Bedtime Songs

These evenings just at the end of the year are long, and dark.

When Junebug is ready for bed, I take him up into his room, turn out the lights, and in the very dark, I sit with him in my lap on the rocking chair, and sing him songs.

We've been singing carols as bedtime songs for weeks now, and we begin with a rousing "Rudolph," and he bellows "Like Pinocchio!" at the proper time. But we slow down, moving from "Angels We Have Heard on High" to "Away in the Manger" and down to "Silent Night."

These are perfect lullabies, because I do still feel them profoundly, and the long round notes relax us both.

On "O Little Town of Bethlehem," Junebug nestles into the crook of my arm, and when we move to our regular lullabies, with lines like "rest your head / close to my heart / never to part," he lays his right ear on my chest, and with his left hand reaches up to stroke my beard.

The unsentimental part of me recognizes that the vibrations of my chest cavity and my open mouth register those baritone lyrics most perceptibly at these places, when the darkness is least familiar, and most unsettling.

But I also know that, vice versa, he is feeling my words and listening to my heart sing just for him.

Ready, Steady, Go!

Three processes resume today:

1) Writing: The summer course now done, grades submitted, and comments returned, the time has not come to write. After a tiny anxiety attack this morning (so distracted by it was I, that I sideswiped a mailbox after dropping off the kids. The mailbox is fine, but the side mirror on my car less so), I did some warm up writing on my tenure documents, and sat down with the book chapter du jour. Chapter 1.2 (or chapter 3, depending how you count) actually requires less work than I had imagined, mostly in the form of bulking up the theoretical grounding and stakes, and adding a major final section at the end to account for an extremely important new direction in both performance and in scholarship, that will make this section much more than a retread of existing scholarship or a retread of the dissertation chapter. This is significant work, to be sure, but less involved than, say, rebuilding the chapter from the ground up that I thought I'd have to do. Instead of writing a 35-page chapter with a handful of usable paragraphs, I've actually got to write 15 new pages to accompany the 25 I must revise and expand. Very doable. Moreover, I began the process of polishing up some of those older pages, and identifying a handful of sources to supplement the writing. I'll pick those up this afternoon on a trip to the library with Junebug.

2) Tenure: My external evaluators for tenure have been determined and confirmed, which means that today I am sending out the packet of my published work with a cover letter to frame it. Our department does not require the book for tenure, but in creating the narrative of my scholarly project, I have come to realize that the subject matter of the book forms a center to my work around which other material constellates. Since earlier articles published before I arrived do not count for my tenure case (something I understand is somewhat unique to this institution), but came from the dissertation-turned-book-project there appears to be a large absence that would otherwise tie my work together. I have tried to frame the existing publications within a narrative suggests that they cluster around this bigger project descried under future work, but I sure don't want evaluators to say, "well if only he had that book!" This is my only serious worry about the tenure process, and submitting these packets today (the other thing to do on my trip to campus with Junebug) is the great leap that the tenure process will entail for me. Everything else seems by comparison like bureaucracy.

3) Other great leaps into the unknown: Junebug took two very tiny, very tentative steps this weekend. He will walk all over the place either holding onto a single hand or cruising along the furniture, so full-on speed-walking is mere days away. I tremble. The coming weeks will be an adventure indeed.

Happy Birthday Junebug!

Happy birthday, my littlest one. It's been a very good year (and a week, since I'm late here).


But a picture from his first birthday, followed by historical precedent:

Stretched Thin

It's been a rough week. Junebug's virus has turned out to be RSV which has turned into bronchiolitis, and may have even developed into a mild case of pneumonia. There's an ear infection in there, too. So since Friday, we've been to the doctor's office four times, and again tomorrow, all of which is the alternative to admitting him into the hospital. Through it all, he's been a total champ, and as he begins to feel better (despite the somewhat labored breathing, and hideous cough) he's been super smiley, which is all the sadder with his face slightly puffy from the inflamed sinuses and coated entirely in snot and tears.

