How to Make a Teletubby Costume

With these six easy steps of torture, you can have a teletubby costume for your ungrateful baby.

1. Clear Out Your Schedule

You think this will be a quick afternoon project? You thought wrong. Expect several afternoons of carpal tunnel and grabbing needles out of your baby's hands.

2. Loosely Cut Out a Pattern

Choose one of your child's frocks and pin it to two layers of fabric. Use it as a pattern to cut out a approximate shape of a child with plenty of wiggle room because let's face it, there will be lots of messing up.

3. Sew Up the Sides

This will loosely represent a sack. Give yourself a pat on the back. Forgot to leave arm holes? No problem! Just cut new holes. 

4. Fashion the Belly

Cut open a rectangular belly on your sack, then sew on a patch of foil. By the way, foil rips and is a very bad material to sew with. Too late to change material? Too tired? Just sew buttons on the inside of the foil and it won't tear quite as much. 

5. Make the Antenna.

Take a wire coat hanger and bend it to the shape of the teletubby's antenna. Try not to impale self. Realize you have no way to attach it to your child. Throw it away. 

6. Put it on Baby

Yah! You are done! Now you can take your baby from door to door and eat all their candy. Isn't that why you made this costume anyway? 

If you were expecting real instruction, let me just say I have no patience and little talent with sewing.  Let this be encouragement to those that think they could never make a Halloween costume. It's only for one night, and it will be dark, and no one will notice! Have a happy Halloween!

I Crack My Baby Up (Happy First Birthday!)

I never thought I was especially funny. I maybe laugh a little too hard at my own jokes: Q: What is a fish's favorite ice-cream? A: Salmonella. Q: What did the pirate say when he got put in jail? A: Arg, I'm an inmatey. Anyway, still laughing over those. But when I had a baby and she could crack her first smile, I realized I'm very funny. I stand up fast, she laughs. I sneeze, she laughs. I scold her, she laughs. So I decided to record some of the things that have made her laugh in her first year of life. Maybe one day, her sense of humor will mature and I will no longer be as entertaining. But I hope not.

Why is Psychobaby Always Offended?

It's okay. It's just her default face.

One day, I was sitting down in a classroom and a classmate walked up to me and said, "Are you okay?" I said, "yeah, why?" I sat up straighter. The classmate said, "you look so puzzled." I relaxed and said, "oh, that's just my default face." A default face is an expression that your face naturally reverts to when nothing is going on. So when my mind is drifting and I am sitting alone, you might see my mouth hanging open, my eyebrows knit together, and my eyes glazed over. That's just my default face. 

Babies have default faces too. If you're lucky, you'll get a baby with a cute default face. Maybe their eyes are bugged open and their mouth is gaping. Good for you. Maybe their lips are perpetually curled into a toothless smile. Good for you again. But if you are like me, your baby has a more peculiar default face. Psychobaby's face is always offended. 

It took me awhile to come to grips with this because as I went on with my day to day life and Baby would look at me with that accusatory glare, I'd think: what did I do? Am I a bad mom? But then it dawned on me that it was just a default face and I could relax. 

Here is a sample of her offended default face:

"How dare you look at me."

"How dare you disgrace me with this bow."

"How dare you give me a Christmas present."

"How dare you take me on a hike. I'll make you pay later."

Creepy Creepy Children

If I were a professor at a university, I would teach a class called, "The Science of Why Children Are so Creepy."

It seems that all good horror films utilize this science. The Sixth Sense, Mama, The Messengers, The Orphanage, The Ring all have children at the center of the plot because filmmakers know their movies will become instantly creepier with a child in it. Why is this? 

Maybe it has to do with the fact that children, especially young children, can't talk. Talking is a way to humanize something or communicate. Without this tool, children seem mysterious and even distant. My baby doesn't say words yet, but sometimes she makes primal grunting noises that are cute during the day, but imagine hearing these noises in the middle of the night in the dark. No talking = Creepy.

Another reason children can be so creepy is because children are so disarmingly innocent and cute. Imagine you see a hairy man in a dark alleyway. You know right away that you should not go there. Hairy men are too obvious in their creepiness. Now imagine you see a little baby in a dark alleyway. It lures you with its giggles and wide-eyed stares. Then, when it's too late, the baby stands up and pulls out a knife. Your stomach drops because, like a blind roller coaster, you had no warning.

Babies are creepy because they crawl. Think of all the things that crawl or drag themselves on the floor: spiders, legless people, the list goes on and on. When babies graduate to walking, they shed some of their creepiness because they become more human-like rather than this mass on the floor. 

It's a simple formula, really. Think of something scary, then add a baby to it. For example: Zombies. Now think of baby zombies. Life just got a lot less hopeful. Here's another: A haunted house. Now think of a haunted NICU. It's almost violating. 

Anyway, why the thoughts on creepy children? My baby decided she wanted to drink out of a cup last week. We gave her cactus juice which looked like blood. The end result? A baby zombie. Some theorize that a baby zombie would be harmless because they have no teeth, thus having no means of passing on the zombie virus. I, on the other hand, believe that babies would make the worst kind of zombie, and teeth or no teeth, they'd find a way.

Is Your Baby Trying to Cause You Bodily Harm?

The answer is yes.

Psycho baby comes equipped with many weapons and innate skills, all of which cause parents and trusting strangers to cry out and beg for mercy. For the sake of time, we will only go into two of these many weapons.

