Dear Mr. Baby:
I have thrown some parties, memorable mostly in their occult and cryptic aftermath, that I call vaguely to mind today. There was the Halloween party of 2005, where, inspired by recently watching Breakfast at Tiffany's, I sauntered around my university apartment encouraging everyone who came to smoke cigarettes in holders and wave their arms around quasi-elegantly like stage actors on a movie set, and woke up to thousands of explicable but still improbable yellowish holes burned into the sides of candles, a shoe I did not own, and the plastic frame of an Ansel Adams photograph that had been in the closet. In 1996, I could not find my coffee maker to ward off the ill effects of a social engagement involving the first and last keg of beer I will ever buy, only to find it (the coffee maker) several days later, dripping Coors Light onto a bed from the ceiling fan where it had been placed with intricate and almost engineered care. The night I refer to as The Saki Night, the remnants of which trapped newspapers and trash in a sickly sweet death grip for weeks to come, all over the house, I assume because I declared at rather imbibed and uninhibited point in the evening that all saki must be drunk hot! but did not have the equipment, experience, nor sobriety to properly execute such a plan. Interestingly, most of the saki seems to have been spilled in the bathroom.
March 2011, one of many days indistinguishable from others: there is a trail of wheat-free snacks on the counter dribbling away into large, tongue shaped splotches on the floor. The dog is wobbly and disoriented. Everything the kitchen is half-done; drawers, in various states of aperture, ooze things like dishcloths and cleaning products and duct tape, partially unrolled. My keys are in the refrigerator, dangling into an open jar of pickles. There is a destroyed stick in the middle of the living room. I lost my phone (but found it, in a fortunate turn of events, prior to restarting the dryer.) A variety of blankets and shirts are everywhere covered in splotches of vomit. A plant has fallen over, from a perch where nobody can even reach to water it. There is underwear all over the place, just all. over. the. place. It looks as though a carnival of socially irresponsible people, with a penchant for brightly colored junk and an obsession with the words Oink! and Chirp! came through here.
It's just like old times, Mr. Baby, except nobody is drunk (except maybe the dog) and nobody really had quite that much fun. Furthermore, and I find this to be the most illusive aspect of the condition of my house - nobody who has properly functioning appendages, aside from me, was even here, which, by default, makes me irrefutably responsible for the mess. It's 8 o'clock, and I have no idea what happened with this day. Or why, given that the kitchen looks like the midnight snack preparations of a drunk, I didn't eat lunch or dinner.
I'd ask you what happened, but you just say phleble and aaaaag over and over and over. To be frank, you're as useful for intelligence gathering as a concussed parrot.
Here are some things I do know happened:
I let you play with a plastic bag, because I distinctly remember thinking about that. I remember feeling rather seasoned at that point, like one of those soldiers on their third tour somewhere, who just walk around in a nonchalant dispassion, ostentatiously not ducking even though there are grenades exploding everywhere. I just thought, rather lethargically: Oh hey look at that. You're so definitively, quintessentially, being a Bad Mother right now. (For the record, you just really showed a lot of interest in it. It's yellow and crinkly, which are two of your favorite qualities in people and stuff. Also, I eventually took it away).
I made a list of all the things I would buy if people would just give me two actual cents instead of universally useless hypotheses as to why you scream a lot. On it, a lifetime supply of earplugs.
There were blithe times too, kicking your crib critters and singing great songs of my own ingenious composition, like Who's awake and chewing on his blanket? and What's wrong with the baby now? That may have been yesterday. Today may have been more of a Tough Times for Tiny Guys day. Either way, there was probably a lot of all that and I'm sure it was the height of tedious fun. It's best if you do it in a variety of styles and somewhat accurate accents. Tone-deaf Australian Raised In Germany Rap, Operatic Indian Who Learned English In Jamaica, Proto-European Country and Western.
Beyond that, who the hell knows what happened here for twelve hours. I can only see the aftermath, and ponder the wonder of it all.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Advice-22
Dear Mr. Baby:
According to the advice we're getting, we're very much on track, not at all.
It's best, after four months, to let you cry in your crib until you exhaust yourself in order to facilitate getting you on a schedule. We must not have a limit for crying at bedtime or you will be taught nothing more than to be a big crybaby. You cannot, because of your level of neurological development, establish bad habits yet, so it is very important to never let you cry for more than an hour, and you should be carried everywhere to keep you from crying. When you give up crying, it's because you have stopped trying to communicate with me, to the detriment of your communicative development, the speed of which is indicative of nothing, and is also a barometer of your general well-being. In fact, it's actually bad parenting masquerading as tender affection to rock, sway, or console you to sleep, because it impedes your learning to fall asleep unassisted and will sow the seeds of terrible sleeping habits, and you will be a sullen teenager who dresses in black and fights the establishment. Furthermore, you will ruin your vocal chords if you cry hysterically, which is simply a sign of being overtired, and I must make sure to allow you to go to sleep at that point by not interfering because there is no case of a baby anywhere who injured himself merely by crying. Naturally, this is neglect.
You can't be spoiled right now, it's a myth. So, if I console you, I will be teaching you terrible habits about manipulation, and you will live at home until you are thirty. At this time, you should be sleeping in another room, to avoid developing problems with separation anxiety, which will set in soon. Additionally, you should be in the family bed until you are ten to build your self-esteem and reduce anxiety. Family beds will increase your chances of SIDS and asphyxiation, so you should never sleep in our bed. You need to hear my heartbeat and you need stationary sleep, so I should carry you and place you on a flat surface to sleep. Sleeping in a stroller, car seat, or wrap is unhealthy for reasons not fully disclosed, but very scientific and containing many cryptic acronyms. Acronyms are indicative of truth. On that note, you should always be carried around, because it reduces crying as evidenced by studies of African mothers. In short, you should go to bed by six, and whenever you appear tired, and you should develop your own sleep schedule.
Confused? It's because you're only four months old and your favorite word is phbleble. Stay with me.
I should never leave a bottle in your crib for you or you could choke, and you should be left with a bottle of water, much like a gerbil, so that you know something is there but cease to awaken for night feedings. In fact, you should never be given a bottle. It's a good idea to start you on bottles now because your father should help you with feedings, and eventually you will need them for day care, which you should never go to because it is full of germs and bad people, and it would be doing you a disservice to avoid because you must socialize. I should never ever give you any water or anything but breast milk for six months, and because you have colic you should have some tea. All of these things could potentially lead to death. Additionally, the doctor said we could start you on solid foods. No babies in the developing world are weaned until they are three, four, and seven, and breastfeeding past the age of one is psychologically unsound, especially in France, where they rub wine on babies' lips to quiet them, which will cause North American women to be morally vacuous and generally rotten people.
