In my youth I never signed up for choirs, took voice lessons, or tried out for musical theater productions. I don't even sing in the shower.
I do, however, enjoy singing. I just limit my vocal exercise to singing as part of the congregation in church and, of course, singing at home or in the car with my kids.
Or, at least, I used to.
Lately my girls have made it clear that I am NOT TO SING. NOT EVER.
For example, in the car we have a Disney Princess sing-along CD that has a song with words, followed by an instrumental version of the same song. The CD continues like this for 10 different songs.
This provides the perfect opportunity to . . . well, sing along, right?
Not for mom. Janae used to say, "MOM, STOP SINGING!!!!" But being the stellar parent I am, I have taught her to say, "Mom, could you just listen this time? I would like to sing this one alone." Janae now says this every time I open my mouth.
But what about when I am home alone with Alaina? Surely I could sing then.
Apparently not.
Yesterday I stayed home from church with Alaina because she had a fever and was throwing up. She was pale, sad, and limp, sitting on my knee. Then she mentioned a song that she really liked, a Christmas song called "The Friendly Beasts."
I will just have to back up a little to explain this one. Around Christmas time, Alaina became obsessed with a porcelain baby Jesus that was part of a nativity set. When we put the Christmas decorations away, she was looking all over for the baby Jesus, walking into rooms and saying, "Jesus?" with her little hands raised up in a questioning pose.
I remembered we had a little book about the nativity that we hadn't packed away--it had pictures of the baby Jesus in a manger, which seemed to satisfy Alaina. She carried the book around everywhere and had me read it all the time, until we somehow lost it.
The words of the book were from the old song "The Friendly Beasts," which I happened to know from a kids' CD we had once owned but had also mysteriously lost.
It goes like this:
Jesus our brother kind and good
Was humbly born in a stable rude,
And the friendly beasts around him stood
Jesus our brother kind and good.
It then tells a story from the point of view of each animal in the stable. For example:
"I," said the donkey shaggy and brown
"I carried his mother uphill and down;
I carried her safely to Bethlehem town."
"I," said the donkey shaggy and brown.
It has similar verses for a cow, sheep, rooster, dove, and even camel.
Anyway, I started singing this for Alaina yesterday, then thought, "I wonder if I could find that CD."
Since I was trapped at home with a sick baby and nothing else to do, I started looking. Unable to find it, though, I thought of Youtube.
I looked up "Friendly Beasts," and it was there, along with a little puppet show that made those old Teletubbies videos look like Oscar-level performances. It even added a cat with glowing eyes to the song and had the entire manger swaying back and forth!

Alaina wanted to watch the video--which she called "Jesus bro-der tind and dood"--over and over again.
When the rest of the family came home I had them watch it--and they, of course, wanted to see it over and over again, too.
Jason, though, thought it was a little creepy. He said that the elderly woman singing the song sounded as though she would "keel over and die at any moment," which was true (although not very nice).
Anyway, later in the evening, Alaina continued to ask for the song, crying "Jesus! Jesus!"
Since we'd already turned off the computer, I thought she might be satisfied by her mother singing the song--as I had done for her until that morning.
As I held Alaina in the rocking chair and started to sing, she shouted, "NO! NO SINGING!" Then she cried again for the song.
I was more than a little offended that she thought the woman on the Youtube video sounded better than I did.
I guess we know who's going to be doing the singing around our house from now on!