The First Few Days

 

Mom and Dad lived in a nice enough place, so I couldn't complain. I mean, it wasn't as if I had a lot of choices. I had this really cool bed, right in their room, so I could get their attention whenever I wanted...day or night. This was great! I didn't so much as have to burp and they'd come running. Of course, Mom and Dad didn't seem nearly as excited about the arrangement.

My first order of business was sleep. I don't know how you people survive on only 8 hours of sleep. I mean, if I didn't get my 16 hours of beauty sleep, I was a bear. Ok, so I was a bear regardless...but hey, I was cute and I knew it.

Speaking of cute... before we go much further, I have to explain these two pictures. Everybody who sees the first picture thinks I'm happy. Let's set the record straight - babies don't smile socially until their 3 to 6 months old. I was no exception. If you're wondering why I was smiling, look at the second picture. The second picture was taken immediately before the first picture. Now, I'm not going to go into any gory details about why a was worried before and why I was smiling after... If you have kids, you already know. If you don't, then ignorance is bliss!

Having said that, let's continue. The first few weeks were spent establishing a direct line of communication with my servants...err, my parents. It was kinda difficult at first. These people had no idea how to communicate! There I'd be, lying in my bassinet for my 5^th nap of the day and my diaper was wet (very uncomfortable...you try it!). I'd be wailing and screaming and Mom would try to feed me. I mean, COME ON, GET WITH THE PICTURE. I'm in need of some serious diaper action, and Mom's gonna feed me?

For a while there, Dad was using a Least Recently Used approach to parenthood. Whenever I cried, he'd go through the 'Burp Me, Feed Me, Change Me, Hold Me, Walk Me, Comfort Me, Sing to Me' list. Each time, he'd keep track of what worked, so the next time he would put the most recently successful tactic at the end of the list. This, of course, didn't work, but it was amusing to watch.

Pretty soon, they started to catch on. You know, the nuances of Wah, Wah, Wail versus Wah, Wail, Wah. After a week or so, things finally started to calm down. Mom was settling into her daily ritual of CNBC addiction while Dad tried to figure out how to change a diaper and burp a baby in his sleep. As for me, I was trying to figure out what that black furry thing with big ears was...