Screaming from the Edge

Lillian has this interesting habit.

I will ask her a question, and then she will ignore me.

It's an impressive habit, since my first response is that she must not have heard me, so I ask again. She then ignores me, again. This, then, irritates me. I'm a stubborn kinna guy, and not in the habit of being ignored by someone who professes love for me on a daily basis, and to whom I respond professing the same back.

I ask a third time, but add a little iritation, and sometimes a touch of frustration, for flavoring.

So, this morning, around 2:10 in the AM, Lillian wakes me up with a scream of, "OH, MY GOD!"

So, now I'm up, looking for the team of ninjas that have broken into our house, or Keyser Soze, and reaching for my samurai sword, or the 9mm Baretta, and then remembering that I own neither of these, and would most likely harm myself in any attempt to use them against the aforementioned assailants.

Not immediately seeing anyone attacking our bed's comforter, I turn to Lil and say, "What?"

Yeppers, that's right, she does what I described five or six paragraphs above and we go through the whole thing. She's fussing in Porter's bassinet, which sends a chill through me that has nothing to do with the Southern California winter air.

Unknown to me, Lillian had a procedure in which monitors for Porter's heart-rate, breathing, glucouse and cholesterol are constantly being reviewed. When any one of them drops below or above normal, she kicks into psycho-gear, and now has the power to give her husband a heart attack, stroke, and auditing from the IRS all at the same time. Add in the ability to hold your husband in suspense while a train-wreck is looming, and you've got the makings of a Chuck Heston Mini Disaster Movie.

Finally, Lil condescends to let me in on the issue, "Porter was breathing shallowly."

Now, I don't want to be an ass her by knocking my wife. So I won't.

Suffice to say, after I got my heart-rate back ti 186 BPM, took several Valium and two shots of very cheap, very toxic Tequilla, it turned out that Porter was ok, but I may not live to see his first birthday!

Spills, Chills and Thrills

About two months into being parents, Lil and I came to the realization that sometimes you just gotta let the lad cry it out. That's a hard lesson to learn, but we were glad we learned it, and learned it early.

Porter does like to complain about lack of attention, which is something I can relate to. He prefers to be up, facing out to the world, and always bouncing, bouncing, bouncing. He doesn't care whose holding him either. In fact, whoever is holding him, he generally prefers to ignore.

"Yes, good work there, servent. Carry on."

Recently, I'm pretty certain Porter has realized what we're doing. He's a clever kid to begin with (of course he's clever, he's my kid, and that's only where the cleverness starts!), and I think he knows that new parents are supposed to be crazy-tired all the time, and over-concerned about every sniffle, whimper and cough. He's certainly up for fulfilling his duties, and nothing, not a swing-chair he loves to sleep in, or the soft music he likes to sleep to, or the gentle shushing of his parents will deter him.

Which basically means that Porter has been waking up, and by extension waking us up, every hour to two hours to complain about something.

Yeppers, we're on the Porter Roller Coaster of Impending Doom, and this time, there's no Indiana Jones to save our Shankara Stones!