Veronica, official daughter-in-law of NewMexiKen, on what it’s really like being a mom.
When I was pregnant, I read about a dozen books on raising infants and toddlers. Most of these had at least one chapter about how to soothe your child when she’s fussy. Most of these books with said chapter recommended that you sing to your child when she’s fussy in order to calm her down. And most of these books that recommended that you sing to your child to soothe her also made the claim (in the body of the book no less, and not in say, a footnote), that there is nothing more soothing to a baby than the sound of her mother’s voice. So, the books said, don’t worry if you can’t sing or carry a tune. It doesn’t matter to the baby. Go ahead! Make up a silly song! Sing it off key! Just do it.
Well, obviously, they were all quite wrong. Example: Today, Sofie was having a tantrum about something or other while we were at the library. To soothe her, I did what I’ve been doing for the entire 22 months that she’s been alive — I sang her some silly song about who knows what in my rather horrible voice. For a moment, she completely stopped screaming and totally dead pan, looked me in the eye and pleaded: “Mama, no singing, no more.”
Dada was reading Cinderella to Katie for the millionth time for her bedtime story and something struck him as funny in the text and he chuckled. My darling two year old looked him right in the eye like he was the stupidest man on earth and said, “That’s not funny, Dada. Not funny at all.”