So in between the temp-taking and the oral medicine administering (we're on our second anti-biotic now) and the diffuser with albuterol vapor and blah blah blah, Willow and I are both trying to keep our semesters from falling apart. Willow, teaching comp this semester, has been in conferences this week for first papers, while I've been trying to pull together materials for texts as diverse as--seriously--Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey," Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler, and finally, the pairing of Marlowe's Dr. Faustus and Shakespeare's The Tempest.

I've been lucky so far with forgiving classes: while the postmodernism class has needed some pulling along (half of that class cites Stephanie Meyer, Jodi Picoult or Nicholas Sparks as a favorite author), the survey class has been totally rocking my world--today students asked questions like whether Wordworth's ideal poet's "more comprehensive soul" was innate or a learned quality, and whether the democratic impulses of his poetry actually translated into a readership that included the "common man" he so valorized. But still, I've got two Renaissance plays to prep for grad students on Thursday, and the insane Jan Svankmajer film version of Faust that I may want to screen some clips of to watch in class, and a set of quizzes to grade and a another set of worksheets on Borges to collate into one usable document and...

I'm on childcare duty tomorrow, with a Doctor's appointment at 11am.

On the move

(And now for something completely different)

This is Junebug. You've seen him before, but maybe it's been awhile since you've seen just how cute he is. I know I'm biased. I think he's the cutest baby ever, but even when I look from as objective a perspective as I can muster, you've still gotta admit that he's, like, what? Top Ten cutest, at least.

He's crawling around now, which is terrifying, but also adds to his cuteness. His is not an up-on-all-fours crawl, but something a little more makeshift: left forearm forward for locomotion, right arm out for stability, right leg pushing off for more locomotion, left leg kicking up and down kind of pointlessly for added adorability, and nice little rhythm you can dance to.

Since I began this post, he's done two laps around our home library, stopping here at the desk to smile at me beatifically at least twice (he might not have completed the second lap otherwise, but those smiles are distracting.)

Anyway, since I can't be actually working on Chapter 3 while he's awake, or, for that matter, prepping my grad course (tomorrow night's topic: metatheatricality in late medieval drama (Mankynde and Fulgens and Lucres), I might as well issue this paean to his cuteness. Or play with him. Which reminds me...

Why I love October

October is, far and away, my favorite month. April is a distant second, followed by May and then June (especially a temperate one). September not so much, and November is just too cold. Here then, are ten reasons why I love October:

1. The weather: today it was 65 and sunny. Earlier this week it was 55 and rainy. by the end of the month, we might even have a daily high in the 40s. Who cares? It's temperate, and bit brisk, even, but it's rarely really cold here in October. Perfect day for walking to campus or driving with one window down.
2. Teaching in October: While it may be the fat part of the semester, when the blush has worn off, and the hustle hasn't yet begun, I find that this is the time when a class really begins to define itself, and some of the best individual lessons happen. Classes are more relaxed, and discussions can be a bit more wide-ranging.
3. The pumpkin patch, complete with hayride and the maize maze (although I will lament that hayrides apparently no longer feature actual hay. bummer). That makes for a damn good Saturday, with kids or without.
   
4. The leaves turn. Here the have just started changing color in earnest, and will peak in about three weeks. We have three beautiful seasons and then winter here. Of the three beautiful ones, fall is the most extraordinary. I've been told that some places in this state technically could be called deciduous rain forests, which doesn't surprise me. And as we know, wet conditions mean more color. It's been a wet spring and summer here, so I'm looking forward to extraordinary foliage.
5. Pumpkin-spice whatever. Latte, beer, bread, pie, toast, chocolate, meat, water, milk, cardboard. You name it, pumpkin pie spices makes it better. But only in October.
6. Clothing: The leather jacket comes out, as does my extensive collection of sweaters (many of them in lovely argyle). In the autumn, people start dressing like grown-ups again, and so I can stop pretending I am a teenager in cargo shorts and ill-fitting t-shirts. This is a self-serving thing to love, since my love of nice clothing earns me funny looks in the summer, and no looks at all underneath the bundling of the winter. But the autumn is the time to bring out the best outfits. In fact, I'm feeling a velvet blazer day coming on.
7. Brunch. I don't know why, but brunches are best in the fall. Since we've moved to the new neighborhood, we've developed a friendship with two other families of new faculty members, both of whom just moved in around the corner within a month of us. We've started having brunch every weekend, and there's really nothing like a brisk morning of strong coffee, bacon, fritatas, and mimosas, with Thistle-and-Shamrock on NPR, or African Jazz on the CD player, or whatever, and sunlight pouring through the windows. And then that full, drowsy, I want-to-get-inside-and-take-a-nap feeling afterwards. Good many times of the year, best in October.
8. Football: College, Professional, or backyard touch. I love a good football game, despite myself.
   
