I planned to spend the evening exchanging texts with Sara about how the twins fared in their first swimming pool experience and writing about that. It was not to be. I won't go into how I did it, but I've effectively killed my phone, so I won't be sending or receiving any texts for awhile.
So I'm improvising.
This may be hard to believe, but baby Jack has taken a liking to me. He stares at me curiously whenever I'm around. Maybe more in a slack-jawed than curious way, but why split hairs. I have been able to captivate and/or make him stop crying several times by making my "snack hands" gesture at him - an example of which I would record and post had I not killed my phone. It's not complicated, though. I hold both hands out and wiggle my fingers around, saying "snaaaacks". Probably even more surprising than the fact that the mini-man seems to like me is the fact that I actually have held a baby. I perhaps would not have held him (for a good 20 minutes, maybe more) on Friday night had Chris not not put him in my lap. But so there.
I have this to say about my baby-holding experience: that kid's built like a Vienna sausage*.
I started out looking up the dimensions of a Vienna sausage so I could see how far off I was in guessing his proportions. I found out that a Vienna sausage is about 3/4 of an inch in diameter and 2 inches long - so both short and stout, like Jack, but I don't know how long Jack is, so I can't say whether that width/length ratio translates accurately to baby. But in looking up sausage dimensions I also ended up with all the nutritional information in front of me, so I did a little math. One Vienna sausage is about 6.25 grams and 37 calories. Fat content: 3 grams (1 saturated, 2 monounsaturated). 14 mg cholesterol, 155 mg sodium, 16 mg potassium, and 2 g protein. 1% recommended daily intake of iron. Jack is 17 pounds. Presuming he is made of the same stuff as a Vienna sausage, that translates to 44,921 calories, 3642 grams of fat (1214 saturated, 2428 monounsaturated), 18.2 grams cholesterol, 19 grams sodium, 19.7 grams potassium and 2428 grams of protein.
I read Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal in first or second year. For anyone not in the know, this is a satirical essay from 1729 wherein he suggests that the impoverished parents of Ireland would benefit financially if they sold their babies to the upper classes as cuts of meat, in that they would be spared the burden of feeding them and put a few dollars in their pockets at the same time. He also pointed out that adding baby to the menu would diversify local cuisine**.
Based on the above statistics, it is clear that baby would not make for a healthy meal. Or snack. I know that Swift was making a point and not actually championing either infantcide or cannibalism: I still respectfully suggest that eating babies is probably not the best idea. All fat. No nutrition***.
For educational purposes, I also tried to look up which species of fauna eat their young, and why, but that proved too much zoology for me. I remembered from childhood that you had to be careful with hamster babies, otherwise their mothers might eat them, so I satisfied myself with that****.
*Our connection is possibly a shared love of snacks. He is a portly fellow.
**oddly, when I looked up summaries of A Modest Proposal to make sure I wasn't getting my limited details wrong, I kept getting pop-up advertisements for Popeye's Chicken.
***Nutrition aside, I also learned that a nice Gewerztraminer is the suggested wine pairing for Vienna sausages. As a vegetarian, it is doubtful that there are any sausages - or babies - in my future, but a nice Gewerztraminer might not be out of the question.
****I've underlined some pertinent parts:
•Hamsters eat their litter for many reasons. If the litter is not weaned and you touch them then most of the time the mom will not smell her scent and might not care for them which is one way they will die, or she feels they are a threat so she will eat them.
•After a mother hamster gets pregnant you have to separate them from the males. They get stressed. That will cause them to eat their young as well. And the males try to take over.
•Another reason is the mother's overcrowding and territorial instincts. If you have too many hamsters in one cage, the mom will feel that there is not any to protect her babies anymore and will start eating them.
•Usually because she feels that they are under threat or she cannot cope with that many babies.
•Perhaps she does not feel safe. Perhaps she is underfed or missing some kind of nutrition.
•Typically a mother hamster needs to feel protected from people and other hamsters, with a comfortable partially secluded area. This may be a small nest box or a area piled high with shavings and litter, in a separate cage from other hamsters. Try not to disturb her too much when she has very young with her. Keep other pets away as well.
Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_do_Hamsters_eat_their_babies#ixzz1ne7Xc7Cm
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