I must state for the record that my mother, on weekend mornings, would put on a record called Olatunji Drums of Passion, and turn up the volume to 11.

As cruel wakeups go, at least it was educational, and funny.

Now, we are all a family of morning people (some obscenely so), except for the Idiot Brother, who still likes to get up at noon.

Dear Aimee - nothing in that song says anything about ugly. People scare animals without being ugly.

It's possible I could have been projecting.

Well, my mother isn't one for metaphor. She just made do with "you're ugly."

I love an honest mom.

It's like being in my own private Rogers & Hammerstein hell. Her usual morning song was "O What A Beautiful Morning" from Oklahoma! Oy. AND oi.

t coughs nervously

Does it count as torture if the person on the receiving end of this song is just a wee little baby, and it makes her smile?

I sing "One" to Emeline.

I am a Singing Mother with a minivan.

Oy.

Does it count as torture if the person on the receiving end of this song is just a wee little baby, and it makes her smile?

Nah. It's most torture-tastic for surly Waver teenagers who are already exhibiting signs of nightowl-dom.

My mom would wait until we made our appearance at the top of the stairs leading down to the kitchen and sing "Good morning to you, good morning to you. We're all in our places with bright shining faces, Good morning to you!" She sings around the house all the time--mostly hits from the 40s. "Honeysuckle Rose" and "Try a Little Tenderness" are two of her favorites.

Gud sounds like the cutest daddy ever.

Except for Hec, who also sings little improvised songs to wake Emmett up and get him to sleep and eat his cereal and take a bath and do his math homework and, well, really everything except baseball, because that would probably cause him to perish of terminal humiliation.

Vonnie and ita are reminding me that I've been meaning to change my tag for a few days now.

My mom sings stuff from the 20s and earlier, I think because her dad sang them to her. Now I sing them (sort of, because I probably get a lot of the words and tunes wrong) and my husband doesn't believe me that they are real songs and I'm not making them up.

But he has wacky songs to sing to children that I never heard of, so that evens out. (eta: He'll also make up songs all teh time. He had a whole opera that centered on a guy who lived down the street from us and glared at all the cars going by from his porch. Then we moved away and mostly forgot the songs, but "He's a drugdealer, he's a drugdealer, he's a popular guy/ People go see him when they want to get high" still crops up occasionally)

The thing about my mom singing? She can't sing. She readily admits this. Can't carry a tune in a bucket and she doesn't really like singing. And yet she does it anyway.

I sing "One" to Emeline.

I am a Singing Mother with a minivan.

Oy.

You also sing Popular to her and dance aroud in a tiara. I think this more than compensates.