In the nearly 11 years I have known my husband, I can’t recall one utterance of the words “Frank Sinatra.” He doesn’t even own a single song or CD. Frank Sinatra, for the brilliant artist he was, has never had any role in our lives.

So last week when we were lying in bed and he mentioned wanting to play Frank Sinatra for the baby I was kind of tack back. In a cliche move often depicted in movies with pregnant characters, he wanted to play music directly into my belly. I didn’t object, although I did argue very, very hard for Dave Matthews Band. We own a dozen DMB albums, danced to them at our wedding, I’ve been to five concerts – you could say we’re fans. Frank Sinatra? Well, again, not one utterance. Shelton explained that the baby needed to listen to Frank because he “has a unique voice.” I argued that most singers at the level of Frank and Dave do in fact have unique voices, that’s why they’ve made it as far as they have. Shelton shook his head adamantly stating that basically, in what I’ll call his opinion, no one has a more unique voice than Frank.

I lost. Frank and Shelton won. That night Shelton got out his iPhone, flipped to Pandora and queued up some old fashioned Sinatra. Dean Martin scrolled by, he skipped it. Ella Fitzgerald scrolled by, he skipped it. It was Frank or Bust. I’ve never witnessed anything sweeter in my life than watching my husband sit over my belly with iPhone ear buds placed on either side of my belly, nervous that the music was too loud or not quite loud enough, intently waiting for a reaction from his daughter. And she did. I tell you she kicked and punched and bounced all over that night. Which tickled him to no end.

This has become a new ritual. We’ll climb in to bed at the ripe hour of oh, 9, because I’m positively exhausted. He’ll look at me and tenderly ask, like a child wanting a treat that’s just out of reach, “is it time for Frank?”. I just giggle and nod and I swear it’s as if Christmas morning were waiting for him in the living room – he bounds out of bed and returns with his iPhone and ear buds, tunes in to the Frank Sinatra Pandora station, and watches his daughter dance.

Last night proved to be the most entertaining yet. It was one of the moments where the eruption of laughter was so hard and lasted so long that we’d completely forgotten what had initiated it. All I know is every time I started laughing deep and hard my belly would take on a completely different shape and shake, which would force us to laugh even harder.

All of this while the unique voice of Frank Sinatra bellowed in to my belly.