After all other crying remediation strategies failed, Lex is now parked in his bumbo, on the coffee table, watching, bopping to, and cooing at a TiVo’d episode of The Simpsons. On one hand, I feel bad about this. On the other hand, he’s no longer crying.
Update: That lasted all of 12 minutes… now what?
I forget, how old is he now? Swaddling tended to work wonders though he often put up a big fuss while he was being swaddled (we made the mistake of stopping swaddling at about 4 weeks; then we went back to it). Once he was packed tightly in the blanket, I would rock him around (REALLY move him around), it would almost ALWAYS work.
How about a swing (wind-up or battery operated) or one of these?
http://www.babyuniverse.com/pro.asp?id=70573&rc=qIrKRQAoNlfNAnH80Xps&siteid=0041024721
Maybe getting Alex out of the house will help him and you. How about a walk by the river (or in a mall if the weather is crummy)? The distractions of outside may improve his mood. Or the walk may put him to sleep. But a change of scenery is often helpful…
The TV thing is fine. But you’ll know you overdid it if his first word is “D’oh” or he thinks Homer is the word for “Da Da” :)
Do you have one of those Vibrating Musical Chairs? My nephew Shawn loved his at that age. Hang in there!
Aha! I didn’t initially realize that 2 *different* David’s replied…
DavidK: 2.5 months. We still swaddle him at night, and sometimes when we think he’s overstimulated. However, if he’s flailing / wailing, he hates swaddling. He only tends to like it when he’s ready to go to sleep. He does love lots of movement. Held, stroller, or car. For held and the stroller, the faster and wobbly-er, the better.
Laura: Katie: We have a Vibrating Musical Chair. It’s one of the things we try… it’s not as magical as we initially thought it was…
DavidR: We try to get out of the house… a lot of times, though, he’s crabby quite late at night (in the 23:00 to 05:00 timeframe), which leaves only strollering him as an option. Hmmm… hopefully the Simpsons won’t be his role-models… I should switch him to watching South Park instead :-)
[...] In response to the comments in the Bad Parenting entry, I was going to write this up as an actual code loop… [...]