Adventures in Babysitting

We're finally out of the newborn phase, which means I'm an expert in all things newborn and it's finally hitting us that no one is coming to pay us $20/hour and then drive us home. 

As Alanis once said: you live, you learn/you love, you learn/you cry, you learn/you lose, you learn.
There has been a whole lot of learning (and so so so much crying, from everyone involved). 

For my first post in almost a year (Bebe was but a twinkle in my eye!), I've decided to bless you all with my wee one wisdom. You're welcome.

NECESSITIES

• Noise cancelling headphones to ward off the unsolicited advice. We've decided against safe sleep practices, thank you very much. I've just been placing my child--drowsy, but awake--outside on our 4th floor balcony with a space blanket and SIG P365 (safety on, duh; I'm not a monster), and checking on him in the morning. Survival of the fittest is the new sleep training. No, we won't be getting an Owlet; Zuck and comrades will just have to find another way to track my baby. Cry it out? Obviously. Any other way would be treating our baby like such a baby. I'm not here for that sort of paternalism. 
  
  The above is full on sarcasm, and how I wish I could respond. Please don't report me to CPS - we follow the ABCs and the AAP. I would even consider AA if they came out with opinions on child safety/sleep. (But not the AARP. Don't come to me with your outdated opinions, ma'am.)
  
  
• Sesame Street for the entirely new letters we're learning regarding bra sizes. Breastfeeding is a trip, y'all. And that's all I'm going to say about that. 
  
  
• Baby Shusher. 3 months ago, I would have VASTLY undervalued a small machine that literally just makes a shushing noise. Even still, I think there are some improvements to be made - its shape makes no sense (like a little rocket ship, but the speaker is on the only flat side), it needs an option greater than 30 minutes (like maybe...8 hours), and why does its design make me feel like a waiter at Olive Garden offering my child some cracked pepper? That doesn't stop us from (silently) sprinting into the room as soon as the 30 minutes are up and Bebe begins to stir, to crack some more pepper (AKA twist the little knob for another 30 minutes) and keep. him. down.
  
  Oh, white noise machines exist? Yes, and we use one of those too because we have the most demanding child in existence. Back in your day you just shushed your baby yourself? And that gets old about 10 minute in, and you know it. Let's not be a bitter Boomer Betty. There are apps that do the same thing, you say? Since this child came into the world, my phone has been at about 4% battery. Between tracking his food, sleep & diapers, nonstop pictures & videos because he is the cutest baby alive, Reddit for late night nursing because looking at his sweet little face will only get me so far at 4 in the morning, and Youtube TV streaming perpetually (WHERE IS BRIAN LAUNDRIE?), my battery life may never recover. One more app going and my phone will just pack its little bags and head to the first childfree home it finds. 
  
  
• Every burp cloth in existence. And then I sewed some more. My washing machine doesn't even know how to do anything other than white loads now. Burp cloths cover every surface of this apartment, and still he finds a way to spit up on me. I'm in the process of creating a jacket made entirely of burp cloths (patent pending), which I now realize is just a bathrobe. 
  
  They're going to find my body buried under a giant stack of burp cloths. Like a very soft, very sad episode of Hoarders.  
  
  
• Ceiling fan. My tiny Don Quixote, tilting at modern windmills. What do Northern babies even look at? Are they slightly deficient because of the lack of ceiling fans? Is this why Northerners are mostly Democrat? Regardless, between the ceiling fans and the noise of running water from the sink, the apartment infrastructure is doing the damn thing. 
  
  

NOPES

• Electric nail file. Instead of cutting your baby with nail clippers/scissors, you now have 2 options: baby shivs (filing the nails into little points) or baby butcher knives (filing the nails flat, but with two incredibly sharp corners). Ten of them, on a being who has not gained complete control of his limbs yet. Snuggling him means wrangling a tiny, strapped-to-the-teeth octopus. A teeny Edward Scissorhands. Cutco should be selling these door-to-door. Please don't tell me this thing works for its intended purpose. His little noodly flail devices prevent me from gaining a firm enough grasp, plus he seems to sense what is about to happen and curls his little hands into impenetrable fists.
  
  
• Pee pee teepee. My Southern lady heart is hurting at having to utter type those words, but here we are. I have been peed on approximately 7 million times. I don't know if my child is a whizzard or if I'm just incompetent, but the next Steele dossier will be written about me. Lately, it seems like he waits to make his move until Tyler is home; I can't help but think it's to make me look like an unfit parent. However, we have all fallen victim: me, Tyler, the diplomas hanging on the wall above the dresser/changing table (which seems like a weird place to hang them, but (1) we lived here before Bebe ever did, and (2) we need to flex hard on Bebe so he learns his place). Bebe is particularly adept at getting himself in the face, and I'm hoping that will be a lesson to him. But he is a baby and his head is full of fluff, so he will likely learn nothing and continue to pee while diaperless.
  
  Such is the way of the world.
   
• Snap footie pajamas. Reason #65412 of why I could never be Amish. If zippers are of the devil, send me straight to hell. Logically, I understood the appeal of zippers versus snaps before I had ye olde baby. I will now no longer accept anything else. I have an advanced degree, but at 3 in the morning in the peak colic phase, snaps were beyond me. Snaps are a trash fastener for trash people.
  
  
• Fire alarms. Hot take: no building should have a fire alarm ever. You either see/smell the fire and get out, or the world is rid of you and your garbage DNA. We are in our third year of living at this complex - we had zero fire alarms until Bebe arrived on the scene, and now we've had 4 in his short lifetime. (If I hadn't been with him literally every single hour of his life - minus 1 in which I went to Target and things at home fell apart - I would suspect my little cherub of pulling the alarm.) Let me tell you, I have never moved so fast as when the complex-wide alarm has gone off and I feared for his tiny little eardrums. You've never truly lived until you find yourself in your pajamas on the sidewalk with all of your neighbors, nursing bra unclasped because you had to evacuate during Bebe's second breakfast. We've now invested in baby noise cancelling headphones for this very reason (and so he, too, can tune out the words of every busybody. See above.)

There is my blog for the year. See y'all in 2022. (Kidding...maybe.)