Nursery Rhymes

I have loved to read my whole life, and the books we read as children bring back so many wonderful memories for me. So I am hoping to instill that love of reading in Curran. All the baby experts say you are supposed to start reading to kids early on, but I just have a hard time reading to someone who wouldn't know if you were reading Goodnight Moon or a romance novel from the grocery store. But I guess it's the act of reading that's important in creating a routine and helping their language develop. I don't know...I just kind of made that up. Anyway, one night a few weeks ago I decided to read some Mother Goose nursery rhymes to Curran. She was pretty much asleep in my lap, but I decided to keep reading anyway. Of course there are the old classics like Humpty Dumpty, Jack and Jill, Little Miss Muffet, etc that everyone knows. But some of the rhymes in that book are just plain weird. I started to read Old Mother Hubbard thinking I was familiar with it, but as I kept reading (and it is 14 stanzas long), I couldn't help but laugh. I mean, it sounded like whoever wrote it was smoking an illegal substance. Bear with me and let me just copy a few of the paragraphs:

Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To give her poor dog a bone;
But when she got there
the cupboard was bare
And so the poor dog had none.

Ok, nothing out of the ordinary there, so I kept reading:

She went to the baker's
To buy him some bread;
When she came back
The dog was dead.

That might be disturbing to some tiny tots, but we'll go with it.

She went to the undertaker's
To buy him a coffin;
When she got back
The dog was laughing.

What, I thought the dog was dead? Now you've got a confused kid who is going to start asking you how the dog came back to life.

She took a clean dish
To get him some tripe;
When she came back
He was smoking a pipe.

She went to the alehouse
To get him some beer;
When she came back
The dog sat in a chair.

She went to the tavern
For white wine and red;
When she came back
The dog stood on his head.   

Probably because of all the smoking and drinking he had been doing.

The dog procedes to feed the cat, dance a jig, play the flute, ride a goat, read the news, go a-spinning, get dressed, curtsy, bow and say bow-wow.

That is one talented dog.