The Search for the Right Lullaby

I have come to the conclusion that we need a new lullaby for Peanut.

When she started, I mean, when she was born, we discovered that she liked this one song called Aicha. Actually, since I was very keen on the name Ayesha for her initially, I sort of fancied this as a 'Theme Song' for her. ( A theme song for a baby. What can I say. New parent) and played it over and over for her - so it's no wonder she grew to recognize and like it. She favoured the Khaled version , and rightly so because the newer version by Outlandish doesn't even come close, in my humble opinion. However, since Khaled, has for some obscure reason chosen to sing this song in French, and my French is a bit rusty nowadays, I have some trouble with remembering and singing the words. The only part I can sing properly is 'Aicha! Aicha! Ecoutez moi' and I'm not even sure I've spelt that right. If you've not heard this song, I have only one thing to say to you - you should hear this song.

Well, anyway, soon after, I moved onto rocking her to the tune ( if you can call it a tune) of 'Give it away, now ' by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. I really like that song, always have. Also, it starts with 'What I got, you gotta give it to your MAMMAA'...so I vaguely felt some sort of baby-and-Mama connect. Of course, I then came to realize that this is perhaps not the most appropriate song to be singing to your baby, and so started to look for another. If you've not heard this song...come on, everyone's heard this song. ( Dipali? Have you? Sorry!)

Peanut did not show much interest in the Mozart CDs that Vijay bought for her, and anyway, as Vijay astutely informed me subsequently 'You can't sing Mozart', that was no help.

I then remembered the wonderful song 'Kitni Sundar Pyaari Chidiyan', and it worked nicely until, as I wrote before, Vijay ruined it for me - forever.

I then tried making up a song by myself for her - rocking her back and forth to a monotonous poem, made up as I went along - I had to stop when I realized I was singing stuff like 'Tu hai meri Rani...', followed by, because I couldn't think of a better rhyme 'Tu hai meri Naani'. Not only is this terrible poetry - so bad that you would probably be shot for it in a less liberal country - it is factually untrue and you don't want to be confusing your Peanut. So I gave up trying to do-it-myself. (Hey, that spells 'Dim'. Sounds about right.)

Nowadays, we've been trying the 'Cuppycake song': ( Yes, Sue, I know you put this down once in my comments section and I didn't acknowledge it, soweee!)

You're my Honeybunch, Sugarplum
Pumpy-umpy-umpkin, You're my Sweetie Pie
You're my Cuppycake, Gumdrop
Snoogums-Boogums, You're the Apple of my Eye
And I love you so and I want you to know
That I'll always be right here
And I love to sing sweet songs to you
Because you are so dear.

Very sweet, but it's getting too repititive now. Plus, Vijay insists on ruining it by either singing along with me or singing it by himself, but saying 'Shnookum shnookum shnookum' instead of Snoogums-Boogums. This is exactly the kind of thing that can put you off any song for good.

So that's pretty much it. But yesterday, Vijay discovered that she likes the 'chhk chhk chhk chhk...' part in that old Hindi song 'Dil ka haal sune dilwaala', so we are transitioning from the Cuppycake song to this one...

Peanut must be thinking 'What the hell is with you people!?'

Any suggestions for a good one?

Edited to add: I forgot to mention that Vijay has also started trying that funny song 'Girl, where didja get your body from? Tell me, where didja get your body from.....I got it from my Mama! I got it from my Mama!'. This is quite frighteningly inappropriate, especially when he starts feeling insecure and starts singing it, instead, as 'I got it from my Papa! I got it from my Papa!'