Music Man

When an ultrasound revealed that I was getting a Connor rather than a Kelsey, I panicked. I had been saying for years that I hoped to have a son someday so I could know at least one man had been raised right, and now it was real. How do you parent the man of the next millennium? What is the perfect combination of Sylvester Stallone and Alan Alda? I decided on a balanced approach and went straight to the store to buy both a ball and a Raggedy Andy. But it didn’t really matter what I did or didn’t do or buy or decide. Connor arrived, as they all do, already himself. And from the beginning, he was all (stereotypical) boy. He loved trucks, turned everything he held in his hand into a firearm, and could get dirty in the bathtub. He thrived on mess and noise and chaos and bugs. He was a rough-and-tumble little man in training and that’s why he surprised the stuffing out of me the day he joined the orchestra at his elementary school. It was not so much that he’d chosen to play an instrument--lots of guys wail on the sax or guitar--but it was the instrument he’d chosen to play. Connor came home with a slender, little case only big enough for…a flute. Yep, a flute. Who knew? In Anne Rockwell’s Root-A-Toot-Toot, one little boy and his flute collect a whole barnyard of followers. And why not? The Pied Piper was cool, right?

http://www.amazon.com/Root-Toot-Toot-Anne-Rockwell/dp/B000O8T3NS

http://www.childrensliteraturenetwork.org/birthbios/brthpage/02feb/2-8rockwell.html