Abigail is constantly singing, often to a tune only she recognizes. But most of the time she’s at least going for a real song. Like tonight, before bed, she was singing, “To-ah hoo-nee HA,” which, naturally, was her version of “Toura Loura Loura.”

When she’s not singing on her how, she’s listening to music. While she likes all the children’s songs, those aren’t the ones she frequently requests. Lately, our most asked for song, heading to the top of the Abigail Charts,  is “Maggie’s Song,” or as the rest of you know it, Elevator Love Letter by Stars. You just can’t get enough of her singing, “Elevator, Elevator,” let me tell you.

It became Maggie’s Song because the first few times we played it, the dog was ordered to dance with us as well. This largely consists of reinforcing very bad canine behavior like jumping up and licking faces. You know, dancing.

Now that I think about it, Abigail’s most requested songs usually don’t come from the children’s category. There was Can’t Get You Out of My Head by Kylie Minogue. Dueling Banjos actually offered a bit of a challenge at the beginning because when you start the song again – after the inevitable request of “Again!” – she just refused to believe it was the same song. We had to tell her to start out by saying, “soft, soft” until the music picked up. She had a very brief fascination with Build Me Up, Buttercup. And then there’s the classic track of Abigail’s young life, Dance, Dance, Dance by Lykke Li. She already knows that music is best when it’s Swedish.