Monday, June 13, 2011

57 Years of Combined Life Experience Trumps 1 Year

Recently I have discovered that babies are illogical. Galinda and Scientist Joe had a Meeting of Scientists™ to go to last night, and the Animus and I put on our babysitting caps.

Two thirds of the charges went to bed without a whimper, but Castor (of Castor and Pollux fame), who saw Galinda leaving, freaked out. Not wanting him to keep Pollux up, we let him play for a half hour before engaging the BATTLE OF THE WILLS. OF DOOM. ™. .COM

When an infant is distressed, the following will not work to coddle him:
- logical argumentation according to classical formulae
- continental logic
- reading a signed copy of Ann Williams's Down from Cascom Mountain in a soothing tone
- reading a signed copy of Ann William's Down from Cascom Mountain in a dramatic tone
- the Animus using Dog Whisperer methods
- a change in diaper
- the "sleeper" hold
- the "cholic" hold
- almost any reassuring hold imaginable
- marching up and down stairs in any reassuring hold imaginable
- letting him scream in a playpen while you hide in the dark eating dinner around the corner, pretending that if he can't see or hear you he'll eventually forget why he's so hysterical
- a bottle of water he is too hysterical to drink from
What will eventually settle him down is
-wedging him between two adult male bodies on a couch with a blanket over him so he can't move, B-rated movie (we used Wanted, for example) playing, until he flops down on the Animus's lap and shuts his eyes.

3 comments:

Miriam Vaswani said...

Marching up and down stairs?

Andrew said...

My father swears by it as a tried-and-true baby-calming technique-and-workout.

Miriam Vaswani said...

I was once sitting next to a man in a coffee shop whose method of calming his baby down involved saying 'sleepy time!', followed by elaborate snoring noises.