Good, but Just One Thing

I mildly cursed myself when I said I have a good baby. I do. He is a good baby, but yet there is one part of him that is not good. What could this be? Riding in the car. He tends to cry. Loudly. For nearly 45 minutes. This is the amount of time it takes to get Inwe to school and for the rest of us to get home. Normally, I do not do this task as the preschool is on the way to work for Phill. However, when he is playing doctor I must get all three kids dressed, fed, brushed, and in the car.

I make sure Finwe has a dry diaper, has fed, and is warm while he is riding in the car.  These acts do not keep him from raising a ruckus while we are driving. And, do you know what is not good for a mother and what breaks her heart? You got it—hearing her baby cry when she can do nothing about it. Why can I not do anything about it? Well, I’m in bumper to bumper, stop and start traffic, and stopping to get him out would mean standing and rocking him for the next twenty minutes, so it is best to just power through and make it home.

Sometimes the initial crying is just for oh, ten minutes, and he falls asleep. When we arrive at the preschool I practically drag Inwe out of the car into the school so that the lack of motion does not wake Finwe. This never works. I arrive back at the car to hear Larien yelling, “Mommy, Finwe is crying,” and to the lovely sound of wailing. I used to hope that just starting the car and getting moving would get him to sleep again, but that was false hope. It doesn’t happen. The torture of hearing the wailing lasts until we reach home.

So, Finwe is a good baby. He nurses well. He’s growing. He has no health problems. He quiets quickly when held. He falls asleep at 9 or 10pm and then sleeps until nearly 4am, when he nurses and then falls back asleep until 7am. I have very little to complain about, but I am doing a bit of complaining about the car crying. Oh, I hope it goes away soon. We’re driving down to North Carolina in two weeks.