You should sleep through the night and wake up twice to feed. You should eat before you go to bed to get you through the night but you should never eat before sleeping because of your incoming teeth, which will dissolve. Baby teeth do not come in immediately precisely because babies nurse to sleep. You should eat every three hours. Regarding feedings, I should feed you whenever you want to avoid dehydration and failure to thrive. I should make sure you get on a schedule, which is evil and Western and something that no one ever had before clocks were invented and should never be done if it can be avoided, because Western things are no good for you until you are about twenty. Plastic, for example, even if carefully concocted to react with absolutely nothing in the known universe, is terrible, and we should try to get a pacifier so you don't suck on your thumb (for the sake of your teeth), and nursing for comfort is a highly effective soothing method. But you should never nurse to go to sleep (again, for the sake of your teeth). The main thing that will save us is swaddling, which will give you a sense of security and destroy your posture, as evidenced by Russians, who are terrible ballerinas.
This is just the eating and sleeping. Don't even get me started on your pre-pre-pre-pre-educational needs, which we are dangerously behind on.
So I think, or at least what I get from all this, is that you should be wrapped up in a hemp sack-cloth and hung by a window with organic sunscreen on, and we should drop some rice mush in there once in a while and speak Mandarin to you so that you have perfect pitch.
According to the advice we're getting, we're very much on track, not at all.
It's best, after four months, to let you cry in your crib until you exhaust yourself in order to facilitate getting you on a schedule. We must not have a limit for crying at bedtime or you will be taught nothing more than to be a big crybaby. You cannot, because of your level of neurological development, establish bad habits yet, so it is very important to never let you cry for more than an hour, and you should be carried everywhere to keep you from crying. When you give up crying, it's because you have stopped trying to communicate with me, to the detriment of your communicative development, the speed of which is indicative of nothing, and is also a barometer of your general well-being. In fact, it's actually bad parenting masquerading as tender affection to rock, sway, or console you to sleep, because it impedes your learning to fall asleep unassisted and will sow the seeds of terrible sleeping habits, and you will be a sullen teenager who dresses in black and fights the establishment. Furthermore, you will ruin your vocal chords if you cry hysterically, which is simply a sign of being overtired, and I must make sure to allow you to go to sleep at that point by not interfering because there is no case of a baby anywhere who injured himself merely by crying. Naturally, this is neglect.
You can't be spoiled right now, it's a myth. So, if I console you, I will be teaching you terrible habits about manipulation, and you will live at home until you are thirty. At this time, you should be sleeping in another room, to avoid developing problems with separation anxiety, which will set in soon. Additionally, you should be in the family bed until you are ten to build your self-esteem and reduce anxiety. Family beds will increase your chances of SIDS and asphyxiation, so you should never sleep in our bed. You need to hear my heartbeat and you need stationary sleep, so I should carry you and place you on a flat surface to sleep. Sleeping in a stroller, car seat, or wrap is unhealthy for reasons not fully disclosed, but very scientific and containing many cryptic acronyms. Acronyms are indicative of truth. On that note, you should always be carried around, because it reduces crying as evidenced by studies of African mothers. In short, you should go to bed by six, and whenever you appear tired, and you should develop your own sleep schedule.
Confused? It's because you're only four months old and your favorite word is phbleble. Stay with me.
I should never leave a bottle in your crib for you or you could choke, and you should be left with a bottle of water, much like a gerbil, so that you know something is there but cease to awaken for night feedings. In fact, you should never be given a bottle. It's a good idea to start you on bottles now because your father should help you with feedings, and eventually you will need them for day care, which you should never go to because it is full of germs and bad people, and it would be doing you a disservice to avoid because you must socialize. I should never ever give you any water or anything but breast milk for six months, and because you have colic you should have some tea. All of these things could potentially lead to death. Additionally, the doctor said we could start you on solid foods. No babies in the developing world are weaned until they are three, four, and seven, and breastfeeding past the age of one is psychologically unsound, especially in France, where they rub wine on babies' lips to quiet them, which will cause North American women to be morally vacuous and generally rotten people.
You should sleep through the night and wake up twice to feed. You should eat before you go to bed to get you through the night but you should never eat before sleeping because of your incoming teeth, which will dissolve. Baby teeth do not come in immediately precisely because babies nurse to sleep. You should eat every three hours. Regarding feedings, I should feed you whenever you want to avoid dehydration and failure to thrive. I should make sure you get on a schedule, which is evil and Western and something that no one ever had before clocks were invented and should never be done if it can be avoided, because Western things are no good for you until you are about twenty. Plastic, for example, even if carefully concocted to react with absolutely nothing in the known universe, is terrible, and we should try to get a pacifier so you don't suck on your thumb (for the sake of your teeth), and nursing for comfort is a highly effective soothing method. But you should never nurse to go to sleep (again, for the sake of your teeth). The main thing that will save us is swaddling, which will give you a sense of security and destroy your posture, as evidenced by Russians, who are terrible ballerinas.
This is just the eating and sleeping. Don't even get me started on your pre-pre-pre-pre-educational needs, which we are dangerously behind on.
So I think, or at least what I get from all this, is that you should be wrapped up in a hemp sack-cloth and hung by a window with organic sunscreen on, and we should drop some rice mush in there once in a while and speak Mandarin to you so that you have perfect pitch.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
No words
Dear Mr. Baby:
There is a scene in Contact, the film adaptation of the Carl Sagan novel of the same name, in which Jodie Foster stares into the fathomless corners of the universe and, awestruck by the enormity and the exquisite beauty of it all, gazes, stricken, saying "no......words.......no.....words...." and opening and closing her mouth in teary, dramatic silent gapes.
I refer to this particular cinematic snippet because I think it best sketches an image of my inner self (with only a few modifications - I weep in disbelief, like Jodie Foster, and in awe and amazement, but of a more negative, a more grotesque, a more olfactory kind; I sense that which awes me not with my eyes but with my nose and with the amygdala or wherever the memory of all tortured smells goes to rot and brand itself to the mind) whenever I open your diapers to a poop these days. There are simply no....words....(tears)....no.....words.....(open mouth)....to describe it.
Perhaps to start we should discuss the general dismay I feel that so much of my life is now dedicated to discussions, albeit short, of fecal matter. Whether it has come or gone, its consistency and color, its size and shape. I have a Master's degree in not one but two platitude-generating fields - I used to be a favorite dinner guest, charming and witty and fairly current on political affairs. Now, I just spend a lot of time fretting about your excrement, Mr. Baby, and I'm trying to cut back. But this, the latest, un-freshest hell, I think we must discuss.
Before, you pooped a lot, and that was a (fairly legitimate, I think) cause for complaint because, well...there was a lot of poop. We spent what I consider to be a disproportionate amount of time in the laundry room, singing a cloying song I call "Pants Check'' whose lyrics really only embody two or three more words beyond that. This song can also easily be arranged to be "Pants Change'' if the need arises. A lot of feet (yours) and hands (mine) and noses (dog's, and occasionally someone else's) got sticky-pooed, and there was a lot of hand-washing and trash and yellowish stuff everywhere, with certain people trying to act cheerful but sounding more like they just walked out of The Feminine Mystique and couldn't find any Valium. Fred barked a lot. I don't know why.
Yes, when you were a wee little lad, you pooped fifteen times a day, and that is not an exaggeration of any kind. I had to write it all down for the doctor, and I always report the numbers honestly. Now, I don't know if doctors do the same thing to a baby's poop reports as they do to alcohol and cigarette reports, which, since you're new to the scene, is this: multiply by three in case someone ''forgot'' something. But she seemed duly impressed. You, Mr. Baby, were in the upper percentiles of pooping, frequency-wise. Stratospheric, vertigo-inducing rankings.
