Visit with Tiffany and Mike

We had another visit with Tiffany yesterday and Mike came along this time too. It was nice to see him since we hadn't seen him since Hannah was in the hospital. It was a nice, but hectic visit. Tiffany and I dressed all of the kids up in their Halloween costumes and had a photo shoot. It was fun! :) Hannah of course was Squirt from Finding Nemo. Chase was Spiderman and Kayla was a Barbie princess. We did have one catastrophe that I'm not sure what kind of havoc it will wreak. One of the dogs, not sure which one, managed to get ahold of Kayla's sparkly face make-up and eat the entire jar. Hopefully all that will happen is some mild digestional upset for the offending dog, but we are going to have to be vigilant for awhile since I'm not sure how bad that stuff is to be ingested.

Last Wednesday Hannah went to her first Halloween party at church. The church hosts a safe alternative to Trick-or-Treating called Trunk-or-Treat where members decorate their trunks and pass out candy from them in the church parking lot. They wanted me to take pictures so Kyle and Hannah came along too and Hannah got to dress up in her Squirt outfit. She looked adorable if I do say so myself!

Daylight Savings time is wreaking havoc in the Spontak household. The pets and the baby have their schedules all screwed up and are resisting the change vehemently. I've always been against daylight savings time and now I have one more reason why to add to my list! I'm praying that I will soon be able to get them all onto a new schedule, but I'm not too optimistic that this will be a quick transition.

Tomorrow Hannah goes to get her 4 month pictures taken. It's a few days early, but we had to do them tomorrow so that we could get the photographer that we love at JC Penny's. We thinks she takes the best pictures and she's great with babies too which is a must. I'm the kinda person that when I find something that I like that works I stick with it. So, I plan on requesting her every single month that we can possibly get her!

The other day Hannah decided to make me feel sad. When Kyle came home from work we went to the door to greet him. I was holding Hannah and she immediately spun herself around in my arms and reached both of her arms out to Kyle to be held. She didn't want boring old mom anymore. :( She wanted fun daddy! Kyle of course was thrilled. Me, not so much.

Hannah long overdue first haircut was finally performed. I held her head still while Kyle snipped. Her bangs are now nice and straight and out of her eyes. I'm sure she feels a lot better and it looks a lot better too!

Well, I just returned to the blog after tending to Hannah for several hours and while I was gone Hannah hit a major milestone! :) She rolled over by herself from her back to her tummy! I had been helping her practice rolling over like we do every day and then we stopped to take a breather. I was tempting her to reach out and grab one of her favorite wrist rattles, when all of a sudden she just up and rolled over to get it! I was so shocked and so was she! I gave her the rattle to play with for a bit and then I rolled her back onto her back and tempted her with the rattle again and she didn't hesitate a bit. She rolled right on over and grabbed it! Of course both times I didn't have my camera and she did it one more time before I got smart enough to go get the camera. As Murphy's Law would have it, once I got the camera Hannah was through rolling over to get the rattle, but if I put her onto her side and waved the rattle around she would go ahead and flip herself the rest of the way over. I did manage to get a video of that so I'm going to post it here. When she did it I was so excited I accidentally hit the stop record button on the camera! So, the video ends a little abruptly, but you can see the main part! :) To see the video, just click on the link. I'm so proud of my little girl I can hardly stand it! She's growing up so fast!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8393965075501961466&hl=en

New Trick

Hannah learned a new trick this past weekend which she is happily practicing constantly now! She can now blow raspberries. Her Daddy taught her this trick :) She sticks her tongue out and blows and sends spit flying everywhere. She thinks it is great fun. I on the otherhand have been washing bibs like crazy ever since she started. As if she wasn't drooling through bibs fast enough already, the raspberries have caused even more bibs to bite the dust. Today we've had 7 bibs already and it's only 2:00! I've got some video of her blowing her raspberries, but it isn't as cute as she really is. It seems that lately once we get the camera out she is much more interested in the camera than in doing whatever she was doing that we thought was so cute that it needed to be preserved on film! Just click on the link to see the video. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7312079990026418993&hl=en

Another cool thing Hannah has started doing that is related to learning to blow her raspberries is that she is mimicking things we do now. Yesterday I was counting on my fingers to tell her how many more minutes she had to sit up after eating before she could get down and play and she started copying my finger motions almost exactly! She also started making the same facial expressions as I do. If I smile, she smiles. If I wrinkle my forehead, she does it too. It's very cute.

