Tough phase

"You're the worst father ever, now get me a boob"

I’m in a tough phase right now. Not Mia, she’s peachy. After a near-German-like two months off I’m finally back at work. It’s been good to feel useful again, a productive member of society, but I spend most of the day staring at pictures covering my cubicle walls of my family, calling for updates or checking e-mail in the hope that Corrie wrote me with some cute anecdote or developmental milestone.

They met me at the T on the way home yesterday and we all walked the dog home, which is when it begun. She no longer needs her dad apparently. Corrie will hold her and she’ll be fine, but as soon as I pick her up she starts in on the wailing. I pass her back and she stops.

So this morning I wake up early to walk the dog and take her to the park before going in to work. Corrie nursed her early and put her in bed so she could sleep next to her. It’ll break your heart to see how cute they are there. I change her diaper and get her dressed, but as soon as I strap her into the Baby Bjorn, she starts wailing again. We make it around the block before I break down, give up and come back home, Walter cheated of romping time with his friends. Of course as soon as we get home and her mom holds her she stops.

Apparently this is just one of the phases she’ll go through, as noted in “The Wonder Weeks: How to turn your Baby’s 8 great fussy phases into magical leaps forward”. She needs her mom now, and at some point she’ll need her dad. Later on it’ll suck to be Corrie, but right now it sucks to be me.

Meet the family

Just in case she wakes up one afternoon and doesn't immediately see me or her mother in the room, We wanted to make sure she felt her family nearby. Perhaps also I wanted to ensure she doesn't forget her father when he goes back to work (tomorrow). To that end we attempted a series of family portraits to hang near her crib.

Dancing Queen Prt 2

After awhile, even the most paitient of us will get sick of the same three or four songs if played enough. New Order was starting to get to us (if not yet to Mia, she's young and doesn't know any better). With that in mind, last night I went hunting for something else that might sooth the savage cries during her daily 6:00-9:00 fussy period.

Sad to say, neither Lyle Lovette, Counting Crows or Digable Planets made a dent in her wails. (so we have a diverse range of interests, sue us). It wasn't until I put on some Fat Boy Slim that she broke into a big smile and calmed down. Three minutes into "Rockerfella Skank" and her little head was resting on my shoulder. (We'll try to keep her away from the explicit lyric songs, but you can't argue with sucess).

In a way I can understand this actually. Soft sweet lullabys might work well for when she's 1-3 years old, but right now she needs something to help her focus. There's just so much going on in that little head of hers at all hours of the day, you want, nay, Need some way to slice through the gordian knot and find a way to relax. That's what dance music is all about really. No clever litterary references, no intricate A-B-A-C-B rhyme scheme. What the situation calls for is a thumping back beat that overwhelms and captivates, and goes on for 10 minutes.

Later she'll understand the verbal gymnastics of an Ani DiFranco or Tribe Called Quest, but for now it's just a matter of finding the beat and sticking with it.

Postscript:
This was perhaps a bit too sucessful last night. I burned out my calves bouncing to the same three songs for about an hour. She stopped crying but would wake up once I stopped bouncing. We tried to get her calm so we could watch the West Wing but she'd have none of it. In a fit of moral weakness, we brought out the big guns, putting her in the car seat and swinging it back and forth. I tell you, it's an automatic winner. Unfortuantly I'm now paying the price with a sore back and burning legs today. Hope she appreciates this.

Dancing Queen

When Mia starts crying, it typically means one of three things. She wants to eat, she needs a new diaper, or she wants the binky.

Every so often however, the big three fail to calm her down and we enter a strange beguiling world of experimental soothing techinques. On some days she likes to bounce, on others she wants to look in the mirror. It's been a process of trying anything/everything until something works, and then just going back to that to see if it was a one off anomoly or something she actually enjoys.

To that end, apparently our daughter is not one for the soothing soft toned lullaby. She likes dancing to New Order.


She will go from a full throated scream to blissful smile after the first bar of "Blue Monday" or "Bizarre Love Triangle". It's gotten to the point where at night after feeding her, changing the diaper and putting her in her PJ's, I'll turn on some dance music and swing her around the room until her eyes drop and neck gets floppy.

By any means necessary.

We have a Crib

After a goodly long ordeal, we finally have a crib in which to place our baby. Long story made short, the one we had picked out in early December was going to take about 8 weeks to hew from a single hunk of sequoia. 12 weeks go by before we call to check in on what certainly must be the most cared for piece of baby furniture ever made, only to be told it would be another 3 weeks. 3 weeks later we call back and are told that the truck will be leaving sometime next week. We call back the next week to hear that the company is “temporarily closed”

A few days later we read in the Boston herald that Boston Baby has stiffed about 35 families with unfilled orders, and the owner has skipped town. Thankfully, American Express is not going to hold anybody accountable for undelivered goods, but we were still without a crib. Our literature tells us she starts to understand her environment around 2 months, so we wanted to get her in her own room around that time. With a now shortened window, we ran out to Babies R, Us (the Wal-Mart of the stroller set) and grabbed whatever they had in stock. It still took over two weeks to get us the crib, but it finally came today.

Very happy with it, but we now have to figure out how to place 15 things (and four shades of wood) in a 10’ x 8’ room. There are the wall decorations to consider, and a lighting scheme that needs fine tuning, but on this, her first day in her new room, she’s already taken a nap.


This helps assuage the violent consumer indignation we were otherwise enjoying.