When you gradually reduced your output, and after I got over being nervous and perplexed and checked the Internet to make sure it was a-okay if you didn't poop for two days and then also called TeleHealth and my mother, I was of course quite pleased. It seemed to me at the time that less frequent pooping meant fewer, shall we say, mishaps. Fewer adventures, fewer emergency clothing changes. Fewer tornadoes of baby wipes and profanity, fewer games of Twister in attempts to keep things unadulterated, fewer contortions of the face remeniscent of The Scream. Less false, shrill giggling and me saying, good poop! vacuously, obviously not meaning it, not meaning it all.
Oh, but I wasn't thinking, and some of our readers more seasoned, more sage, those who have had children are already shaking their heads affectionately, for they know. Perhaps they are thinking of that time when they too were jejune fools, new to baby poop and unwise to the ways of the world. Still brimming with optimism and hope, clinging to that silly, fluttering dream that life will return to something normal. Someday. If only the poop will stop.
It turns out - and of course this is all quite logical in retrospect, and hindsmell is 20/10 Mr. Baby - it turns out that you don't actually want the poop to go on hiatus in anyone's bum. It turns out that human feces, left fermenting for several days, actually just takes on a horrifically fetid odor. One could say that it actually evolves in there. When, after several days of squirming and grunting and turning red and wringing your little hands while I act as your doula, you finally birth this little monster, Mr. Baby, there are no. words. to describe it, there is nothing to compare it to, there is simply not a hyperbole hyperbolic enough to capture the essence of this stench. It's additionally, although not at all unexpectedly, ironic that you began this nasty fermentation process right after we switched to cloth diapers. Thanks for that.
So to summarize my thoughts on this Mr. Baby, if you feel like going back to more frequent evacuations, that would be met with no small amount of joy and fanfare. Please. It's really, really gross. Really.
There is a scene in Contact, the film adaptation of the Carl Sagan novel of the same name, in which Jodie Foster stares into the fathomless corners of the universe and, awestruck by the enormity and the exquisite beauty of it all, gazes, stricken, saying "no......words.......no.....words...." and opening and closing her mouth in teary, dramatic silent gapes.
I refer to this particular cinematic snippet because I think it best sketches an image of my inner self (with only a few modifications - I weep in disbelief, like Jodie Foster, and in awe and amazement, but of a more negative, a more grotesque, a more olfactory kind; I sense that which awes me not with my eyes but with my nose and with the amygdala or wherever the memory of all tortured smells goes to rot and brand itself to the mind) whenever I open your diapers to a poop these days. There are simply no....words....(tears)....no.....words.....(open mouth)....to describe it.
Perhaps to start we should discuss the general dismay I feel that so much of my life is now dedicated to discussions, albeit short, of fecal matter. Whether it has come or gone, its consistency and color, its size and shape. I have a Master's degree in not one but two platitude-generating fields - I used to be a favorite dinner guest, charming and witty and fairly current on political affairs. Now, I just spend a lot of time fretting about your excrement, Mr. Baby, and I'm trying to cut back. But this, the latest, un-freshest hell, I think we must discuss.
Before, you pooped a lot, and that was a (fairly legitimate, I think) cause for complaint because, well...there was a lot of poop. We spent what I consider to be a disproportionate amount of time in the laundry room, singing a cloying song I call "Pants Check'' whose lyrics really only embody two or three more words beyond that. This song can also easily be arranged to be "Pants Change'' if the need arises. A lot of feet (yours) and hands (mine) and noses (dog's, and occasionally someone else's) got sticky-pooed, and there was a lot of hand-washing and trash and yellowish stuff everywhere, with certain people trying to act cheerful but sounding more like they just walked out of The Feminine Mystique and couldn't find any Valium. Fred barked a lot. I don't know why.
Yes, when you were a wee little lad, you pooped fifteen times a day, and that is not an exaggeration of any kind. I had to write it all down for the doctor, and I always report the numbers honestly. Now, I don't know if doctors do the same thing to a baby's poop reports as they do to alcohol and cigarette reports, which, since you're new to the scene, is this: multiply by three in case someone ''forgot'' something. But she seemed duly impressed. You, Mr. Baby, were in the upper percentiles of pooping, frequency-wise. Stratospheric, vertigo-inducing rankings.
When you gradually reduced your output, and after I got over being nervous and perplexed and checked the Internet to make sure it was a-okay if you didn't poop for two days and then also called TeleHealth and my mother, I was of course quite pleased. It seemed to me at the time that less frequent pooping meant fewer, shall we say, mishaps. Fewer adventures, fewer emergency clothing changes. Fewer tornadoes of baby wipes and profanity, fewer games of Twister in attempts to keep things unadulterated, fewer contortions of the face remeniscent of The Scream. Less false, shrill giggling and me saying, good poop! vacuously, obviously not meaning it, not meaning it all.
Oh, but I wasn't thinking, and some of our readers more seasoned, more sage, those who have had children are already shaking their heads affectionately, for they know. Perhaps they are thinking of that time when they too were jejune fools, new to baby poop and unwise to the ways of the world. Still brimming with optimism and hope, clinging to that silly, fluttering dream that life will return to something normal. Someday. If only the poop will stop.
It turns out - and of course this is all quite logical in retrospect, and hindsmell is 20/10 Mr. Baby - it turns out that you don't actually want the poop to go on hiatus in anyone's bum. It turns out that human feces, left fermenting for several days, actually just takes on a horrifically fetid odor. One could say that it actually evolves in there. When, after several days of squirming and grunting and turning red and wringing your little hands while I act as your doula, you finally birth this little monster, Mr. Baby, there are no. words. to describe it, there is nothing to compare it to, there is simply not a hyperbole hyperbolic enough to capture the essence of this stench. It's additionally, although not at all unexpectedly, ironic that you began this nasty fermentation process right after we switched to cloth diapers. Thanks for that.
So to summarize my thoughts on this Mr. Baby, if you feel like going back to more frequent evacuations, that would be met with no small amount of joy and fanfare. Please. It's really, really gross. Really.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Snacks
Dear Mr. Baby:
Some moms may feel bad saying "no'' to their kids. And you've become unbearably cute, what with the eyelashes and all, so I can see how, in a toy store, or a book store, or just good old Wal-Mart, you might get away with some such nonsense as talking me into buying an inflatable castle with club lights and a three-car garage. Since I've had you, I can see how a lot of things can happen that, before I had you, made no sense to me whatsoever. Now I see things with a much more raw clarity, like this: if your kid is sitting there in front of the TV for six mindless hours, it might be true he isn't getting any smarter, but that's six hours during which you might be able to move freely about your own home and perhaps complete an online banking transaction or understand what is being said to you on the phone. It happens.
