My job as a bouncer

My enemy, my friend.

There's a very funny episode of "Sex in the City" in which Samantha volunteers to babysit for Miranda, who is overwhelmed by her crying baby. Miranda's neighbor has given Miranda an "oscillating chair" that helps soothe the baby, and when the "oscillating" unexpectedly dies and the crying begins, Samantha improvises and sticks a vibrating massage wand behind the baby to keep him calm until mom returns. The mother of the boys I care for told me about this episode (I never really watched the show much) because her boys, too, love their bouncy chairs (as pictured above).

The bouncy chair, like almost everything made for infants, has its pros and cons. It bounces and keeps the babies calm, but someone has to bounce it to keep the babies calm. As younger infants, Findecano and Baren Meneldur (their elf names, a la Sarabeth; the boys will henceforth be referred to as Fin and Baren, because I can't make the accent that is called for over the "c") loved the "Calming Vibrations" that come with this brand of chair. It would help keep them calm and sometimes lull them to sleep. Now, slightly older, they don't seem to notice or be affected by the vibrating, but they love being bounced. It keeps them calm while they're waiting for their bottles to warm (sometimes), and it stops them from fighting sleep when it's nap time. For these reasons, the bouncy chairs are my friends. They are a second set of arms, which is really helpful since these are twin four-month-old boys and I am one woman with one set of arms. The problem with the bouncy chairs is that once you start bouncing, they sometimes don't want you to stop. It's like the stroller -- they'll sleep if you walk them in the stroller, but heaven help you if you go in a store and try to stand still for a moment. They just LOVE movement.

In the past few weeks, I've started to put the boys down in the cribs for their naps, and they'll usually fall asleep. But more often than not (like yesterday), one or both will wake up thirty minutes into nap and need to be either walked or bounced (calmly) in the bouncy chair -- and bounced, and bounced. For this reason, the bouncy chairs are my enemies. Mind you, I'm not a mother, and this is not my home. There's not a whole lot I need to accomplish while the boys are napping. The to-do list includes bottles, baby laundry, safely going to the bathroom, and sometimes lunch. Thanks to the boys' proclivity for BOUNCING, though, I more often wind up in the nursery in the big chair gently bouncing whoever stirs and cries throughout the nap. I've read many a book in this position and wrote several of my papers for my class last fall using this method. If I nod off, as I am wont to do late in the afternoon since it gets dark out so early here, I am awakened and reminded that I have stopped bouncing the chairs. Unacceptable. It cracks me up. For two babies who can fall asleep in the most uncomfortable-looking positions in the Bjorns, they are very particular about where and how they fall asleep in their warm and quiet nursery.

For now, we will stick to the method. The boys sleep in their cribs all night and will occasionally take a whole nap in them, so they're getting the hang of the motionless sleep. Right now, for example, they have both slid off the pillows that are on the floor into positions that don't seem at all comfortable. What are they doing slumped over on the floor? Sleeping.