Grumpy Teeth

Baby's First Teeth
Baby’s First Teeth

It may be true that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned but I think it’s also safe to say there are no torrential tantrums quite like those of a baby struggling with the dual issues of gas pains and teething.

 

And, truthfully, who can blame our quarter-pound progeny? They can’t use words to describe their pain and most babies teething are, for all intents and purposes, immobile. This severely limits their options for expressing displeasure.

 

Like the majority of us, the knowledge they have no control tints everything else in their life with a less-than-rosy tinge. Consider — when you put them on a blanket, on the blanket they stay. Even moving two feet requires a complicated combination of rolling from front to back, leg thrusting and back arching. If it were an adult performing these maneuvers we’d coo and cluck and tell them how sad it is they can’t get around… and get them a LifeCall so the paramedics would respond to their calls of, “Help me! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”

 

We aren’t so solicitous to the babies.

 

Bubby is a miserable wretch. He has two teeth breaking through and a gut full of gas I can probably blame on the broccoli I ate with lunch. That was a poor choice on many levels because A) I don’t like broccoli and B) it smells like toots even as it’s cooking and I know it won’t get better during the digestive process.

 

When it boils down to it, I believe my job as a mother is to accept responsibility for all things wrong with the world from the perspective of my children. Gas pain? Obviously, since he’s still nursing it’s my fault. Ran out of gum balls? I must have been chewing them on the sly! Can’t find the match to that shoe? It’s because I like to keep singleton shoes in a large pile under my bed next to the rolled up socks, to the left of the dust bunnies. Whatever ails you? Definitely my fault.

 

It’s always my fault. But I will refuse to pay for the therapy bills later, instead handing my children a rabbit and saying, “Go… tell your troubles to this fuzzy friend and stop complaining about me.” There’s a chance my children will actually be functional adults as a result of my breaking their heart a million times before they reach the age of five, at least that’s a part of my plan for world domination.

 

Until next time, my friends, I’ll be over here with the miserable baby. Have yourself a quiet evening.

 

 

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