2010.01.03 The Good Old Days
It's just about 03:30 in the morning, and I've been awake for a couple hours now - thanks to screaming infant action. Simon doesn't like being in his crib.
On the conditioning principle that any action that is followed by a desired result - even occasionally - will tend to increase that action, we're trying to be careful about not rewarding the crying. So during a temporary lull, I pounced on him to check his diaper - it was fine. Shouldn't be hungry - just got fed at around midnight.
Which basically leaves just one explanation: Simon is evil.
I find myself wearily resenting being made to lose my cool. Not that I've done anything to demonstrate my loss of cool, but I can feel my lack of cool distinctly - it feels like being at school with a big rip in the ass of your jeans. The wife asked if I'm OK, and I am. Basically. Just, you know, not cool.
She's lost her cool too, though. The baby has been quiet for 5 minutes - maybe - and after a small sneeze escaped from me, she hissed "FUCK!" and glowered at me like I was about to smother the baby with a plastic bag. Which, admittedly, has crossed my addled mind in a non-serious sort of way - but she probably didn't know that.
I should also mention that we're in the living room. Because we're afraid of going back into the bedroom, and possibly waking the Evil One. Today, I'm moving his crib back into his own room. We moved it into ours to make room for guests during the holidays. And also because we thought it was cozy to have him near us. Because we're fucking idiots.
The part that really drives me nuts, though, is that the two hours of hell we just went through, and all the others like it, are going to be sanitized in the wife's memory. All too soon, she'll smile at me and say, "It wasn't that bad." Just like the pregnancy itself, which has been transformed in her mind into a purely magical fuzzy-happy time of smiles and laughter. Something that I have reconciling with my own memories of terrified doctors visits, watching her spend a solid three months with perpetual nausea, of being yelled and cried at, and culminating with watching her rip in half and the midwife fighting to stop her arterial spurts of blood. Which isn't to say that there wasn't magic or fuzzy-happiness or smiles or laughter - they just weren't the entirety of it. As I recall it.
So, when the memory of this horror has faded, I wish there was some way of validating my own vivid memory of this night of suffering. I can't really argue that these aren't The Good Old Days; they're pretty damn good, after all. It's just that they're also The Bad Old Days too. Because all of this - career, marriage, parenthood - is simultaneously better than I thought it would be, and a hell of a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.