Later that night... "Waaaaaah!"

"What's the matter with him?" I grumbled to myself as I woke up for what seemed the millionth time. "He's usually such a great sleeper!" Sam latched on for a few minutes, pulled away, and screamed. And farted. And farted again, and screamed again.

By four in the morning, I had had all I could handle of trying to latch him on in my sleep. I picked him up, carried him to his room, and sat with him in the rocker while he whimpered. Meanwhile, I began to regain enough coherency to be able to begin to place blame for the evening's activity.

Sam, it seems, is not a fan of Indian food.

I don't know why that surprised me so much. I did try to prenatally acclimate his little palate to crave my favorite food; I ate at my preferred Indian restaurant as often as I could, squeezing my pregnant frame into the little booths and ordering Paneer Masala or Tandoori chicken with delight. By all rights, and according to all studies, Sam should have arrived on the scene demanding curries almost immediately.

In the wee hours of morning, Sam managed to "download" most of the ingested curry into his shorts. I couldn't even manage a smile of relief. Poking a sleeping Eric hard in the arm, I called his name.

"Wha...?"
"I've gotten maybe two hours of nonconsecutive sleep all night. Your son has just filled his shorts. Please take him and change him."
"No, you do it."

It was then that I finally broke down. I whined and moaned. "Please, Eric! I just need a little sleep! Your curry kept us both awake all night, and I just can't handle getting up right now! I need you to do this one favor for me, please!"

Eric stonewalled some more. He didn't like dirty diapers, it seemed, and he really didn't feel like starting his morning with one. The more I cried, the more he hedged.

Finally, angrily, he rolled out of bed, grabbed Sam, and stomped off to the other room. Through my sleepy haze, I heart the snort of disgust as he uncovered the full product of Sam's labors. After a few minutes of huffing and puffing and gagging, he returned and dumped a newly clean Sam next to me. I opened my eyes to see the face of my husband glowering - and the face of my son, split open into the widest grin I'd ever seen him wear. The grin was directed, unmistakably, at me. It was his first social smile.

I'm glad I was awake enough to see it.

Yes, yes, I know. A seat is just a tool. (Thank you, Aimee, for putting into words that of which I'd been trying to remind myself for some time.) Tools can be abused - used to place babies in out-of-mind corners for long periods for parental convenience - but they don't have to be. In trying to prevent myself from owning tools that could be abused, I'd forgotten a small thing: Sam needed a place to sit. Someplace other than my chest, for there would come a time when I would have to pee, and Daddy wouldn't be around to hold him.

Anyway, we went to buy a seat. I'd made up my mind that if we were going to do this thing, we weren't going to waste money on some crappy piece of aluminum with a life span of two months. I had my eye on a particular chair that could convert to a rocking chair for the toddler Sammy of the future. In the store, we walked straight to the seats, and there was my bouncer.

Not one to risk anything, I swiftly pulled Sam out of his sling and plopped him in the seat. Eric fiddled with the toy bar as I bucked him in. We then stood back and gazed in amusement; Sammy's eyes were locked onto the toy bar and refused to be pulled away by anything. He was staring as if transfixed, and his lips were parted in a half-smile. Obviously, this was going to be a good purchase.

Except for one thing: there was only one on the shelf, and the box was torn, bent, and taped. While Eric waited for a stock person to check whether or not there were more in the back, I walked around with the baby, bouncing him in my arms, as he grew steadily more and more fussy. Finally, we got the bad news. If we wanted a "new" seat, we'd be waiting a few days.

Sammy cried. Well, he was crying to be fed, but crying nonetheless. I sat with him on a bench and nursed while Eric ran to grab a few other things we needed. It was a few minutes into nursing him when I noticed a tell-tale yellow stain on his white onesie. His diaper was losing containment!

We ran to the bathroom, where I discovered that I had already robbed the diaper bag of the clean onesie; all that remained was a terry sleeper, which was far too hot for the day.

A woman stopped by and stared over my shoulder to coo at Sam, who took a break from whining to grimace at her. "What a handsome boy! How old is he?"
"Three weeks."
"Oh! And why is he all red?"

It was baby acne, hitting its peak, and I blushed for Sam that this lady would point it out. "Just a little rash. It'll go away." I later wished I had told her it was measles, or scarlet fever.

I put him in a fresh diaper and returned to the store "au naturel." He continued to fuss, though, so we ended up running out as quickly as we could.

Not one of our more successful outings. Still, he didn't scream in the carseat, which was refreshingly different.