Singing her to sleep

Ada and I were without Scott today.

He travelled to Chattanooga so that two of his friends could try (and successfully did!!) fix my poor little Altima (that is hanging in there despite her constant problems). It is midnight now, and Scott is still in Chattanooga. As much as I am wishing he is here with me, I am more blown away by the kindness of the guys who gave up their Saturday to do this for us. And now it's turning into Sunday. Seriously, what a gift they have given us!!

Anyway...Ada and I were looking at a long day.

I faced the day with ammunition--plans to spend the morning traipsing around town, ending at Wal-Mart to purchase a blow up pool for the backyard. We stayed out until 11 am, when Ada normally starts asking to go "night-night," and then I pulled out the question, "do you want to play with water?" And she jumped on that, so I was able to postpone nap time until 12:30.

Then, we visited Target after her nap, where she was able to pick out a treat--Sesame Street bath toys. Sesame Street is the choice show around here, though Curious George is coming in at a close second. Every time I ask Ada if she would rather have an Elmo or Curious George birthday party, she says, "Melmo," but that is liable to change. Anyway, we killed some time until 4:30, but then Ada started to notice that Scott wasn't around, and she probably started to notice that I was a bit burned out.

Finally, at 7:00, I put Ada to bed (without a bath because I had given her one earlier after swimming in her new pool). An hour and half later, realizing she wasn't going to sleep without a bath and books (our normal night time routine), Ada was back out of bed and in a lavender bubble bath.

Ada was a cryer as a newborn. For the first two months or so, around 5:00, Ada would start crying and was usually inconsolable. Scott and I would take turns walking her around, swaying back and forth, shushing in her ear, and passing her off when our sanity threatened to leave us. Some nights, a lavender bath would do the trick. Tonight, after wailing for 90 minutes, I thought a lavender bath might do the trick once again. And it did, for a while.

I let her cry some more, and finally at 9:00, when I could tell she was too worked up to calm herself down, I went upstairs and held her very tightly and I began to sing. We sat in the rocking chair for a while, until I believed that she was calm enough to go to sleep. However, when I put her down in the bed, she asked me to sing some more, and this time she requested a specific song--The Veggie Tales theme song, her favorite song in the whole world.

I chuckled to myself, and in a very quiet voice (usually the singing of that song involves much dancing and squealing and all sorts of hoopla) I began to sing the theme song as I patted her little belly. She had a little contented grin on her face, and she would join in the same quiet voice to sing the words that she knew, and this is how she finally fell asleep. It was a very surprising and pleasant way for us to end this evening and this hard week that we have had. She was just grinning and calm and we sang together. My precious girl.