the Midnight Serenade

There's something to be said of the Midnight Serenade. There's a defiant romance when John Cusack holds the boom box above his head to the chagrin of neighbors and parental figures. There's a chilling beauty in the wolf howl and the coyote yip. Even the cat on the fence brings a warm fuzzy feeling. ... after you've launched the boot at him and he's moved on to someone elses fence. We have our own songstress these days. Some of you know that Genevieve has become quite the little singer the past few months. I don't want to take credit, but I'm going to. I like to sing to the girls, especially when I'm getting them ready for bed. Several weeks ago I found that Genevieve was singing back when I would do it. Now I'm sure Gina noticed this long before I did and she probably feels that it's something she did that caused it, but she's not writing this blog, is she?! So there. Anyway, she quickly moved from response singing to spontaneous singing and now she breaks out in song all the time no matter what the circumstances around her. Let me be clear, she's not really hitting notes and scales so much. It's more of a high pitch squeal dragged brutally between octaves. But it's not done out of malice and it is obviously a reflection of her happiness with the world around her. I wouldn't say it's beautiful. ... but damn is it cute. The last few days she's realized how loud she can make it. And it's very, very loud. And she is very, VERY satisfied with the volume level. All fine and dandy at 9 in the morning or 6 at night. No so much around 2:30 AM on a Wednesday. But what do you do? As a parent, how do you respond? She's happy, that's the only time she does it. So do you go in, quite her down and risk ruining that happiness? Any parent would agree that a happy baby at 2 AM is waaaaayyy better than an angry baby at 2 AM. On the other hand, as cute as it may be, it's 2 AM on a Wednesday. I've got to get up at 5. So how long to we wait until we make the transition from happy to angry? Cause angry is much easier to get to sleep than a happy baby. During this time period angry is solved by a boob and a rocking chair. Happy, happy is solved by play time which leads to very awake baby which leads to sleep deprived mom which leads to grouchy morning mom which leads to dad in trouble for some how being responsible. I don't like that second scenario. We decided to let it go and see what happened. Amazingly, we (and by we I mean me because, based on her morning mumbling when I was getting dressed, I'm pretty sure Gina was stuck awake until about 4 because her body needed to nurse but her mind told her body to shut up and go to sleep, she wasn't about to mess with their sleep patterns that have finally started to come under control) drifted back to sleep despite the vocal explorations in the other room. And even more amazingly, so did Genevieve. So everyone was sung (back) to sleep at 2:30 via Midnight Serenade. Is there anything more heart warming than that? Well, a good solid night sleep of course, but I mean BESIDE that.