Hoppy Oppy Boppy!

That is one of Lily's favorite sound combinations right now. She's a singin' toddler. She loves to sing right now, and she'll make something up, just a couple words or even nonsense words like her favorites, and she'll say, "That's my best song." John told me she was singing to one of her stuffed animals and told it "I'm singing you my best song."

I love this marvelous, simple joy. She'll ask us to sing with her sometimes, and when I do, I realize and remember the joy of just making something up to sing (I was a notorious late-night singer, according to my older sister whose bedroom was next to mine) and it didn't have to be complicated or make sense or mean anything, it just had to please me with its sounds.

It also reminds me of one of the Basilica's mottoes, "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord." I know it's called something else besides a motto, but it comes up all the time in bulletins, reminding people why we sing so much in church.

We take Lily to Mass almost every Sunday, and she likes it. She's usually interested in the music, and I think she enjoys seeing (and hearing) Mommy and Daddy sing. I mean, we sing to her all the time, but then she sees us singing at church and it just reinforces how it's a normal, joyful part of our lives, to sing. It's one of the main reasons I love church so much--the singing. And why I love this particular church. We'll sing a lot of things that other churches would just say, and I think it's so much more beautiful to sing it.

Lily's joyful little snippets sometime reminds me of these short bits that we sing in Mass, like we'll sing after each petition, "Lord hear our prayer" or "Thanks be to God" (sometimes in Latin) after each reading. Lily sings "Cocoa's happy" and "And Mommy and Daddy and Baby and Cocoa."