Pretenders -- "Lovers of Today" (1980)

I put my arms 'round my baby,
I said "Hush, hush, hush, hush baby sleep tight, now."
Hush, hush, hush baby sleep.
All of the birds start to sing,
Everytime babies dream.
All of the birds start to sing.

I kissed the eyes of my baby,
I said, "Dream, dream, dream, dream baby all night, long."
Dream, dream, dream all night.
All of the stars in the skies,
Twinkle like my baby's eyes,
All of the stars in the sky.

This is a second post about my daughters' birthday.  After all, they're twins -- so just one post wouldn't be enough.  Here's a link to the first one if you missed it.

Many or most (if not all) of my several loyal readers will remember that I'm a big Pretenders fan.  I have a homemade cassette of their first two albums, and used to listen to it every year on my Cape Cod mountain biking rides -- and only on those rides.

When Sarah and Caroline were very young, they went to sleep at 7 pm or so.  It was my job to wake them up around 10 or 11 and give them each a bottle, then change them and put them back to bed.  I think the idea was that the bottles and the fresh diapers would help ensure that they would sleep until a reasonable hour the next morning.  (Some people have a very wrong impression of what I was like as a young father -- based on a short story I wrote, they think I never changed messy diapers.  Nothing could be further from the truth.)

Sarah and Caroline --
or is it Caroline and Sarah?

I used to tape the David Letterman show each night and watch the taped shows while I fed the girls -- when you're holding two babies and two bottles, you can't very well read a book or balance the checkbook.

(I still have the television I watched during this nightly ritual.  We haven't used it in years -- it's just sitting in a basement storage room.  It works just fine, but watching a 25-year-old television just isn't done.)

Here's the best stupid pet trick I ever saw on Letterman.  I tried to duplicate it for my kids shortly after seeing it, but started laughing so hard I almost choked to death.

After I fed and changed the girls, I carried them back upstairs to their bedroom and rocked them to sleep.  As we rocked, I used to sing this song to them.  The song's not really a lullaby intended for babies, but that's how I used it.

It's not an easy song to sing softly and a capella.  I'm glad no one ever heard me sing it except two very drowsy babies. 

This all seems like a very long time ago.  That's because it was a very long time ago.  Too bad I can't turn the clock back 24 years or so and do it all over again -- just for one night.

Happy birthday, girls . . .

I couldn't find a decent YouTube video of this song.  Try clicking on this instead.

You can get a 30-second excerpt of "Lover of Today" by using this link to iTunes.

Here's a link to the song on Amazon, which will also give you a 30-second excerpt.