When the boys were babies, they were terrible sleepers, and Husband and I spent hours and hours singing them to sleep. Naturally, we chose songs that we liked and to which we knew all the words: Springsteen, Dylan, and Tull for Husband, and Joni Mitchell, Elvis Costello, and Ben Folds Five for me. (Sample inappropriate sleepytime lyric: “Give me my money back, you bitch.”)

The boys are older now, though, and their tolerance for a capella has diminished. Aitch doesn’t like us to sing to him at all, and gets especially wiggy when Husband and I sing in unison. Minor only likes songs he already has heard a thousand times, which creates a Catch-22 situation that sounds an awful lot like “The Wheels on the Bus (Go Round and Round).” If I sing a song that’s not on his mental set list he complains about it, in his very Minor-like way of letting you know when every little detail in his world is not precisely to his liking.

A few weeks ago, I slipped a new song into my nighttime repertoire: “Rubber Ducky.” At first, Minor put up with it, probably because he had heard it on “Sesame Street.” But when I got to the part that goes, “Every day when I make my way to my tubby…” he didn’t recognize it as part of the same song and started whining: “No not that song other song Mommy other song Mommy OTHER SONG!”

“Relax, honey, it’s just the bridge,” I told him, and started the familiar part again.

The next few times I sang it, he did the same thing. I tried to head him off at the pass by distracting him during that section. I would put my head close to his and then rub noses when we got to “Rub-a-dub-dubby.” Eventually he twigged to the fact that it was part of the song. Now as soon as I begin to sing “Rubber ducky, you’re the one…” he begins chanting, “Every day Mommy every day mommy EVERY DAY.” When we get to the bridge he rubs my nose and laughs.

I don’t know that it’s that great of a story, but it’s one of those little fleeting things that gets replaced by other routines pretty quickly, and I wanted to remember it.