Drunken Monkey 2: Return of the Monkey

Yep, you'd think that by now we'd have learned at least one rule of parenting: know when to leave well enough alone. But sometimes, for us experiental learners, you've got repeat a mistake three or four (bajillion) times before the lesson sinks in.

Yesterday was going amazingly smoothly: textbook-smooth, even. We had gotten into a groove. Feeding? Check. Solo playtime? Check. Group playtime? Check. Giant nap for everyone? Check. We even took some time to walk Aden around in his Baby Bjorn, so he could get used to it, and we could see the hotel (hint for travelers to Guatemala City: there's not a whole heck of a lot to see in the hotel). So maybe we can chalk this all up to feeling flushed with success. Pride goeth before a fall. That sort of thing.

Anyhow, around 6:30, we gave him his bottle, which he sucked down like a champ. And then he passed out. Simple as that: eat, conk out. Perfect!

But the thing of it is, a sleeping baby is like a custard. You have to let it sit. And don't open the oven door too fast! (or is that a flan? a popover? souffle? you get the idea.) When Aden is out cold, you could drive a tank by his head and he wouldn't notice. So we figured that it would be safe to move him from our bed, where he had passed out, to his crib. Bad move, folks. Within seconds, he was 100% back to awake. We tried being quiet and rocking him (he laughed, and bounced up and down like we were giving him a ride), we tried dimming the lights, we tried singing, all to no avail. Drunken Monkey was back in action.

The one upside was that, without his PCP-laced bananas, he was something of a new Drunken Monkey. Like he was drunk on Schlitz instead of Jagermeister - not quite as frantic, though still full of slapstick antics. His big new move this time was the fishy-kiss face. He blew air kisses! Over and over and over again. He thought it was totally hilarious. Of course, the fact that we had given in to the hilarity and were blowing air-kisses back probably didn't hurt. Sadly, the fishy-kiss face proved too elusive to catch on film, so there are no pictures of this just yet - we're hoping that it will make another appearance sometime soon.

Anyhow, after two hours of blowing kisses and falling around like a miniature Benny Hill, Aden's energy finally subsided to the point that we really could rock him to sleep. The upside of the whole episode was that he didn't wake up at all for the rest of the night, and slept in until 6:30! Bliss!