Kyle finally conceeded and admitted defeat in two long fought battles the other day. Hannah is now allowed to sleep on her side if she wants to and I am now allowed to trim Hannah's bangs! Her hair was getting so long that her bangs were in her eyes. The back of her hair looks like a baby mullet, but I don't plan to cut that. We'll just have to see it through to the end while it grows out, but the bangs just had to be trimmed. Kyle finally admitted that they should be cut before her next pictures. :)

Finally, I've found a new way to get my chores done faster while still entertaining Hannah. The other day I sat her down inside an empty laundry basket while I transferred clothes from the washer to the dryer and it worked perfectly for keeping her off the dirty basement floor and it gave her some practice on sitting up. Then, later in the day I didn't want to make two trips up and down the basement stairs so I put Hannah in the laundry basket with the clean clothes and brought her upstairs inside the basket. She got a big kick out of that and lounged around in it for quite some time even after we were upstairs! I managed to get a picture of her with the clean clothes that I will try to post on here. I'll also post Hannah's official 3 month pictures. I think they turned out pretty cute if I don't say so myself.

It's Official!

It's official. Hannah is now legally a Spontak! :) We went to court yesterday for Hannah's adoption finalization. While the hearing itself was uneventful actually getting up to the courtroom had some snags. We had to go through a very long security line to even get past the courthouse lobby. We had to take Hannah out of her stroller and send everything expect us and the stroller through the x-ray machine. They used the wand on the stroller. Once through they told us that cameras were not allowed and that we would have to take it back to the car. I was already just a little bit emotionally on edge and telling me that I was not going to get a picture to commemorate my daughter's finalization was not a smart thing to do! I marched right over to the deputy on guard with our letter from our lawyer who does adoption hearings in that very same courthouse all the time that said be sure to bring your camera. The deputy was not sympathetic at all and refused to let us bring it through! I was seriously ticked off because I HAVE SEEN pictures from that courthouse before. Kyle had to take the camera back to the car and then go through the long security line again. Once we got up to the courtrooms we met another couple who had also been denied their camera. Then, right before it was our turn to go into the courtroom another couple arrived from our agency and we found out that they HAD been allowed to bring their camera! Let me just say that this angered me even more than not being allowed to bring ours in. I mean if you are so adamant about security and about cameras being absolutely not allowed anywhere in the courthouse then how could they let someone get through with a really big camera!?! Some great quality control they have if security didn't even notice their camera! Thankfully that family was finalizing right after us and they offered to take our picture of us with the judge and email us the photos. So, I will have my picture, but I am still upset about the injustice of it all. If they are going to ban cameras then they need to ban all cameras and not just randomly refuse to let some in but not others. If the government wants to make rules then they should make them fair and applicable to all and not just enforce them when they feel like it. Anyway, the hearing went smoothly and it is all over. Hannah is now officially and legally a Spontak. :)

The last week or so has brought several new developments besides Hannah's finalization. First off, she is of course growing again. After mourning the retirement of two more beloved sleepers, we measured her again to find that she had grown another 1/4 to 1/2 inch. That puts her length now at around 25 3/4 inches or 26 inches! I would say that she is now in 6-9 month clothes as her primary size. She still has a few odd 3-6 month onesies that fit, but they are getting tight. We removed the head support from her car seat last week, but yesterday Kyle had to actually move the harnesses in her car seat so that the shoulder straps would actually go around her. We got out the owners manual to the car seat and according to that Hannah can only grow another 1/4 to 1/2 inch or gain a few more pounds before she is out of the seat for good. I've been saying for about a month now that I thought she was getting close to outgrowing it, but Kyle kept dismissing me. Well, now we know for sure! I'm not quite ready to fork out the money for a new convertible car seat just yet, but I guess we really don't have much choice. Once she outgrows it, it's not safe to have her in it anymore. Safety is the most important thing so I guess I'll just have to deal with it. While at the courthouse I was able to compare Hannah to several other babies around her same age and she was by far the biggest one there. There was also an eight month old little boy at the restaurant we stopped for lunch at and Hannah was even bigger than him! I have concluded that my daughter is indeed a giant! I really hope she does not get teased by other kids once she gets older if this trend continues.

