Comparison Shopping

Don’t think about the color green. Forget it even existed for just one moment.

If you are like me, you are thinking about green in every shade—from lime green to forest green.

I know that I should not compare my daughter to my son, but I can’t help myself. Last week during a rare walk outside with both kids, a friend said, “You don’t talk about Vivian much, if at all.”


It’s true. I don’t. Compared to her brother, she is an easy baby.

True, she is a newborn, and she keeps me busy with the usual, exhaustive schedule of feeding and changing. Yet unlike her brother when he was a newborn, she sleeps. Vivian takes naps and even sleeps for a nice stretch at night. In fact, she’s sleeping right now. I can type this post with two hands.

The newborn Young Master B did not sleep. In a nod to the “never nude” Tobias on Arrested Development, I called Bertram the “never napper.” I was lucky to have a two-hour stretch without feeding, changing, or soothing a colicky young Master B. Indeed, I can remember going on new mommy death marches—simultaneously walking and bouncing young Master B in the Baby Bjorn during the dreadful summer heat, sweat running down my back, mosquitoes nipping at my legs—because it was the only thing I could do that would yield precious quiet.

Just yesterday, Parental Unit #2 said quite accurately, “Bertram sleeps more now than he ever did as a newborn.” Gentle readers, the reverse is supposed to be true.

Now that Vivian has entered our lives, I know how other moms had the time to get into crafts or cook elaborate meals. Something I always regarded with bewilderment, how could these moms have the time? Clearly, their babies slept. I guess the point here is that young Master B broke his Parental Units’ backs to the point such that anything less—by comparison—feels like a walk in a very green park.