Baby Brain

What is this power that babies have over the general population to turn them into mindless babbling fools. If I could only bottle up that cuteness, I could control the world. Unfortunately, my wife will not let me bottle any part of Evann.

This power also translates into the baby songs that we are always mindlessly singing to babies as well. Have you ever really examined any of these songs? Last night, I was rocking with the boy on the gliding chair and singing "Rock-a-bye-baby". I started to think about the lyrics of this disturbing song.

Just think about the lyrics for a moment:
Rock-a-bye baby, in the tree top
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall
And down will come baby, cradle and all

I wonder to myself, why is this baby and the cradle in a tree during a serious wind storm (obviously strong enough to break boughs)? And is this a song that really soothes and put a baby's mind at peace to sleep? I, too, would be on guard and would be resistant to sleep with tree-placing-cradle-caregivers like this.



Anyhow, the parenting continues to be fun and challenging. Baby E keeps us on our toes. Every day, I think that we've finally got a schedule and the boy just changes it. He's subtle though, only modifying times by an hour or sleeping when he should be awake or vice versa. I know it's intentional because I see the little smirk on his face. He's so tricky. I like his style though, but what he doesn't know is that his father is advanced too. I'm just going to trick him with reverse psychology. Yeah. So when he tries one of his little changes, I'll say I wanted him to do that. Yeah. I'm all over it.

By the way, the words and lyrics to the nursery rhyme "Rock-a-bye Baby" are reputed to reflect the observations of a young pilgrim boy in America who had seen Native Indian mothers suspend a birch bark cradle from the branches of a tree enabling the wind to rock the cradle and the child to sleep. The rhyme also hold a warning on the choice of bough! Still, I wouldn't recommend it.