Good Morning Merry Sunshine by Bob Greene. Adult Nonfiction. DONE.
I first read the Reader's Digest book excerpt of this back in 1984 or 1985 and thought it was delightful. I don't know why it took me 25 years to get around to reading the full novel.
It is one father's journal of the first year of life of his daughter. He is sensitive. He is thoughtful. He admits that he is in over his head, as all first time parents are.
It is amazing to think that the baby in the book is now old enough to be a parent herself.
When I get a chance, I will post some excerpts here.
My favorite parts are about "Grandma to the rescue", "Helen the Cat and the baby" and "babies love Snuglis".
I think that the next time I am invited to a baby shower, I may order a copy of this from Amazon to give to the Mom and Dad. I am guessing that the regular stores no longer stock it. Amazon says that prices start at $.01 plus $3.99 shipping.
http://www.amazon.com/It is too bad that libraries have started weeding copies of this book as it falls apart and is replaced by newer books, but I still see about 1000 copies available according to WorldCat.
On this blog I will also put in a plug for his book To Our Children's Children, cowritten by his sister. I recommend this book to patrons doing family history research and oral history. I don't buy many books for my personal library, but I have two copies of this one to use when interviewing family members about their memories.
Selections from Good Morning Merry Sunshine
Pages are for hardback, ISBN 0-689-11434-6
ON GRANDMAS
page 16. Susan's mother arrived. [Susan is the author's wife and mother of 4-day-old Amanda]. She's staying at a hotel in the neighborhood; she caught a plane here from Ohio and left her bags at the hotel's front desk and came over even before she had checked in.
It's peculiar how you never notice things about people until those matters affect you directly. From the moment Mrs. Koebel walked into the apartment, things calmed down. She picked the baby up and started walking around with her and talking to her; Amanda Sue was crying just as hard, but just watching Mrs. Koebel holding her made me less nervous. I have no idea how to handle a baby, and Susan, although she's better than I, is still brand-new to it.
But Mrs. Koebel had four children of her own, and two grandchildren before Amanda Sue, and she was great at this. It was as if Susan and I were kids who had never driven a car before, and we were suddenly put behind the wheel; we lurched, we slammed on the brakes, we looked around nervously, we hesitated. Mrs. Koebel was like someone who had been driving all her life. She didn't even have to think about the process.
In the hours after she showed up, the level of tension in the apartment dropped dramatically. I've asked her if she will stay for two weeks, and she has said yes. I may not have learned anything else useful from this situation yet, but I know this: if you're having your first baby, make sure you get a grandmother there as soon as possible. You may think you know everything there is to know about life, but you can't touch her when it comes to this.
ON SNUGLIS
page 83. I don't know who invented Snuglis, but they are definitely the eighties verson of pacifiers.
Snuglis are those baby-pouches that mothers strap onto themselves. The straps crisscross over the mothers' backs; the babies fit into a carrying compartment in front, facing the mothers' chests. Susan wears one all the time when she is going to the grocery or out for a short walk; even if Amanda has been screaming, she is placid within a minute or so of being put in the Snugli. It's like a substitute for being back in the womb.
They were all over the Omaha airport. And of all the Snuglis I saw, not one baby in one Snugli was screaming. They were all snuggling against their mothers' chests and sleeping soundly. Somewhere there must be a baby who doesn't love a Snugli, but I'v yet to see one.
[Library mistress's note: I think baby slings are more popular than Snuglis in 2009, but it is the same idea].
SNUGLI PART II
page 130. I was talking with a man who has a daughter just a few months older than Amanda.
"Have you been through the first cold yet?" he said.
I said we hadn't.
He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. He didn't need to say anything.
"That bad, huh?" I said.
"Worse," he said. "There's nothing you can do. You can hear it every time she breathes, and you want to do something. You call the doctor and he tells you that it'll be over in three days. But you fall apart."
"Is there anything you can give her for it?" I asked.
"Just the Snugli, " he said.
Four months ago I would have thought he was talking in a foreign language.
"The Snugli, huh?" I said.
"Yeah," he said. "It keeps her warm by keeping her close to her mother's boby, but most of all it keeps her upright so she doesn't get so congested."
All of us out here, all of us fledgling fathers, in some sort of New Order of the Snugli.
GRANDMAS PART II.
page 165. Susan's mother came through town today. I got home from work, and she was holding Amanda.
"She's getting so big," Mrs. Koebel said.
The first thing I thought was that she was holding Amanda wrong. She seemed to be gripping her more tightly than I did, and I thought that when she stood up to walk with her she did it too abruptly.
Then I remembered back to that first week, when I thought that Mrs. Koebel was the only person in the world who knew how to hold a baby - and when I didn't have the self-confidence to hold Amanda myself for more than a few seconds at a time.
"Let me have her," I said. She handed Amanda to me.
"My, you are getting good at that," Mrs. Koebel said.
I suppose she holds Amanda all right.
HELEN THE CAT
page 170. Helen is turning out to be a bit of a surprise. She was a real worry to us in the months before Amanda was born; she had always been such a rotten, mean cat in the presence of other people that we assumed she was going to be a major problem with a baby in the house.
As we've learned, of course, that hasn't been the case. Mostly she's ignored Amanda and kept to herself. But in the last few days, something new has developed.
Helen will walk up to within a few feet of wherever Amanda is, and she will stand sentry. There's no other way to describe it. She has become Amanda's protector. I don't know what Helen's worrying about; Susan and I have been doing all right in looking out for Amanda. But now Helen wants in the act.
Tonight she was doing it again: just sitting there, looking around the room, making sure that no harm came to the baby.
"I think we've got a guard cat," Susan said.
I think it's a case of if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
HELEN THE CAT PART II
page 183.
This detente with Helen might be in danger.
Tonight Helen was standing guard over Amanda as usual.
Amanda looked up, smiled, reached out, and grabbed a handful of fur from Helen's side.
Helen raised a paw and calmly swiped it at Amanda.
That may be more ominous than it sounds.
BOOKS FOR BABIES [I had to include this since this is a library site].
page 198. [Christmas] We made certain that we gave her something special: cloth books.
They're just what they sound like: short books printed on cloth. She has no idea what they are, of course; the only reason she likes them is that they feel soft in her hands, and they're colorful, and she can put them in her mouth.
Our theory is that there's a good chance they are good for her. If she can learn - even subliminally- that it's a positive thing to have book in the house, then it's a start. So many factors these days fight agains a child's having any respect or reverence for reading; we figure that if we can signal to her, at this young age, that books are to be equated with pleasure, then maybe she'll continue to turn to them when she's old enough to really read them.
It was great to see her playing with her d-o-g on Christmas day. But it was even better to see her holding and examining her cloth books. Even though she did decide, after the examination, to try to eat them.
AIR-TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS.
page 268. There are times when I think that Susan and I are not so much parents as air-traffic controllers.
With Amanda's constant movement around the apartment, we seem to do basically the same kind of work as controllers do: we each watch her while she is in our particular geographic area of responsibility, and when we see she is about to leave we hand her over to the next person.
"She's crawling out of the living room now; can you see her?" "Yes, she's just moving into the bedroom."...
Kind of like a 727 flying from Denver to Chicago. With a pilot who drools and wears pajamas with feet attached.
