The Vinyl Solution

(Thanks for the title, E.)

Waking up the little people at our house is hard, hard work. That is, it was until last week when I picked up this vintage record player at a thrift store, along with a dozen "little golden" records.

Now, I just strike up the Star Spangled banner and the kids pop out of bed, (mostly to come turn it off.)

I remember when my dad bought a CD player and slowly replaced the shelves of records with CDs. He was so excited. Stella and Zoey's entire experience of music is digital, but they caught onto the record thing very quickly. It's so compelling - the full-bodied sound coming through the needle, the weight of the records, and the graphics. Very seductive, while simultaneously heavy, awkward for transporting, and labor-intensive, (relative to just moving your thumb around on a dial.) When you're listening to a record, you're really interacting with it.

After I bought the record player, I took the girls to the thrift store to pick out some music. Stella spent about half an hour hunting for Beethoven, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and other show tunes, yelping every time she made a find.

Zoey scored Peter Rabbit (amazing) and the Chipmunks (unfortunate for the rest of us but delightful for her.)

And I have spent the week fulfilling a fantasy of warm evenings with windows open and scratchy jazz playing, pots of veggies steaming on the stove and tea in hand.