The Bap Mobile

, a photo by Life As We Blog It on Flickr.

Eliza Skye likes to bap.

My kind friends with babies sweetly refer to her cries as "cute" whereas they cut through me like a razor on Joan Rivers' face. Her baps, on the other hand, do not make me clench my fingernails between my teeth because they are quite endearing.

Back in the early days, I scoffed at those who said that I would recognize her different cries because hell, they all sounded the same to me. Now that I'm past the 3 month mark (which my girlfriends and I decided at lunch today is the first true milestone for new moms), I must admit that although I can distinguish her hunger cry from the others, I have no clue what the other ones mean. I do, however, know which ones are going somewhere dark and evil and which ones will quickly subside.

The baps, if caught at just the right time, will most likely turn to smiles if I play my cards right.. or in baby terms, if I act like a clown and make ridiculous faces and sounds.

Which is fine with me because like all new moms, my main goal in life is to keep her happy... and, um, relatively quiet.

Now that she is 14 weeks old, she finally likes things that she used to hate and I'm not on pins and needles each time we leave the house. I took her in the car yesterday and not only did she sleep for the car ride to and fro and while we were at Barnes and Nobles, she didn't even do her usual 5 minutes of crying before passing out. Instead, she played with her toys and sucked on her bunnies ear.

Each morning, I've been forcing myself out of the house to get some much needed exercise for the mind and body and for the most part, she enjoys these strolls whereas just a few weeks ago, it was a real crap shoot.

Today, we strolled to the train station, then to Target, up to Anthony Davids on 9th and Bloomfield, over to Connie's on 9th and Hudson, and then back to our place in Southwest Hoboken.

And The Cheeks was a good little girl on each leg of the journey. She's starting to love her Bap Mobile and that makes me love her even more.