Trivial things that make you happy - Part 2 - The Happyning

Beethoven's 9th Symphony, the most glorious work of art created by a human.

While I much prefer the calm of Beethoven's piano music to orchestral or symphonic pieces, the more I listen to his 9th Symphony, the more out of the world it is. It is just full of the vigour of life. Alive. The choral finale (4th movement) and its deep voices in particular is so versatile.

(starts at 59:00)

Anyway, the most entertaining twist in the past two weeks of my singing to the 9th symphony is that I'm "conducting" the 1-year-old and 3-year-old while showing them the above Chicago Symphony Orchestra performance on the laptop on the kitchen table and the whole kitchen goes mad as I "conduct" and they "sing" and laugh (If you're thinking of that Richard Gere 9th Symphony scene in Mr Jones you weren't the only one!). So, fast forward to my daily afternoon walk with the 1-year-old before his bedtime and I'm humming away the 9th Symphony as we walk and I notice his little hands moving and he's looking at me and moving his hands and fingers conducting me!!! Double take, right there. While that's crazily cute, he then humps his little shoulders a bit and moves his right finger and then his hand tentatively and then firmly to calm the music down (at this stage he's not even conducting me but the pillar to somebody's gate). So many layers of unexpected cuteness in the simple things. These are the best walks ever.

When I go in to collect the little gasúr from crèche, the Spaniards working there - about 95% of the staff - all have attached the Spanish diminutive suffix ito onto the end of his Irish name. It's cute!

The 3-year-old bet everybody in the potato and spoon race in her school's sports' day today. I was in awe of her as she managed to hold down that potato on the spoon with her hand as she ran past everybody. hehe.

The number of cheating little feckers in that sports day who are two and three years of age. Some of those parents - particularly the daddys - were getting an awful lot of fun from watching their own cheating bastard sprogeen (in fairness, it was mostly the buachaillí; some of the more studious girls were way at the end as they followed the actual rules and went through all the obstacles that the lads just ignored to get to the finish line first.)

If some psychologist did a longitudinal study based on watching these kids on sports day and how they got on in later life it would be interesting (like the famous Marshmallow Experiment on delayed gratification.)