A bad day

By Published On: September 1st, 2011

Written by: Josh August 31 2011 I wrote last week […]

Written by: Josh

I wrote last week about a typical day here in Baby Jail. Well, there’s Yang to that Yin, of course, more colloquially referred to as “yesterday.”

You see, yesterday was a really bad day. No (nursery) rhyme, no reason, Bub just woke up on the wrong side of the crib and let me know about for the next ten straight hours. I’m completely exhausted, beat-down, and frankly, am in dire need of an electronic hug.

I guess I should preface this with some of my wife’s understanding, defusing words after Bub was in bed and I’d mostly decompressed. Paraphrasing, she pointed out that at least he’s not colicky, he’s healthy, he mostly sleeps through the night, etc. Yeah yeah yeah, whatever. Like Woodstock, you just weren’t there, man—you don’t know how it really was. So now on to the regularly-scheduled complaining.

This is not nearly as structured as the diary-style approach to the typical day. The reasons for that is simple: it was pretty much a ten-hour blur of unending frustration, chaos and desperation. Or what I like to call survival parenting.
It’s only natural—when human beings are put into ridiculously stressful situations, it becomes less about the big picture and more about self-preservating, about doing what must be done to get through the ordeal. It’s a lot like that movie Alive, though thankfully I did not have to eat Bub’s chubby little legs to survive, though Mommy did ask why I was slathering them with BBQ sauce when she walked in.

Anyway, it was really just Murphy’s Law unleashed on the hapless SAD, that SAD being me. He woke up early and my wife fed him. Normally he goes back to sleep (and so do I) for an extra blissful hour; not today my friends. Nope, today he was fully awake and ready to party angry. For you see, in Bub’s underdeveloped brain, there is no sense of causality, no ‘If this, then this…’ e.g., if I don’t go back to bed, I will turn into Se