One of the awesome gifts someone got my progeny unit in one of her thirteen baby showers is a stuffed bear which plays sounds designed to calm or keep a child asleep. Choices include waves crashing on the beach, rain, a mother's heartbeat (recorded in utero), and whale songs. It's honestly pretty cool...you push a button, and it provides an hour of sounds while you (supposedly) get your urchin to sleep.
Last night/way too early this morning, my progeny unit woke up. Spousal unit fed progeny unit and then handed her off to me (seeing as I am the daytime caretaker unit and she has to work). Progeny unit, though, was decidedly un-tired. I had every trick in the book (literally; someone just recommended The Happiest Baby on the Block, and I was pulling out every bit of advice, to relatively decent effect), but that little kid was fighting sleep with all she got.
After three hours, several sleep sound machine re-sets, and two failed feeding attempts, she finally went back down to la-la land...and in her crib, no less! I then collapsed in my own bed. As I lay there trying to shut off my mind, I could still hear the whale sounds playing from down the hall. They say whale songs are language of a sort. This immediately set me thinking: what exactly are these particular whales saying? What if these whales are trying to corrupt my kiddo? What kind of insidious whale-messages exactly am I unwittingly piping into my daughter's room?
What if these whales are terrorists? Drug addicts? RIAA supporters? Karaoke singers? Tea partiers? Baseball fans? What if they're evil in some other way, like maybe being Rachel Ray fans? You see? We really have no idea what they're saying...and this is something I never considered until I became a father...more specifically, a father awake at 5am, running on two hours of sleep.
Yeah, sure, they're probably just talking about plankton availability...but can we really take that chance? What about the children? Won't someone think of the children????.
I am, by the way, realizing exactly how much I now need coffee.
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