My First 100 Days: Day 3: Things are not always as they seem

I don’t know where these so-called “medical professionals” get their information. Everyone’s all like “babies sleep 20 to 22 hours a day.” Have these people met an actual baby? I guess I sold the whole "I'm a nice, quiet, saintly child" thing pretty hard when my grandmother was here. (She goes by Nana, by the way, which just so happens to be the chant I say over and over in my head, with this sharp, sarcastic, Mid-Atlantic accent, when the humans are trying to get me to sleep at night.) Seriously, these people ate that up. Then, when the sun went down and these giant humans settling down to sleep, I sprung the surprise on them: I'm not a saint at all. In fact, I hate sleep. Sleep sucks! Do you know how much awesome stuff you miss while you're asleep? Just imagine. I don't have to - I don't plan to sleep for the next decade. I'll take the occasional cat nap, provided someone is cradling me like a Faberge egg, stroking my back or preferably feeding me some delicious milk grapes like a cherub in some Botticelli painting. But no way, no how am I sleeping in that thing they call the “bassinet." It looks like the crisper from an old fridge and I half expect to get out cauliflower chunks in my hair.

Of course, I know that I need to tread at least a little carefully with this strategy. The guy they call "dad" seemed to get a little irritated with me roundabout 4am. Cute goes a long way but I know even that has its limits. As my pal Vasily in the nursery told me that first night: Be careful, comrade. You’re only one unstoppable tantrum away from an Aeroflot flight to Moscow. Wait – is it too soon for that joke? Maybe it is. Cultural sensitivity, like irony, is one of those things that comes along very late in linguistic development, so my barometer’s a little janky.

Here’s as much as I’ve figured out about where the hell I came from. And I warn you, it’s not much. Yet. I asked some kid in the hall what he thought and he also mentioned this stork. What’s a stork? I asked – again -- and he said it’s this sea bird with a big cloth diaper in its mouth that looks sorta like the giant bird on the cereal, only a little more monochromatic. And he carries babies around in diapers and then deposits them into mothers where they are surgically removed by men in rooms lit brighter than Chinese restaurants. Considering the source, you have to take this one with a grain of salt. The kid was like 3. And wearing an Aqua Man costume. I also heard some talk about birds and bees, with those animals serving as metaphors for parents but I had to stop listening to that one or it's really going to gross me out when I'm 14.

The thing is, I’m killing myself trying to remember something before Wednesday. Not to get all philosophical, but it’s as is I just woke up one day and was. It’s like when Dr Who just walks out of the phone booth and he’s somewhere he wasn’t before – say, on a hillock in Islay -- only in this case I never got into the phone booth on the other side, in Oxford or Leeds.

Clearly this matter requires more investigation.

If I can get a little Larry King for a minute, here are a few other observations from today:

It’s hilarious to watch these people marvel over the ongoing adventures in my pants. Apparently the nice ladies in green jumpsuits who like to weigh me on a portable produce scale told them that I should be soiling myself like 4 or 5 times a day. Please - I’m doing that per hour. I’m trashing Pampers like a guy who invested his entire piggy bank in diaper futures.

And what’s the deal with Jason Bay? Seriously.

Ok that’s it for today. I have big people to torture. Here are a few photos to tide you over until tomorrow.

This is me by day: