How to Amuse a 3-Month-Old.

Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, I've been hanging out with the sweetest little gal you'll ever meet. You are probably familiar with her from the Watson family site linked at right. Her name is Sarah and she is a doll baby, utterly and completely. Already at 3.5 months, she's got a total personality and basically cracks me up all day long (except when she's tired/cranky/desperate for the Momboob I cannot provide and/or having pooplosions out the top and sides of her diapers... during such times she more threatens to crack me than to crack me up.).

We have good times, me and the babe. She generally sleeps at least three of the eight hours we spend together, sometimes even four (during which times I try to sleep also, with the help of a magic spit-up covered sweatshit that blocks out all light and allows me to stay slumbering and motionless on the couch so as to not wake the wee Sleeping Beauty with unnecessary activities like walking, talking, going to the bathroom, what have you). Our days start early (not as early as poor Mom and Pop, I know) and usually breaks down to an hour or hour and a half of fun and food in the morning, followed by two hours of nap, then about 2 hours of food/diaper changing/play time and another hour or two of naps, then more food, more diaper changing and intensive efforts on my part to amuse, bemuse and delight, finally falling into desperate attempts to distract and pacify in the final half hour until Mama and the Twins come home to make all Sarah's dreams come true with the afternoon nursing sesh.

We've developed several fun and amusing games to fill the non-food/non-diaper related hours between naps. One game involves a mild version of peek-a-boo with her swaddling blanket floating down through the air toward her while she's lying on her back. This usually gets me some smiles, a few excited leg kicks, and sometimes that adorably weird sucking-in-air thing that babies do when they feel wind on their face (which usually means I'm getting a little too zesty with my blankie-waving, actually - "Take it easy" as Bex would say).

Another game consists of my laying on the floor, knees bent toward the ceiling, with Sarah sitting on my tum, back against my legs, while I sing ridiculous songs about her smile, her fingernails, her drool, whatever. Last week I somehow got a Sunday School song in my head (at least I think it's a Sunday School song, having never been to Sunday School myself...), the one about Noah and it goes something like "Who built the Ark? Noah! Noah! Who built the Ark? Brother Noah built the Ark!" An absurdly folk-songy version can be viewed here*. It is to this tune (approximately) that I sing things like "Who's got the drool? Who's got the drool? Sarah! Sarah! Who's got the drool??!? Baby Sarah's got the drool!!!" while moving my legs to the left and my torso to the right, snuggling Sarah one way or the other and giving her a little tickle to emphasize "Baby Sarah's got the drool!" I am proud to say that this little shaker produces hilarious giggles, the sounds of which melts my frozen heart like sunshine and kittens and unicorns and rainbows all wrapped up in a box of World Peace. Gah. She kills me.

I won't bore you with the other so-called games as they mostly consist of my pointing out completely non-interesting things as if they were unequivocally fascinating, or making insane faces worthy of an asylum escapee, with appropriately deranged sound effects, etc. We also do a fair amount of "reading" books, which she's actually quite content with at this stage of the game, taking in each page with interest and curiosity... look out: beauty AND brains, double whammy, right Pops? (And Daddy just jingled the keys to the chastity belt he's planning to strap on her in a decade or so.)

The tough times do come, about 30 minutes before Mom comes home. We've had to get a little creative in that time as most distractions can be a little overstimulating, and there's nothing a working mom needs less than a screaming hot mess of a baby melting down under overzealous babysitter tricks. Periodically we end up pacing the house, or sitting on the porch, watching the electronic picture frame change images, or cars drive by, or the dog pee - simple things, watchful things, observational rather than participatory activities. I'm quite proud of one recent discovery, however, though I fear I may be creating a wee bit of a narcissist. My latest success, documented below, involves the use of my camera phone, with the shrunken image of herself shining back at her as she looks into the display of the phone console. Brilliant. Utterly captivating. It was a 25-minute staring contest. Check it:



In related news: How freaking cute is that face? J'adore.

But: you can tell that she's pushing the limits of happytime in this photo by the little swatches of pink above each eyebrow. When those start to turn scarlet, you better look the hell out, man, no joke. Also, the slash of pink on my chest? Angry baby nails, Yo, angry, angry baby nails. So yeah, look out, for serious. (Of course I'd let this one scratch my eyeballs from my head, she's just. that. perfect).


*Updated to say that it's not a Sunday School song after all... It's RAFFI!!! After half a dozen or more solid years of Raffi from '86 to probably '94, how could I forget? And now it begins anew. Already the strains rise in my head: "Bay-Bee, Buh-Loooooo-Guh". Oy. Luckily I've not yet been forced to consume The Wiggles or Dan Zanes yet, but I've heard rumor on the MommyBlogs that they are out there. Waiting. Watching. Biding their time. Ready to pounce. (More on all that - the explosion of motherhood, the insanity of mommby blogs, the ubiquity and the conversion of the interwebs - very soon).