The Crying Game

Alright, let the real fun begin - implementing the disciplined schedule to a newborn baby. Goodie. I've heard some parents say that there is nothing more beautiful to their ears then the sound of their baby crying. Those people need to be committed. A baby's furious wailing is a mind-numbing noise that, when heard repeatedly, doesn't even sound human.

In fact, your own personal level of sleep deprivation bends and contorts the sounds of a baby's cry so it sounds like: the bah'ing of a baby goat, a Geiger counter hovering over a pile of Uranium, a dishwasher with you inside of it. Forget water-boarding, they should pipe in a play group's worth of infants into an interrogation chamber, that'll get the Taliban gossiping like US Weekly.

Getting back to the task at hand, we are following the routine of - feed, waketime, naptime. So after a hearty meal, it is 20 minutes of waketime activities (like wind-sprints) and then it is off to bed with him, whether he wants to or not. Here is where the crying comes in. Obviously the baby wants to keep the good times rolling, but if they stay up too long, the schedule is thrown into flux. Emily and I encountered severe push-back on this last night, and we made the mistake of attempting this regime change at 3:00 am. Kids, nothing good ever happens at 3:00 am.

Being new parents we could easily fall prey to "letting it ride" or "I'll just hold him for a bit." From what we hear, that is the first step down a slippery-slope that some parents can never recover from. They will forever bow down to their baby's every whim - MaMa....PaPa...kiss the ring. Thankfully, I can put up a nice stonewall of emotion and not give into the cries of my child to keep the greater good intact.

You see it's not my heart-strings that are pulled by a baby crying, it is my sanity strings. Too much of any sound ('cept the sound of $$, holla!) will drive me crazy. Music, alarms, bird cackles (the worst) - the simple repetition of the right/wrong frequencies is a cheese grater to the very core of my being. I disassembled a coworker's Big Mouth Billy Bass after hours one time. I was secretly thanked by the entire office.

I can't wait to get to the other side of this part of parenting. Oh, and I could do without the yellow deli-style mustard poops too.