“I like every music, Mom”

Tickets — My husband and I are huge concert goers—and we went to plenty during my pregnancy, including the awesome Gathering of the Vibes festival. These are some of the tickets, now in my son’s baby book, from that beautiful 9-month period.

“I like every music, Mom.” Those were the words I heard from the backseat of the car on Tuesday on our way home from the grocery store. My 2-year-old has become the radio czar in our car, letting us know clearly when we can and cannot play music—and which songs we should stop at when scanning the various Sirius stations from the front seat. He’s my backseat DJ.

Stubbornly scorning kiddie music from my son’s birth, I let all the children’s CDs I’d been given stack up in a pile high (read: out of reach) on his bookshelf while I regularly selected music from my own library. I nixed songs I thought were inappropriate (we didn’t listen to much Jay-Z or Pearl Jam, for instance) but was still able to indulge my own tastes while having fun with my son (so, Eddie Vedder’s Into the Wild, followed by his surprisingly ingratiating ukulele endeavor, came into play when I was missing Pearl Jam).

I just rediscovered my “V Playlist” on the iPod that has taken permanent residence on the Bose in my son’s room (so much for using it for workouts). For any parents, like me, who grew up on classic rock in the ’70s through grunge and pop in the ’90s and whose tastes run the gamut to anything but house and techno, here are some of the songs that survived both my son’s and my discretion—in other words, songs I liked enough that I could handle the repetition that comes with a toddler saying “again!” at will; and that he liked enough to dance and sing to without tiring or losing his oh-so-wide smile (and, I admit, a few kid-specific songs made the cut):

Toddler- and Parent-Friendly Playlist

Idlewild Blues – Outkast
Flip Flap – Ozomatli (my son often requests “the penguin CD” for our afternoon dance parties: the whole Happy Feet 2 soundtrack is great)
Three Little Birds – Bob Marley
The Emperor’s New Clothes – Sinéad O’Connor
Devil Town – Tony Lucca
Can’t Get Next to You – The Temptations
I Turn My Camera On – Spoon
Free Fallin’ – Tom Petty
Tangerine – Buffalo Tom
Trip Through Your Wires – U2
Pay Me My Money Down – Dan Zanes & Friends
You & Me – Dave Matthews Band
Rush – Big Audio Dynamite 2
Loves Me Like a Rock – Paul Simon
Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard – Simon and Garfunkel
Jump Up (It’s a Good Day!) – Brady Rymer
Cape Cod Girls – Dan Zanes & Friends
Ants Marching – Dave Matthews Band
Instanbul (Not Constantinople) – They Might Be Giants
Doesn’t Remind Me – Audioslave
Read My Mind – The Killers
I Wanna Be Sedated – The Ramones (perhaps not lyrically appropriate, but if you think about it, quite hysterical when being “sung” by a manic toddler)