Where did the madness begin?

My wife and I have two very darling children. Our son, Noah, just recently turned 3 and our daughter, Isabelle (Belle aka Gorg aka Pig) is about 8 months old. Both of our children have been dreams come true. Besides the fact that they are both good looking kids (what else would anyone expect from Brooke and I spawning children?) but they have both been absolute angels from the time they were born. Now, Noah is 3 so we are in the middle of a shit storm but he is a good kid. The reality is he acts just like me which is why we clash so much. Anyway, as I was saying...angels.

From the time both of them were born they have both slept through the night. Yes, we had some rough times (Belle is allergic to dairy and it took us a while to figure that out) but for the most part they have slept real good. We haven't been lucky either....it is the result of good parenting. (I'll go over sleeping conditions in a future post.) Babies are easy to raise, you just have to know how to do it. My wife and I both read countless books before our Noah was born. I was deployed to Iraq and would work a 16 hr shift to go back to my trailer and read parenting books that friends and family had sent me. Very quickly I realized that every book claimed to be the "authority" on parenting and they were all very different. To be successful my wife and I would have to try different ideas from each book and see what worked with our son. I can't tell you how many times over the first year of my sons life this worked for us. You have to try different things with babies and there isn't one solution that works for every child. However, there are some easy steps to take when your newborn starts crying that most new parents simply forget or are too tired to think about.

1. Is the baby hungry? When was the last time you fed your baby?
2. Is the babies diaper dirty or wet? I would cry if I had on a wet, shit filled diaper too and so would you.
3. is the baby tired? You can't keep the little tike up all day.
4. Is the baby comfortable? And yes, this one is geared towards all of the moms that put absolutely ridiculous stuff on babies. Would you want to be dressed up in some stupid thing that rubs your skin raw because someone thinks it looks cute? I think not.

Some of these topics will be addressed in future posts. The reason for this post though is to give you some idea of where I'm coming from and where the title of the blog came from. Which leads me to church...

One day in church I noticed this darling baby girl (couple of months old) that was a little fussy. Her mother sat there throughout church frowning and grimacing at this precious little girl. All I could think about throughout the entire service was, "smile at your baby bitch". Babies feed off of your emotions (yes, I read this in a book). Try calming down a screaming baby while your are tense, angry, yelling, etc. Fact is it is not going to happen. Since the day both of our children have been born, I have smiled at them every chance I get. Whether I'm sad, mad, whatever. I smile and guess what? We have the happiest kids in the world.