Oh, this baby. She is very sweet and cute and nice and easy-going, but man, oh man, is she ever one of those wants-to-be-held-ALL-the-time babies. She simply will not sleep unless one or the other of us is holding her, and it is wearing me right out. It feels like the only times I’m not sitting with her in my lap — more often than not with her attached bodily to me — are when I’ve handed her off to Olof so I can get some cooking, cleaning, or chauffeuring done in a mad dash.

Tage was much like this as a baby, with the added delight of incessant screaming, and I admit to not looking back on it fondly. I don’t think that boy napped on his own more than a handful of times before he was two years old. It bears considering, though, that these days he is by far the most laid-back, calm, and easy to deal with of all my kids. Petra and Brynja, on the other hand, were dream babies — so easy it felt shameful — but once past babyhood they did an about-face. Today both of them are rather more … ahem … spirited than I might have anticipated based on my early months with them.

Looking way back in time, I can’t quite get a clear picture in my head of what Lydia was like when she was brand-new. I remember her as a baby who cried quite a bit, but my mom remembers her being very easy. Of course, I was a first-time mother with not a lot of baby experience, so probably any crying seemed like a lot to me. Also, my life was very different then. I’d gone back to work when she was eight weeks old and the stress of the whole situation was off the charts. All things considered, I expect she was a fairly average baby as far as crying and demanding-ness go, neither an easy baby nor a difficult one.

I do remember that she was practically perfect as a toddler and pre-schooler, but that’s probably not surprising given that she was an only child until she was six, and she was nearly always surrounded by adults who adored her. It shouldn’t be too hard in that situation to be well-mannered and agreeable. Though I suppose that could just as well be a breeding ground for self-centered brattiness, so maybe I should give her (and myself) a bit more credit there. In any case, the last decade or so has seen her grow into a fairly average teenager, behavior-wise, so she hasn’t strayed too far from where she started on the easy-versus-hard scale.

So, back to Yrsa … all in all, I guess I’d say she’s pretty average herself, as month-old babies go (while at the same time being wonderful and gorgeous and all-around delicious, of course), so maybe she’ll turn out to be an average kid as well. Upon consideration, however, I’ll go out on a limb and say I could probably deal with rather more bother now if it would translate into less bother later. I’m already looking ahead to my fifties, when I’ll have three adolescent girls under one roof, and I have to say I’d just as soon they get all the bother they can out of their systems now while I still have some energy left to deal with it.