1. The Mouth

Aw, yes, so cute and pudgy and puckery. The mouth is probably the strongest part of a baby's body. It seems so innocent. The mouth comes closer and closer, suddenly you are caught in a death latch. The cheeks puff in and out like a medieval machine. Below is a picture of a hickie my baby gave me. I'm not the daring type, so I've never received a hickie before in my life until now. The red part of my skin is my skin dying from lack of oxygen.

2. The Nails

I'm almost convinced that if I released Baby into the wild, she would be able to find shelter, catch her own food, and defend herself from predators all by the power of her razor sharp nails. She has drawn blood from my face and arms. She does a gouging motion when near my eyes. My brother sent me an accurate diagram not long after I had Baby:

Credit: howtobeadad.com

Baby also likes to do a horse bite. It's a self-defense move where you dig your nails into the flesh of your opponent and your opponent pleads for their life. As pictured below:

I've had friends tell me to cut my baby's nails more. I try, I really do try. Baby seems to sense that by cutting her nails, I am disarming her, so she finds effective ways to evade me - squirming, slashing, not sleeping ever. I have found one way to quell her abilities. It is called the chinese shirt. It is a baby shirt that looks like a robe, but has sleeves that can fold over the hands. She is modeling the shirt below: 

In this picture, the shirt looks like a straight jacket - very fitting for her condition.

In Conclusion

The weapons of a baby are too numerous to explore them all. Let's just say, avoid a baby's mouth and nails, and you're chances of survival will increase dramatically. Probably. No guarantee.

Ways My Baby Has Tried To Commit Suicide

I may be a paranoid parent. The internet doesn't help, with all its sad stories about babies. I've stayed up till 3 a.m. reading about SIDS once. Don't do it. I cried myself to sleep. Anyway, my baby's psycho behavior doesn't help my paranoia. With my baby's recklessness for life, what parent wouldn't be a little twitchy and nervous? Here are the top ways my baby has tried to commit suicide.

1. Drowning

Here is a picture of my baby taking a bath. Though it doesn't look like it, she is currently trying to flip over and lie face down in the water. It's almost like she knows that my biggest fear is drowning baby. This fear was instilled in me ever since I watched The Joy Luck Club. Don't watch it. It will make you cry.

2. Electrocution

There could be dozens of toys scattered around baby, but almost as if it were a magnet, she is drawn to the electric sockets on the wall. We also have an electric heater. It has vents that blow hot air. Her fingers are the perfect size for these vents.

3. Choking

Here is a picture of baby jamming the wrong end of her toothbrush into her mouth. No, I did not plan on getting a picture of her gagging, but it is a common enough occurrence, it's no wonder that I don't have more gagging pictures.

4. Eye Gouging

Below is a picture of baby with her first Christmas present. We were excited for her to use the mallet to hammer in the colorful pegs. But the moment we gave it to her, she jammed the mallet into her mouth and gagged, then tried to gouge out her eyes with the pegs. Needless to say, we took the toy away and will give it back when her motor skills and will to live are more developed.

5. Head Trauma

Baby has begun to walk with the support of furniture. She is a talented walker. She is an equally talented head hitter. I've seen spectacular falls, all of which end with a tearful baby trying to get back up again for a repeat performance. Short term memory loss makes baby a daredevil.

There are many other ways my baby has threatened her life, but let's just say that while she's a psycho, you have to give her props for being creative.

Psycho Poo

In my almost 3 decades of life, I've had a lot of experience with poo. I've had a dog that has excreted death poo (poo that makes you wish for death) that I've had to put in a plastic bag and store in a trash bin on our porch. Then when enough of these plastic bags have accumulated, I take the bin out to the trash truck that comes once a day. You think bagged poo is gross? Imagine 10 bags of poo, swimming in their own juices, sitting on a hot porch. One time, I noticed things that looked like dust on the inside of the trash bin. Thinking it was nothing, I let it be. Then one day, as I was dropping another poo poo baggie into the trash bin, little baby flies flew out from within, and I then realized I had been housing maggots. All this is to say, I've had gross experiences with poo. But yesterday, I had a scarring poo experience from psycho baby. 

It started like a normal day. Baby woke up, happy and crazy. After breakfast, I smelt the poo smell coming from her diaper. Laying her down, I opened her diaper to find a small nugget pressed up against her inner thighs. (She is now eating solids so everything comes out like little nuggets.) I wiped it up, or wrapped it up, then proceeded to wipe baby's butt down. Suddenly, a horrible hissing noise came from her butt. I thought it was just some gas. But then this happened: 

More and more came, twisting and squirming on it's way out. I was ill equipped at the time and fumbled with diapers and wipes as this was happening. Baby thought it was funny to squirm at this time. Just when I thought it was done and I was going in to wipe, the eye of Sauron opened some more and the last watery logs sloshed out. This may seem like a small poo experience, but for some reason I felt faint and deeply affected. Changed. 

I don't doubt it was intentional on baby's part. In any case, we have a new rule. Wait five minutes for all poo to come out. 

Welcome! 

We've all gathered here today to discuss a very important issue: psycho babies. It is a condition that is hard to diagnose because babies are naturally awkward. Eating the toilet brush. Trying to suck milk from an old lady or a man. Sighing loudly through a very touching conversation with a friend. A lot of baby actions could leave a parent feeling confused and thinking: Is my baby socially inept? Or is my baby a psycho baby? This blog will explore in-depth the psycho baby condition, and it will offer hope to many souls who struggle with the day-to-day crazy.

Exhibit A: Psycho Baby eating her favorite toy, a baby toothbrush. At 7 months old, the symptoms are getting worse and worse. Everything must go in mouth, no matter how disgusting or life threatening.