Gurgle Goo Erp

In case you haven't dropped by in a while, I went to visit a baby this weekend.

I think we can all agree that this baby? Is the cutest. Did you not notice the jammies with feet? FEET! (Also, his dad said it was totally okay for me to plaster pictures of his son all over the vast and scary internet, so here's another one.)

This is Baby Pincus looking at the three officially-old-enough-to-be-grown-ups who put his swing together and thinking, "My swing doesn't work right because you dummies forgot to buy batteries. And I have to live with you for how long?"

Baby Pincus and I slept away most of our three-day weekend together. We slept in the back seat on the way home from the airport, we slept all morning and most of the afternoon. We'd wake up for a few hours between eight and eleven and watch NBA playoff games with the Lieutenant, but only if we were feeling up to it. The best part was that I got to sleep on the couch and he got to sleep on ME. How wonderful is it to hold a tiny occasionally-squirmy ball of pudge who puts his little head and little fists up on your chest to sleep? And to sometimes stretch and yawn and sometimes sneeze? CRAZY wonderful.

One of the cutest things about Baby Pincus was also the most frightening. Did you know that babies get hiccups? Okay, I didn't know this and when the baby first started jolting himself awake in my arms with a little "Erp! Erp!" I completely freaked because hiccups? SO PAINFUL. I hate hiccups. I often think that I will die of hiccups. Phillip is not allowed to tickle me for fear of inducing death in just this way. My sister-in-law tried to calm me down by informing me that the doctors say it doesn't hurt babies and that he even got hiccups when he was still inside her (OH MY GOD), it was still deeply disturbing and I tried all sorts of things to get him to stop. Unfortunately many of the hiccup remedies I know are for people who can use the bathroom by themselves, so I didn't have much success. I just held him until he stopped. Which was a long time. And then we all breathed much easier.

Like this. This is how you hold the baby. (This is also the frightened expression you wear during the the third quarter of the Sonics vs. Kings Game 4.)

Other observations:

1. Car seats are the enemies of Cool Aunts everywhere. Why can't we just HOLD THE BABY?

2. Babies like to be held when you are standing up, bouncing them around and swaying. In other words, using as much of your energy as possible. And when you sit down, they KNOW.

3. Bouncy Leg Syndrome (a frequent symptom of highly anxious personalities such as myself) is an excellent curse to have when you are tasked with keeping the baby quiet so his mother can sleep an hour longer. You will be terrified, thinking that you are jiggling the very brains out of his skull, but the baby? LOVES THE BOUNCY.

I miss the baby. But in the meantime, I have my own baby.

12 more days!!!