selective memory.

It seems like some of the parents I go to for advice have a selective memory problem. "Oh, I guess so," they respond when you ask if it was hard dealing with the 5-6th week peak fussiness stage. "Maybe, I can't remember," they say when you try to find out if they, too, spent hours crying in the shower. "Yeah, but then it gets better," they always say when you ask if the first two months were as hard on them as it is on you.

I've always had a problem with selective memory of the other variety. When I was a little girl, my mom started a tradition of including "3 good things" in my nightly prayers so I would go to sleep remembering what was good that day rather than what was bad, which was what I tended to focus on.

So, here's how we want to remember you in your 6th week, Lorelei, playing in the afternoon sun with your dad, cooing and moving all around and being a very cute little baby.



We will try very hard not to remember that you decided to go through a growth spurt the day the power went out and your mom was diagnosed with mastitis and how, even though she needed to be sleeping to build strength and get rid of the impending infection, you insisted on eating every hour on the hour and refused to sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time. We will try to forget how you screamed at the top of your lungs when we picked you up, tried to feed you, didn't feed you, tried to hold you, tried to put you down, or did pretty much anything at all. We will try to forget how tired we were and how confused we were about what to do with you because, well, that's what good parents are supposed to do.