9. The twins' birthday on October 30. I am looking forward to when they're in middle school and high school (really one of the only reasons I am actively looking forward to them being in middle school), and the Claycomb birthday/Halloween party becomes an annual event.
10. Did I mention Halloween? Since the kids were born, I haven't been able to do much myself, but any holiday involving elaborate and/or creative costuming is going to be a favorite. Some of my past best costumes: The Universe, Route 66, and an illuminated manuscript.

Daddy Time

Willow and Junebug are on the West Coast, halfway through a 6-day excursion, which leaves me home with the twins during a long weekend (half day Thursday and inservice Friday for parent-teacher conferences). Everyone's been saying things like "will you be ok?" and "let us know if you need any help" and things like that, comments that, while of course well-intentioned, also reveal the differing expectations for academic mothers and fathers.

Of course I'll be ok. Rambunctious and Imperia are almost six. They play well together; they are well-behaved (if, well, rambunctious), well-adjusted, and easy to entertain. And if not, they fit nicely into a closet (I joke). So far we've had a fantastic time: playdates, the Children's Museum, soccer practice, Saturday brunch with friends.

But even this afternoon, after all the activities, and the scheduled quiet time, we were great. They played in the back yard, collecting grass clippiings for the nest they were building for the butterflies in the butterfly bush, while I cut the grass and moved some of the summer stuff into the garage.

Then we went in and they colored while I made dinner (pasta, tomatoes, limas, milk, pears), and we cleaned up the kitchen together, and they colored some more while I folded a couple of loads of laundry. Kind of what we do every night. Imperia got a little sad at bed time, missing mommy after a phone call out west, but barring that, this was a pretty average fun Saturday at Chez Horace.

BUT. I've barely thought about my teaching or scholarship since I picked the kids up on Thursday afternoon, and of course this is precisely why these distinctions get made: because so many women are doing that second-shift work, especially since female academic have those flexible schedules that are so easily and blithely carved into. That I am doing the second shift is not uncommon for our household (though admittedly, Willow typically does more of this than I do), but it always makes work-life balance difficult.

I'm in a lucky spot right now. I have almost a full year before my critical year for tenure begins, and I've already met my benchmarks for publishing, have earned a minor teaching award, have a raft of strong evals, and do more service than is good for me. I would be shocked if my tenure case at this institution posed more difficulty than simply the labor of compiling the file (no mean feat, I understand). But I was reading Earnest English, and hearing her talk about the anxietieis of new parenthood coinciding with the new demands of TT faculty life. My comments there were that it can be done and is done often, and that early baby time is the worst time to try to gauge how hard parenting will be. I did it with twins (thoughas a Dad, not a Mom), and am kind of doing it again, and it was hard, but it happened. It would've been much harder were I woman.

All of this makes me a bit more bothered by the questions, not because they assume that I can't do the job, but because so many mothers in the same scenario would not get nearly the same sympathetic concern.

OK, so this post went ina direction I didn't expect, but there it is. And now, since this is my only alone time of the day, I'm off to read for this week. It's Beckett week intro to drama, and so I have to find a way to teach 200-level non-majors how to love the wait for Godot.

Milestone

Junebug rolled over today. Next thing you know, he'll be driving my car (or I hope, Rambunctious's car).

Engrossment

I have been (predictably) quiet on this space because, of course, I've been deep in the baby haze of renewed fatherhood, punctuated by the sheer energy jolt that is parenting 5-year-olds in the summer.

