Thursday, November 8, 2007

Bedtime songs

When I was a little kid my Mom would sing one song to me and my sister every night. She made up the song herself, and it went a little something like this:

Night night, twinkies
Sleep tight, twinkies
Morning light, twinkies
That's when we'll see twinks again
In the morning light, when the sky is bright, and the sun's all right...
That's when we'll see twinks again!

Cute, right? (Though now that my Mom's a psychologist she has a "deeper" reading of these lyrics, and if you want to hear it you can follow this asterisk:*) My sister and I used to sing "Check the calendar!" at the end of the song, which meant, now that you've done singing us our song, Mom, check the calendar with the alternating Ds and Ss on it and determines which of us gets hugged good-night first. We were all about Fairness back then.

Anyway: a somewhat predictable bedtime routine, but a short one.

Me, I'm spending a good 15-20 minutes singing to Nate every evening. I sing him a somewhat random selection of classic lullabies, Beatles tunes, hippy/Quaker/folk songs, and some misc. classic rock and show tunes. I know this will change, eventually, once he's weaned off breastfeeding; we've gotten Lula down to one song a night and it only took THREE YEARS. But Tallulah has a tricksy way of stretching these things out. Recently I've been going in and singing her that ol' folk song "Oil in My Lamp"**, and at first it was pretty brief, since I could only remember two verses:

Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burnin' burnin' burnin'
Give me oil in my lamp, I pray (I pray!)
Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burnin' burnin' burnin'
Keep me burning 'til the break of day!

And the other verse I remembered was the "fun" one:
Give me umption in my gumption, help me function function function...

But every night I go in there now she ADDS ANOTHER VERSE. It is creative and adorable enough to keep me with her, singing to her like a CHUMP, and she knows it. Some recent verses:

Give me water for my cup, make it chilly chilly chilly...
Give me snack for my bowl, make it yummy yummy yummy...
Keep a blanket on my hard horse,*** keep him warm warm warm...

If more are created, I will let you know.
-------------------
* - There's obviously a desperate wish/plea/command? for the children to sleep UNTIL THE MORNING; also, the idea that the sun could possibly NOT be "all right" is seen as sinister/frightening.
** - though for the chorus we sing the Quaker variant "Sing hosanna to the break of day!" instead of the more Jesus-y "to the King of Kings!"
*** - as opposed to her stuffed horse, natch.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I spent many years singing my boys to sleep. Now—although they love it when I include one of the songs on a cd—if I were to sing in public they would become furious at me. It is the technique by which I control them: Stop (or start) doing X, or I will sing right now. In this store. Loudly.

And I just have to say: Could be she was reaching for a rhyme there. Because, as she should know, sometimes a sun is just a sun. And if there had been a song I could have sung that sounded pleasant but included the encoded message "Do not wake up until the morning," I would have sung that sucker until my lungs gave out.

Anonymous said...

The Mom speaks.

It was like this: My 3- month old twins had croup. Tiny little bodies making deep seal noises. I was freaking out, and we had the babies in the bathroom for the shower steam, but that didn't seem to help. So I was sitting in the rocking chair in their room, holding one child with her face right in the cool wooly mist of the vaporizer, and singing whatever I could think of to be soothing and repetitive. That was the song, and it worked. Whoever I was holding (twinship confers such generic name-blurry memories) got quiet and then fell asleep. Worked on the other one, too. So: those were the words I thought of that night, and I never could think of better ones.

Here's where this ties to the patronizing feeling in parenting. When I made up the song, I so much wanted and needed sleep. I thought I could put in that bit about "THAT'S when we'll see twinks again" as a little joke only I could understand, a little ha-ha to myself (I was VERY tired) about the real message in all lullabyes, a message kept secret from the babies hearing it because--ha!--they were babies and didn't know words.

Who knew, on that particular night, that the babies would soon be kids who would know every word I did? And so quickly. And then grow up to repeat all my words back to me, on the Internet? Keep this in mind, Moms of today.

And the thing about the sun being all right--I hated that rhyme-driven anxiety-provoking reassurance. Too many science fiction stories where the sun turned out to be oh-so-not all right. Has anyone read "Pail Full of Air?" But I had used up Light and Bright and I was trapped! Trapped, I tell you...

OK, enough defensiveness. I love my Twinkies and I hope they sleep tight tonight and every night. Go sun.
Love, Mom

S-Way said...

Mom! Do not feel defensive. I never felt that the Night-night song was patronizing. I sing it to both of my kids! There's nothing wrong with letting your children know that you wish to see them in the morning.

kate said...

Oh, we used to sing that song at church when I was a kid, only it was:
Give me oil for my lamp, keep me burnin' *for the Lo-ord*, etc.

We had a pastor who added the verses:
Give me gas for my Ford, keep me truckin' for the Lord

and

Give me deodorant for my bod, keep me smellin' good for God...

Oh, god, I'm such a complete dork. I can't believe I remebered that...

Anonymous said...

Just want to say how much I appreciate you putting that song on your page. I have been looking for that song to sing to the children at Sunday school and I couldn't find the verses, I used to sing it when I was little too. I appreciate the other comments from others who have the other verses to go along with it! You guys Rock!!

Anonymous said...

Thanks...

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