Dina Tune and more

The Little Boss is really coming into her own.
I won't deny that in my life I have been known as someone who manipulates the stereo, no matter the social circumstance. Is this an inherited trait? Hadley now rules the music of the house, in a micro-managing kind of way.

At first she would insist on the artist we listen to: Raffi ("Waffi", French Lady "Fench", African CD, Scary Robot Children, etc. So unlike the old days - by which I mean a few months ago - we can't just say, "hey Hadley, here's a Sharon Lois and Bram album: enjoy". Instead she gets to pick.
Then she started to narrow down the album. In the case of Raffi, she was really focussed on the first album, which she identified by the song near the end about working on the railroad all the livelong day. She called this one "Dina Tune" because at point Raffi cries "Dina!" and Hadley used to love that. The French Lady CDs were divided by colour of the CD itself: yellow, green and red.

But nowadays she decides on individual songs and makes us switch CDs back and forth. So She'll want the "SleepyTime" French song about animals sleeping in the jungle, then she'll want Down by the Bay by Raffi, next she'll want Elmo's Song on the Sesame Street CD, etc. And she gets really irate if we take too long or try and placate her with only one album at a time. This is unacceptable in her eyes. Of course, in today's futureland of musicmaking I could probably just burn all her favourite songs onto one CD and be done with it.

Hadley also associates different songs with different dances, so she'll opt for a 'jumping' song or 'sleepy' song, depending on her mood and dancing spirit.

The art of sleep

So before I go any further, here is my top five list of music that helps Hadley fall asleep:

1. Thomas Mapfumo (works 98% of the time)
2. Ali Farka Touré
3. LCD Soundsystem (go figure)
4. José Gonzalez
5. Darker than Blue, a Jamaican reggae compilation

We think she appreciates music that is repetitive and has a bit of a beat. If I rock her to the beat, she is in heaven.

Last night wasn't so easy, though. Usually she's out halfway through the second Mapfumo track but she lasted at least until halfway through the album. It doesn't help that our CD player is a piece of junk and often returns to the beginning of a song over and over.

It seemed like it was her ears. Hadley got the diagnosis of 'ear infection' a couple of weeks ago but the physician said it was just her best guess. The problem, she said, is that Hadley's (and many babies') ear canals are so narrow it's difficult to see if they are infected or not. She's never had one before, but here were the signs: always rubbing her ears, unable to be comforted (especially at night), slight fever. The last 2 have subsided but she still rubs her ears a lot. It's pretty heartbreaking - as you parents know - to watch your baby go through pain and be unable to fix it. I mean, there's only so many times you want to calm her with Baby Advil. That stuff is rough on the system.

In the end, Mapfumo won out. My newest tactic is to lie on my back and place Hadley on my chest, face down. I rock her by gently pushing her bum over and over to the beat. Almost always, she winds down pretty quick. Once her breathing is regular ( I can't see her eyes from this angle), I tip her over to the side and let her nestle in my armpit for a few minutes. This to ease the transition from Dad to no Dad. Eventually I pull my arm out from under her head and adjust her so her head's on a bit of an angle, to let all that snot pour out. I'll save this for another post, but MAN is it hard to get snot out of a baby's nose.

I'm not claiming this is easy. There are moments when I want to scream or abandon her because I'm so frustrated. My thoughts run a mile a minute when Hadley is crying, and they can turn quite dark. Not mean-spirited, but resentful or self-pitying or whatever. But it passes and everything is OK. The best is when I fall asleep, too. Nothing beats waking up beside a baby.