And tango makes three

We have some designs on the gerb--namely, that it will be a musician. It probably doesn't matter whether musical aptitude is determined by nature or nurture (or some combination of both), as both of its mommies are musicians from musical families.

And already the gerb has definite preferences. It gets all excited when I break out the violin and play unaccompanied Bach, though it tends to sleep through the rest of my repertoire. It dances when Mrs. Gerbil plays this one tango by Albeñiz, but it stays quiet when she plays anything else. It slumbers through violin and piano duets, yet it totally partied when we went to hear the awesome Italian guitarist Roberto Dalla Vecchia a few months ago. But the rhythm that gets it going the most is still the tango.

Mrs. Gerbil likes to sing lullabies to it, a practice which looks to the untrained eye like her serenading my navel. (As the gerb reliably starts to stir when it is mommies' bedtime, I fear that it will start to associate lullabies with waking up!) Last night she decided to sing it some tangos.

Well, we only know two tangos with words ("Hernando's Hideaway" and "The Tango Maureen") so this was a short-lived activity. Neither of these songs is particularly appropriate for babies, but the gerb got down and boogied nonetheless.

What a sophisticated creature is the little gerb!

In other news, today is my 28th birthday. Daaaaaaaaaaaang.