Babies in Spaaaaaaaaace

At about 3am last night I came up with a brilliant new theory about children. I know my usual 3am fare is usually somewhat suspect, but this one is frickin' brilliant...really.

Every baby is different (I know, I know: Duh!) so the key to good parenting is understanding your baby's personality and I've developed a fantastic new way of doing this. For those of you operating on too little sleep (like me) or those of you who just prefer crib notes, here's the highlights.

The truth according to me (insert trumpet fanfare here): parents and caregivers can understand every single baby out there if they know how that baby's personality and behaviours translates to stuff you find in space.

Here's just a few examples:

Some babies are biiiiiig eaters. They would be the black holes of the baby world, requiring parents to ensure anything they don't want to disappear stays beyond the baby's event horizon (arm's reach).

Some puke at every turn, leaving a trail of milk curds wherever they go. Gross, but it definitely makes them the Milky Way. Caregivers have to just go with the flow and realize their entire house is going to be filled with little trails of white bits until further notice.

Others are simply unable to stay still. They scoot, crawl and then run through life, often leaving a trail of destruction behind them like comets and asteroids. Since an "Armageddon" style solution isn't practical - nobody wants to nuke their kids - this just requires a parent to be proactive and move anything potentially destructible from the child's path.

Some kids go from zero to one hundred in two seconds flat when it comes to temper tantrums. I think of them as solar flares...or in the worst case scenarios, the Big Bang. I recommend building the emotional equivalent to a solar shield to deflect the impact of the anger radiating in your general direction while trying each and every one of the fifty thousand methods that claim to cure a child of temper tantrums.

And some tykes can't handle being more than a couple of feet away from their mothers so they orbit them like satellites. Again, not a whole lot to do except ensure their orbit doesn't decay to the point that they are constantly underfoot or glommed on to mommy's leg. Eventually, they will break orbit on their own and you'll miss that little satellite more than you ever thought possible.

My kid is like Jupiter...one of the universe's larger gassy giants.

Sigh