shaken auntie syndrome

My sister, who is pregnant with twins, Annabelle and I went to see the original and still fabulous Anna Belle Stevens (my grandmother) and the Bronte Bombshells (my aunts) this weekend. And we had a great time. Bronte is near San Angelo, which is about a 7 hour drive away.

Annabelle did great and had a wonderful time and was the perfect baby--except for last night. I want you to imagine the biggest mega atomic shit attack tantrum you can. Throw that out--that's kid's play. Now, I want you to imagine an asteroid, hitting the earth, and the earth exploding, and taking all of the planets with it, which in turn causes our solar system to rip apart, creating a cataclysmic black hole that eats up the entire univesrse. That is what we had last night. She went to sleep and then started coughing. So I made the mistake of checking on her which led to 3 hours of crying and playing alternatively--at one point she put her face next to mine and her finger to her mouth and said "shhhh, quiet." At the 2 and 1/2 hour point, I tried to hit the reset button and we read bedtime books and said prayers again and then I went back to the room where Auntie and I were staying, got in bed and listened to the scream "MAAAAMMMMAAAAA!!!!!!!!" for 20 minutes. Now, Auntie has three hearts right now, so the thought occurred to me that she might have and idea about what to do. She had been awake for some time--we were all awake, except my uncle who is deaf as a post. So I asked her "what do your developing mother instincts tell you I should do now?" She thought about it, and then said "hmmmm, shake the baby?"

I went back to the room and picked her up and cuddled her and eventually, she fell asleep, after crawling all over me and the bed and asking for her ba-pa and to go outside.

Someone remind me to have a CPS home study done on my sister in January, please?

[we joke, but never, ever shake a baby]