Shining road.

Eliot has caught on to the basket dragging and it doesn't work to put him to sleep anymore. What does work, strangely enough, is listening to a band called the Cranes, and their album "Loved," which I used to listen to as a freshman in college. One day he crawled up to the stereo and by pushing random buttons, began to play their CD (and I still have no idea why it was in the stereo in the first place, as I swear I haven't listened to this album since 1998-ish). As the first track played, he crawled into my lap and burrowed his head against me. I started rocking him back and forth and he was asleep by track 3.

The next time he was grouchy and nothing would convince him to nap, I put on the album again and held him on my hip, bouncing. Halfway through the first song, he leaned his head down on my shoulder, and once again, by the third song or so, he was out.

He really likes this album; even when he isn't sleepy, he'll listen to it and start doing his head bobbing dance moves. But if he's close to ready for a nap, boom! Can't resist those Cranes. Their rhythmic tones lull him into slumberland every time.

And, thanks to this wondrous medium I lovingly call "Internet," I am able to bring you, dear readers, a sampling of said Cranes. Here's a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II-d0AI_jLw
Don't fall asleep!

Actually, I was going to embed it, but for some reason I can't get the whole code to copy and paste. Argh. Whatever.

So the point I'm so long in getting at is that it's crazy incongruous for me, rocking him to sleep along to this music. Music can be such a memory trigger, and this particular album evokes a whole other world for me. Sometimes it seems like my memories from those days aren't mine at all, but rather the actions and thoughts of some character in a movie I saw once that I can't quite remember fully. I never dreamt, the first time I fell in love with the Cranes, that one day I'd be rocking my son to sleep with their music. I wonder whether the person I was then would recognize the me I've become. So strange.

Okay, reading that back it sounds really cracked out. Perhaps someone just smoked a bit too much back in the day, huh?! That movie I was talking about must have been a bad after-school ABC special. Ew.