The baby books call this period of fatherhood "engrossment," in which the male parent (or presumably, potentially any parent who did not physically give birth) bonds intensely with the child through close physical contact, logistical concern, and other domestic involvement with the new child's arrival. I am certainly experiencing that process, as this picture surely illustrates.

But we've got two other children, too, and I've found, perhaps predictably as well, that I've had opportunities to renew my bond with them as well. Much of their childhood has been defined by a preference (not exclusive, but marked) for their mother, even though we split a lot of the parenting duties and privileges. This has been a source of constant, if not devastating, hurt, as I sit quietly as the twins fight over who gets to sit behind mommy in the car, or next to her at a restaurant, as my nurturing of a skinned knee or bumped head is usually elicits cries for Mommy's apparently superior nurturing.

This preference is likely to be even more marked with Junebug, as Willow has been more singularly active with him than I have, requiring my help less frequently during key nursing or nurturing moments. I can only suspect that the next years with him will find some of the same rejections of the father that have stung with the twins.

But as I said, I'm also sometimes engrossed with my older children, having taken them for walks and trips and outings and time in the garden and a lot of other things since Junebug was born. The preferences for Mommy remain, but I'm finding some new, if unnervingly stereotypical, ways of finding affirmation from my children. That Rambunctious, for example, is super-excited to come watch my soccer game tonight induces extraordinary pride. That Imperia, upon her drop-off from a visit with grandparents, sat plastered up next to me at dinner feels warm and affectionate.

Couple these with the engrossment of a sleeping baby, and you can imagine a pretty satisfying month of fatherhood.

My kids and me...

Imperia was actually much happier than this picture suggests. Rambunctious was exactly this happy. Junebug, well, he's not so sure...

New Concepts in College-Town Dining

The fine dining options, or paucity of them, are a much discussed topic among the self-professed cosmopolitans of our faculty. "No Thai?! How shall I ever survive without good tom ka?" "No, french dressing does not count as French cuisine..."

You get the idea.

That, plus Willow and I often fantasize about that least wise of alternate careers: restaurateur.

When we moved, our dream restaurant would be called Aspergrass, which for whatever reason found etymological roots from each of our childhoods. It was a healthy, veg-heavy, California cuisine concept with a bit of a Southern inflection.

When we realized there was no good Mexican/ Salvadoran/ Southwestern food in town, our concept was Mission: Sparse white adobe walls, stark mission style furniture, chestnut pumpkin soup with cayenne and nutmeg.

Well, the other day, we were walking downtown with the kids, and we noticed an old stalwart shop along Main Street had closed down: City Pharmacy. "That" I said, "would be a great name for a gastro-pub, and a great location too."

This got Rambunctious and Imperia thinking about their restaurant concepts. Imperia's was Purple Blankie Restaurant, where everything would be purple, and Red Hat Societies would drive from miles away to hold tea parties over grape cake. With the amount of detail she provided, we could tell she'd been percolating this idea for a good long time.

"OH!" Rambunctious bellowed (bellowing is the default volume right now). Mine would be "Stop! You're gonna Kill me!"

I'm not sure if he's a visionary animal-rights, vegetarian, gastro-activist, or destined for some other career. Given his enthusiasm for bacon, I'm going with the latter.

Q&A

Rambunctious: Who would win a football game: Tai Lung (the evil snow leopard form Kung Fu Panda) or Ben Roethlisberger?
Horace: Where are they playing: The Valley of Peace, or Pittsburgh?
R: Pittsburgh
H: Oh, then Roethlisberger would win.

R: Oh! I know why. Tai Lung would get more penalties.

What To Do with the Days Off

We're in a part of the world where right now, our nostrils freeze when we step foot outside, and since this is a fairly uncommon state of affairs, schools have been canceled for a couple of days. On top of a few minor illnesses and an unusually long holiday break from school, and we've had a LOT of time home with the kids in the last month.

Fortunately, Imperia and Rambunctious have just hit the stage where they are able to focus long enough for some selected board games, many of which were new from Christmas. Of course, we're already well acquainted with Chutes and Ladders and Candy Land, both of which are often played, well, creatively. They also enjoy a few well-designed movie tie-in games: a hand-me-down Lion King and a cool new one that ties into Madagascar II. I am generally not thrilled with the highly branded/tie-in toys, but in these cases, the design of the game really appealed to us: both games mix in collaboration with the competitive nature of the game, which is really important for twins (probably all siblings, but certainly twins).

Anyway, these lead us to discover Princess: A Cooperative Game of Discussion, Logic, and Rescue. The gender politics of the damsel in distress is mitigated by the fact that Imperia is the one who like to be the one to save her, and the game is flexible enough that we've added our own self-designed cards to the game play.

But we also decided that the game would import well to other narrative worlds that our children enjoy, which right now (for both of them) revolves around superheroes. To wit: We "invented" Superhero: A Cooperative Game of Discussion, Logic, and Capture. We spent the whole morning yesterday with the back of a pizza box, some printed-out graphics from images online, and the template that Princess offered us. The result:


We've put it away only once since we designed it, and it came back out almost immediately. (And Imperia likes to be the one to capture the Joker, too).

Spreading the News

I promised I'd explain the fall hiatus when the time came, and since the semester is nigh on over, and the explanation is making the rounds anyway, I figured now's as good a time as any. So here are many reasons why this blog went silent for a bit.

1) In the middle of the summer, my grandmother passed away. This in and of itself was not earth-shattering. I don't want to be calloused, but she suffered from Paranoid schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, and was recently diagnosed with Parkinson's, and then she had the fatal stroke. It had been a long time since the grandmother I knew had been in our lives. But the mourning was far less an issue than the events it set off in the family at large.

2) Extended Family Drama that included, in no particular order: old resentments, poorly disguised relief, old fears, unnecessary moralizing, boundary issues, betrayed confidences, and some use of substances not helpful in aiding clear-headedness. I won't say anymore about that.

3) Busiest Semester Yet of my academic career: three preps, two brand new, and the third, a comp class substituted at the last minute, not to mention an independent study with a (fabulous) grad student. Plus! final push to get the edited manuscript out, edits on two articles in the pipeline, and chairing two committees.

4) Willow's first semester back in the classroom since our move to BRU=more stacks of papers in the house, and fewer common free hours.

5) The Biggie: Baby C. Coming in June. As twins, Rambunctious and Imperia were labeled Baby A and Baby B, respectively, on the early sonograms. And so now, 12 weeks along, is Baby C. It is perhaps important to note that we first expected Baby C in March, but that never materialized, and so June it is.

Natures

Imperia is at an age where picking flowers is among the most wonderful things possible. When the spring dandelions were coming up, she wanted whole handfuls of them. Of course, the wanted whole handfuls of the daffodils and tulips that were springing up, too, not to mention any other kind of beautiful little thing growing in anyone else's yard or public place.

We had to teach her about what you could and couldn't pick, with varying explanations. Willow tried to explain that the fairies needed the flower petals to make dresses for fairy balls, while I, somewhat less magically inclined, explained that if we pick the flowers, they die faster and other people can't enjoy them.

So while the rogue flower-picking has waned, Imperia learned that people didn't care nearly as much about whether she picked random berries, leaves, stones, twigs, and soon these fell into the larger, but still treasured category of "natures."


Now every day, she has small gifts to offer: a woodchip from the playground, a pebble from the ground, twelve lovely blades of grass. These we accumulate in a small treasure box--a clear plastic container once for dried fruit.

This is adorable, no doubt, certainly when, at the end of her visit to her grandparents last week, she picked up a stone from the driveway, ran back to my mom and said, "Mom-mom, this is my missing-you stone."

On the other hand, it also means that we often have piles of dried leaves, handfuls of dirt, pebbles and other "natures" that show up: in her cubby at school, in pockets, in the laundry. One feels almost awful leaving those piles back outside, but they are frequently forgotten as soon as they are offered. I can merely hope that they are only making room for other treasures to be discovered, offered up, and taken. Bits of nature believed beautiful and valuable, if only for moments at a time.

