Lullabies (Rockabye Baby & Twinkle Twinkle Little Rock Star)

Rockin' right from the start

In my last post I kind of bragged about how Baba G wasn't sweating his incoming tooth.

I jinxed us.

For the past two nights he's been having a rough go of things. The tooth is sharp as %&^$, has broken through his gums, and I think BG's none too happy about this new pointy thing he's feeling in his mouth. I've been trying to console him, but I, too, have been feeling ill—and on top of all that, my husband's been out of town.

On Tuesday night I enlisted the help of our baby swing to calm BG down, and it worked. (The swing's review post will include a video, so it's gonna have to wait until I have time to upload the file.)

Last night, however, I turned to a different but equally effective old standby: music. Baba loves music. Almost every night, my husband serenades him with an acoustic guitar. As you can see from the picture below, BG's already getting piano lessons as well. (My husband is trying to "pitch train" him. Some say this can't be done. But that's not stopping my husband.)

I, however, was trying to get BG to take a nap, so I couldn't prop him up at the piano, and I don't know how to play guitar. My husband was traveling with the iPad that holds our lullaby mix. What's more, my iPhone was almost out of battery, so I couldn't even fire up the ol' "Chill Mix" of slow songs on it that I played throughout my pregnancy and during feedings when BG was a newborn.

Baby Mozart

SO instead I held BG in our rocker and sang to him the only song that came to my weary, sleep-deprived mind: Katy Perry's "Califonia Gurls."

Believe it or not, when sung very, very slowly, even lyrics such as "We free-ee-eeak . . . in my jeep . . . Snoop Doggy Dogg on the stereo" can sound absolutely precious.

All the same, I advise you not to get caught in this position. You want some true lullaby music on the ready. There are a ton of traditional lullaby CDs out there, and many of them are great and I'll try to review some more of them in the future. But I'm going to start with two of my favorite lullaby "brands," if you will: Rockabye Baby! (their exclamation point, not mine) and Twinkle Twinkle Little Rock Star.

We knew about Rockabye Baby (I refuse to use the ! again) early on because, as those of you who read my other blog might remember, my husband is a huge Van Halen fan (that post I just linked to is one of my favorites I've EVER written by the way), and David Lee Roth's sister created the company. We'd received Rockabye Baby CDs of Van Halen, Beatles and Radiohead music, and we'd intended to buy more off of iTunes . . . until we discovered Spotify.

While browsing around on Spotify during the increasingly stressful days after my due date came and went, my husband found the Twinkle Twinkle Little Rock Star lullabies. What's the difference between the two brands? I can't really tell.

Here comes the tongue, doo do doo-doo

All you need is ... a nap.

Both companies have made lullabies out of the same artists (in some cases), such as the Dave Matthews Band, Coldplay and Bob Marley. But then it seems like each brand also covers some bands that the other doesn't. For example, Twinkle Twinkle has a CD of "sci-fi and fantasy classics" that includes themes from Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, The X-Files and Harry Potter (and others). That might just be the best thing ever invented, as far as baby music goes.

What's nice about a service like Spotify is that you can just make a mix of all of these lullabies from both brands.

The bottom line: If you like music, you must get your hands (ears?) on at least SOME of the Rockabye Baby or Twinkle Twinkle Little Rock Star lullabies, one way or the other. They're the coolest. The littlest Beatles fan approves!

I would MUCH rather listen to the lullaby CDs than Mommy's scary-flat singing voice!