Nursery Rhyme Epiphany

Toby has taken to singing himself to sleep these past few nights. It’s really very sweet to hear his soft voice soothing himself to sleep with his number 1 hit, Twinkle twinkle little star. That is, for about the first 40 times you hear it. Then it gets tiring.

The other morning he woke up at 5:45 am. Thankfully, he recognized that it was still the time that MOST people are asleep so he started in on Twinkle Twinkle Little star in, what I assume was an attempt to put himself back to sleep.

At about the 25^th go round, I realized that not only was Toby NOT going to go back to sleep, but neither was I. Earplugs, extra pillows and even the white noise of our fan couldn’t drone out the monotonous repetition until, all of a sudden I heard something novel. I sat up in bed and pulled out my earplugs to listen closer. THANK GOODNESS he was on to the next song…or so it seemed. He was now singing the Alphabet song but - -it had the SAME TUNE!!

ARGH. What are the CHANCES I thought to myself, throwing my head back on my pillow in frustration? WHY on EARTH would the inventor of children’s songs not RECOGNIZE toddlers' incessant need to REPEAT things and at least switch the TUNE up? I started cursing the Alphabet song/Twinkle twinkle little star song writers and began to wish that Toby had chosen to get fixated on ANOTHER song. Like – Baabaa black sheep?

As that song rolled in my head I made another shocking and equally disappointing discovery.

IT ALSO has the SAME TUNE!!

Frantically I began to sing every nursery rhyme I knew out loud. Did they ALL follow this same tune??!?!? Was I the ONLY PERSON on the PLANET to not KNOW this!?!??! Was I SERIOUSLY lying in my bed, wide awake at 6am singing myself NURSERY rhymes!?!?

I made up my mind then and there to do things differently with the next kid. Forget this boring, redundant tunes the other kids follow. I’m going to teach my next kid a Baa-baa black sheep version that follows the tune of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”. Try it out yourself. Maybe it was the labiality of my 6am state at the time, but I for one think it sounds much better.