So I googled myself yesterday, and was
pleasantly surprised to find a selflink on the second page. It was a
poem I put up on Poetry.com a while back, viewable here.
Now my mornings consist of me
surfing the net on a laptop and trying to make my daughter laugh. Then
at 11:30, rush to dress in business casual and head off to my ongoing
temp gig for four hours. I come home, have a nice conversation with
Joyce as I re-assume parental duties, and she heads off to work.
Fortunately, Frannie is a good baby. Sleeps through the night without too much difficulty. Doesn't fuss much, and goes to sleep easily, as opposed to my son who fought sleep as if he would never waken again. I'm taking her to Southern California in a few weeks, and I'm actually looking forward to the flight—that's how good she is. But the best part is getting her to laugh.
I like laughing babies. I discovered this quite a few years ago when I was on a bus in western Des Moines. Sitting a seat or two in front was a woman with a baby that was about 6-9 months old. The child was staring at me intently, so I did what comes natural to me: I started making faces.
The baby reacted at once by waving his arms and laughing. His mother immediately looked around to see what made her son laugh, but I had returned to my stoic bus face. When she looked away, I made another face. Mom caught me that time.
After that time, I started doing it on a regular basis. Grocery store lines, bus stops, cars at stoplights. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. Francesca likes to laugh, and it's easy to coax her smile into a giggle.
So the best thing I do each day is to make a kid laugh. It's such a simple task with no purpose then a few fleeting moments of joy for someone who doesn't really even know what joy is. It's such a meaningless task, but it seems so full if I am successful. For me, it's like an addiction.
Excuse me while I take another hit.