in a not-so-silent way

As maman mentioned, Benjamin has been getting an increased dose of jazz recently, specifically Miles Davis. We purchased a contraption that allows me to hook my iPod to the side of his crib and play him my MP3s through small speakers in the contraption. It's a great setup, but it's cheap and you get what you pay for: the bass on the "womb sounds" recording we'd been using for his bedtime ritual started making distortion sounds on the little speakers. Lucky for me, I got no such distortion when I switched to Miles Davis's In a Silent Way, which is one of my all-time favorite albums, and one that Squirmantha's parents had already introduced into her bedtime ritual.

Ocean Waves 1.3 Download (804KB)

Date: May 5, 2006 OS: Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later License: Free to try; Shareware $5

Benben fell asleep, with or without the help of the music I don't know. But it soothes his papa, so the ritual will continue.

As I write this, however, with Benjamin asleep on my chest as I work (well, asleep on my chest as I take a break from work to write this blog post), what has helped calm the boy down and fall asleep is not music but the synthesized sound of "Ocean Waves" playing on my computer. If you have a Mac and a baby, I recommend this very helpful little shareware app.

- papa