When Storytime and Baseball Season Collide

Most Wednesday mornings we head to the local library for Storytime with Ms. Bonnie. The girls always look forward to it.

However, don't let the term "storytime" fool you. It's so much more than just stories! Ms. Bonnie plays the tambourine and ukulele. There's jumping and wiggling and giggling. Storytime always begins with a mini show and tell session. Most of the time Ms. Bonnie breaks out this ratty brown puppet, fittingly named Grumpus. He's ill mannered and dirty and never remembers to cover his sneezes! Later, Ms. Bonnie invites the children to come up to the front and sing. At first, Natalie and Lexi rarely took part in the singing. Then, I began bribing them with tic tacs and now they are the first to volunteer! (Serio

usly, it's amazing what I can get my kids to do for one measly orange tic tac!)

Most of the children at storytime sing songs such as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Row Row Row Your Boat, or The ABC's. There was about a 3 week stretch (in March, mind you) when Lexi chose to sing Away in the Manger.

But now... in case you hadn't noticed... it's April. That means it's baseball season. More specifically, The Cubs are now part of the Mocabee's daily routine. For those of you who are less than familiar with the Chicago Cubs, let me fill you in... (because I have become more than familar with our dear old Cubbies).

So, there's this little song called Go Cubs Go that they play at Wrigley Field after the Cubs win. (Insert your own "after they win!?" joke here. I won't tell Scott.) Go Cubs Go is actually Scott's ringtone, so we get to hear it all year round.

Now, let's put this all together....

It's April, baseball season, Cubs on the brain....

It's Wednesday, library day, Mom has orange tic tacs in her purse.

Long story short...

Last week, at Storytime with Ms. Bonnie, the girls ditched the usual catalog of preschool songs and decided to sing Go Cubs Go.

I only captured part of it on video and the sound isn't great. But, much to their Daddy's delight, they sang it!

"Go Cubs Go! Go Cubs Go! Hey Chicago, what do you say? The Cubs are gonna win today!"

Truthfully, it did take a bit of extra convincing on my part to get them to sing this particular song. I could see that the orange tic tacs were, perhaps, not as persuasive as I needed them to be. I reached a bit deeper into my bag of bribes. Ah hah! There it was. Gum. "If you sing Go Cubs Go, you can have an orange tic tac AND a piece of gum." They were sold!