Really. It Wasn't Funny (snicker)

Yesterday, Imperia woke up at 4, and so Willow got up with her, but when Rambunctious and I both awoke around 7:30, I decided to take the kids to the rec center to play. I like to take them to a racquetball court, pull out a bunch of tennis balls and racquetballs and few racquets and (since they're only four) just let everyone hit the ball around, and throw it, and slide around on the floor and have races. The room has a glass back wall to keep the room from feeling too closed in, and the kids have a blast.

So yesterday, after about 45 minutes of rambunctious joy (and Rambunctious joy), we had to make a group trek to the potty. As we returned, Imperia ran ahead, and down the hallway along the courts and, at full speed, took a right into our court. The one with the glass wall and door.

You know where this is going, right?

We had a good ten minutes of tears, and nice little bruise in the middle of her forehead for all the Christmas pictures. It wasn't funny. Really. At the time. Nowthough? as I remember it?

A little bit funny.

RBOC: Stopgap Edition

It's been two weeks since I've posted anything, and I'm about to leave for another week, so I want to get something up here, just 'cause, you know, I know you all miss me so much. But really, a lot's been going on and I want to get some of it down.

• Finished up June by going to a fantastic mini-conference on activism, pedagogy and cultural studies. It's just 18 people, more a works-in-progress symposium than anything. But the intellectual energy is very exciting. My co-editor and I presented a draft of some pages of our introduction that were both well received, and thoroughly critiqued. We've got a lot of work to do on those pages, but they're really taking shape.

• We also looked over the proposal with our series editor, who is increasingly enthusiastic about the project. Hopefully, a full proposal will be ready move on up the ladder in a month or so.

• The trip also coincided with a trip to visit many wonderful friends--I had dropped off Rambunctious with my folks for the long weekend (even though he was sick--more on that), and Willow and Imperia went to stay with friends in the same area as the symposium. So we got to spend some good time with a lot of different people.

• We also got to have a fantastic meal at a great restaurant whose chef was named a best chef by Food and Wine a couple of years ago. Great meal, great company.
  

• On the drive home, along a very rural stretch of Interstate, I noticed several lit road signs with the phrase "Terror Tips" and an 800 number. Why? I ask. What are the odds that someone is going to be driving along a stretch of highway where there's nothing but hills and woods for miles (not even a mobile phone tower), and think, "Hunh, I do have a tip on a terrorist, and it slipped my mind until just this moment!" This sort of thing strikes me as the worst kind of spectacle of fear. blecch.

• Been doing some good reading lately: finished Angela Carter's Wise Children on Willow's enthusiastic recommendation, and finished (by audiobook--cheating, but I'll likely read it on paper very soon) Arundhati Roy's amazing The God of Small Things. I just got an iPod for my recent birthday, so I also got John Hodgman's funny, droll The Areas of My Expertise. In addition to reading for the collection (which will soon include Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Order of Things), I'll also be finishing up new reading for the Commonwealth lit class, including Heart of Darkness (for the bajillionth time) and Coetzee's Disgrace. Sadly, I'm leaning toward cutting Rushdie's Midnight's Children because it's just too big. I'll use some of his short stories instead.
  

• We've just had a visit from our wonderful friend who I would call Gracefully Overworked Prof, but the initials for that name are GOP and she'd shudder. So instead I will call her Queen of the Archives, because she (like many of her competitors who may be reading this), has spent much of this summer assiduously transcribing manuscripts across various London sites. QotA is a wonderful guest, because she a) loves hanging out with our kids enough that we only barely feel guilty making her hang out with them, b) is always good for conversation on virtually any topic, and c) got me, for my birthday, the makings of a damn fine Pimm's cup, which, as I've just found out, is a smashing British mixed drink involving Pimm's, Lemonade and fruit (In our case, lemon, lime, mint and cucumber). God bless you QotA!

