“Well, I think we’ll have fun,” I tell her, lifting her up. “Your mommy and daddy left us all kinds of cool stuff to play with. How old are you?”
Naturally, she does not answer me. I wish someone had told me how old this baby was. If I need any mom tips, I could text Mia for emergency help on how to keep a baby of this age busy. She’s really small, but that’s not much help.
I’m not sure what to do with her, so I just walk around, gently jostling her while I try to figure it out. Since Lydia said she should nap for a while, I assume she has been fed and diapered recently.
“How about your mat?” I ask her. “Your mom said you like to look up at yourself, let’s try that.”
Holding her close to my chest, I drop to my knees next to the mat Gio laid out for her. I support her neck and put her down on her back, but the minute her back hits the mat, she starts fussing.
“Wait, wait, wait,” I tell her, darting over to grab the diaper bag. “Hang on, you know what I see?” I grab the round reflective toy and hold the mirror up over her head and gasp. “Look at that! Do yo
u see that pretty baby right there?”
For about a second and a half, she looks at the mirror.
Then her little face crinkles up and she starts screaming bloody murder.
I try again to get her attention, to show her the reflection in the mirror, but she is not having it. Her little downturned mouth and mournful cry are so heartbreaking, I can’t stand it. I give up and put the mirror aside, grabbing the teddy bear and holding it up to show her. “How about Mr. Bear? Is that his name? That’s not a very creative name, is it?”
Still, she screams, so I put the bear back on the coffee table and pick her up, gathering her against my chest, rocking and shushing her.
That does not work. Apparently she finds it offensive that I put her down in the first place, and outraged by my perceived abandonment, she now wants no Laurel cuddles.
“I’m sorry, I thought you would want to play,” I tell her.
Her screams of betrayal tell me I thought wrong.
Thinking to walk around and distract her with something else, I stand and look around for something to show her. Rafe doesn’t have anything she would care about, but there is a large silver mirror on the other side of the room, so I walk over and turn so she can see her own reflection.
“Look, you see there?” I ask, pointing.
Her head wobbles on my shoulder as she looks up, but then her face crumbles and she shoves her fist into her mouth, sobbing inconsolably.
Damn.
I walk around for the longest few minutes of all time, but she does not stop crying. Not once, not even to catch her breath. My nerves are already shot as I try desperately to think of what could be wrong with her.
“Are you hungry?” I ask. “Your mom said you wouldn’t be hungry for a couple hours.” She is chewing on her fist though, so maybe her mom was wrong? Maybe she only figured she wouldn’t need to eat because she would be asleep.
Walking back into the living room, I grab my phone and text Lydia to ask if there’s any chance Skylar might be hungry. It takes her a few minutes of screaming to text back, and when she does, it’s simply, “Yeah.”
I try putting Skylar down in the bassinet so I can go make her bottle, and boy, does that piss her off. Now she is doubly offended—not only did I put her down once, I repeated the offense. This baby has clearly had it with me, and I’ve only had her for roughly ten minutes.
I pick her back up and try to stop the wailing, but to no avail. My insides are shaking as I haul her into the kitchen and dig out a bottle. Rafe has a Keurig machine, so I grab a boring-ass coffee mug and fill it with hot water.
I make a mental note that his coffee mug situation needs to be fixed. He has white ceramic mugs and black matte mugs, and not a single funny saying on any of them. I can’t live this way.
“We need to buy Uncle Rafe some cool coffee cups.” Frowning, I reconsider, “Wait, is he your uncle? No, he’s your second cousin, isn’t he? You Morellis have way too many babies. Do you know that? I realize I myself am contributing to the problem, but sheesh.”
Skylar does not at all appreciate my commentary on her family’s reproductive habits, and she screams her little head off until she can’t breathe to let me know it.
Now she’s starting to worry me. It was bad enough she was crying, but now she’s crying so hard her little body shudders as her breath hitches.
“Why are you so mad?” I ask, rocking her as I dip the bottle into the coffee cup. “I’m so sorry I put you down, I’ll never do it again. Never ever. I’ll learn to sleep standing up, and steal you from your mommy and daddy to prevent such a thing ever happening again. Will that make you happy?”
While the bottle is warming up, I take her back to the living room to try her binky again. She seemed to like that thing while she was sleeping. Retrieving it from the carrier, I bring it to her mouth, but she’s too busy freaking out to take it. She begins to calm down and starts sucking on it, but within several seconds, she stops sucking it and wails again, like it has only added to her disappointment.
Giving up, I toss that back in the carrier and haul her back to the kitchen.