Music for toddlers and parents?

My wife and I found these kids cds enjoyable for us as well:

Chic Street Man -- Lullablues
Lionel Jean Baptiste -- Ice Cream Songs
Joe Reilly -- Children of the Earth
Los Lobos with Lalo Guerrero -- Papa's Dream

Sweet Honey in the Rock has some great songs I used when I taught Kindergarten.

The dvd and album "Free to Be You and Me" by Marlo Thomas is also great with positive messages.

Lastly, a friend who's a Maurice Sendak fan (author/illustrator of Where the Wild Things Are) has his animated vhs "Really Rosie" with music by Carole King. I believe they just released the music on cd.

But some of the best music is anything that moves your toddler to ask you to dance around the living room with her.

A favorite thing for me and my now 2.5 yr. old son is to march around the coffee table in the upstairs living room listening to Donald Fagin's Morph the cat while we take turns banging on a drum... I used to be real careful and when he was a baby played only MozartBeetovanBrahmsShubertRavelDebussyETC but now anything goes. Even when I'm downstairs and have something cranked up really loud he'll come from his room in the other end of the house and cry to come in to see what daddy's doing/listening to. The volume doesn't seem to bother him at all... when I was a kid loud volume used to SCARE me...

Dan Zanes, Peter Himmelman

Kids love what parents love, as toddlers. You need to "own" the stereo and play what you like. Occasionally it can be toddler-time and you can put on Raffi and kid oriented CDs and LPs, but don't expect to like it.

You need to deal with the mother not the kids. Kids can deal with almost anything. I play trumpet and there was initial worries about my ability to practice. Well, the kids fell asleep during trumpet practice. Three daughters and two grand-daughters later I'm still playing trumpet and they still fall asleep occasionally in the middle of it all. Don't change your routine.

Get the kids some music they'll like, but don't expect to like it also. They will like yours. I still cherish the memory of my daughters getting up early and sitting beside me while I listened to Biber, Gabrielli, Bach, Finzi, James Taylor, Lauri Anderson, etc. and had my morning coffee. They say they remember those times also.

Call me, Experienced.

Dave Van Ronk's folk version of Peter and the Wolf is a hoot. The cd has a few other funny songs that my kids (and me, the big kid) enjoyed greatly.