Lullabies and good night

Jack's bedtime routine has remained relatively stable over the past year or so, with the exception of one thing: his lullabies. When he was a really little baby, we would sing him Beatles songs to sleep. As he got older, he wanted me to only sing the songs from "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh." I sang all of them except "Heffalumps and Woozles" and "The Tigger Song." It always took exactly seven minutes. I rather enjoyed the predictability of that. This set list remained relatively stable for about the entire year before the baby was born.

Then shortly after Violet was born, Jack started really getting into Thomas trains. So then he started requesting that I sing a couple of Thomas songs at bedtime. I did NOT like that nearly as much. It was bad enough that I was hearing those songs throughout the day with the videos, but then I had to learn the words and sing them every night? Ugh. Thankfully, that was a relatively short-lived phase.

A couple of months ago, we went on a road trip to Huntington Beach to visit some friends. I brought along a couple of CDs of kid songs. I think that may have been the most foolish thing I've ever done. Ever since that day, I have had to listen to one or the other of those CDs for almost every single minute that Jack is in the car with me. And it's not enough that we listen to it, I have to act as his personal jukebox, skipping least favored songs or parts of songs to get to the ones that he likes.

The worst, though, was when it spilled into bedtime. He would demand that I sing his favorite five, then seven, then eleven songs. And he was, of course, extremely particular about how I sang them - they had to follow the arrangement on the CD precisely.

In the last couple of weeks, however, he has decided I'm pretty much persona non grata at bedtime. So he asks me to sing one song ("The Itsy Bitsy Spider") and then he says, "Leave, Mommy. Give Violet to Daddy. Daddy stay."

Yes, he wants his dad and his sister to stay in the room with him, but he wants me to leave.

Believe me, I am so not complaining. After a long day with Jack and his kiddie music, the door definitely does not hit me on the way out. I really love that kid, but I also really love it when he sleeps!

I do sort of miss the Pooh songs...