Monitor nostalgia

Don't get me wrong, I am not rethinking the break-up, but I wanted to try to remember some of the good times. I have no regrets about our time spent together and I want to hold on to the fond memories we made.

My fondest memory by far involves the only parent whose paranoia puts mine to shame. This parent would be my husband. One evening, when B was a little over 2 months old, we put him to bed in his crib in his own room and it was a breeze. At the time this was a new and exciting thing for us as we were just starting to master the whole bedtime routine. Additionally B was starting to regularly sleep for 7-9 hour stretches (ah, how I long for those days). Since I knew that I was guaranteed a nice stretch of sleep in there, I felt that I no longer had to go to bed at 7 with the baby and instead could stay up and enjoy some time with my husband. G and I barely knew what to do with ourselves and this gift of an entire evening.

Back when a fist was as good as a binky

As we were debating what movie to order, G took a glance at the monitor. He discovered that B had turned his head such that we could no longer see his face and could only view his mop of hair. Since his raven locks offer no indication as to whether or not he is breathing, this was an unacceptable view for G.

I begged and pleaded with him not to go in there and move the camera. I was loathe to wake the sleeping baby. When my pleas were ineffective I made threats. "You wake up that baby and he is your problem!" I cautioned. G would not be dissuaded and off he went to B's room. A few seconds later I heard a huge bang as G tripped and smashed into B's bedroom door. I froze as I waited and sure enough, "waaaaaaaAAAAAAAA!" the beast was awake.

What followed is still, by far, the pinnacle of my parenthood.

I watched on the monitor as G's enormous hand plaintively searched around the crib for a stray binky. Once he found one I figured surely this would resolve itself and we could start a movie, but no. G's eyes evidently hadn't adjusted to the dark yet and he didn't have the benefit of the night vision camera that I was using to witness the action. As he attempted to put the binky in B's mouth he instead deftly jabbed it into B's cheek, into his eye, into his ear, and really everywhere but his mouth. B did not find any of this soothing, and as his cries intensified the giant hand on the screen began jabbing even more frantically. It was all I could do not to pee my pants as I cackled.

I wish I knew how long the whole thing went on, but as threatened, I turned off the monitor and snuggled the receiver in bed as we drifted off to sleep.

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