Hannah has also taught herself a new trick recently. She has learned how to use her head as a pivot point, arch her back and use her feet to push herself around in a circle. Last night I watched her do a complete 360 degree rotation. Mind you this took almost an hour to complete, but she did it. It also solves the mystery of how Hannah was managing to get herself completely perpendicular in her crib. Instead of staying in her crib the long way like we put her down we have been finding Hannah sleeping with her head and feet across the short side of the crib instead. I was really wondering how she was managing to do that when finally I got to see her scoot herself around. She has also decided that she no longer wants to sleep on her back no matter what Mom and Dad and all the experts say. She is going to sleep on her left side and there is nothing we or anyone else can do about it short of tying her down to the bed! She and Kyle have been involved in a battle of the wills the past few nights about this newest development and I must admit that Hannah is winning! Kyle places Hannah on her back to sleep and then several times a night goes in and makes her return to her back, but each time she immediately rolls herself back onto her side and drapes her arm across her face. It's the arm draping that worries Kyle the most I think. He's afraid she won't be able to breathe. It really doesn't matter what he does. No matter how she looks when we leave her she is always in her new preferred position when we come back. I guess this means goodbye to our beloved Super Buddha pose. :(

Hannah has also decided that she's not nearly as hungry as she used to be. She's started refusing bottles lately. Usually she takes some of each bottle, but there have been a few times in the last week that she has ended up taking over one whole bottle less of formula a day than is normal. I'm mildly concerned about this and plan to ask the doctor about it during her 4 month check up here in a few weeks, but I'm not concerned enough to call the office about it right now since other than that she seems perfectly OK. She's not losing weight that we can tell and not acting sick or running a fever. She just drinks until she's full and then spits the bottle out. If we try to put the nipple back into to her mouth she expertly blocks it with her hands or even reaches up and knocks it away if we manage to get past her defenses!

Another milestone is that Hannah has graduated to her big girl bathtub and she really enjoys it I think. I took the sling out of her tub and put it away for good. Now she's splashing away in the water with her feet. It's pretty cute. I've got some cute video of her splashing in the tub that I'll try to post. I'd rate it PG for some partial baby nudity! ;0
http://video.google.com/videouploadfinished?docid=5730186296407061204&filename=wsb64__00000_T2N0b2JlciAxOCwgMjAwNiAwMjk.avi
Just click on the link to watch the video.

On a final note, Hannah got yet another package in the mail the other day. Each time I think there can't possibly be another person who might want to send a gift and each time I'm surprised when another package arrives in the mail! This time it was from my cousin Matt and his wife Regina. The mailman brought it into the house for me because my hands were pretty full with Hannah and it was a big box and after he got a look at Hannah he commented that he thought it looked like Hannah had grown since the last package he delivered for her last week! It's pretty bad when even the mailman is noticing growth! But then I guess it just goes to show what generous family and friends we have that Hannah has gotten enough packages that he has actually been able to track her growth over his many visits!

The Case of the Missing Baby Stuff

I remember someone telling me before Hannah was born that baby stuff is lost easily so I should buy extra, but I didn't really believe them. I now admit that I was wrong and they are (whoever it was) completely right. Recently things have bee disappearing like crazy! Half the fleet of Hannah's pacifiers have deserted their posts, her baby nail clippers are AWOL, and somewhere there are at least 3 missing baby socks! Add to this list the bottle we left at a restaurant the other day and several toy "links" that I am positive are here in the house somewhere and you get a recipe for driving me crazy! If things are bad now, I can only imagine how they will get once Hannah becomes mobile!

Lately Hannah has been having a bit of a rocky sleep schedule. Now most parents would probably wonder why I even worry, but Hannah is such a good sleeper and thrives so much on her schedule that I always worry when things get a little off. She's been falling asleep earlier and earlier in the evening and we had been having to wake her for her final bottle and diaper change before bed. Then after her last bottle she's been having a hard time settling down to sleep and has been crying when we put her down to sleep or waking up after a few minutes and crying until we rock her back to sleep. So, last night we decided to try giving her her last bottle a half an hour earlier and trying to keep her awake just a little bit longer so that she's really sleepy when we put her to bed. It seemed to work last night so hopefully it wasn't just a fluke and things will continue to run smoothly.

