Arthur is having a very musical week this week. More specifically, he is immersing himself in the world of song: he appears to be a sponge for the lyrics he hears, and is managing to reproduce them pretty accurately with very cute (and sometimes very amusing) results.

He’s always been into music – unsurprisingly perhaps given the gigs and festivals we’ve taken him to and the fact we love to listen to music at home. But this love for lyrics – or the ability to remember them anyway – is a fairly recent thing.

It started when ‘The You and Me Song’ came on the radio. Now I love this song, but I’d almost forgotten about it when Jo Whiley used it to begin her show. She often does that to me – spins a tune that returns me to the recesses of my record collection and has me hunting for my old CDs. I started singing along, and Arthur was quite taken with it too. And before I knew it he was singing ‘you and me always, and forever’ over and over again. I’d like to think it could be our theme tune.

Then, with a bit of a cultural shift, came ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’. This one’s obviously been on his radar for a while, but he surprised me last weekend with an almost word and note perfect rendition of it – right up to the little boy who lives down the lane. I’m still impressed when I hear him sing it – which is good, because he sings it a lot.

The other thing he’s been doing is singing songs from the movies he’s been watching, and this is where it gets especially entertaining.

Like (I hope) most toddlers, he likes to boss me around, often telling me to ‘move it!’ if there is something in his way or otherwise not in exactly the right place. But this week, whenever he’s given me that order, it’s been like a little lightbulb has gone off in his brain, flashing up his favourite scene from Madagascar. And then, with a grin on his face, he launches into ‘I like to move it, move it, I like to move it, move it’. Seriously funny, though I’m not sure I should be laughing quite so much at my little tyrant.

This morning he had me in hysterics again. We were walking down the stairs in our pyjamas, me holding his hand as I am wont to do, and he began to sing ‘Let it go! Let it go!’. I responded in my usual gushing, proud mummy way – and he stopped, looked me very seriously, and said ‘let go’. I guess he didn’t want me to hold his hand after all.

I’m finding the development of Arthur’s language skills such a joy, and his ability to reproduce what he hears – and twist it to fit new situations – particularly fascinating. The fact that his current propensity for singing is turning our lives into one big musical is just an added bonus!

I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

My word of the week this week is musical.