The Saddest Day of Noah's Life

Today was a day that will live on in infamy... at least in the mind of the newborn. We tortured poor little Noah today. We made him cry. We didn't stop tormenting him. He cried and cried and cried. We even read about the proper way to do it beforehand. Helpless Grandma Betsy looked on in agony, on the verge of tears, wanting to comfort, but she wasn't able to... Cecelia, in particularly sadistic fashion, filmed and photographed the entire experience. I'm frankly quite surprised that we didn't get any phone calls from the neighbors.

We carefully laid out the instruments of torture ahead of time...

Then we stripped our tiny little baby of his clothes, and perhaps his dignity, too. That was pretty much all it took for the crying to start, but that was just the beginning...

And then... WHAM! We hit him with all we had.

Water...

Soap...

Sponge... Nothing but cleansing goodness.

Grandma was excited at first, eagerly getting pictures to add to her iPhone collection.

In a short moment of compassion, Mom comforted the little one, and even got him to stop crying. He was definitely wide awake, though.

And then, Dad decided that was more than enough compassion. (After all, he cuts people for a living... how much compassion did you expect?) And they tag-teamed the rest of the torturing process.

Poor Grandma Betsy started to change sides. No longer was she one of us, gleeful in causing the despair of the little one, but instead she abandoned us... she started to have sympathy for Noah. Her loyalties to the adults waivered. Her lip quivered. She said, "I never washed my babies when they were crying! I don't think I could do that!"

We didn't let her propaganda get the best of us, though, and we continued with the brutality... allbeit in a slightly more tolerable manner.

And then with a quick diaper change, it all came to an end... a happy, clean, dry, fresh-smelling end. Noah was rewarded with a splendid meal prepared especially for him by his mother, and everyone, exhaused by the experience, promptly retired for the evening.