Confessions of a new dad, vol. 6: Hearing things

With a newborn around the house, you tend to hear things. My wife and I tend to be unconsciously vigilant about listening for our little one when she is in another room sleeping, either on the baby monitor or with the naked ear. It's not uncommon for one of to stop the other when we think we've heard a noise resembling that of our child. "Was that her?" Sometimes it's her, but often times it's not her, but a noise from outside or the like. Now none of that is outside the range of normalcy for parents of a young baby. But we hear other things too, which may or may not make us a little crazy.

I'll think I hear a peep or cry through the monitor, when the monitor may not even be on and she is lying in the same room as me. Or the monitor will be on and I'll think I hear her from down the hall, yet no noise is coming through the monitor. Her sleep sheep- which is an ingenious little white-noise machine and is set to calming wave noises to help her go to sleep- I hear quite often throughout the day whether it's on or not.

We also have a couple of little entertainment devices for the little lady: one being a play "gym" which amounts to an elaborate mat that she lies on and looks up on various animals unrecognizable to science hanging above (such as Geebee the ginormous light-up butterfly, or Gloria the turtlebug... and yes, they have names). The other is a bouncy chair where she can sort of recline in while looking at sea life shapes and dancing lights. Now it must be said that both of these things can be a lifesaver. She can sometimes be entranced by them for quite a few minutes, giving us a small respite from entertaining her ourselves. They share another quality in that they both play various catchy*  (*see also: burned-into-the-fibers-of-your-brain) tunes. So common are the tunes heard, and so limited in their variety, we tend to hear them sometimes- even when they are not on. So much so, that if we are in another room and think we hear one, one of us will call out to the other saying something like, "I hear Geebee. Do I really hear Geebee, or is that just in my head?" And to add to the mayhem, throughout the day I will catch myself or my wife humming or whistling these tunes unconsciously.

We recently added a swing to the mix, which as luck has it, plays the same tunes as the bouncy chair. Who needs variety? Right now as I write this I am hearing a couple of the songs from said devices- a quiet tune that makes me think of stately people doing medieval dances in candle-lit chambers, and also a quite jaunty arrangement of Ba Ba black sheep... Yessir, yessir my brain is full.