“Singing”

April 26: Sylvia spends a lot of the time she’s in her car seat…screaming.  I feel like I need a different word for that because screaming is such a violent, negative word and she does it so much that I want to re-name it something more positive.  So today as I again drove across town accompanied by her gasping, gurgling on saliva, full-throtle screaming, I decided that I will refer to such behavior as “singing.”  And as long as she was singing, I might as well sing too.
Usually I spend the first 5-10 minutes of a drive trying to soothe her by singing, shushing, stroking her face, trying to get her to take the pacifier, and then I give up and sit in resigned silence for the remainder of the drive.  But this time I put on a new kids CD I got at the library called Ralph’s World and sang Happy Lemonade about 10 times in a row.

The lyrics are as follows:

So Sylvia and I “sang” a duet on our drive across town: me belting out “happy lemons for happy days, happy people with smiling faces..” and Sylvia “singing” wahhhh wwaaaahhhhh…gasp, gasp…silent scream…very audible scream…gurgle-cough from saliva that collected in the back of the throat during the last extended scream.  cough cough cough.  ANGRY cry from the coughing.  wahhhh waaahhhhh  waaaaaahhhhhhh. And meanwhile I’m at “la la la la la la la la…”

I may be scarring the poor girl by singing about happiness being a glass of lemondae while she’s in the throws of deepest carseat misery, but at least I’ll be heading toward a nice Willy Wanka-esque insanity:)

PS.  Joe did a nice post about Syliva’s carseat crying back in March.