But just so you know, if you want an evil snack, even if you really really want it, you're up against it good buddy. I will have NO PROBLEM telling you where to get off the bus and grab a carrot. Because here is a list of all the things, traditional embraced with zeal in my diet, which I am now unable to eat:
Beer
Bread
Doughnuts
Cheese
Yogurt
Butter to go on the bread
Pasta
Pierogi
Alfredo Sauce
Vodka Cream Sauce
Blue Cheese
Yellow Cheese
Tasty Cheese
Processed Cheese
Fancy Cheese
Cheap Cheese
Expensive Cheese
Sweetened Condensed Milk directly out of the can
Pizza
Beer
Crackers
Crackers with Cheese
Oh what happens if eat these things? If I'm like, oh whatever, when has a cracker ever caused someone's life to completely unravel, to totally disintegrate into a nightmarish hell? When has one wheat cracker ever submerged a person in a blazing inferno, when has a solitary cracker dragged someone to the precipice of madness and lunacy, turned them into a shuddering, overheated creature, trapped in a prison of auditory anguish, condemned and filled with regret, shedding silent tears in a deafening purgatory? It's just a fucking cracker.
And if I think, I'd like to put some milk in my coffee, because soy milk in coffee is pretty much like licking the inside of a dead cow's ass? What if I think, oh a single slice of cheese has never destroyed a human being, never shattered a person's soul with an incessant, stentorian caterwaul? What if?
What if, indeed, Mr. Baby. One tiny molecule of wheat, one little fleck of dairy, digested by me though it may be, and transformed, through whatever miracles of biology go on in there, into human milk, still hits your digestive tract and hell actually unfolds in your bowels. Insomuch as hell is defined by what is probably some very intense discomfort, interpreted by you as soul-wrenching noise. Accompanied by the most contorted, theatrical squirming ever seen outside of a circus.
God help us all if someone gets wild and eats the traditional North American appetizer of a cracker with cheese.
So expect some healthy, tasteless snacks in your future. Not because I am a particularly good or nutrition-conscious mother, but because, Mr. Baby - I want revenge.
Some moms may feel bad saying "no'' to their kids. And you've become unbearably cute, what with the eyelashes and all, so I can see how, in a toy store, or a book store, or just good old Wal-Mart, you might get away with some such nonsense as talking me into buying an inflatable castle with club lights and a three-car garage. Since I've had you, I can see how a lot of things can happen that, before I had you, made no sense to me whatsoever. Now I see things with a much more raw clarity, like this: if your kid is sitting there in front of the TV for six mindless hours, it might be true he isn't getting any smarter, but that's six hours during which you might be able to move freely about your own home and perhaps complete an online banking transaction or understand what is being said to you on the phone. It happens.
But just so you know, if you want an evil snack, even if you really really want it, you're up against it good buddy. I will have NO PROBLEM telling you where to get off the bus and grab a carrot. Because here is a list of all the things, traditional embraced with zeal in my diet, which I am now unable to eat:
Beer
Bread
Doughnuts
Cheese
Yogurt
Butter to go on the bread
Pasta
Pierogi
Alfredo Sauce
Vodka Cream Sauce
Blue Cheese
Yellow Cheese
Tasty Cheese
Processed Cheese
Fancy Cheese
Cheap Cheese
Expensive Cheese
Sweetened Condensed Milk directly out of the can
Pizza
Beer
Crackers
Crackers with Cheese
Oh what happens if eat these things? If I'm like, oh whatever, when has a cracker ever caused someone's life to completely unravel, to totally disintegrate into a nightmarish hell? When has one wheat cracker ever submerged a person in a blazing inferno, when has a solitary cracker dragged someone to the precipice of madness and lunacy, turned them into a shuddering, overheated creature, trapped in a prison of auditory anguish, condemned and filled with regret, shedding silent tears in a deafening purgatory? It's just a fucking cracker.
And if I think, I'd like to put some milk in my coffee, because soy milk in coffee is pretty much like licking the inside of a dead cow's ass? What if I think, oh a single slice of cheese has never destroyed a human being, never shattered a person's soul with an incessant, stentorian caterwaul? What if?
What if, indeed, Mr. Baby. One tiny molecule of wheat, one little fleck of dairy, digested by me though it may be, and transformed, through whatever miracles of biology go on in there, into human milk, still hits your digestive tract and hell actually unfolds in your bowels. Insomuch as hell is defined by what is probably some very intense discomfort, interpreted by you as soul-wrenching noise. Accompanied by the most contorted, theatrical squirming ever seen outside of a circus.
God help us all if someone gets wild and eats the traditional North American appetizer of a cracker with cheese.
So expect some healthy, tasteless snacks in your future. Not because I am a particularly good or nutrition-conscious mother, but because, Mr. Baby - I want revenge.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Sleeping
So you're tired.
I can understand that. You have a busy day, after all. Eating books, staring at the futon, holding onto things and putting them into your mouth. Tummy time. It takes it out of you.
But Mr. Baby, you don't have one other goddam thing to do in the evening. You don't have a job, you don't have any homework, you don't do your own laundry, you've never even offered to cook, you have no hobbies as far as I can tell, you can't even focus on a television set and you probably wouldn't know what the hell you're looking at anyway, you don't even have to get up and walk to the bathroom if you feel like you need to tinkle. Not only that, any time you even look like you're thinking about contemplating the idea of considering possibly mulling over having the glimmer of the general appearance of someone who is about to look as though he may possibly be about to rub his eye, everyone in the house bursts from their relaxing times in a confetti of warmed blankets and whispers and machines that make white noise and rigged curtains and Sleep Sheep and soft gentle voices and no more TV - all done so that Your Comfort is delicately cultivated like a rare, fragile orchid, and so that you may drift off to a pacific slumber in a pile of soft fuzzy things and aquarium sounds and awaken only if you should so choose.
I have some news for you, Mr. Baby, and that's this: lying around chubbily grinning while you are ferried by an entourage of obsequious servants dedicated to your sleeping whims, untethered to worry or even the part of your brain that has the capacity for worry, occasionally pissing yourself without moving from your mountain of blankets, and having your poopy pants soothingly removed by said servants - often getting your belly gently rubbed and your feet massaged by gigantic thumbs and your hair gently tousled while you fall back asleep - this is probably about as good as it gets as far as sleeping goes. In fact, you have a pretty sweet deal because everyone will do anything you want to get you to sleep. Rub gently in circles on your lower back? More pressure? Oh less. Oh slightly less. No problem...rub more in the shape of triangles now, you say? Oh you'd like your blanket heated up in the dryer? Too hot now - worry not, we'll fluff it until it's cooler. Too cool? Back in the dryer it goes. Oh, you're tired of the back rub and want a head rub? Oh, you meant both? We'll call someone in here to help right away.
Yeah, Mr. Baby. If there's one thing I can tell you from life experience, it's this: this particular shit is not gonna last.
So instead of lying around boo-hooing and just. yelling. about how tired you are, if you're sooooooo tired from sitting in your crib and waving your hands at things, and being floated around the house like an airplane while you look at things, and sitting in your swing where you sit around swinging, and....what else? oh, being placed gently in a tub of warm soapy water smelling faintly of lavender......if you're that tired Mr. Baby...why don't you just fucking go to sleep?
