Frank, the old Italian man across the street, spends his days working on his landscaping or people watching on his porch. As such, this summer, every time I open my front door he yells across the street "Your baby cries a lot!"
For the first two weeks of his life, this gave me such a complex that I wouldn't take him anywhere public. Because you know the implication of his comment is that my baby cries, he can hear it, and I am somehow inadequate as a baby nurturer to stop said crying.
After that, I got a little more confident and more angry at Frank, but still either he or his wife had that ever helpful comment each time I opened the damn door.
Last night, Miles was in rare form. He hadn't napped all day and said, "Fuck yinz! I am NOT sleeping tonight. Instead...I will CRY!" So between 8pm and 730 this morning, the little turd slept a total of 4.5 hours. The rest of that time? Wailing.
Our evening was spent alternating between sixty minute nursing sessions and Corey marching up and down the stairs with Miles in the Bjorn. There were brief periods where Miles would sleep in the Bjorn on Corey's chest, but otherwise, it was wailing, agitated nursing, and me yelling right back at my infant child.
So this morning, when we went to leave for the Aviary (I hoped that the screeching birds would drown out my screeching kid), I had my Thunder Vision activated. You see, I opened the front door and Frank said, "Miles sure cried a lot last night."
In my fantasy, I told him, "Really? He must have gotten agitated when we set him in the back yard and went inside to snort coke."
In real life, I just looked at Frank. I relived the previous twelve hours, the tense muscles, the crying from all three of us, the poop smeared under my nails, the barf on my pajamas, my non-showered body and furry unbrushed teeth. I wondered what small part of Satan sneaked into Frank's skin and urged him to make this comment, a statement that no amount of garden beans or fresh figs can forgive. I blinked my baggy eyes at him, got in the car, and drove away as Miles howled down Route 28.
Eff you, Frank.
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1 comment:
My brother cried most of his childhood. He was a very colicy baby. The only thing that made him stop was running the vacuum all night long. It became a common occurance for us to have company over and the vauum would sit in his room just running. Odd, but it worked.
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