Our upstairs bathroom has a heat lamp in it. We thought it was kind of pointless and kept meaning to have our electrician (the excellent Tosone Electric) take it out. But we have now discovered that the warmth of the heat lamp and the ticking of its timer, combined with running water in the sink and bouncing him back and forth, is one of the few things that can get Max to sleep at night. Because the little creature is not sleeping so hot.

What do you think of when you picture a baby? I always had images in my mind of something cute and asleep, like this:

Which in retrospect reflects an endearing naivete at best. All my friends warned me about the lack-of-sleep problem, but I don't think I quite realized how far it goes. The reality (at least for the past 4 or 5 days) has been Max waking up every 2 hours or so throughout the night, crying for any one of a number of reasons -- sometimes diaper, sometimes crazy hunger even though Jen just fed him for like 45 minutes just a little while before, and sometimes for no obvious reason.

So we end up bouncing him around, patting his butt, using the heat lamp, and eventually getting him to fall asleep. Now putting him *down* to sleep is a whole different matter and is not working so well -- Max is not a self-soother yet. Sometimes we co-sleep, but sometimes even that doesn't work and I end up sitting on the couch, holding him up to my chest talking or singing until the warmth/heartbeat/vocal cord vibrations/whatever put him to sleep in the early early morning. Imagine this kind of thing night after night:


Oops, sorry about that. I've been watching a lot of Venture Brothers on the DVR at 3 AM so that and the crying baby kind of run together after a while.

Anyway, hopefully this will pass soon. Max is a pain, but not nearly as bad as what we've heard about from our friends who have had colicky babies. Maybe he's having a growth spurt; maybe he's annoyed that it's 26 degrees outside and drafty in the house; maybe he's just a a stubborn little cuss like his parents. But I have faith that someday we'll get back to sleepytime Max: