Tag Archives: songs

mommyhood, siblings, things toddlers say

Things Toddlers Say

March 13, 2018 Only Hsuman Leave a comment

Happy Tuesday, y’all! I thought it was spring, and then it snowed yesterday. March in NC, am I right?! Enjoy our funnies, no matter what the weather is!

J: I just fayell (fell)!
Me: I saw! Are you okay?
J: I was looking where I was going and I didn’t do anything I just fayell!
Me: *tries not to laugh as I comfort him*

Proof that D is picking up on his brother’s amazing vocabulary, this happened while I was helping him blow his nose…
D: Ack-chewy, I got more boogers. *blows again*

D: I want moopies!
Me: What?
D, handing me the lid and straw we always use for smoothies: Moopies! Peas? Moopies?

J: Mom! When I sneezed, you didn’t even bless me!

My mother in law let EK sit with her on Sunday at church, and have me this song she wrote during the service. I’m in love.

Hubby was chopping an onion, and D saw it and said: A ordament! (Throwback from Christmas ornaments I suppose.)

D: *falls and cries*
Me: Aww, what happened?!
J: He ran so fast that he fayell.
Hubby: You pushes him down and I saw you do it!
J: Sorryyyyyy!

There you have it – the daily hilarities of my family. What are your kids saying that’s hilarious?!

faith, music

I wrote a song.

August 24, 2017 Only Hsuman Leave a comment

This post originally appeared on Everyday Exiles.

A few months ago, I went to a worship leading conference with Paul Baloche. (Hey, Paul! You’re great! No, we didn’t meet. But yeah, I love you. Totally.) Anyway, I ended up in his songwriting workshop. Before I go on, let me make myself clear: I have never fashioned myself a songwriter. I was a music major in college, complete with composition classes and arranging classes and task-oriented composing all through theory classes and the like. But no assignment or little ditty I wrote was ever very good. I have never assumed that if I sat down to write an actual song, something would actually come out.

That being said, this songwriting workshop inspired me to give it a go. I actually had a moment of inspiration (weakness?) where I thought up a couplet in my head. Isn’t that how the greats do it? “I like mine with lettuce and tomato, Heinz 57 and French-fried potatoes…” Anyway, so this couplet just popped into my head, and I made a voice reminder on my iPhone with it. You know, so I wouldn’t forget.

Well, that turned into me digging in the Psalms, texting back and forth with my worship pastor (ever the encouraging friend) and making my husband tell me if it sounded like crap. Which turned out to be him saying that it didn’t sound like crap! It was about a week-long process of simultaneously being unable to stop thinking about and wanting it to be finished but not knowing how to get there.

Paul Baloche’s suggestions were all things like “Keep writing even if it’s not good.” and “You’ll write a hundred bad songs for every good one.” and “Use your journal for inspiration.” which was how I had come up with that couplet: journaling. I used to have time for journaling a lot, but since having kids, and then staying home with them, I somehow have less time than I used to (cue all the moms cry-laughing, agreeing with the lack of time). But when I do sit down to do it, it tends to be heavier, albeit shorter. But just a moment of me writing my prayers landed me in a songwriting mood, culminating in an actual completed song. I guess there’s no reason I should’ve been so hard on myself about it, since I did really enjoy the process. I’m a little nervous that like Paul said, now that I’ve got one song that didn’t totally suck, the next hundred will be bad ones. But if my heart is in the right place, and I’m writing something because I’m worshiping Jesus, it’ll be pleasing to Him anyway.

mommyhood, music

Favorite Lullabies

September 26, 2015 Only Hsuman 12 Comments

As the mom of three kids that I still actively put to bed, I have to have a lot bedtime songs in my arsenal. I get requests from Taylor Swift to Disney to worship songs. I even occasionally have to make up a song about a random object. (It’s an “I love lamp.” situation in my daughter’s room some nights.) Thus, my list of bedtime songs is endless, but I’ve compiled a list of some of our current favorites, if you’re getting tired of your old standards.

1. Edelweiss. This is the song from The Sound of Music that is portrayed as the Austrian favorite, sung by both Liesel and the Captain (and the audience at the festival). Both my older kids love it, and it’s not very long, so I learned it quickly, and it’s not some 9-verse song I never feel like singing.

2. Somewhere Over the Rainbow. EK loves this one, mostly because she loves rainbows. But like The Sound of Music, we’ve also watched The Wizard of Oz enough times that all the songs from it are very familiar. This one has a couple verses, but it’s not terribly long either. (Nerd moment: It’s a good way to teach octaves!)

3. Oceans. This is a Hillsong United tune that I’ve sung at church during our service over the last couple of years, and EK loves it. She frequently requests it, and knows all the words. I trim it WAY down – the album version is about 9 minutes long – at bedtime (and at church) and it’s still long. But hey, when your daughter requests that you sing a worship song, you deliver.

4. Getting to Know You. This favorite from The King and I is one of the songs the kids know best. They’ve watched this movie countless times, and still want to watch it sometimes. I think they like seeing all the children!

5. Oh, Mister Sun. This is a kids’ song from way back, and I’m not sure if I even sing the actual words, but I definitely sing it a lot. I often follow it with “Oh, Mister Moon” – a second verse I’m almost certain I make up most of the words to.

6. Disney songs. I know that’s vague, but there are so many that they ask for. Here’s a sampling: Let It Go (Frozen), Part of Your World (The Little Mermaid), I See the Light (Tangled), A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes (Cinderella), Beauty and the Beast (Beauty and the Beast), and several. My absolute favorite is Stay Awake (Mary Poppins’s lullaby) and I’ve written an extra verse for each of my children, using their names.

7. You Are My Sunshine. Everyone knows this one, right? Short, easy, to the point, and done.

8. Jesus Loves Me. The kids sing this one at church, so they request it at home. I love it that they want it.

9. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star/ABC. Since these songs have the same tune, when J starts singing it (often without any intelligible words), I go back and forth between which words I sing. Or sometimes I’ll sing them back to back.

10. Colour My World. If you know Hubby and me, you know that we are rock and roll people. So naturally, this Chicago tune had made our favorite song list.

11. Golden Slumbers. This song by the Beatles is a lovely one – from the Abbey Road album.

12. Down to the River to Pray. This bluegrass-y, gospel-y song was featured in Oh Brother Where Art Thou and I’ve been hooked on it ever since. Several verses and multiple harmonies make it all the more appealing.

What are some songs you sing to your kids? Are the slow lullabies, rock ballads, or edited rap songs? I’ve heard of all three!

crafts/diy, home

Musical Crafting

November 13, 2014 Only Hsuman 2 Comments

The other day, I called my bestie with a craft idea. I’d heard of people doing something like this project, but not recently, so I want to give myself a little credit for thinking of it. I wanted to take our favorite Christmas songs from my old hymnal, and make them look old. Then I wanted to mat/frame them and add them to our Christmas decorations! Lauren and I both have pianos in our homes, and I thought it was a good way to decorate the piano area for the season.

So she came over, we brewed some tea, cut some songs out of the hymnal, and got to work. Here’s our process:

1. Brew the tea. Drink some. Mmm. Doesn’t matter the kind of tea. I just used a cheap black tea we had in the cupboard, and brewed it fairly strong. After some googling, we found out some people use coffee or orange juice for this project also. I like the color that the tea turned out, though.

2. Cut out the songs. We cut out a lot… some Christmas, and some not. We figured once we put the songs into frames, we could put the non-Christmas ones in for the rest of the year, so as to get our money’s worth out of the frames!

3. Put a song or two at a time on a cookie sheet (we used one with sides, to keep the tea in), and pour a little bit of tea at a time onto the corner of the sheet, not actually onto the paper. You want it to go underneath the paper and soak it up that way.

4. Pour off the excess tea, and bake it for 5-7 minutes on 200 degrees. When the edges of the paper start to curl up, take them out. Sometimes mine were still damp in the middle, but I set them on a rack and let them dry.

5. Admire your handy work! If you’re like me, and you always have tea and sheet music, this is a pretty much free project! Obviously, you will have to get frames if you don’t have any spares, but they can be inexpensively purchased at Michael’s or A. C. Moore.

Side note: I found frames at Wal-Mart that I used, but I’m not 100% that I like them yet, so I didn’t post a picture… I’ll add it when I decide for sure!

Have you aged paper like this before? How did you do it?

We're Only Hsuman…