About two weeks ago, I informed Mr. H that it was Canada Day.

“What? Is that why all those French people are driving around waving flags out of their cut-suspension Renaults?”

“No, honey, you’re thinking of Bastille Day.”

And here we are! C’est Bastille Day. Also known as “A baby has been alive for four weeks.” A baby will be a full one month old on Sunday. This week, a baby has learned to smile in response to a smile and make a sound approximating a laugh. She also has some new noises that are sort of screechy, but not crying. More like the caws of a gleeful pterodactyl. She enjoys rolling over to escape the totally bullshit “tummy time” paradigm and following a toy with her eyes. Once in a while she manages to get her hand in her mouth, and that is a good time. Hobbies include “naked butt time” and sleeping up to 4 hours at a time. She also loves to be outside, so I drag my ill-groomed self outside several times a day to walk with her in the sling. Except today, because it is hot as balls.

A baby also broke out in a crusty rash, got diarrhea, and made her distaste for the booger removal apparatus known. Next week a baby has to have a minor surgical procedure to correct a defect in her mouth. I am feeling like a hideous ogre for even entertaining the idea of allowing someone to rearrange my baby. A baby will get a hit of laughing gas for her procedure. I hope they are doing a two-for-Tuesday deal for parents.

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I am never doing this again.

Did I mention I am never doing this again?

This is my last Bastille Day with a four-week-old baby. Phew!

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At some point, I will write her full birth story. It’s a corker. My best theory is that the river flooding scared the bejesus out of her, because she promptly stopped growing and ran out of amniotic fluid (her first version of “I’ll hold my breath until I turn blue,” perhaps). So she sneakily skirted a hippie water birth. I was floating around in the tub and everything, until the midwife basically said “ah, no way, dude” after listening to her heart rate crash. This earned us a white knuckle car ride to the hospital, where a Colombian man I’d never met before cut her out of my belly. I think he yelled “gooooooallllll” when he yanked her out. She also hates baths. No water, plz kthx. She didn’t ask to be born!