Does this thing come with a manual???

He is here!!! A star is born!!! Or maybe I should say a little firecracker!!!

While everyone else was enjoying firework displays, spending the day at the beach, eating hot dogs and ice cream and celebrating this great country, I was at Stamford Hospital meeting my precious baby boy, Michael.  While I do love the beach and ice cream I think that my 4th of July tops everyone else's (I'm just saying).

So I have been a mommy for three weeks now and I would not trade it for the world! I love every minute of it... Every time we make eye contact, every overnight feeding, every poop, every pee pee fountain, every swaddle, even every 3:00 screaming fit; however the other day I did find myself thinking... "Does this thing come with a manual???"

So for the past nine months I have heard time and time again "You are going to be a great mommy, you are fantastic with kids." Well...I have always had the opportunity to hand those children back to their parents after the first waaaaaahhhhh...  Well the other day I had my first "I can't pass him back to his mommy cause that is me" moment. Crying does not even begin to describe the noise that this tiny little boy was making...

So I pulled out my mommy bag of tricks and started with the famous Dr. Karp's 5 S's of soothing a crying baby list that they handed us in the hospital.

1. Swaddle- Michael loves a good swaddle! In fact we can usually end right here cause he cries, we swaddle, end of story... Not this time! In fact the swaddle only made him cry harder. On to S number 2.

2. Side or Stomach- "Maybe it's a little bit of gas? Let's do some skin to skin tummy time and that will sooth him right down, right"? WRONG so here I am, shirtless, with my little baby still screaming. The only thing that could make this moment any worse would be the doorbell ringing.

3. Shhhhhh- OK, so S numbers 1 and 2 were not big hit's, this one has to work.... Mike and I take turns shhhhshing (is that even a word?) We eventually turn our shhhhh's into a friendly contest to see who could make the longer shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh (anyone that knows Mike and I knows we love a little friendly competition with eachother).  We are turning our shhh's into songs, first nursery rhymes but eventually we find ourselves shhhhhshing to Lady Gaga and Beyonce and we actually stoop so low as to  do funny little dances around the nursery to sooth our screaming little noise maker.  I am not sure if any of you are fans of the show Friends, but I did in fact try to shhhhh "Baby got Back"I mean it worked for Ross when Emma was crying, why wouldn't it work for Michael. Apparently my baby still needs to watch that episode cause he was not impressed.

4. Swinging- OK down the stairs we go, by this point I think to myself that the baby is going to give himself a laryngitis, I mean if I screamed for 20 minutes non stop I would loose my voice for a week. In fact it happened recently when Mike brought me to see the New Kids on The Block in concert, I screamed so much that I could not speak for the rest of the weekend.  If you were born between 1978-1982 you understand!!! Well there is not much to report here except that the swing was a complete and utter failure. I think at one point Michael actually stopped screaming for one split second but it was only because he saw me trip over the Boppy pillow on the floor.

5. Sucking- OK here goes nothing!!! We are on the final S. This one has to work, I mean Dr. Karp is famous around the world for this list, right?  So Mike sprints back up to the nursery to grab the pacifier, literally leaps down the stairs in a single bound and puts the pacifier into the babies mouth with one graceful motion...We wait....We watch....We wonder??? and WAHHHHHHHH!!!!! The pacifier gets one powerful plop out of the mouth and right onto the floor.

So at this point I actually looked at Mike and asked "Does this thing come with a manual?"  And then, just like that, it comes to me... THATS IT!!! I am a genius!!! How come I didn't think of that sooner!!! Dr. Karp forgot one S... The most obvious one.. I have invented the sixth S!!!

6. SH**- You can fill in the blanks!!! We bring him upstairs, lay him down on the changing table, a few  wipes and a new diaper later and our little firecracker is quiet as can be, smiling at us as if he is saying "I was trying to tell you all along."

So the moral of the story is... Dr. Karp probably made millions with his famous "5 S's" list, however, he forgot the most important one....SHIT

Next time Michael is crying, the first thing I am going to do is check the diaper! Forget the other 5 S's