kinda like the portrait of dorian gray, only in reverse and with unsleeping babies and less gay

let's take another looksee inside mr. nice guy's mailbag, children! yay! what have people written to him lately? LET'S FIND OUT!!!




recently i received an awesome e-mail from a friend who lives in our nation's capital, on some hill that has apparently been named after a prominent domed building there. she had a baby about seven weeks before we had ours, so she has suddenly climbed the ranks from "College Chum of Mrs. Nice Guy" status to "This Is What Your Life Will Look Like In Two Months, Fear It" status. it is a friendship fraught with fear and awe and authority and respect and mostly fear. want to know why? here is the e-mail, sent on november 9, about her son, who i may have mentioned is two months older than our baby -- a frightening window into the future, a snapshot of our life to come:

-----Original Message-----
From: College Chum of Mrs. Nice Guy
To: 'Nice Guy, Mrs.'; 'Nice Guy, Mr.'
Sent: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 09:47:33 -0500
Subject: sleep is for sissies

I was catching up on my Mr. Nice Guy while my angelic child naps and thought I'd preview 7 1/2 months for you. Last night he went to bed at 7 pm, was up at 9 pm, 11 pm, 1 am, 3 am and 6 am. That is after stuffing him full of solids, both boobs, and a heaping helping of Baby Tylenol. Good times.

oh man, did that ever put the fear of god into me. but you see i am a smug fucker. deep down inside i thought to myself "heh heh, too bad for you, College Chum of Mrs. Nice Guy! my baby is obviously superior and therefore i have no need to worry about the petty afflictions that afflict mere afflicted mortals such as yourself!"

and then the bad thing happened. by "bad thing," of course, i mean the "our baby has decided to stop sleeping in the middle of the night and opts instead to scream until she vomits and starts choking on it" thing. yes, that happened. so i learned something: when College Chum of Mrs. Nice Guy sends an e-mail, treat every word therein as holy gospel. she is our latter day Cassandra, staring into the crystal ball of her baby's bald head.

so imagine my terror today when an e-mail with the subject line "kill me now" appeared in my inbox. no joke, people. here it is:

So, I was up last night with Baby College Chum while he had absolute meltdown from 1 am until 5 am, a new all-time worst night ever Chez Nous. (And do I know why? Not really. He has the sniffles, but no fever or teething or ear infection or anything else that would account for a 4-hour fit of hysterical sobbing. I mainly think the deal went south when I sent Mr. College Chum in to soothe him after nursing failed and that seemed to provoke a volcanic explosion of Extreme Baby Anger.) I was at a bookstore today (buying coffee, natch) and picked up a copy of yet! another! sleep book! The author is from the DC area and they had a big stack of signed copies so I thought what the hell, like it can be worse than what we're doing now. I will provide a full review upon completion of her 2-week sleep bootcamp. Or I won't because I gassed myself to death by sticking my headin the oven at 4 am. Stay tuned ...

oh i am tuned, College Chum, i am tuned. my reception is impeccable; i've got satellite dishes and elephantine antennae. never has anyone been more tuned.

UPDATE! mrs nice guy's college chum writes in today with an appraisal of the new tome on sleeping! here's her assessment, as of 14:57:09 on thurs, 17 nov 2005:

All I can say is that I just put him down for his 1 pm nap now (almost 3 pm). The new system is working so very well he was in completely unhinged hysterics for almost 2 hours. Good times.

as lim ladd is want to say: "looooord have merrrcy!" ... looks like it's your turn to kill me now, friend.