PSoTD

8 AM on Christmas Eve Day, I'm the only one awake and out of bed.

Tomorrow the kids will be awake by 6:30

Friday the kids will be asleep still at 8 AM

One of the things Christmas trains children for is sleeping anxiety.

Grandmother, Mother and Daughter sitting at breakfast table. Father and son also, but they're not part of this discussion.

Mother: You know, next year we should take Cee (daughter) to the Nutcracker ballet.

Grandmother: That's a wonderful idea!

Daughter: Nooooo!!!!!

Our daughter was less than a year old - still crawling, climbing to her feet but not yet walking - when MMMBop by Hanson came out. It was a catchy bubblegum tune, on the radio a lot of the time, and after a little bit we realized that she liked that song. In fact, she liked it so much that we could sing it to her when she was upset, or when we wanted her to go to sleep, and she would calm down to it and at night or nap time she would go to sleep in our arms. It was gold to us.

One time my old boss, Rick, was out from Sacramento, and we had him over for dinner. By that time I had videotaped MMMBop as well, since we knew it gathered her attention, and we didn't have to sing it everytime, if we needed the tune. We were telling Rick about it, and he thought it was funny, so we gave him a demonstration. We sat our daughter on one side of our family room, set the tape up to play, and walked to the other side of the room. Of course, she wanted to be with us, so she started to crawl quickly to us, when the song kicked in on the television. She stopped immediately and looked at the TV, cocked her head, then crawled to it. She pulled herself up on our old entertainment center, and then proceeded to do the baby dance. We've all seen the baby dance - they're on their two feet, mostly bopping up and down in an effort to find some sort of musical rythym I guess, and it doesn't sync up to the beat but it's still as cute as anything. And she was. I have her, and MMMBop, on video somewhere.

There are songs that I really like, and then there are songs like MMMBop, which have an extrinsic value that far overwhelms any value the song may musically provide. It's a catchy song, but our daughter made it perhaps the most memorable song of the 1990s for us. Even to this day, she likes it, although she's embarrassed by the story.