# 9 - Here Comes the Baby Land Punkin' Rose

This is the one.  This is the one that will either make my kids cringe or melt their hearts.  # 9 on the Top 10 Funniest/Best Moments of My 50 Years - Here Comes the Baby Land Punkin' Rose.  I decided to post it now, so everyone will forget about it by the time we get to my birthday in a few weeks.

See if my kids read this, they will know immediately that this isn't really the right title.  The right title would be too long to count as a title.  This is an abbreviated version of the title.  In case you can't tell, this memory is all about when my kids were little - little enough that we had regular bedtime routines that included bedtime stories and songs.  So this isn't so much a funny memory but a best memory.  And it's not a specific moment but more a collection of moments.

We would read books for bedtime each night - classics like Good Night Moon, gentle books like Harold and the Purple Crayon, silly books like I Hate Lima Beans, "educational" books like Sesame Street's series with titles I don't even remember.  I remember doing the voices of The Count and Grover and Oscar the Grouch and even Snuffleupagus (yes, that spelling is correct!), but I never did a good Big Bird for some reason.

After books, I'd sing lullabies.  Each of my kids had their favorite lullaby for bedtime.  My oldest would rest easier after hearing the song "Here Comes the Sandman."  You may not have ever heard of it.  I haven't ever known anyone outside of my own family who knew the song, but it was one my mother sang to me, so I sang it to my children.  Here is a view of the sheet music that has been around over 100 years.  But we never sang the 2nd verse.  I didn't even know that there was a 2nd verse until just a year or so ago when I found this link!
http://www.gruntle.com/lotus/sites/staging.gruntle.com/filebrowser/files/sandman.pdf

Keep in mind that this was when my son, S, was a little guy - only about 5 or so when this routine was still going on.  He may be all cool and hip and grown up these days, but there was a time when he was a little guy who enjoyed the sound of his mama's voice singing him to sleep.

My daughter, S, the new bride, would know that her day was coming to an end if she heard the song, "How Many Miles to Baby Land?"  It may be another one you're unfamiliar with since again I haven't heard it sung outside of our family.  Such is the nature of lullabies, I suppose, with the exception of a few.  My mother never liked to sing the more popular Top 40 Rock-a-Bye-Baby one to us.  Or if she did, she'd change the words so the baby didn't fall out of the tree.  Babies aren't supposed to fall out of trees, with bows breaking and cradles falling to the ground!  We were also never big on the Hush Little Baby one.  I always got the mockingbird mixed up with the looking glass mixed up with the billy goat on that one, too.  I needed songs that sort of told a story like the Sandman one above or the Baby Land one.  I could keep track of how the verses built on each other, even at the end of a long day of mothering young children.  You can hear it by clicking on this link - well you can hear the tune anyway that you can hopefully match up with the words...
http://www.kididdles.com/lyrics/h058.html

Now, while both of these were favorites of my first two, my next child, my son, D?  Yea...he HATED both of those songs.  His hatred for the baby land song was only exceeded by his hatred of the sandman one.  How do I know that he hated both of these?  He would scream.  Yes, that's right.  He would cry and wail and carry on like we were torturing him to listen to such horrible songs!  His favorite was "Go To Sleep Now My Pumpkin" that I always sang as "punkin'".  I can't find the music or even exactly the right lyrics for this one, but this link is close.  Maybe D liked the idea of turning into a rose as he went to sleep each night...
http://www.rainbowsongs.com/lyrics-database/go-to-sleep-now-my-pumpkin.html

As for my youngest, her song wasn't really so much of a lullaby, but a version of the "Where is Thumpkin" song - one that she learned at Delta Gamma where she went for vision therapy until she was 3 years old.  I remember times when we'd be in the van, driving the older kids between various activities, and she would be upset in her car seat, but if we sang this song to her, she'd calm down.  In fact, by the time she was only about 6 months old, she was singing it to herself.  You may find that hard to believe.  I couldn't even believe it myself when I first heard it.  But she was singing - tune and words.  She wasn't talking, but she was singing.  My mother used to tell me that my sister, J, could sing before she could talk - singing "Jesus Loves Me" before she could talk.  I didn't understand that whenever she told me...so God gave me B.  And now I get it.

This is getting to be a really extra long DD, so I'll stop.  I hope I haven't embarassed my kiddos - my now all adult "kids" - too much by sharing special memories from their young childhood. 

Because these are all moments that I cherish and hold dear.  Priceless.  I wouldn't trade them for anything.  And they are all part of celebrating 50 years of me living on this planet.