I can understand that. You have a busy day, after all. Eating books, staring at the futon, holding onto things and putting them into your mouth. Tummy time. It takes it out of you.
But Mr. Baby, you don't have one other goddam thing to do in the evening. You don't have a job, you don't have any homework, you don't do your own laundry, you've never even offered to cook, you have no hobbies as far as I can tell, you can't even focus on a television set and you probably wouldn't know what the hell you're looking at anyway, you don't even have to get up and walk to the bathroom if you feel like you need to tinkle. Not only that, any time you even look like you're thinking about contemplating the idea of considering possibly mulling over having the glimmer of the general appearance of someone who is about to look as though he may possibly be about to rub his eye, everyone in the house bursts from their relaxing times in a confetti of warmed blankets and whispers and machines that make white noise and rigged curtains and Sleep Sheep and soft gentle voices and no more TV - all done so that Your Comfort is delicately cultivated like a rare, fragile orchid, and so that you may drift off to a pacific slumber in a pile of soft fuzzy things and aquarium sounds and awaken only if you should so choose.
I have some news for you, Mr. Baby, and that's this: lying around chubbily grinning while you are ferried by an entourage of obsequious servants dedicated to your sleeping whims, untethered to worry or even the part of your brain that has the capacity for worry, occasionally pissing yourself without moving from your mountain of blankets, and having your poopy pants soothingly removed by said servants - often getting your belly gently rubbed and your feet massaged by gigantic thumbs and your hair gently tousled while you fall back asleep - this is probably about as good as it gets as far as sleeping goes. In fact, you have a pretty sweet deal because everyone will do anything you want to get you to sleep. Rub gently in circles on your lower back? More pressure? Oh less. Oh slightly less. No problem...rub more in the shape of triangles now, you say? Oh you'd like your blanket heated up in the dryer? Too hot now - worry not, we'll fluff it until it's cooler. Too cool? Back in the dryer it goes. Oh, you're tired of the back rub and want a head rub? Oh, you meant both? We'll call someone in here to help right away.
Yeah, Mr. Baby. If there's one thing I can tell you from life experience, it's this: this particular shit is not gonna last.
So instead of lying around boo-hooing and just. yelling. about how tired you are, if you're sooooooo tired from sitting in your crib and waving your hands at things, and being floated around the house like an airplane while you look at things, and sitting in your swing where you sit around swinging, and....what else? oh, being placed gently in a tub of warm soapy water smelling faintly of lavender......if you're that tired Mr. Baby...why don't you just fucking go to sleep?
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Nails
Dr. Mr. Baby:
Okay, ha ha, Edward Scissorhands. Your nails fucking hurt. Stop clawing me. Not only does it hurt, it's vaguely upsetting to the psyche, the way clowns and Teletubbies are. (Don't ask me to explain). The "'Most Babies Can Do" chart, which we refer to whenever you're doing something annoying or weird, says you should be getting your hands under control by now. I don't know if that's supposed to be while you're doing the bit where you cry but no sound actually emerges from your mouth - you know, when your head appears to actually contain all of the blood in your body and really look about to blast right off your neck and go spraying all over the house like a deflating red balloon? But try it anyway (getting hands under control, not blowing your head up). Just because you're pissed off is no reason to be undignified.
Back to the point, Wolverine; the nail clipper is really our friend. You have to stop flailing around and whacking it if you don't want blood. It's safe, because we paid extra, but not that safe. I'm not trying to cut off your damn finger. You won't feel a thing if you just hold fracking still. Yes, I know, we've said that before and it was a pack of lies. But this time it really is just a little snip.
Mr. Baby, I'm just trying to keep people, dogs, and any errant paper products safe from your spazzy, mulcher-hands. You could decapitate someone just getting overzealous about something interesting on the wall. Also, you're literally going to dig your own eyeball out of your fucking head. What are you going to do with one eye? Be a pirate? How the hell is that going to help anyone?
Mittens? Ha. You ate the last pair. I mean, I really think you ate them, because the last time I saw them they were headed toward your mouth and no one knows where they are now. (Don't expect me to be worried about that. I have enough on my plate, and I stopped worrying about swallowed items long before you ever got here: just ask the dog. He's eaten at least forty plastic bags and he seems fine to me).
Fingernails on babies, it turns out, are dangerous, Mr. Baby. So just chill the hell out and let me cut those things with either one of my two pairs of Safety First! Baby Safety Nail Clippers, which are extra safe because they were made in the name of safety, but just can't help us if you jab at me the whole time. Let me do it, Mr. Baby. Before we all get shredded. Shredded into a million little pieces by your demonic little hands.
Okay, ha ha, Edward Scissorhands. Your nails fucking hurt. Stop clawing me. Not only does it hurt, it's vaguely upsetting to the psyche, the way clowns and Teletubbies are. (Don't ask me to explain). The "'Most Babies Can Do" chart, which we refer to whenever you're doing something annoying or weird, says you should be getting your hands under control by now. I don't know if that's supposed to be while you're doing the bit where you cry but no sound actually emerges from your mouth - you know, when your head appears to actually contain all of the blood in your body and really look about to blast right off your neck and go spraying all over the house like a deflating red balloon? But try it anyway (getting hands under control, not blowing your head up). Just because you're pissed off is no reason to be undignified.
Back to the point, Wolverine; the nail clipper is really our friend. You have to stop flailing around and whacking it if you don't want blood. It's safe, because we paid extra, but not that safe. I'm not trying to cut off your damn finger. You won't feel a thing if you just hold fracking still. Yes, I know, we've said that before and it was a pack of lies. But this time it really is just a little snip.
Mr. Baby, I'm just trying to keep people, dogs, and any errant paper products safe from your spazzy, mulcher-hands. You could decapitate someone just getting overzealous about something interesting on the wall. Also, you're literally going to dig your own eyeball out of your fucking head. What are you going to do with one eye? Be a pirate? How the hell is that going to help anyone?
Mittens? Ha. You ate the last pair. I mean, I really think you ate them, because the last time I saw them they were headed toward your mouth and no one knows where they are now. (Don't expect me to be worried about that. I have enough on my plate, and I stopped worrying about swallowed items long before you ever got here: just ask the dog. He's eaten at least forty plastic bags and he seems fine to me).
Fingernails on babies, it turns out, are dangerous, Mr. Baby. So just chill the hell out and let me cut those things with either one of my two pairs of Safety First! Baby Safety Nail Clippers, which are extra safe because they were made in the name of safety, but just can't help us if you jab at me the whole time. Let me do it, Mr. Baby. Before we all get shredded. Shredded into a million little pieces by your demonic little hands.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Exit Strategy
You're looking at me like I'm some kind of idiot now, and I have to say, I am some kind of idiot, but just what kind remains to be seen. Regarding this latest craptacular incident, I'd like to say a few things in my defense:
You're supposed to have your bum out in the open for a while, which we haven't done on the most regular basis, just like the Vitamin D drops and something else I'm still trying to remember. But you crap and crap, and no one ever knows when it's coming, so open-air derriere time has been put on hold repeatedly. Out of fear. The same fear that makes me open your diaper with what I imagine to be the same consternation as a rookie bomb technician. The same fear that makes me jump back uncontrollably screaming and knocking cans off the shelves with my head every time you fart with your diaper open and my hands anywhere near your pooper. It's the fear of being covered in fresh shit.
