Paisley's New Nickname

We have a new nickname for Paisley.  We (affectionately) call her “Boo-Hoo Baby”.  Here’s how it came about:

I ordered a bunch of bilingual (Chinese/English) kids’ books for Paisley.  We thought it would be a good idea to have them around so that the Chinese babysitter would have some inspiration, and so that we could read them to Paisley to reinforce the language (even though we don’t speak Chinese). 

One of the books that we got was the Mantra Lingua version of a book called What Shall We Do with the Boo-Hoo Baby?  For our linguistic purposes, it isn’t great, because the Chinese is only in traditional characters, and this one didn’t come with a CD, so only the babysitter will actually be able to read it to Paisley in Chinese.  Aside from that, though, the book is fantastic!  The pictures are really good, and the story is great.  Basically, it’s a story of a baby that just keeps crying, while a cow, a duck, a cat, and a dog try to make the baby happy.  The animals keep trying different things, and nothing works until at the end something finally does work.  I read the book to Jeff when it first arrived, and we both really enjoyed it.

Here’s why: Our baby is fussy.  She cries about everything.  I like her a lot, but man, oh, man, she sure is needy!  She cries when she is hungry, when she needs to go to the bathroom, if she wets a diaper, if she wants to be with us and isn’t, if she is tired, if she wakes up, if I am holding her but she wants to also be bounced, if I set her down, if I stop patting her back, etc.  Jeff is a very loud sneezer; he can’t help it.  Almost every time Jeff sneezes (which is a few times every day) it startles Paisley, and she starts to cry.  (I think this ought to be a “you break it you buy it” type thing—if I finally have Paisley happy and Jeff sneezes, I think he should have to be the one to make her happy again.  He doesn’t think so.)

Sometimes Jeff tells me he thinks our baby cries a lot.  I usually tell him I think maybe she is in the 60^th percentile for crying—meaning, she cries more than 60% of all of the babies.  Because all babies cry sometimes, I think.  I don’t know, some days I feel like she’s in the 85^th percentile.  Anyway, we still like Paisley, but I really hope this is just a long phase, or something she grows out of.  And next time (if there is a next time), I think I want to put in a request for a baby that is a little more easy-going.

Paisley doesn’t cry all day long…she just cries kind of a lot, pretty much about everything, and she usually wants 100% of my attention in order to calm down, and I often have to keep giving her my full attention and effort for her to stay calm.  For instance, I carry her in the sling most of every day, but a lot of times being carried isn’t enough; she also wants to be bounced or for me to walk in really exaggerated, bouncy steps.  (That gets tiring, but she doesn’t care.) 

So, for now, the nickname seems really appropriate.  This will go by quickly, though.  She’ll only be little for a short time, so I just need to keep enjoying the fact that she wants me.