I Saw Three Ships

The wife and I have been stuck in a new-parent rut: you look after baby while I practice my music, then I’ll look after baby while you practice your music. (The wife plays fiddle, and I play guitar.) Tonight someone figured out that we could try playing together and see how baby responded, the presumption being that she would be crying somewhere between five seconds and five minutes after we started to play. How long did she last before she wailed? It never happened. We played and sang “I Saw Three Ships” three or four times and baby laughed and sang along as though she couldn’t get enough of it. We grew tired of ourselves before she did. As the Bard said, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”