Lullabies?

Girlchild - she's a performer.

Part of her bedtime routine involves stories and songs. Usually I do the singing, plunk her into her crib, turn on a quiet CD and say night night. It gets really quiet in her room and we assume she has gone to sleep. We've figured out, though, that she plays possum. What she's really doing is soaking in every last lyric on the CD. Then, once it has stopped playing, she breaks out into song.

Sometimes she'll sing for an hour. I will take the singing over banshee-like shrieks any day.

Her repertoire is quite vast and includes the medley of lullabies and folk songs I've been singing to her since before she was born along with songs from her CDs (such as "Old MacDonald," "The ABC Song," "Zoom Zoom Zoom," etc.). The girl knows dozens of songs. She's not quite two and a half.

Girlchild and Boychild both have songs especially for them. One night when Boychild was really young he had gripes and was fussy and there was much weeping and crying (probably from both of us) that went late into the night. Exhausted and tired of hearing all the same lullabies, I made one up. It basically involves singing "Mommy Mommy loves you, Daddy Daddy loves you" over and over to a tune that popped into my head.

Girlchild's song, "Oh Dear," was born out of calmer circumstances: rocking and nursing. The tune is also simple, but the lyrics are marginally more complex:

Oh dear, oh my dear
Oh my little sleepy one
Close your eyes
Rest your head
Go to sleep my baby girl.

Girlchild knows this song and the "Mommy Loves You" song and a bunch of others. So tonight, I'm sitting at my desk and I can hear her crooning away over the monitor - her song. She sings it clearly and sweetly. When it ends, she doesn't even take a breath before launching into a couple of lines from this one, which I'm pretty sure I haven't sung at bedtime:

I like to move it move it!
I like to move it move it!

I howled!