We represent the Lullabye League

I've been meaning to make a note of all of Dominic's favorite songs, and I'd like to invite anyone who is reading this to either post comments or send me email with suggestions of other songs to sing for him, perhaps songs from your own childhood or songs you sang to your children that they enjoyed.

Old MacDonald

Old Mac Donald had a farm

E-I-E-I-O

And on that farm he had a _____ (animal)

E-I-E-I-O

With a ___ ___ (animal's sound) here

and a ___ ___ (sound) there

Here a ___ there a ___, everywhere a ___ ___.

Old MacDonald had a farm

E-I-E-I-O

(Animals we use are duck-quack, dog-arf, cat-meow, cow-moo, sheep-baa, donkey-heehaw, owl-hoo, and we've even thrown in lions-rrrrowr, and monkeys-oo-oo-ah-ah, and the occasional bee-bzzbzz. What animals do you use?)

Old MacDonald is a great song for stopping a booboo face, like if something scares him or if you take something away that he wanted to put in his mouth like a pen.

A great song for preventing a tantrum when wet-wiping Dominic's face and hands is "Happy and You Know It". We sing "If you're happy and you know it, wash your face (wash wash), If you're happy and you know it, wipe your hands (wipe wipe), If you're happy and you know it, then you're face will surely show it! If you're happy and you know it wash your face (wash wash)." It's remarkably the perfect length of song to get both hands and his face clean before it's over.

Night-time lullabyes...

My mom used to sing this to me:

I see the moon and the moon sees me

The moon sees the somebody I want to see

So God bless the moon and God bless me

And God bless the somebody I want to see

I really think

That God above

Created you for me to love!

He picked you out

From all the rest

Because He knew I would love you the best!

If I get to Heaven and you're not there,

I'll write your name on the golden stair.

I'll put it there

For all to see

That I love you and you love me!

And this one she would sing to my little brother, John. It's so incredible to be singing it to my own little boy! I looked all over the internet to find a version of Bing Crosby singing it that I could link you to, but couldn't find one that you don't have to pay for. You can click here and then scroll down to number 21 and click the little arrow in that row to get it to play. If you have iTunes you can search the iTunes store for "little man bing crosby" and they will let you listen to a snippet. The lyrics shown on his version are not 100% the same as the way I learned it.

Little man, you're crying

I know why you're blue

Someone took your kiddie car away

Better go to sleep now

Little Man, you've had a busy day

Johnny won your marbles?

Tell you what we'll do

Dad'll get you new ones right away

Better go to sleep now

Little Man, you've had a busy day

You've been playing soldier

The battle has been won

The enemy is out of sight

Come along now, soldier

Put away your gun

The war is over for tonight

Time to stop your scheming

Time your day was through

Can't you hear the Sandman softly say

Better go to sleep now

Little Man, you've had a busy day.

We also love "You Are My Sunshine" (we sang this to Dominic when he was first born, hoping he would recognize it from all the times we sang it to him before he was born), and when we open the blinds to let in the sunshine in the mornings, we always sing "Sunshine on my shoulders"

Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy

Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry

Sunshine on the water looks so lovely

Sunshine almost always makes me high

If I had a day that I could give you

I'd give to you a day just like today

If I had a song that I could sing for you

I'd sing a song to make you feel this way:

Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy

Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry

Sunshine on the water looks so lovely

Sunshine almost always makes me high

Sometimes we play the Beatles "Here Comes the Sun" and dance around the bonus room. Have you ever noticed that most songs with "sun" in the title are pretty fun, positive songs?

Here's a video of Dominic singing...

Growing and Remembering...

Last night we lowered the crib in Dominic's room one notch. He has been starting to get up on his hands and knees in the crib and just yesterday started reaching up and taking a hold of the crib railing, so I figured it's just a matter of time before he launches himself.


Lowering the mattress made me feel about the same as when I bagged up the first tiny clothes that stopped fitting him. "Wow, this is going fast."


It's weird because part of me is so excited about him crawling and eager to hear his thoughts on everything when he can talk, but part is melancholy for the tiniest time. It's remarkable, really, because while I have always loved children, I've never been much for infants. My favorite age of child has always been between the ages of first talking and I've-got-to-have-THAT-label-of-tennis-shoes-mom. But with Dominic, I have really really enjoyed his infancy, memorizing the shape of his belly-button, watching his eyes change color, looking deeply into those changing eyes and imagining all of what's going on behind there!


