How to be a professional crier

Here's how you know when your darling baby is screaming so loudly that he may be setting the Guinness record for wailing:

Your cat, who was previously contented to hang out in the bedroom next to the cradle, stares up at the writhing, screaming, purple-faced infant in dismay, and then he jumps up on his hind legs to push the bedroom door nearly closed. Then the cat scoots around the two-inch crack left by the nearly-closed door to get the hell out of Dodge and into the relative quiet of the hallway.

I didn't know Smokey was that smart, honestly.

If anyone ever forms a professional crying circuit, I'm signing William up and buying him the uniform. He could break glass with some of his screams when he really gets wound up. It's a miracle that we still have all our wedding crystal.

But to be fair, he's also amazingly good at eating. He is gaining weight daily, as I've mentioned. I know he'll have broken the 12 pound mark by Monday. Of course, he turns 8 weeks old tomorrow, so he's not that young anymore. (Listen to me, you'd think that he was ready to go off to college or something.) But the boy loves to eat. He'd eat his Uncle Mark's chess pie if he could get his hands on it.