she’s with the band

As evidenced by that last post, E and I elected to stay in for New Year’s Eve.

We originally planned to join some friends for what turned out to be a tremendously awesome party, but once E’s mother volunteered to visit for the night with her brother in tow we realized we had the opportunity to enjoy our own house for 24 entire hours while two totally other people entertained our baby.

(To put things into perspective, last time we had a fleet of family visit us I spent the better part of a night mopping AND I LOVED IT.)

(That’s not a baby-related change – I’ve always loved mopping.)

Since the entire point of holidaying at home was to avoid leaving the house, and since EV6 enjoys music and dancing, I asked bro to bring his Rock Band setup along with him. (I, of course, eschew all shitty plastic instruments that are not actually synthesizers, so my only participation is singing and occasionally playing an actual guitar, which works out even better for me now that I’m covering a pretty significant chunk of these sorts of tunes with Smash Fantastic.)

Thus, on New Year’s Day, we began a run of five-starring any songs left uncovered from our epic renditions of Summer 2011, when we had three microphones on mic stands for harmony and were ranked something like 18th in the world at the entire Bruno Mars catalog and could make the chorus of “Love Game” sound like something performed by the Andrews Sisters.

EV6 was digging it for a while, since from her perspective behind the TV it seemed like she was enjoying a command all-singing, all-dacing performance. Between her chubbiness and her need for us to constantly dance for her pleasure, she’s more and more resembling Jabba the Hutt. It’s impossible to get anything done that cannot be disguised as a command dance party.

However, she began to flag just as we hit the heavy belting stage of our setlist. Bro and I exchanged nervous glances between every song. Was the music lulling her to sleep or keeping her awake? We didn’t want to put her off her downward spiral to slumber, but each successive monster rock song hit I sang could be the one to rouse her.

(Keep in mind that I can be heard singing unamplified over a full drum set. I’m not saying that’s an ideal arrangement, just that my unadulterated singing voice is potentially louder than several hundred dollars worth of wood, metal, and reverberating polymer blends.)

We needn’t have worried. We are raising a rock baby who is completely unphased by loud sounds. After all, EV has been sitting in on full band rehearsals (wearing ear protection) since she was two months old. She went out somewhere in the Ks through Ls, stayed down when I had to move my microphone stand into the kitchen to sing Maroon 5 without it bleeding into the other mics, and did not rouse until after an appropriately rousing rendition of Whitesnake’s “Here We Go Again.”

If you don’t believe that’s a spectacular feat, you should invite me over to sing some hair metal tunes while you’re taking your next nap.