Matilda is 9 weeks old tomorrow. We're in the final stretch of the newborn phase and I have to admit I'm ready to wrap this up. I'm not much of a marathon runner. More of a sprinter. I can't wait for Week 12 as that's when babies segue into the interactive phase.
Sure, Matilda smiles for us now, but MAN we have to work for it. I want giggling and LESS SCREAMING and would like to keep my shirt down for more than a hour a day. I'd love to be able to read her a book or hand her a toy and watch her shove it in her mouth. Would love to be able to cook dinner one night. Or eat dinner without a baby in my lap with a napkin over her head.
She's been showing glimmers of The Interactive but the vaccinations on April First really threw a wrench into things. She'd been taking morning naps and smiling and getting our hopes up that we'd soon be living with a person and not an animal -- Totally feels like we're living with an animal. My mother said today, "She doesn't go back to the vet for two months?" -- but the two days following the vaccinations left us with an inconsolable non-napping oven roaster. At her pediatrician's go ahead, we mixed up some sugar water in a bottle and popped the bottle in the baby's mouth and SWEET BABY JESUS you've never seen NOTHING till you've seen a baby discover sugar. Sugar is not an acquired taste, I am here to tell you. We are wired to like sugar and MAN OUR BABY LOVES SUGAR.
We've never really had a problem getting the baby to take a bottle of breast-milk. It's the one thing that gets us through long car rides as Matilda hates both her car-seat and the car. Shoving a bottle repeatedly into the howling center of her face eventually quiets her down. Sugar water requires no effort. You wave that bottle of sugar water under her nose and she's on it like white on rice. Her eyes light up like her Dad's when he smells cognac.
Either way, it's the sugar.
I dare you to take their sugar away from them. I DOUBLE DOG DARE YOU.
