Last night, for the second night in a row, Elliott decided he wanted to tell us a story. His story began at about 3 a.m. and by 4 a.m. he wasn't done. He wasn't fussing or crying... just babbling. If Elliott was able to form words and coherent sentences and wanted to dictate an hour-by-hour account of everything he has done in his life to this point for his biography Things I've Peed On: The Elliott Sherman Story, it still would not have taken an hour.

So, facing our second straight night of virtually no sleep, we took to drastic measures. We brought in his lullabye CD. But, since it was 4 a.m. and I originally went looking for the CD in the refrigerator, I was obviously in no shape to transfer our stereo into our bedroom. So  we popped the CD into our DVD player. Of course, for it to play, we had to leave the television on and were thus bathed in an eerie blue light while the dulcet sounds of Twinkle Twinkle poured into the room. (As a brief sidenote, Shelbi discovered two interesting facts thanks to this CD. First, that it took her 28 years to realize that the Alphabet Song and Twinkle Twinkle have the same melody. And second, that the lyrics to Rock-a-Bye baby are morbid and horrifying.)

While the music didn't immediately put Elliott to sleep, it did quiet him and, after a while, I liked to imagine that he was providing his own spoken word variation on Hush Little Baby a la William Shatner. It took about 45 minutes but when we got to track 15, which is simply 5 minutes of a metronomic heartbeat (Edgar Allen Poe Remix), he was out cold. I was not, however. Because I was up thinking about how I completely missed the boat in career choice. There are 14 songs on this CD. All are exceedingly simplistic versions of some extremely simplistic songs. Twinkle Twinkle goes on for five and a half minutes. Five minutes! Who's playing these songs? Phish?

These have to be the easiest CDs in the world to crank out and because of the ever-growing market of desperate, sleep-deprived parents, I'm sure they sell hundreds of thousands of copies. We have yet to experiment with other CDs but I am curious to see what albums of mine he will take to. We have friends in San Diego who swear that Elliott Smith knocks their baby out but I think if my son was listening to Miss Misery I'd be petrified that he was staring up at his mobile with thoughts of suicide. The album of Radiohead lullabies is moderately intriguing though. It's actually better than I thought it would be and even a little creepier than I anticipated.



"Hey guys! It's 4 a.m. What are you up to? Want to hang out? Want
to play with my rattle? It sure is fun being a baby. Come on guys,
seriously. I'm up for anything right now!"