Good morning, starshine

AG has been taking a long time to fall asleep at night lately. She talks and sings to herself for about two hours regularly. Typically Paul or I will go in there and gently ask her to quiet down, and then she’ll ask us to change her diaper because she’s “a little squishy” (people who use disposable diapers will know what she means). I fear the days of naptime are coming to a close.

Anyway, the other night at 10:30 I went in there to ask her to calm down. She was standing up on her bed, blathering away, with her left fist in the air. She turned to look at me in the dark and said, “Mommy, will you please wipe the poop off my hands?”

Yes. She had unzipped her jammies, stuck her hand in her dirty diaper, and pulled out some poop.

Your friends won’t tell you about these kinds of things when you’re trying to decide whether to have a kid, by the way.

But! The next morning, while eating breakfast, she turned to me and said, “Will you sing the twinkle song?” “Twinkle, twinkle, little star?” I asked. “No – the one with the people.”

She meant this one:

So I sang it for her, several times, because she kept asking me to sing it to her.

And that kind of made up for the poop.

NaBloPoMo Day 3

NaBloPoMo Writing Prompt for Thursday, November 3, 2011:
Can you listen to music and write? What song did you hear today?

Whether I can listen to music and write (I assume they mean “at the same time”) depends on the music and whatever it is I’m writing.

If I am listening to music that is distracting, and I’m trying to write something that needs my full attention, that’s not a good mix. But I can usually listen to classical music and work on just about anything – although not always. Sometimes I simply have to turn of the sound and concentrate. And if my work/writing is more captivating than the music, I can listen to just about anything and hardly notice it.

Today, like most days, I primarily listened to the Current. On my way to work, I heard Cat Stevens’ “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out,” which, of course, made me think of Harold and Maude, so that’s a nice way to start the work day. When I got to work, although I had the Current streaming on my computer, I forgot to turn my speakers on. Which (I now see, looking back on the day’s playlist), was too bad, because I missed some goodies: Mariachi El Bronx’s “48 Roses” (although they play that one a lot these days), Michael Franti and Spearhead’s “Say Hey (I Love You),” Plastic Bertrand’s “Ca Plane Pour Moi.” However, perhaps it’s just as well; those three songs would all have made me want to get up and dance, rather than concentrate on tracking down free versions of law review articles for a professor’s class.

I suppose I could always hook up my iPod or get my Spotify playlists all squared away so that I could listen to whatever I want, whenever I want, but I like the spontaneity of the radio. Plus, with the Current, I get introduced to new artists (and some old ones that I didn’t know about) that I would otherwise miss.

As I write right now, I’m listening to Elizabeth Mitchell over the baby monitor as it plays in my daughter’s bedroom to lull her to sleep. And that’s kind of what it’s doing for me, too, so … good night.