Most teenage pseudo-intellectuals are obsessed with some philosopher- Nietszche is the perennial favorite, because he's so easy to take out of context and many of those out-of-context quotes are so satisfyingly upsetting. Some prefer Ayn Rand- usually those who overestimate their own intelligence by at least ten points, convincing themselves they are geniuses when they are merely bright. Some part of my own personality has always been a little crantankerous (that's my own word, I made it up!) so just to be different I was into Rousseau.

When my infant daughter is screaming loud enough to wake Godzilla in his watery home (despite the fact that we live in Minnesota and he lives in the Pacific Ocean), one of the most effective methods for calming her down is simply to keep saying “shhh” to her over and over.

I'm not sure why this is, really, but I've heard two theories on the matter. One is just that it's white noise, and all people tend to find white noise calming, whether infants or adults. The other is that it somehow mimics what the baby would have heard in the womb for nine long months, and because of this the baby finds it deeply calming.

The baby has started to get up around 4 am. Only she doesn't really get up- she's half awake and half asleep, not really doing much of anything but not being willing to be put down in her crib either. The result of this is that my wife can't go back to sleep, and nobody who has to go to work in the morning can realistically keep getting up at 4 am.

“Maybe that baby just doesn't want me to be able to play games at all anymore!”

This was my precocious pre-schooler's unfortunate analysis of the situation a few days ago, when the baby had been screaming her head off for about three hours and no one in the house could really do much of anything but try to deal with it.