Beastie

My goodness, the little beastie -- as we call babykins when she's being beastly -- was beastly tonight. To get her to sleep we had to resort to four of Dr. Karp's five esses: we swaddled her, I held her in a side-lying position, I swayed or actually swiveled her back and forth, and I shhhhhhed in her ear. She'd already exhausted her need to suck, it seems, by doing so on my bicep (hence no need for the fifth ess). But after some hours of unhappiness she succumbed to the four esses we employed.

After a difficult baby bedtime, it's hard to reconstruct the rest of the day (especially because Petey kept us up last night meowing like a maniac). But babykins was definitely in a good mood this morning.

I suppose another reason I'm having trouble reconstructing the day, actually, is that Summer took babykins to meet with a bunch of other mothers and babies -- the "prenatal group gang" as Summer's called them. So for several hours I was left to drown my paternal exclusion in KRLX and Niman Ranch bacon.

Summer's note: Madeline and I had a good time hanging out with three other babies and their mothers at a friend's house in Cranston. Baby was a little fussy on the drive there, despite the fact that WBRU played one of my favorite songs "She Blinded me with Science"! I don't know how this bodes for her future paleontology career. At the mommy and baby group she was extremely interested in the ceiling fan and a vase full of flowers. She happily played with her lizard and pink bird on the drive home. I was very thankful for this because it was raining quite hard and I got lost trying to avoid a congested 95N. We even made an untended turn around in one of Providence's fine "gentlemen's" clubs. I'm sure we were an interesting sight for the guys in the parking lot.

Summer and babykins came home to a dark-gray and rainy afternoon. Babykins mostly seemed to want to gnaw; after exhausting Sophie Giraffe she turned to my knuckle.

She also enjoyed more sky baby game and our stirring renditions of "I've Been Working on the Railroad." But as afternoon gave way to evening and evening to night, babykins became ever more beastly. Which brings us back to the beginning of the post. We've got some teething rings in the fridge for tomorrow night in case the need to gnaw and babykins's beastliness are related.

Summer's note: It's now the next morning and 4 S's we implemented last night must have really worked because Madeline slept from 11-6:30 (the first time she's slept that long in awhile)! I guess she isn't out of the fourth trimester quite yet!