I say I'll never forget the feeling of pressing my cheek against his for the first time, but I also thought I'd never forget the feeling of him moving inside me for the first time, and while I do remember the emotion of it, I can't honestly say I could fully describe the feeling. If we ever give Dominic a little brother or sister, I'm going to write it all down. So here I'm writing the feeling of that cheek just in case it all goes blurry.


It was probably a whole week or two after he was born. I had cuddled him innumerable times and was absolutely in lala land (possibly partly from lack of sleep, but mostly from joy), and I don't know why I pressed his little face against mine that particular day. I had expected his cheek to feel ... I don't know ... less substantial, more like it was filled with air. But it was so firm and squishy (wow these aren't very good words for it... putting things into words is harder than I thought, especially for someone who talks as much as me), and this rush of feeling came over me. It was sort of like a realization that this little person would some day be a man.. almost a fast-forward feeling. I felt so connected to him at that moment, and my body felt filled with the joy of it, as if joy was something physical and there was so much of it inside me that it was pressing against the inside of my skin.


This picture is from January 12 (Dominic was almost 4 months old), so it was long after the cheek incident. But you can see those lucious cheeks pretty well here... doesn't it just make you want to squish them against yours?

Now where was I?

I keep getting intimidated about how I'm going to get back to this blog when there is so much to recap.  So the intimidation makes me put it off until tomorrow, when I think I will somehow wake up with a brilliant idea for getting 4 months of amazing events into a quick blog entry.  

Today I decided that I just have to jump back in or else.  So someday I might post the missing months, but right now I'm starting with recent events and going forward.

First, an event of today.

Today marks a small breakthrough in Dominic's cognitive development, I think.  Whenever I am changing him on his little changing pad on top of the dresser in his room, I always point to the nautical flags hanging on the wall above his head and recite "D-O-M-I-N-I C".  He always smiles and studies how my lips make the letters, and looks at the flags as i tap each one.  But later if we are in the room and I spell his name, he just studies my mouth.  Today, however, when i started spelling D-O-M-I..., he turned his head up to look at the flags, which were behind him.  I think this is honestly the first time I've ever really noticed him linking a random sound to an actual thing.  My dad always wears a baseball cap, and when we see him, Granddaddy always says "hat", at which point Dominic looks up at his hat, and he has done that for some time now.  But this flag thing is the first time I've seen him link something that's not right there in front of him with a sound.

Here are a couple of recent pix and a video of Dominic's first crawling steps (5-31-08) and first carousel ride (6-3-08).

Dominic with our guests, the Carlton family, from England taking the Long Beach Passport bus to the Aquarium 

5-29-08

Dominic touching the rays on his first visit to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach 

5-29-08

Dominc can almost balance on the rocking horse he got from Uncle Greg and Auntie Jenn 

5-31-08

Cooling off in the parking lot of the Boomers activity center 

6-1-08

Dominic in his stroller on a beautiful walk we took with our guests on Balboa Island 6-4-08

As a gift for my mom for Mother's Day, I took her and Dominic back east to New Jersey to visit her side of the family.  Dominic's namesake, my Grandpa Donald Carpentier, has 2 sisters and 1 brother still living there, as well as my cousins (Grandpa Don's nieces and nephews) and now their kids.  After our trip to Cabo on March 31 thru April 5, this was Dominic's second plane trip.

I think it is thanks to our friend Jack Snow's mom, Julie, a veteran flight attendant for American Airlines, that the only empty seat on our red-eye flight to JFK Airport in New York was the one between Mom and me, so even though we hadn't bought a seat for Dominic, we could still stretch out a bit.  Dominic was an absolutely perfect traveller.  This is saying a lot when you hear our trip back included 

   * a 5-hour traffic jam drive thru Manhattan followed by 

   * a hasty exit from the rental car, 

   * schlepping with volumes of bags (one of which was completely full of yummy New Jersey crumb cakes to bring home!) through the airport, followed by 

   * a 5-hour flight 

at the end of which one passenger told me that he flies 100 days per year and this was the best baby he had ever flown with!!

Our visit with the family was amazing.  I couldn't believe how big all the "kids" are getting.  We stayed with Aunt Louise and Uncle Mike, and Robbie and Donna hosted us for dinner one afternoon, too.  Seeing Aunt Netting and Aunt Connie were highlights... I'm so glad Dominic got to meet them and they him!  Here are some photos: