Last night, my younger daughter was doing her normal fidgeting in the crib before she fell asleep, when she made a new demand.
“Sing A-B-C,” she muttered while flipping her pillow over and over and over again.
I realized in that moment that I sing to her much less than I did her older sister.
When Amelie was a baby, I came home one night and she was crying in my wife’s arms, refusing to go to sleep and ready for somebody new to rock her for a little bit.
I’d just finished listening to a Bruce Springsteen song on my iPod and so I had the melody at the ready when I took her and began cooing into her ear.
“I was eight years old, and running with… a dime in my hands…” I sang softly, and as she calmed down I hummed the last few verses and put her to sleep.
Amelie often had trouble falling asleep and I’ve probably sung My Hometown as many times as The Boss in this decade and the last. Wish You Were Here, Don’t Cry and Crawlin’ Back to You were also big hits.
Elise has always been easier to get to sleep. She usually gets annoyed if I try to sing anything, but there was a while she seemed to dig Tom Petty. Mostly, she listens to Mozart as she drifts off, thanks to this contraption we picked up at some kid’s store.
She wasn’t having Wolfgang on this night, though.
Luckily, I knew the words to A-B-C and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. She was still a bit fussy, so I began making up words to go with the tune, using more slant rhymes than Macklemore–sleep, dream, sweet… you get the drift of my rapping abilities.
She was quiet and then… “A-B-C–no, daddy’s song.”
So, I guess Bruce Springsteen isn’t the only rocker in my kid’s lives now.
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Photo credit: Brandon Giesbrecht via Source / CC BY