But in another moment of (we find out later, less-than) genius, I elaborated a plan. I placed you in the crib, on your tummy, with no diaper. BUT! I put a diaper changing pad under you.
The way this went down in my own mind, worst-case scenario, was something like this: you enjoyed tummy time with your cute little bum in the air, but you pooped. Oooooohhhhhh, I said. Somebody made a poopy, but it's ok because we thought ahead and we have this changing pad here! I then whisked you away in a blur of clean, efficient, whiteness. I picked you up and we smiled as I removed the diaper changing pad with smug and satisfied dexterity, neatly folding it, taking it to the washer, and dropping it in with a clean smile. We smiled at our genius as we turned on the washing machine, tossing in a little soap and nodding to each other because we knew it would come out All Clean. I set an All-Clean you down and put on another diaper, cooing in a montage of smiles and sanitation and the glow of a job well done - revealing, I see in retrospect, that my fantasy was derived from a commercial for detergent.
Yes, I know this now. If you put a baby on his tummy and he poops, the poop does not magically dispense itself neatly in a little pile waiting to be whisked away in gleaming, fifties-era commercial brightness. Unfettered by a diaper, poop oozes out onto the person it came from, and just sort of spreads. And there it is. For a brief moment, it's just a pretty yellow shmear, collected into an elegant pool and looking benign and meaningless, like so much modern art. Transfixed, you stand there staring at all this yolky crap and the tiny human squirming in it. You think things like: this could be a commentary on post-modernist capitalistic Marxism. But a stray thought begins to flicker away in your mind. It takes form with every little jerk of tiny human legs and hands, each of them flinging a little drop of poop hither and fro. The yellow begins to slide around, become jagged and multiply, to stink and to be sticky and you realize you will have to touch it. As it spreads, the little thought forms a mouth and starts to speak to you. You have no exit strategy, it says. You are, it tells you, IN. THE. SHIT.
Because removing said tiny human squirming in yellow poop cannot be done the way you would normally pick up something covered in shit. You can't just grab a corner of it and hold it at arms length while you go running for a trash can. Nor can you scoop a baby up in a plastic bag and throw it away. It began to dawn on me, as I looked at you, that I had to pick you up, and you were covered in poop, and then I had to somehow get the poopy things separated from the non-poopy things, so that eventually, everything was non-poopy. It's a logical quagmire, though - like moving those frogs on a log - everything poopy makes everything else poopy, ad nauseum. All of this had to be sorted out to the tune of your 100 decibel screaming, which interferes with my spatial and logical reasoning, as I think I may have mentioned on more than one occasion and which you continue to disregard.
So what happened? I made some bad decisions. Mistakes were made, and the following casualties were covered in shit: all of you, my arm, my face, my shirt, the plastic bars of the crib, 3 blankets, one bolster pillow, the baby swing, 2 receiving blankets, and of course, the diaper changing pad. Ironically, the changing pad, the original and intended destination of the poop, sustained moderate but unimpressive damage.
Not done. We then moved it to the laundry room, where we covered a few other things in shit. The dryer, the other diaper changing pad, three clean diapers, some clean laundry. We're still finding things back there with little flecks of shit on them. Thanks to your endless flailing, it really does look as though someone threw your actual shit into an actual fan.
And so, Mr. Baby, in the immortal but oft-disregarded words of Colin Powell, which I think apply to adventures in baby poop almost as much, if not more, than to military action: Have a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement. And do not (and Colin Powell never said this, although perhaps if he had....) base your exit strategy upon the dreamy remembrances of fabric softener commercials.
You're supposed to have your bum out in the open for a while, which we haven't done on the most regular basis, just like the Vitamin D drops and something else I'm still trying to remember. But you crap and crap, and no one ever knows when it's coming, so open-air derriere time has been put on hold repeatedly. Out of fear. The same fear that makes me open your diaper with what I imagine to be the same consternation as a rookie bomb technician. The same fear that makes me jump back uncontrollably screaming and knocking cans off the shelves with my head every time you fart with your diaper open and my hands anywhere near your pooper. It's the fear of being covered in fresh shit.
But in another moment of (we find out later, less-than) genius, I elaborated a plan. I placed you in the crib, on your tummy, with no diaper. BUT! I put a diaper changing pad under you.
The way this went down in my own mind, worst-case scenario, was something like this: you enjoyed tummy time with your cute little bum in the air, but you pooped. Oooooohhhhhh, I said. Somebody made a poopy, but it's ok because we thought ahead and we have this changing pad here! I then whisked you away in a blur of clean, efficient, whiteness. I picked you up and we smiled as I removed the diaper changing pad with smug and satisfied dexterity, neatly folding it, taking it to the washer, and dropping it in with a clean smile. We smiled at our genius as we turned on the washing machine, tossing in a little soap and nodding to each other because we knew it would come out All Clean. I set an All-Clean you down and put on another diaper, cooing in a montage of smiles and sanitation and the glow of a job well done - revealing, I see in retrospect, that my fantasy was derived from a commercial for detergent.
Yes, I know this now. If you put a baby on his tummy and he poops, the poop does not magically dispense itself neatly in a little pile waiting to be whisked away in gleaming, fifties-era commercial brightness. Unfettered by a diaper, poop oozes out onto the person it came from, and just sort of spreads. And there it is. For a brief moment, it's just a pretty yellow shmear, collected into an elegant pool and looking benign and meaningless, like so much modern art. Transfixed, you stand there staring at all this yolky crap and the tiny human squirming in it. You think things like: this could be a commentary on post-modernist capitalistic Marxism. But a stray thought begins to flicker away in your mind. It takes form with every little jerk of tiny human legs and hands, each of them flinging a little drop of poop hither and fro. The yellow begins to slide around, become jagged and multiply, to stink and to be sticky and you realize you will have to touch it. As it spreads, the little thought forms a mouth and starts to speak to you. You have no exit strategy, it says. You are, it tells you, IN. THE. SHIT.
Because removing said tiny human squirming in yellow poop cannot be done the way you would normally pick up something covered in shit. You can't just grab a corner of it and hold it at arms length while you go running for a trash can. Nor can you scoop a baby up in a plastic bag and throw it away. It began to dawn on me, as I looked at you, that I had to pick you up, and you were covered in poop, and then I had to somehow get the poopy things separated from the non-poopy things, so that eventually, everything was non-poopy. It's a logical quagmire, though - like moving those frogs on a log - everything poopy makes everything else poopy, ad nauseum. All of this had to be sorted out to the tune of your 100 decibel screaming, which interferes with my spatial and logical reasoning, as I think I may have mentioned on more than one occasion and which you continue to disregard.
So what happened? I made some bad decisions. Mistakes were made, and the following casualties were covered in shit: all of you, my arm, my face, my shirt, the plastic bars of the crib, 3 blankets, one bolster pillow, the baby swing, 2 receiving blankets, and of course, the diaper changing pad. Ironically, the changing pad, the original and intended destination of the poop, sustained moderate but unimpressive damage.
