Saturday, March 8, 2008

Baby Songs

As you would expect, one of the best ways to calm down a baby is to sing them a song. It is amazing to see how quickly Roshan will fall asleep after a few verses. My biggest problem was I didn't remember any of the nursery rhymes from childhood. My first few times I had to rely on a few verses from Pearl Jam, which is not exactly the most uplifting music.

Emily was kind enough to send me these lyrics of all major nursery rhymes. Have you ever looked at the lyrics? Some of them are just terrible. For example:
  • "Ring Around the Rosies" is actually about the Bubonic plague ("Ashes to ashes" is about cremation of dead bodies!)

  • The cradle comes crashing down in "Rock-a-bye Baby";

  • "Three Blind Mice" is about Queen Mary who persecuted Protestants and burned three of them at the stake!

  • "London Bridge" is about the (multiple) destructions of the bridge

All of these make Pearl Jam look pale in comparison. So I have officially given up and decided to sing only Christmas songs. At least they are all positive and cheerful (and more importantly, memorable).

Look for Roshan to dominate the caroling season.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

So Olivia's favorite song EVER is "ba ba black sheep".
My favorite to hum are ABCDEFG...., happy birthday, twinkle twinkle little star. ABC is great cuz you never forget the lyrics and there are no bad connotations (that i know of!)
Xmas songs are great too. O's fav is "we wish you a merry xmas".
have fun singing!

Anita said...

The songs sound ghastly...wait until you get around to fairy tales...they're no picnic either...

I would have to agree with Em on the ABC's; might sound a bit silly but when I can't fall asleep I don't count sheep, I just say the alphabet backward and forward continuously until I pass out.

Unknown said...

you're looking pretty exhausted there papa bear.

Eugine Chung said...

You're so cute! Such a great dad...
I remember my mom never singing me "you better watch out, you better not cry" cause she hated "suppressing emotions and threatnening". Even Christmas carols aren't all that jolly :)

Was great to hang out with you, Mon, and Roshan! We should do it more often!