Mama Says Om: Lullaby

Over at Mama Says Om, they are offering a giveaway of a CD by Renee Stahl and Jeremy Toback called "It's a Big World" and I would really, really love to own it. You can hear clips here. My friend Wannabe Hippie mentioned this CD on her blog awhile back, with a link to some samples of the music. This music is some of the sweetest lullaby music you may ever hear, and is the kind of thing you wouldn’t even mind listening when there are no kids around.

It’s a good soundtrack for drinking tea while reading the Sunday paper, or for dozing in the hammock while listening to the kids playing happily nearby. Even after listening to snippets of it on their website, I found myself singing them to myself later in the day, not even knowing the rest of the song!

Its funny, I always imagined one of the best parts of motherhood was singing to your child softly, in the rocking chair, while breastfeeding. I knew I didn’t have the best singing voice, but it’s not all that bad either. But when my first baby came, and I quietly sang to him in the night, he would burst into tears, inconsolable. When I stopped singing, he stopped crying. And it went on like that.

To fulfill that little fantasy of motherhood, I had to quietly sing to him after he fell back asleep, before I laid him back in his bed. All for my own benefit.

This was all the more disconcerting as he grew older and developed a love of all things musical. He had to own a toy piano, a harmonica, a drum, some castanets, a saxophone… whatever new instrument he learned about, he wanted to play. And he learned to sing songs quickly and loved to sing them.

But if I tried to sing along with him, he would scold me. “Mommy! Stop Singing!”

One day, I asked him, “Why? How come you get to sing, but I don’t?” and he answered, “Because when you sing, its like you’re being mean to me!” He was in a cranky mood that day, but that hurt.

So, I ended up playing him lullaby CDs before bed. I tried to get him to listen to things I would like, mellow songs from Cat Stevens, Simon and Garfunkle, and the like. But he always asked for something else. Lullabies from the Beatles came next. Nope. He did like those nature discs that had some classical music along with the sounds of birds chirping or the ocean waves. But the one he always went back to was one that came as an advertisement from a PHARMACEUTICAL company, for some drug for children and infants!! And he has been listening to it over and over, night after night, for about three years straight.

This is fine for him. But, I have to listen to it too, through the baby monitor.

Now, understand that I am the mom who doesn’t like advertising things unless I REALLY like the product. I won’t wear those free t-shirts you get from companies with their logo on it, no matter how cool it looks. I don’t like my kids to wear those shirts either, and it bugs me, all those useful things like clocks and pens and cups and soap dispensers and LULLABY CDs (!!!) that my hubby comes home with, because my frugal side has to battle with my non-advertising side.

Which brings me back to “It’s a Big World”. See, I already know I like the music on this disc. It’s so sweet and soothing. If I can’t win Noah over to it, I can just play it in my own room, drowning out his music coming over the monitor!

And, I can start my twin toddlers out early on some music I like listening to over and over again.