Hannah continues to enjoy her play gym more and more. Lately she's been getting a kick out of (no pun intended) swinging her legs up and grabbing her feet and then using them both together to kick the toys. It's pretty cute to watch. She continues to grow stronger and stronger and her head and trunk control has improved drastically in the last week. She's sitting up much better with her boppy and can sit by herself propped up against the back of the couch or a chair almost indefinitely.

Her hair is growing so long that it's almost ridiculous. It's constantly getting caught in the Velcro on her bibs or snaps on her shirt. Her bangs are now officially in her eyes and she appears to have a mullet! I've noticed that it seems like it is getting thicker as well. It's still not quite long enough everywhere for me to get it up into one of those Pebbles Flintstone pony tails, but it is definitely long enough for barrettes. The problem with that is that Hannah likes to play with her hair so much that she pulls the barrettes right out and I"m afraid she will put them into her mouth and choke.

Yesterday we had our first baby spit up incident in public. Kyle and I were out to eat and Hannah had finished her bottle and was sitting happily on my lap while I ate. Out of the blue I felt my pants getting wet. Hannah had spit up a massive amount of her bottle. She managed to not get a single drop of it on her bib, but instead deposited it all on both of our blue jeans! YUCK! I hate wet jeans. Of course I had an extra shirt for myself in the diaper bag should something like this ever happen, but not an extra pair of pants! Really, what were the odds that I'd get baby puke on my pants and not my shirt? Hannah sure does like to keep us on our toes!

Of course she is still growing like crazy! We think she's grown another 1/4 inch and is now at 25 1/2 inches long. We don't know how much she weighs, but it's getting harder and harder to carry her around in her infant car seat and we've removed all of the head supports now because she is just too big. The other day Kyle noticed that most of her 0-3 month onesies, stretchy as they are, are getting too tight and difficult to snap. I've also had to retire 2 more 3-6 month sleepers (the more stretchy ones) in the past week. The other thing I have noticed is that her arms are getting longer. She has several 0-3 month and 3-6 month long sleeved onesies (which I absolutely love by the way!) that although they aren't too tight and will still snap are turning into 3/4 sleeved onesies instead of long sleeved! Right now I"m still having her wear them and I just layer something over the top of them since she really doesn't have many 6-9 month or 12 month long sleeved onesies, but soon I'm not going to be able to do even that because the arms are also getting tight. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find many long sleeved onesies. Occasionally I'll find a single one at a specialty store like Old Navy or The Children's Place, but I haven't found any packs of them yet. I don't really want to buy them one at a time b/c they cost more that way, but I may have to start since companies don't seem to want to package them. It seems like everywhere wants to just sell long sleeved shirts. I have nothing against long sleeved shirts, but I really like the long sleeved onesies because they don't ride up when I pick Hannah up or when she wiggles around. As cold as it's been I want to make sure she stays as warm as possible.

Here are some more Hananh videos. Just click on the links to watch them.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-140372765346280036&hl=en


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-140372765346280036&hl=en

We have a cat?

Hannah realized for the first time yesterday that we have a cat. I was talking on the telephone with Mike, Hannah's birthfather, and Hannah was sitting on my lap when all of a sudden I noticed that Hannah was giggling. I looked down and saw her petting Sadie, one of our cats! Hannah was reaching out and rubbing Sadie's fur and Sadie was in turn rubbing her face up against Hannah's hand. Hannah must have liked the softness of Sadie's fur because she kept on reaching out and touching her and then giggling. The two of them were at it for several minutes. For the rest of the day, every time Hannah saw Sadie her eyes locked onto her and she reached out for her if she was close. On several other occasions she ended up petting the cat again. Even today she reached out for Sadie when Sadie walked by. It looks like I will need to be getting Hannah one of those look and feel board books if she is that interested in textures. Yesterday I was also able to talk to Tiffany, Hannah's birthmom. We had a nice chat and talked about coordinating our schedules to get together sometime before the holidays get too busy. We are hoping to get all the kids' pictures taken together if possible. I think it would be really nice for Hannah to have a picture of herself with her siblings.

Here is another video we have of Hannah being cute. Just click on the link to see the video. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3127997354669683269

The first picture is of Hannah petting Sadie. The second one is of Hannah sleeping in her Super Buddha pose in one of her new 6-12 month outfits from Billie Jo.

