Grace and Hazel

Grace’s repertoire doesn’t allow for much fine-tuned communication. In reality, she only has about 3 modes: Asleep, awake and crying. Asleep and awake are pretty much the same all the time (she smiles in both) and crying (usually preceded by snorting) is a pretty blunt tool for getting one’s point across. She cries when she is hungry, she cries when she is cold or uncomfortable….and she cries when she has pooped (this is arguably the same as uncomfortable). The books tell us that many parents can tell the difference between cries and certainly other parents claim to hear “that hungry sound” with Grace, though they are wrong at least 50% of the time. To us, there is not much difference between the hungry cry and the irritated cry. There is, however, one sound that we have come to know and it is 90% accurate. We call it the “poop noise”. If you were to take an adult male goose and gently throttle it while showing it a picture of a nude Rush Limbaugh Christmas dinner with all the trimmings, the last earthly gasping (and somewhat surprised) sound that it would make, would probably sound a lot like the poop noise. We listen from the comfort of our bed as she wakes up slowly with her pig imitation (which is like the cartoon whistling that always precedes a cartoon anvil dropping on one’s head) and we discuss the possibilities, “Do you think she is still hungry?”…”Maybe she has come out of her swaddle…”. And then, every so often, she let’s us know, the way only Grace or a dying gander could, that she demands change!

UPDATE: I am told that there are, in fact, a bunch of different cries for hunger, cold, sarcasm etc. “We” know about all of them and how dare I suggest that we don’t understand our own daughter. I immediately recognized that cry. Um…what are the words I am looking for…Yes, dear.