{"id":614,"date":"2009-08-03T12:48:29","date_gmt":"2009-08-03T12:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2009\/08\/03\/be-happy\/"},"modified":"2009-08-03T12:48:29","modified_gmt":"2009-08-03T12:48:29","slug":"be-happy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2009\/08\/03\/be-happy\/","title":{"rendered":"Be Happy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our six-year old had a birthday party to go to the other day, so I took our five-year old out for lunch as a consolation prize. As we sat in the restaurant eating, Bobby McFerrin&#8217;s &#8220;Don&#8217;t Worry, Be Happy&#8221; started playing on the radio.<\/p>\n<p>I, of course, started singing along.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No Daddy!&#8221; he said. &#8220;Stop singing! No Singing!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t be silly. Of course we can sing. Don&#8217;t Worry, Be Happy Now &#8211; DOOO doo doo doo-&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No! No Singing!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Yes singing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Yes&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>We were at an impasse. In the background, Bobby continued singing about how we shouldn&#8217;t worry.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Okay,&#8221; I said. &#8220;As long as you&#8217;re eating, I won&#8217;t sing.&#8221; We&#8217;ve been having troubles getting him to eat lately, so I figured this was a safe bet.<\/p>\n<p>He stuffed a forkfull of macaroni and cheese into his mouth.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Hmph,&#8221; I said.<\/p>\n<p>He flashed me a cheesy grin, little bits of macaroni sticking out of his teeth. I sipped my root beer while he chewed. Fortunately, &#8220;Don&#8217;t Worry, Be Happy&#8221; is a fairly long song. The little guy swallowed and then burst out giggling.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But when you worry, you make it double&#8221; I sang along with Bobby.<\/p>\n<p>The little guy&#8217;s eyes widened, he grabbed more macaroni and cheese and put it in his mouth.<\/p>\n<p>He ate non-stop through the rest of the song.<\/p>\n<p>Now I have a question for all my gentle readers.&nbsp;Is this a victory of clever parenting or a crushing blow to my singing career? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our six-year old had a birthday party to go to the other day, so I took our five-year old out for lunch as a consolation prize. As we sat in the restaurant eating, Bobby McFerrin&#8217;s &#8220;Don&#8217;t Worry, Be Happy&#8221; started playing on the radio. I, of course, started singing along. &#8220;No Daddy!&#8221; he said. &#8220;Stop [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[123,122,120,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-cute","category-daddytales-n","category-daddytales-embarassing","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-9U","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}