Monsters in the Bathroom

For the first three months Sadie was a bubbly, gurgling angel in the mornings and slowly developed into a fussy, angry demon as the day wore on. This is normal for a newborn, apparently, for reasons not fully understood. Whatever the reason, ever since she began approaching the 3 month point that routine has begun to flip (along with sleeping schedules, feeding schedules and every other kind of schedule I've managed to successfully establish, but that's a topic for another post). Last night the kid was Miss Congeniality, and this morning she rapidly devolved into a ball of angry yelly-ness.

When she gets this way she wants to be held and comforted, which is new. Before, it was motion and constant noise that soothed her and it didn't matter too much whether she was being rocked in my arms or in her mechanical swing. Now when she's fussy, putting her down anywhere makes it considerably worse. While I kind of dig knowing that I'm now the source of ultimate comfort for her, it makes doing anything requiring the use of my hands...well...difficult.

Her entirely new perspective on the world has led to other changes I hadn't expected. Typically, for example, I bring her into the bathroom with me while I shower. She plays in her bouncy seat, knocking a little purple hippo back and forth with her fist, and is cool as long as I've got some kind of loud noise going on -- the shower, the hairdryer, whatever. The hairdryer, in fact, as always been a source of comfort for Sadie, putting her into a kind of dream-like trance.

But this morning when I fired it up, she got a look of utter terror on her face and burst into sobs. You'd have thought I'd left her alone on the African savanna in the middle of lion territory, that's how upset she was.

I picked her up and she immediately quieted. I tried turning on the dryer while holding her. No problem. Put her back down in her bouncy seat and turned it on again.

"WAAAAAAAAHHHHHH."

Now, here's the thing. I get to look decent maybe one day out of every month, and this month I would like that day to be Christmas Eve when I get to have dinner with my 80-something grandparents, so DAMN IT I was going to dry my hair and nothing was going to stop me.

So picture this: I wind up drying my hair with Sadie in the Moby wrap curled up against my chest, while trying to hold the hairdryer angled away from her so that I won't fry her head. (This activity is probably not recommended by the APA.) Meanwhile, copious amounts of drool are getting all over both of us because her saliva glands just kicked into overdrive this past week. Also, there are boogers.

But my hair is now shiny and dry, the baby is not screaming, and I can chalk up one more tiny victory in this crazy parenting process.