to music, b). we’re always singing something, c). we like to invent our own songs and versus. We probably were destined for this regardless of the aforementioned reasons because of names alone.


Turns out Roland is a popular musical instrument company, who happens to make accordions which in my book is WAY cool.

Aria literally means: an elaborate melody for a solo voice in an opera, usually with orchestral accompaniment. Alternates include "song" or "melody" in Italian. In Hebrew it means “Lion”. So you see, we’ve set ourselves up for a loud house. And loud it is. Back to the dinner table. We do ridiculous renditions of Ari’s favorites, the “itsy-bitsy-spider” and “wheels-on-the-bus”, which makes her grin. This allows us to feed her, else she wields her super baby ninja arms like flying numb-chucks towards anything entering the space near her face. It’s amazing, really. The point is, we are always singing to each other. Ah yes, the dinner.

Generally the meal starts out quiet, with “how was your day” talk mixed with pleading “please eat your dinner Roland” requests (to be said again, about 100 times). Once we are midway through or done we start into singing (or begging Roland to eat) …BUT…the other day, as we are still just settling into dinner, out of nowhere, Aria lets out a mountain of a ROAR.

More background necessary here. Aria adores Roland, Roland observes Aria. We make them do just about everything together, but little has come of it…or so we thought. When we take the kids out of the bath Roland is always ceremoniously draped in his dragon towel and encouraged to roar, most often, to Aria. Sigh. So suddenly it appears after – oh – about 270 baths with 270 roars – Aria has determined this is how we communicate.

Where was I? Oh yes, Aria is now ROARING at her brother across the table, who doesn’t quite know how to respond. Brian and I are a bit bewildered, not sure if what is happening is actually what we think is happening. So of course, being the smart parents we are (who apparently love social/developmental experiments) tell Roland to ROAR back. (Big smile) Commence the Throop Roarfest 2010. Imagine the “Wassssupppp” beer campaign except it’s us. Roaring at one another. Me at Aria. Aria at me. Brian at Aria. Roland at Brian. Roaring all over the place. I’m sure the dogs were in the other room wondering, WTH? There was enough roaring to get out both cameras and shoot video and still shots of the event.

It’s official. We’re crazy. Crazy happy that is! ROAR! (Hopefully, I'll post some video of this soon.)