Babies: It's not a competition

No matter what, you always think your baby is the cutest baby in the world. People warned me that I’d think my baby was cuter than any other child. I figured that I’d be objective, and after all the kid’s got my genes so really, how cute could he be? And then he was born and I was like "Jesus, he’s gorgeous!" It’s inevitable. This continues until you meet up with other parents with similarly aged children. Then everything turns into a competition. You can’t help it. You’re constantly sizing up your kid against theirs. One parent will say "oh, he started on solid foods this week," knowing full well that their baby is ahead of schedule on that. The other parents, who are not to the solid food stage, will counter with "yeah, we’re not quite there yet, but little Timmy can roll over from his back to his stomach!" This of course results in a tie score of 1-1, and you then move on to round 2.


Rachel and I have always had a trump card. No matter what other parents said, we could always resort to "Jonah’s been sleeping through the night since he was 3 weeks old." No other parent that I’ve met to date has been so lucky. I thought we were like the best parents in the world. Actually I should say that I thought Rachel was the best mother in the world, and I had somehow not figured out a way to screw it up yet.

Then daylight savings time hit. I have no idea if his circadian rhythms are screwed up or what, but since then we’ve had a hell of a time getting him to sleep. He’ll be sleeping soundly in our laps, but once we move to the crib, he just freaks out. Like uncontrollably. You know how they tell you to let your baby cry itself to sleep, so it learns that you won’t be there every time? You try letting your son cry so hard tears are coming out of his eyes, snots flying out of his nose and he’s screaming so hard he’s forgetting to breathe. Just try it and see how long it takes you to respond. So we have to pick him up and rock him. He usually falls asleep again in a few minutes, so we go back to the crib and here come the water works again. He’s been spending the last few nights attached to Rachel’s boob all night. Great for him, not so great for us. Not much sleep for us. Tonight was a little bit better, he only cried and flipped out for about 45 minutes, but he’s sleeping soundly now.

So yeah, we’ve lost our trump card. But he’s still our little boy and we love him!