The Crank Monster

Ah blogs, you write a few articles and then drop off the world… this tends to be the problem most people have with blogs, so I’ll take comfort in that…

Anyway, it turns out that we brought more than one person home from the hospital. While most of the day Molly varies between curious, sleepy, snuggly, and hungry, right around 7:00 at night, her face scrunches up, she starts jittering around and then she pulls a Jeckyll & Hyde and turns into: the Crank Monster. The change takes approximately 0.03 nanoseconds.

The Crank Monster is recognized by her reddish glow, whipping hands, kicking legs, and open mouth. Her most feared weapon is her powerful, and oh so constant scream. Oh, so constant.

Various strategies such as rocking, singing, dancing, burping, tummy-rubbing, and sacrificial finger offerings all have a one-time value. While they confuse and pacify the Crank Monster the first time, she quickly acclimates to the new behavior and adjusts her strategy by: screaming. The only weapon that can always fight the Crank Monster is: the double-barrel Milk-Maker 2007 (not to be confused with the Widow-Maker 2007, which I hope Kate never orders…).

The Crank Monster’s only natural enemy is sleep which usually only fully overtakes her around 11:30 - midnight. Ah, the joys of parenthood…

Our cats have been wondering just what this new creature in the house is: “It looks like one of them, but it’s about our size… we might be able to take it if it chooses to attack…”

Dudley is his usual fearless self and comes right up to Molly and sniffs her lovingly. Fat Tony has always been wary of anything that makes loud sudden noises, so we were pretty concerned as to how he’d react. After a few days of avoiding (but at least not hiding in the basement), he’s decided that she’s not going to hurt him and he’s learning to deal. It turns out, he prefers one of her bears even more than she does:

And here’s a few more shots of Molly:

OK, I thought this was the most interesting piece of mail we received this week. Amidst all the various coupons for baby products, magazines about baby raising, and credit card offers for Molly, we received this little gem:

It’s a DVD with all the latest and greatest info on both “Guiding Light” and “As the World Turns”. It’s got background info on the plot, character synopses, the latest gossip, who killed JR, and so much more… This way you can bond with the characters and dive right into the soaps, no prior experience necessary…

I’m so stoked. I mean, this is what we had Molly for…

Harry Houdini has nothing on our daughter.

She can wiggle her arms out of anything we put her in. The only consolation I have is that even at the hospital when she was put in her little baby straight-jacket and swaddled by professional swaddlers, she still managed to escape.

And who designs clothes for babies anyway? It takes a good 10 minutes to wrangle all the stuff over her head, get her arms through, round it down to her feet… I’d start crying if someone spent that long jamming me into clothes too. More velcro please…

And while we’re on the subject, baby clothes that say they fit “0-9 mos”? I’m sorry, but if GAP introduced clothing and claimed it fit ages 2-15 they’d be laughed off the market. We spent 10 minutes putting her in a 0-9 mos sleeper this morning and then another 10 minutes trying to find her again… Maybe next fall…

We just got back from our first pediatric check-up and Molly’s in perfect health. Good color, good weight, snazzy dresser… Don’t know what else to say really, so I’ll post a few more pics: