Back to School

Niki and I took another class this week to learn how it is one learns how to be a parent. The first somewhat alarming thing was that one of the families on the video from the last class we had on childbirth was also prominently featured in the video this time on the first few weeks of a baby's life. Is this family going to be in every video? I have this weird feeling that one day we'll be in a class about sending Nub to college and there will be a video with baby Mateo, all grown up and ready to teach us how to act as parents of a co-ed.

In any case, this class taught us all about how to deal with crying babies. At one point, we sat in a circle with some other couples as we passed a doll around, everyone needing to come up with a way to soothe this baby until the teacher told us to stop. After about 50 rounds of this, and after everyone had offered every variation of singing, rocking and massaging (and after I had offered to stage an elaborate puppet show for the doll), Niki finally said she would just break down and cry herself if this baby was not soothed at this point, which seemed like as good an answer as any.