• Now that QotA is back home, we are preparing to depart for the centerpiece of our summer: a week on the West Coast for Willow's brother's wedding, on the campus of Prestigious-University-whose-mascot-is-NOT-a-bird-but-rather-a-color-or-perhaps-a-pine-tree. Rambunctious and Imperia are ring-bearer and flower child respectively, and are as excited about that as they are about their first flight. One that will last five hours each way, not counting travel time to the airport and waiting time in the airport. Did I mention that they're three and a half? Did I mention that we aren't half as excited as they are?

• Roger Federer just won his fifth Wimbledon, and while he is hardly my favorite male tennis player, man, that guy is amazing. He and Nadal both made some shots today that I simply don't understand the physics of. So hats off to Roger. Also to 17-year-old American Donald Young who won his second juniors Grand Slam Title and has been hailed for two or three years now as the future of American Men's Tennis. Likely makes the present of American Men's Tennis feel bloody great. But still I'm excited to get to see him play before too long.

• 15 pounds since May 1. Prompted me to get a fabulous new suit for the wedding.
  

• Finally, I must mention that Willow's first story since she returned to writing a couple of years ago has just been published, and we're waiting on another that has also been accepted. In other COMPLETELY UNRELATED NEWS, check out this fantastic story.
  

Toddler Jokes

First was the repeating of the famous Carnegie Hall joke that rambunctious heard on a Sesame Street video "Howda get Carny Hall prakissprakissprakiss!" which he didn't "get" but understood was funny because it was treated as funny (a burgeoning class clown this one).

But now, the twins are beginning to master the rhythms of the knock-knock joke.

Just not the actual humor part:

Imperia: Knock Knock
Willow: Who's there?
I: Boo Who.
(pause)
W: umm...Boo-hoo..........Who?
(long pause, a mixture of confusion and forgetting)
I: Don't cry!

Or...


I: Knock knock
W: Who's there?
I: Orange.
W: (Knowing that a few steps have been skipped here) Orange who
I: Are you glad I didn't say lemon? (uproarious laughter)

Lemon!?!

Warm Fuzzies

I'm snuggled into the recliner with Imperia, watching The Backyardigans, making her giggle with kisses, and I say, "You're my favorite girl in the whole world, did you know that?" and she looks at me and nods proudly.

"Am I your favorite Dad?" Another proud nod...

"Daddy, do you know who is my favorite favorite daddy?"

"No" I say coyly, enjoying the amplification...

"Evie's daddy, Jason."

Oof.

Bedtime Songs

Lately, the children have been very interested in an increasing repertoire of bedtime songs, and Rambunctious in particular has decided that he no longer wants his lullaby cd. So I'm getting a longer and longer list of songs to sing, but seem to need even more to add.

Not every nice, soft, quiet song makes a good lullaby, though, for if it relies too much on background instrumentation, or is repetitive in its melodic verse structure, the voice is the only thing to carry the line, and the song gets boring very quickly. This, sadly, is the problem with some of my favorite lullabies for cds, "Hallelujah" and "Halfacre", which violate both rules.

Here's what's in the repertoire now, though some, (like "Scarborough Fair") only get one verse, sometimes repeated once, to avoid being too mundane, and some (like Don Henley's "Lilah") only get snippets because I don't know them all.

"Scarborough Fair"
"Lilah" (Don Henley)
"Sweet Baby James"
"Tender Shepherd"(A lullaby from the musical Peter Pan)
"Edelweiss"
"Unforgettable" (Our wedding song)
"The Impossible Dream" (or, as rambunctious calls it, "The Important Dream")
"Soon it's Gonna Rain" (from The Fantasticks)
"Black is the Color of my True Love's Hair"
"In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning"
"Cecilia"
"The Lion Sleeps Tonight"
and, my favorite, "Moon River"

Willow also sings a few not in my repertoire:
"My Funny Valentine"
"Desperado"
"Peaceful Easy Feeling" (Someone's a big Eagles fan)
"Somewhere over the Rainbow"
"The Rainbow Connection" (which she's just told me, and which I must add into the rotation)

So what lullabies do you remember loving? What have you sung to your children? What makes a good lullaby for you?