#BabysFirstMixtape

Hi Little One,

You are almost 21 weeks old, as of this entry. Your tiny ears can now hear sounds from the world outside of yourself. It’s a lot I know! It might not make sense to you just yet, but give it some time. I was saving this entry for this time, because one of the coolest things about hearing is listening, to voices, animal noises, sounds that objects make, and music. Now, I am making some assumption here about your being able to hear things, but until we learn otherwise, we will rely on developmental milestones as we understand them.

Oh, oh you will hear so many songs! And you will learn so many songs! A countless number of songs that you will come to know some or all of the lyrics to. You might impress people with your ability to sing something from start to finish entirely by memory. Some will rattle in your brain like an earworm at the oddest (and occasionally inconvenient) times throughout your entire life. Those same songs, with those same lyrics you may know by heart, may one day mean something entirely different to you than they did yesterday.

Maybe a song will be tied to a memory, a soundtrack to life while it happens.

Maybe a song will be the way that you can convey your feelings and thoughts to others in a way that words alone might not do justice.

Or maybe you take a moment to do nothing else but really listen to the words of a song you have known your entire life and listen to what the song is trying to say.

On the day after Papa & I started planning for you, I sat in my car in the parking lot of my office, and just listened to this song. I had not heard it in some time; something shook it loose from my memory. From that 2 minutes and 53 seconds in my car (bawling my eyes out, of course, in one of the happiest cries of my life) came my first and still greatest hope for you, and for your Papa & Me.

I hope that we teach you well, and that we learn well from you.

Teach Your Children
Crosby, Stills & Nash

You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good-bye.

Teach your children well,
Their father’s hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picks, the one you’ll know by.
Don’t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry,
So just look at them and sigh
And know they love you.

And you, of tender years,
Can’t know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.

Teach your parents well,
Their children’s hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picks, the one you’ll know by.
Don’t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

And maybe a song finds you at exactly the time in your life when it would mean the most to you.

I Cant Wait to Meet You
David Ryan Harris

There’s a chair in the corner
Where I’ll rock you to sleep
Under the stars, painted on the ceiling
I’ll hold you while you dream

Will you have your mother’s patience?
Her smile or her eyes?
I guess we will see
But I know you’ll be a beautiful surprise

There’s a song in my heart
That I will sing to you
That my father’s father sang to him
When he was in my shoes

When the sun is on your shoulder
It will give strenght to shine
So that as you grow to be a man
You’ll never loose the boy inside

Take your time
You’ll never take enough
When time is on your side

Know that I
I’ll be here forever if you need me to
All your life
Full of possibility
Like a sky wide open and blue
I know you’re on your way
I can’t wait to meet you

Brand new curtains for the windows
And a blanket in baby blue
That your grandmother started working
On the second that she heard you’ll be here soon

We’ll be all be watching over you
As you take your first breath
We count the minutes and the hours
Until the day we’re blessed

Take your time
You’ll never take enough
When time is on your side.
Know that I
I’ll be here forever if you need me to
All your life
Full of possibility
Like a sky wide open and blue
I know you’re on your way
I can’t wait to meet you

All your life
Full of possibility
Like a sky wide open and blue
I know you’re on your way
I can’t wait to meet you
All I wanna say is:
I can’t wait to meet you

For your first of what I hope are many mixtapes…

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