Day, meet Night.

My wife and I have two children. One thing I’ve learned from having two kids is that no two are alike. As a matter of fact, my offspring are diametrically opposed to one another.

Our son is our first-born. As an infant he could not have been easier. He spoiled us as parents. He was the type of baby that may go all day without crying.

He slept through the night on our 2^nd night home from the hospital. I awoke at 6:00 the next morning in a panic. “Why is he not crying? Why did he not wake up to eat 4 hours ago? Is he breathing?” I leaped out of bed to check on him. He was, in fact, breathing. And he was very much asleep.

He routinely slept through his feeding times. We tried wiping his face and neck with a cold washcloth. We tried flicking water in his face. Nothing would keep him awake to eat. We became increasingly concerned. Finally, we called the hospital to speak to the lactation nurse. She laughed at us, and told us to enjoy it while it lasted.

It lasted years. We could take him anywhere. He rarely made a sound. Forget to change his diaper for 8 hours? No problem. Not a peep from him, just a 4-pound diaper.

Then came our daughter. She proved to be just as difficult as our son was easy. As an infant, nothing satisfied her. She despised the car seat. She started screaming the moment her baby bottom touched the cloth. She cried sometimes just to let you know she would soon have a wet diaper.

Here’s a quick anecdote to illustrate the blatant differences between the two.

We took our son for his first picture sitting when he was about a month old. We loaded him into the car and drove to our local Kmart Photo Studio. We were fresh out of college and jobless, and Kmart was the cheapest studio around.

The photographer covered his car seat/carrier with some fabric, placed him on top and snapped away. He lay there motionless for the most part. He looked around, blinked a little with each flash, but never made a sound. We ended up getting some decent pictures.

After that we continued to carry him for pictures every couple of months. The process never got any more complicated than that first time. He would sit on the set, look at the camera, and smile. By the time he was 18 months old, we had a wonderful photographic progression the first year and a half of his life.

We, of course, wanted the same record of our daughter’s first months and years. When she was a couple of month old we were ready to begin the cheesy photo studio album of her life.

My mother gave us a dress for our little girl before she was born. It was a simple white linen gown with some beautiful stitching. We decided it would make a perfect “first picture” dress. We dressed her in the outfit without incident. We slipped some thick socks over her tiny feet, bundled her in some warm outerwear, and loaded her into her child-safety seat.

As soon as the buckle snapped she began screaming and kicking. We gave her a pacifier, which seemed to, well, pacify her. It was only temporary. We placed her in the car, but the pacifier was out and the screams and kicks resumed. By this point she had kicked off the blankets and managed to slide her socks from her feet. The car was warm, so we decided to wait until we reached the studio (I think it was Wal-mart this time) to replace the socks. We tossed the blanket back over her legs and began our trip.

She cried most of the way there.

When we arrived, we decided to skip replacing the socks. We wanted her barefoot for the picture anyway. We replaced the, once again kicked away, blanket and took her to the photo studio.

Once inside we took her out of the car seat/carrier. She calmed down almost immediately.

The photographer wanted to try the same technique we used with our son. Place some fabric over the carrier and place her inside for the picture. We were skeptical. We warned her of our little girl’s hatred of the carrier. The photographer insisted she would get our angel to calm down and get a great picture. We acquiesced.

(I have to give a quick aside here and say how proud I am of myself for using the word acquiesce in that last paragraph. I even spelled it correctly without using spell check! Score!!!)

So, we agreed. We placed our darling crying, squirming baby girl in her carrier and lifted it onto a table. While the photographer moved and set up her camera, Misty and I tried to calm the baby. By this point she was mad as hell. She’d gone from crying and squirming to kicking and screaming.

The photographer got her gear set up and set about trying to calm her subject. She tried dolls. She tried feathers. She tried baby talk. She tried “peek-a-boo.” Nothing worked. The screaming got louder. The kicking intensified.

Finally she suggested one of us pick her up and hold her for a few minutes. We did. She calmed a little, but the crying persisted.

We decided to try it one more time. Maybe, just maybe, she could get one usable shot. Then we could pick our $29.99 package of photos and get home. We placed her back in the carrier. Again came the dolls, and the feathers, and the baby talk, and the peek-a-boo. She only got louder and redder.

By this point she was screaming a scary sort of scream. The kind you hear at the pediatrician’s office as the nurse exits an exam room with a used hypodermic needle.

Her entire head was crimson red; except her brow, which was ghostly white. Eyes squeezed shut. Mouth wide open. Fists balled tightly and shaking. Feet flailing.

We gave up. We apologized to the photographer and packed our things to go home.

I picked up our baby girl and held her as Misty gathered our stuff. She handed me the baby’s socks and asked me to put them on her before we went back out in the cold. I don’t know if her legs were too tired to move or if she was actually calming down, but I was able to get the first sock on with no resistance.

Time for sock number two.

By this point I was in a haze. The screaming, the baby talk, and the feathers had brought me to the point of sensory overload. I slipped the second sock over her foot. Through the fog of my distractedness, I noticed that the sock did not go on just right. I pulled the sock down and tried again. It still would not go on. I assumed a string from the sock had hung on one of her toenails, so I removed the sock.

As the sock came off I saw the string. But when I removed the sock the string was still there. It came, not from the sock, but from her dress. I followed the string up from her foot. In the heat of her fit, my daughter had kicked the hem out of her dress. I pulled the string loose from the dress, but it was still attached somewhere.

I followed the string to her foot. From her foot to her toes. There I noticed that she had not only kicked the hem out of her dress, but in the kicking and flailing had wrapped the thread tightly around the middle toe of one foot. The continuous motion had tightened the string like a tourniquet. The tip of her toe was white from lack of blood flow.

I unwrapped the string (it was wound 3-4 time around her toe.) Her toe turned pink and became pinker by the second. Luckily it was not cut. She did not stop crying, but did calm a little.

We apologized again to the photographer and took our exhausted little girl home.

We learned a valuable lesson that day. Don’t ever let your mother give you a hand-sewn dress for your unborn child. I’m just sayin’.