Too much of a good thing is... not so good

My wonderfully thoughtful sister in law took pity on me after reading this and sent my kids a copy of the coolest kids' music ever released. The first time that I played it in the car, Evan screamed "more... more NOW!" when I tried to turn the car off and I thought I'd died and gone to the kind of heaven where children have good taste in music and no one has ever even heard of the Sesame Street Count. I sent Jordan a glowing email of thanks and settled in to forget the past months of Ah-ah-ah agony.

Several weeks later, however, I've come to realize that the problem was not Evan's obsession with the Count, but Evan's obsessive nature, period. Ninety Nine Bats (In My Car Today), it is history, folks. My fickle son no longer cares one iota about those bats. Today, we're all about a plethora of other animals, the ones in Ella Fitzgerald's rendition of Old McDonald, to be precise. I had forgotten just how passionate Evan can be about that song, but Evan, apparently, had not. This CD lit the fire in his farm-loving soul once again and he simply can not get enough of it. "EIO, Mommy," he now begs as soon as we get into the car. "EIO again," he begs as soon as the song ends. "EIO again NOW!" Things get nasty quickly if he doesn't get his fix. It's all beginning to sound, I'm afraid to say, a tad familiar.

Ella is a vast improvement over a Muppet, of that there is no question. I completely loved her version of this old favorite the first time I heard it. But frankly, after the seventy fifth time I've heard the song this week, I'm getting a little tempted to tell her where she can put those animals of hers. Evan thanks you a thousand times over, Jordan. I do, too, of course. But possibly not quite as much as I had originally thought...