ETC: Did You Happen to See the Most Crabby Baby in the World?

And if you did, was he cry-yyy-yyying?

Now, before you get up in my grill, all "You should be thankful he's healthy!" and "All babies are a precious gift from God!" you have to understand that I love my boy and really wouldn't change any part of him for the world (except the cradle cap; that can go). But it's been a long day.

Some days, young Master Sam wakes up all gummy grins and spends the rest of his day smiling and chortling and squealing with glee, a visual and auditory delight to all he meets. After a day like this, I go to bed with a song in my heart, feeling like a combination of June Cleaver, Julie Andrews, and Mary Poppins, but with better hair.

Then life goes back to normal the next day. And I'm here to tell you that nothing diminishes your sense of self-worth like an angry baby. It's even worse than being growled at by a dog whose owner keeps exclaiming, "I don't know why he's doing that! He's never done that before! He loves EVERYBODY!"

You haven't been on the receiving end of undeserved wrath until you've tenderly nursed a small creature at your breast, only to look down and see that creature glaring up at you with its one visible eye and muttering angrily under its breath, all while sucking furiously. It's like being maitre d' at a restaurant where the customers hate you but keep coming back because, to their knowledge, yours is the only restaurant in this sector of the known universe.

And I'm sitting there forced to take it and I'm, like, "What? I didn't even do anything! Oh, except give you the gift of LIFE. And by the way, YOU'RE WELCOME."

Let me tell you: babies are impervious to sarcasm.

What I'm trying to say here, in my own ever-circuitous way, is that my boy? He's what you call "mercurial". (I'm really glad the word "mercurial" already exists, because if it didn't we'd have to put a team of linguists to work coming up with a new word for what my boy is.) Dizzying highs? Check. Terrifying lows? Check. Creamy middles? Not so much.

I've come to quite respect his temperament, actually. It's made me realize how much I'd always assumed that new babies are all tabulae rasae, ready for our devious programming. Oho, I am here to tell you that they are not. They come with unique personalities and preferences from the get-go, and woe to the person who assumes that these personalities are on scale with their diminutive stature. Small baby = big ego (or is that id? I get those mixed up).

And let me tell you something else: they are impossible to reason with.

But what's a harried parent to do? You can't argue with them. You can't ground them. So you do what I do: you dress them like a Florida retiree for the day. Sure, I won't hit revenge paydirt for decades -- perhaps with a photo slideshow at his wedding -- but it's all I've got.