Toby's New Lullabye

Ever since Toby was 4 months old I have sung him the song “Lullabye” by Trout Fishing in America as he falls asleep each night. It’s a very sweet song that Toby refers to as “close your eyes” because that’s the opening line. It talks about night time; crickets serenading, the stars shining on the lake, cows sleeping in barns and how you’re safe and warm in your covers. It’s the perfect good night song for him and Toby adores it.

However, after 21 months of singing this song EVERY NIGHT to him, he decided, last night, that he wanted to hear “another song”. I believe his exact words were, “No, not THAT song” when I started to sing it.

I sifted frantically through my brain’s very limited lullabye lyric collections. I tried things like “Feeling Groovy” and my old good night song from Camp Trillium. He listened to the first few lines of all of them and then promptly NIXED them with his newfound phrase, “No not THAT song.”

I was beginning to feel like a Juke Box.

FINALLY after scraping the bottom of the barrel of my repertoire we settled on a new good night song. It seems to have stuck and we’ve used it for the last few nights. Tonight he even asked for it by name; “Sing the Pop bottle song, Mommy!”

This is how it goes ;

One bottle of pop, two bottle of pop three bottle of pop four bottle of pop five bottle of pop six bottle of pop seven seven bottle of pop

Fish and chips and vinegar! Vinegar! Vinegar!
Fish and chips and vinegar! Pepper pepper pepper Salt!

Don’t throw your junk in MY backyard MY backyard MY backyard!

Don’t throw your junk in MY backyard, my backyard’s FULL!

And then it repeats itself.

(I wasn’t joking about the bottom of the barrel…)

Who says we can’t change things up once in a while?