The Rattle Under the Hood of the Car

You know how when your car makes a funny noise, it bugs you and bugs you, so you finally take it into the shop? But then in the shop, you can't replicate the noise so you stand there sounding like an idiot as you try to imitate the sound? That's what the Doodlebug did to me. He screamed all day Monday. He screamed all Tuesday morning. He refused to nap and would only scream. So I called the doctor. And while I was on the phone, he did scream. I admit, I felt dumb calling the doctor to say, "Hey, my baby is crying;" after all, that's what babies do: they cry. But they seemed to think it was odd as well and told me to come right on in. You know where this is going, right? On the way to the doctor's office, he stopped screaming. And, I might add, started smiling. The doctor examined my grinning, gurgling child as I tried to explain how bad the crying was. I felt like a complete idiot as the doc proclaimed my child healthy. Oh, and what do you think happened the second we arrived back home? He started screaming again. Sigh. Happily, he has since stopped yelling (the major suspect was constipation so I gave him some water and told him if he didn't move his bowels, we were resorting to prune juice, and the threat worked) and today I wisely got him out of the house first thing in the morning, which always puts him to sleep. After all, a sleeping Doodlebug is an ecstatic mommy.