Come Mr DJ won't you turn the music up?

We are trying to establish a better dinner routine now that we have a baby. For years, since living in our tiny apartment in New York, Chris and I have been in the habit of eating dinner at the coffee table in the living room. Even when I was nine months pregnant and couldn't sit on the floor, we had a hard time sitting down to dinner at the dining room table. However, I really want to change that habit before Jonathan is old enough to pick it up. So the other night, we cleared the dining room and sat down for a meal. Jonathan had already been fed, so we moved the gate to block the kitchen and let him crawl around under our feet.

My old stereo sits in the dining room on a low cabinet. The nanny uses it all the time to play music for the kids - she gets a big kick out of Jonathan grooving to Tony Bennett. Jonathan doesn't often get free range in the dining room, although it's relatively well baby-proofed, so he had a fantastic time. He spent a few minutes hitting the base of the floor lamp (shiny!) and flipping the handles on the chest of drawers (noisy!) Chris and I ate our pasta and enjoyed some conversation. Suddenly, from our stereo, comes some music - The Cars, singing "You Might Think." Classic 80's pop, which we do not have on CD. I look over at the stereo, and Jonathan has pulled himself up to kneeling and is happily pressing buttons. Somehow he managed to turn the power on, and then hit the "tuner" button so that the radio began to play. He was pretty satisifed with himself, and sat back to "dance" for a few moments. This involved shaking his head back and forth to the music. Chris and I were laughing pretty hard, and then we returned to our dinner.

Then the music got louder! Looking again, we saw that Jonathan had now discovered the volume knob, and was trying to make sure we could hear and appreciate his first turn as a DJ. We finished the song clapping and laughing for our clever little boy. He was kind of disconcerted when the song ended and the commericals began, so at that point we turned off the stereo. Chris and I finished our dinner, and Jonathan went back to the lamp.