Wrapped Around Their Little fingers

New parents that we are, Natalie and I are unschooled in the finer points of infant care. The girls have begun waging an ongoing behavior modification campaign on their parents.

Sometimes, in response to a particularly egregious lack of parenting skill, one of the twins will fire back with an all out, four-diaper poonami assault. Most grievances, though, seem to warrant a more subtle response, akin to psychological warfare, in which the offended child holds her breath until she turns beat red, culminating in a cathartic raspberry when her little lungs can wait no longer to breath in the dank air of infant oppression that permeates the NICU (that might just be poop; jury is still out). Natalie and I have taken to calling the impetus for such behavior a "RED FACE OFFENSE".

Harper, in particular, is quite adept at employing the RFO strategy.



We asked Harper to describe some of her top level red face offenses:

• Making me wait for my bottle ... that's a red face offense.
• Talking too loudly ... another red face offense.
• Chubbing my cheeks ... red face offense.
• Changing my diaper ... red face offense.
• Not changing my diaper ... also, red face offense.

We're certain that there are many more RFO-worthy scenarios, but Harper wouldn't tell us about them. Asking too many questions is, apparently, a RED FACE OFFENSE!