Accidental Rollover

My little girl accomplished a big thing today! Hannah rolled over from her belly to her back twice today!!!!! Both times were accidental, but still she was able to do it. She had spent most of the day awake and cranky so around 1:00 I put her down for some tummy time to try to wear her out. She was NOT pleased with my choice of activities and started thrashing about with her arms and legs. While thrashing she managed to push herself over onto her back. Afterwards she got real quiet and was glancing all around her like she was paranoid or something! I think she really surprised herself! I was so excited about this new trick that I rolled her right back over onto her tummy and after some more screaming and flailing she managed to flip herself over again! Of course I didn't have the video camera out since I didn't expect anything exciting because she was so tired and cranky! That'll teach me I guess!

Another new trick she taught herself today was how to kick her foot outside of the toy bar on her bouncer and prop it up on the bar like someone putting their feet up on a coffee table. When I saw her like that I thought, "Oh no, she's stuck," and I put her foot back where it belonged. She immediately lifted her foot back around the bar and propped it back up and then gave me a dirty look as if to say, "hey! I was comfy like that!"

We survived our first overnight trip with Hannah. Things really weren't too bad. Really the hardest part about the whole thing was the drive there and back. The carseat has lost its magic sleep inducing powers and Hannah was awake and wanting to be entertained most of the 2 hours there and 2 hours back. Her turtle kept her entertained for part of the time, but of course she kept knocking it out of her reach. So, I spent a good portion of both trips turned around in my seat, hanging over the back fetching the turtle. Both Kyle and Hannah found this highly amusing, but I did not see the humor in the situation. Finally on the way home it got so bad that Kyle had to pull over and I had to sit in the back with Hannah. The little stinker stopped fussing immediately and didn't knock her turtle out of reach the rest of the way home! In fact, she decided that it might be a nice time for a nap!

Video Post

Well, I finally found a better way to post videos. I'll try to keep posting them from time to time. Just click on the links and they will take you straight to the video clips.


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6452816167477752366

Here is a video of Hannah in the play gym that Ken and Amanda gave her.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6190874609090764054

Here is a video of Hannah when she was only about a month old. She loves to have her face blown on.

3 Months Old

Tomorrow Hannah will officially be 3 months old. She is getting to be such a big girl! She is so curious and happy. She brightens my every day! Today she had breakfast with her friend Evelyn at Panearas and then went to JC Pennys to get her 3 month pictures taken. Of course she looked adorable and I can't wait to get them back so that I can post them on here.

Hannah has accomplished quite a bit since I last posted. Her biggest thing is that now toys are VERY interesting. She swats at them with her hands and kicks at them with her feet when they are dangled above her. She reaches for and grabs toys that are held in front of her on the first try and plays with and chews on them for quite awhile before she loses interest. She LOVES her play gym now and will play in it happily by herself for over a half hour! The other day she was kicking at the ball on her gym and she kicked so hard it came off its velcro strap and flew across the room. I have some video of her in her play gym that I will try to post on here in the next week. She's decided lately that games are quite fun and enjoys playing patty-cake and peak-a-boo with both Mom and Dad. Rolling over is another skill that she is working hard to master. I've had several people tell me that she won't do it for quite awhile yet, but they haven't seen her at it. She's so close she can taste it and it frustrates her to no end. Apparently going from your tummy to your back is easier, but she has no interest at all in learning how to do that. She wants to roll from her back to her tummy and she's almost done it multiple times now. She gets about 3/4 of the way over and teeters there for a minute before her heavy legs get the better of her and she flops back over! It's quite comical to watch, but as I said if you leave her at it too long she gets REALLY MAD! The struggle for tummy time is over and now I actually think she enjoys it. She's also doing much better at sitting up although she'll still fall over if she gets too excited and turns her head too fast.

Hannah and Kyle teamed up together this year for my birthday present. They made me a really cool book titled Mommy and Me that has a little story and a bunch of pictures of Hannah and I. I loved it! It made me cry it was so sweet!

