Murphy's Law and Parenting

Daniel spit up a lot as a little baby. He spit up so much that burp cloths were the limiting factor for doing laundry, and we have about 30 of them. It never really bothered me too much. It was just a fact of life. Well, I must be coming out of the fog that has been the last two weeks because I finally remembered why I was so behind at the beginning of this week. Last weekend, when my parents were here, Daniel was waking up in the middle of the night. I keep checking for molars, but none have appeared. On Friday night, Daniel was up from 2:00 until 3:30 am. I am really out of shape for middle of the night duty. When I had to get up to nurse, I was fine, but now I'm totally a zombie with mush for brains.

Rule #1 - If your baby normally sleeps through the night, they will get up if you have out of town company in the next room.

Anyway, Saturday night was fine, but Sunday night was the real killer. We heard Daniel crying at 4 am, so I went in to check on him. As soon as I walked in the door, I knew something was wrong. His room smelled horribble, and it was a new smell. It was vomit, and it was everywhere. I had to get Matt up to help. I was on baby duty, he was on carpet and crib clean-up duty. Whe had no idea what to do. It's 4 am, the baby is scared and upset, we are still pretty much asleep. My Dad got up to help out. He's reading "What to Expect the First Year." It was a regular three-ring circus on Monday morning. Why does the first vomit have to be in the middle of the night? It must be some parenting right of passage. I ended up sleeping in the rocker with Daniel until morning. It was a little chilly, and there were no big blankets around, so I had a baby blanket on each limb. I can only imagine what it looked like - me and Daniel in a pile of assorted baby blankets.

Rule #2 - Things like vomit and blow-outs always happen at inopportune moments.

I can only assume that babies are so cute, like in the video below, so that when you have to do real dirty parenting tasks, you do them with love. About the video - Matt taught Daniel this head bobbing thing, and he loves it. He does it all the time and loves it when you do it back to him.