Not done. We then moved it to the laundry room, where we covered a few other things in shit. The dryer, the other diaper changing pad, three clean diapers, some clean laundry. We're still finding things back there with little flecks of shit on them. Thanks to your endless flailing, it really does look as though someone threw your actual shit into an actual fan.
And so, Mr. Baby, in the immortal but oft-disregarded words of Colin Powell, which I think apply to adventures in baby poop almost as much, if not more, than to military action: Have a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement. And do not (and Colin Powell never said this, although perhaps if he had....) base your exit strategy upon the dreamy remembrances of fabric softener commercials.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Back to sleep
Dear Mr. Baby:
I think maybe we need to discuss why I keep doing this to you. You hate it, and I hear you cluckin' big chicken. You've made your point, even if all that you making a point can consist of is some really hideous squawking. You sound like a thousand dying peacocks. I. get. it. You don't like sleeping on your back. You don't really even like being placed on your back, unless it's on the dryer, and I think the only reason you really like that is because you get your poopy pants changed there and you can, occasionally, stick your feet in your own poop if you play your cards right. Also, you're mesmerized by a geographically incorrect cartoon picture of the world. But I digress. You hate your back, and that's a big bummer, because as of 1993 they've got this thing called Back To Sleep. I won't bore you with the details, it just boils down to this: basically, I can't put you on your tummy without being convinced that you're going to die. There are posters and brochures, it's on the Internet. It is for real.
What's that? Oh, all the children from before 1993? I think they're just lucky to be alive.
What's that? Oh I know what I say, I know what I say about the validity of studies and statistics and all that shit, but the Internet propaganda and the twisted, macabre posters at the hospital with quasi-statistics on them and pictures of babies who are about to die have me freaked right the hell out. I would be a Bad Mother for putting you on your tummy, and you will die. Just like if you look at plastic or don't breastfeed or I give you a pacifier or your toys are made in Bangladesh.
What? Oh the car seat. That again. Yeah, well, I mean....we have to draw the line somewhere. Because really? Expired? It's not a goddam carton of milk. Also, we're Americans in Canada, and we live on the edge.
You're right, Mr. Baby. I am picking and choosing here. You might as well get used to it. The point is this: we can't put you on your tummy to sleep. It has to be your back. I've tried putting you on your side but you sleep like you're playing badminton to the death and whack yourself repeatedly awake in your big, oversize head. Oh, I know, I can I Ruth Goldberg all the pillows and blankets in the house so that you're squashed in there just so, and then we all just stand back and look at it the way you do after you had too many martinis and got a little brave playing Jenga. It won't last. You can't even imagine why you tried. That is stressful, Mr. Baby. Not to mention annoying. You'll know what I mean when you're old enough to play Jenga. Or diffuse a bomb. So Back To Sleep it is.
Yes, it should be called Back to Screaming. It really should.
I think maybe we need to discuss why I keep doing this to you. You hate it, and I hear you cluckin' big chicken. You've made your point, even if all that you making a point can consist of is some really hideous squawking. You sound like a thousand dying peacocks. I. get. it. You don't like sleeping on your back. You don't really even like being placed on your back, unless it's on the dryer, and I think the only reason you really like that is because you get your poopy pants changed there and you can, occasionally, stick your feet in your own poop if you play your cards right. Also, you're mesmerized by a geographically incorrect cartoon picture of the world. But I digress. You hate your back, and that's a big bummer, because as of 1993 they've got this thing called Back To Sleep. I won't bore you with the details, it just boils down to this: basically, I can't put you on your tummy without being convinced that you're going to die. There are posters and brochures, it's on the Internet. It is for real.
What's that? Oh, all the children from before 1993? I think they're just lucky to be alive.
What's that? Oh I know what I say, I know what I say about the validity of studies and statistics and all that shit, but the Internet propaganda and the twisted, macabre posters at the hospital with quasi-statistics on them and pictures of babies who are about to die have me freaked right the hell out. I would be a Bad Mother for putting you on your tummy, and you will die. Just like if you look at plastic or don't breastfeed or I give you a pacifier or your toys are made in Bangladesh.
What? Oh the car seat. That again. Yeah, well, I mean....we have to draw the line somewhere. Because really? Expired? It's not a goddam carton of milk. Also, we're Americans in Canada, and we live on the edge.
You're right, Mr. Baby. I am picking and choosing here. You might as well get used to it. The point is this: we can't put you on your tummy to sleep. It has to be your back. I've tried putting you on your side but you sleep like you're playing badminton to the death and whack yourself repeatedly awake in your big, oversize head. Oh, I know, I can I Ruth Goldberg all the pillows and blankets in the house so that you're squashed in there just so, and then we all just stand back and look at it the way you do after you had too many martinis and got a little brave playing Jenga. It won't last. You can't even imagine why you tried. That is stressful, Mr. Baby. Not to mention annoying. You'll know what I mean when you're old enough to play Jenga. Or diffuse a bomb. So Back To Sleep it is.
Yes, it should be called Back to Screaming. It really should.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Axis of Noise
You and the dog seem to have formed some sort of partnership, or alliance, with designs on actually causing my head to explode from the incessant, loud, inanity. Either that or you're just both fucking crazy. To quote:
D: rrrrrrrrrrrrr
MB: ah ah
D: rrrrrrrr grrrrrrr
MB: ah ah ah ooooo
D: rrRRRRRRRRR?! rrrrrrrrRRRR!
MB: aaaaaaaaaHHHHHHHHHH. AAAAAAHHHH
D: RRRRRR RUFF RUFF RUFF RUUFF
MB: AHHHHHHHHHH AHHHHYA AHHHHH!
D: RUFF RUFF RUFF RUFF RUFF RUFF RUFF!
MB: AHH AHHHA AHHH AHHHA AAYA AHAHAHAHAHAHA!
D: RUFF RUFF RUFF RUFF RUFF RUFF RUFF
MB: AHHH AHHH AHHH AHHHHA AHHHHA AHHHHH AHHHHA AH
D: RUFF RUFF RUFRUFRUFRUFRUFURF ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF RRRRRRRRAAAAAAFFFFF!
MB: AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! AHHH AHYHH AHHHHH AHHHHHA HHHHHHAHAHHHAAA!!!!!
(Together): RRRRAAAAAAHHHHHHHH RAHAAHAHAAHHHHHHFFFFFFAAAAARRRRRRRRR!
Gibberish? Nonsense! I have laboriously produced a translation, which I think is not only accurate but captures the delicate nuances of your exchanges:
D: What's going on over there?
MB: Oh nothing much. I'm fine really.
D: Yeah, me too. Just lookin' at the wall.
MB: Yep. I'm lookin' at my bugs.
D: What's that? What the hell is that sound outside?!
MB: What's that?! What the hell is this stripy bug?!
D: THAT! THAT! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!
MB: WHAT THE FUCK ARE THESE BUGS DOING IN HERE?!!!!
D: THERE ARE FUCKING COWS OUTSIDE!