The other day I got the notion to play dress up with Hannah to see if she had grown into any new clothes (and she had!) and while I was at it I decided to try her Squirt Halloween costume on her. For those of you who don't know, before Hannah was born and actually before we were even matched with Tiffany and Mike, an extremely nice woman who adopted her son through the same agency that we adopted Hannah through was looking at our website and saw the pictures I had posted of our nursery. Since we had a Finding Nemo theme, she mailed me the Squirt costume that her son wore for Halloween last year. She was so sweet! I offered to buy it from her or at the very least pay the postage, but she wouldn't let me. She said she just wanted pictures of Hannah in the costume in her nursery. Well, the costume is a 12 month size and is quite large. Anyway, I wanted to see just how big on Hannah it was since she is growing so quickly and has been able to wear some things that we were sure she wouldn't be in for another 6 months at least. By the time I got around to the costume Hannah was starting to get tired of being dressed and undressed, but she was a good sport about it and let me dress her up one more time. I managed to snap a few shots of her in the costume, but it is quite apparent from the photos that although she isn't screaming she is definitely not happy with the situation. To make things worse, I got a little greedy and decided that I wanted a picture of her doing tummy time in the outfit that way I could see the turtle's shell and eyes. Well that was just too much for poor Hannah and she let me have it. Such a screaming fit I had never been able to capture on film before. I just couldn't resist taking one final picture of her! I'm such a mean mom! :P

Tomorrow we are taking Hannah on her first overnight trip and hotel stay. We are going to Terre Haute for Rose Hulman's homecoming. I have absolutely no idea what and how much to pack for her. There's just no way to average or guess how many diapers or outfits she might go through in a day and a half. Some days she has 6 dirty diapers (one for each feeding), but others she has 12! Sometimes she dirties 3 or more before I even get her off the changing table for the first one! The same goes for outfits. It seems like most days she makes it through the day in the same outfit that I put on her when she wakes up and then has one sleeper as PJs for the night, but other days she may go through 4 or more outfits during the day and 2-3 sleepers in the evening/night. The record (not counting the 2 weeks she was in the hospital) is 8 outfits and 2 sleepers in one 24 hour period! Thankfully that doesn't happen often, but it is a possibility and I don't want to be stuck with no clean clothes for my little girl. This trip is going to be a test run for our trip back to PA for Thanksgiving. We will be gone 9 days and it's practically impossible to know how many outfits, diapers, wash cloths, wipes, formula, burp cloths, etc to take with us. We could fill our entire car just with Hannah's stuff for the week, but of course we have to leave room for Kyle and I to sit and a small place to store our luggage as well! It should be an interesting adventure. What might normally be a 12 hour drive will most likely take closer to 18 and we will be without our bouncer, mobile, and swing which we have come to rely on as our saviors. We will also have to most likely have to boil bottles everyday and do laundry at least once during the trip at various people's homes that haven't had babies around in years. Like I said it should be interesting and will definitely be one for the memory books I imagine.

Just a few more Hannah updates before I wrap this post up. Thursday Hannah received yet another package in the mail. I honestly didn't think there was anyone left that could possibly send her a gift, but I was wrong. Hannah is totally spoiled rotten! We have recieved more packages in the mail in the 3 months since Hannah's birth than I have recieved my entire life! We know so many wonderful and generous people. Thank you all! This time it was Jay and Leah, our friends who recently moved back to Canada, who sent her a book called Hannah and the Seven Dresses. It is quite cute and I'm sure it will become a favorite of hers since what little girl doesn't like being the star of a book. It's very exciting as a little kid to hear your name read as part of a story. I remember my mom having some books made with me and my cousin Billie Jo as the main characters and I LOVED them. Thanks Jay and Leah!

Backing up just a little big further, Wednesday morning I woke up at around 5:00 am to the sound of Kyle and Hannah singing in the nursery. They were belting out Clemintine and various other kids songs as loud as they could. First, I just turned off the baby monitor hoping that would do the trick. When it didn't, I had to resort to putting my pillow over my head to get back to sleep. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not really complaining. I know how incredibly lucky I am to have a husband who gets up at 5:00 am to feed the baby and who will sing silly songs to her before he has to go to work, but it is very hard to get to sleep listening to a song about a miners daughter who drowns because her lover is too scared to swim out and save her and whose father then goes into a depression and kills himself to be with her and then they both end up fertilizing flowers while the lover runs off with the sister! And this is a children's song! That brings me to another point. Have you ever actually listened to and thought about the words to the classic children's songs? They are awful. There are songs about jilted lovers, suicide, drunken monkeys, death, vomit, and other gross bodily functions. Whoever first decided these songs ought to be sung to impressionable children must have been crazy! If you don't believe me, go to http://niehs.nih.gov/kids/music.htm#index and read the lyrics to some of your favorites and some you remember listening to as a kid and I'm sure you begin to see the pattern.