Ooops

I just did something that might not make Husband happy. I just bought the Mary Poppins soundtrack. While I do enjoy me some occasional showtunes, I've not become a devotee of 1960's movie-musicals. Even though we less than three gig on our hard drive and have to constantly clean out our files in order to make room for new songs, photos, etc, I bought the cd because itunes makes it so damn easy to blow money, and because I thought it would be good for Baby.
For some reason Baby likes my singing voice. He'll learn soon enough not to, but for now, I find myself singing to him a lot. Sometimes I make up songs that go something like:
We're changing your diaper, Baby-boo,
We're changing your diaper, my sweet boy,
We're changing your diaper, Baby-boo,
Because you smell like shit.

or

You are my baby, my baby boy,
I think you're so great.
You are my baby, my baby boy,
You're better than any toy.

As you can see, I'm not really musically inclined, but if you're reading this, you probably already know that about me.
Sometimes I pull out songs from when I was a kindergarten aide. These songs take the tunes from traditional children's (or other) songs and change the words to make the song more of a learning experience. Dr. Jean is one mind-numbing example of someone who does this. My two favorites are "Days of the Week," which basically teaches kids the days of the week to the tune of the Addams Family theme song, and "Weather Helper," which is sung to the tune of "Clementine." I like singing the kindergarten songs to Baby because I like to think I'm helping him learn, even though I know he's too young to understand how plants grow or what today's date is. My problem here is that I can't remember all of them, so I end up singing "Days of the Week" over and over and over again. It gets old, fast, and after the fourth, or maybe fifteenth rendition, Baby starts to look at me as though I've got four heads.
I didn't know what else to do, so one day I downloaded $17 worth of Veggie Tales songs. I enjoy Veggie Tales immensely. I think they're amusing. Sometimes I will turn on itunes and Baby and I will dance to various fruits and vegetables singing inane but hilarious songs.
Today I ran out of songs to sing to Baby. We were having fun, making faces at each other and playing "You Licked My Finger!" and "You Drooled on Me!" and I ran out of songs. I contemplated turning on my itunes playlist, but then I thought that as much as I swear, Ani Difranco probably isn't good for Baby's young ears.
Which brings me to Mary Poppins. I realized there was an alternative to my music, which can often be full of angst and swearing, and children's music, which tends to be complete crap. If you don't believe me, listen to some of the itunes samples in their children's music category. It makes me want to drill a hole through my toe rather than listen to it. I started singing the "Let's Go Fly a Kite," song, only I wasn't sure I was getting the words correct. I visited itunes and figured I might as well just buy the whole soundtrack, since it's such a fabulous movie. I remember the songs being fun and singing along with them when I watched the movie as a child.
While the songs were downloading, I continued to butcher the words to "Let's Go Fly a Kite." As soon as it loaded, I played it and started singing, my off-key notes echoing through the house. Baby loved it. I got off to a great start, and all of a sudden the singers changed, the way the song was sung changed, and I couldn't keep up. What I expected to be a fun sing-along type of song seemed more like a Broadway number complete with complex vocal tricks and an orchestral interlude. I was a little disheartened, but moved on to a different song. It, unfortunately was no better. Nor was the third and final song, "A Spoonful of Sugar," I tried. It was 2:40, and the last minute was just instrumental! I kept getting my lungs ready for a rousing chorus that never came. I was very disappointed, because these were clearly not the Mary Poppins songs I remembered, so to cheer myself up, I sang along with Blake to "You Give Love a Bad Name," while Baby smiled his smile that seems to say, "I'm enjoying this, but Mama, you sure are a jackass." I'm glad I made the kid smile, but I'm not sure it was worth losing whatever it is we will have to delete in order to keep the 16 Mary Poppins tracks.

Sidenote: Jenny McCarthy talks about singing to her baby in her book Baby Laughs. I recommend it.