MB: THERE ARE FUCKING BUGS HANGING OVER MY HEAD!!!!!
D: COWS! COWS! COWS! COWS! COWS!
MB: BUGS! BUGS! BUGS! BUGS! BUGS!
D: I DON'T KNOW WHY I'M BARKING!
MB: I DON'T KNOW WHY I'M SCREAMING!
(Together):AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH! AAHHHHHH! OH, THE HUMANITY! THE HUMANITY!!!!
D: rrrrrrrrrrrrr
MB: ah ah
D: rrrrrrrr grrrrrrr
MB: ah ah ah ooooo
D: rrRRRRRRRRR?! rrrrrrrrRRRR!
MB: aaaaaaaaaHHHHHHHHHH. AAAAAAHHHH
D: RRRRRR RUFF RUFF RUFF RUUFF
MB: AHHHHHHHHHH AHHHHYA AHHHHH!
D: RUFF RUFF RUFF RUFF RUFF RUFF RUFF!
MB: AHH AHHHA AHHH AHHHA AAYA AHAHAHAHAHAHA!
D: RUFF RUFF RUFF RUFF RUFF RUFF RUFF
MB: AHHH AHHH AHHH AHHHHA AHHHHA AHHHHH AHHHHA AH
D: RUFF RUFF RUFRUFRUFRUFRUFURF ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF RRRRRRRRAAAAAAFFFFF!
MB: AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! AHHH AHYHH AHHHHH AHHHHHA HHHHHHAHAHHHAAA!!!!!
(Together): RRRRAAAAAAHHHHHHHH RAHAAHAHAAHHHHHHFFFFFFAAAAARRRRRRRRR!
Gibberish? Nonsense! I have laboriously produced a translation, which I think is not only accurate but captures the delicate nuances of your exchanges:
D: What's going on over there?
MB: Oh nothing much. I'm fine really.
D: Yeah, me too. Just lookin' at the wall.
MB: Yep. I'm lookin' at my bugs.
D: What's that? What the hell is that sound outside?!
MB: What's that?! What the hell is this stripy bug?!
D: THAT! THAT! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!
MB: WHAT THE FUCK ARE THESE BUGS DOING IN HERE?!!!!
D: THERE ARE FUCKING COWS OUTSIDE!
MB: THERE ARE FUCKING BUGS HANGING OVER MY HEAD!!!!!
D: COWS! COWS! COWS! COWS! COWS!
MB: BUGS! BUGS! BUGS! BUGS! BUGS!
D: I DON'T KNOW WHY I'M BARKING!
MB: I DON'T KNOW WHY I'M SCREAMING!
(Together):AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH! AAHHHHHH! OH, THE HUMANITY! THE HUMANITY!!!!
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Hairpology
Dear Mr. Baby:
I'm really sorry, and the more I think about it the worse I feel.
I don't know how it got into your bottle, and I'll be honest - I noticed it after you had already been eating for a while, and so I figured there wasn't any point to freaking out and running around the house screaming, "The baby is eating a dog hair!'' Nor did I really feel like throwing all that milk out, because I don't know if I've told you how I feel about expressing breast milk. It makes me wish I were a man. Not for the obvious reason that I wouldn't have to express milk, but because then I could say things like, ''I'd rather slam my cock in a car door,'' if someone ever asked me what I thought of it. And I figured you had probably ingested whatever was on the dog hair by then. I spent a brief few seconds calculating (non-scientifically, non-statistically, and non-geometrically) the odds of a dog hair going through a bottle nipple and decided they were low.
However...you finished the bottle and the dog hair was gone. Now, I do want to point something out here, which is that Fred is a black and white dog, so it's just our bad luck that we even know about this. Still, as usual I became a little bit worried, and then went completely psycho, and then looked on the Internet to make sure I really lost my shit. Oddly, the Internet mostly tells you what to do if your dog eats baby hair, which either makes me feel better or worse as a mother, depending on how you look at it. Anyway, of course I stumbled onto unrelated things, and what do you know Mr. Baby? There's all this shit on the Internet about how if you're screaming for hours and nothing consoles you, it could be a hair wrapped around your penis. So god only knows what a dog hair will do in your intestines.
Well, I got calmed down about that (I won't tell you how, but suffice it to say that Motherisk thinks I should wait 2 hours to feed you, rhymes with "odd car'' in Bostonian), and then I looked out the window at our dog, who was standing in the cow pen eating cow shit. I can only assume that there's a 50% chance that some cow shit is on a hair from that dog, since he spends most of his time in there with the cows, who spend most of their time shitting.
You seem to be fine, and not any poopier than usual. But I still feel pretty bad, so this is an apology. I figure I could also twist this all around and claim that you might be better off for eating shitty dog hairs, since it seems that first-world babies aren't dirty enough, according to some of the Internet. I don't know Mr. Baby. The oracle is divided on this topic.
Anyway Mr. Baby...sorry about that. Please don't get any poopier.
Please.
I'm really sorry, and the more I think about it the worse I feel.
I don't know how it got into your bottle, and I'll be honest - I noticed it after you had already been eating for a while, and so I figured there wasn't any point to freaking out and running around the house screaming, "The baby is eating a dog hair!'' Nor did I really feel like throwing all that milk out, because I don't know if I've told you how I feel about expressing breast milk. It makes me wish I were a man. Not for the obvious reason that I wouldn't have to express milk, but because then I could say things like, ''I'd rather slam my cock in a car door,'' if someone ever asked me what I thought of it. And I figured you had probably ingested whatever was on the dog hair by then. I spent a brief few seconds calculating (non-scientifically, non-statistically, and non-geometrically) the odds of a dog hair going through a bottle nipple and decided they were low.
However...you finished the bottle and the dog hair was gone. Now, I do want to point something out here, which is that Fred is a black and white dog, so it's just our bad luck that we even know about this. Still, as usual I became a little bit worried, and then went completely psycho, and then looked on the Internet to make sure I really lost my shit. Oddly, the Internet mostly tells you what to do if your dog eats baby hair, which either makes me feel better or worse as a mother, depending on how you look at it. Anyway, of course I stumbled onto unrelated things, and what do you know Mr. Baby? There's all this shit on the Internet about how if you're screaming for hours and nothing consoles you, it could be a hair wrapped around your penis. So god only knows what a dog hair will do in your intestines.
Well, I got calmed down about that (I won't tell you how, but suffice it to say that Motherisk thinks I should wait 2 hours to feed you, rhymes with "odd car'' in Bostonian), and then I looked out the window at our dog, who was standing in the cow pen eating cow shit. I can only assume that there's a 50% chance that some cow shit is on a hair from that dog, since he spends most of his time in there with the cows, who spend most of their time shitting.
You seem to be fine, and not any poopier than usual. But I still feel pretty bad, so this is an apology. I figure I could also twist this all around and claim that you might be better off for eating shitty dog hairs, since it seems that first-world babies aren't dirty enough, according to some of the Internet. I don't know Mr. Baby. The oracle is divided on this topic.
Anyway Mr. Baby...sorry about that. Please don't get any poopier.
Please.
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