This is my grandson Sean Henry......scared ya, huh?!?! ;-) This is actually one of those mechanical babies. My daughter brought it home for the weekend as part of her Family Health class. She chose the name by combining the name of one of her fave actors and the name of my grampa who she never had the pleasure to meet but has heard a lot about. I was tickled about that.
However...can I say that having our household tossed back into 'infant-land' for an entire weekend wasn't so 'tickel-ish?! WOW! it was tough...very tough.
Now, this project was my daughter's responsibility, but by 11:30 on that first night, when I went to her bedroom and saw tears in her eyes because the wailing infant was inconsolable, I wasn't about to abandon her. I mean, she's never even baby sat before let alone take care of a new born. So, my own baby and I bonded like never before, sharing the experience of taking care of her 'baby'...every single minute of it, all weekend long, day and night. It was exhausting but fun too.
I don't know if any you have had experince with one of these mechanical babies. They recognize their 'parent' via electronic chip sensor and they need feeding, consoling/rocking and their diaper changed, etc. These actions are noted within the baby and once the project is done, a print-out is extracted from the baby via the teacher's computer. This allows the teacher and student to see where the student may have not performed an action correctly or missed it altogether. However...my daughter brought this print-out home last night and the information seems to be anything but accurate. Among the misreportings, it seems to list many missed feedings - all of which were to have taken place when the baby was 'sleeping'. See, my daughter was required to keep a log of each and every action she took with the baby...and the records just don't match up. This was really unfortunate and made the experience 'less' all-around - worse yet, the inaccurate reporting left my daughter feeling like she was a bad mom and nothing could be further from the truth.
The teacher for her Family Health class will be welcomed by a lenthy email from me this morning as I checked every piece of 'baby-reported-info' and found error after error and made those facts known in my message to her last night. I know some parents defend their children to a fault these days....but this is not the case here. I've never been more proud of my daughter's performance...she was 100% attentive and never left that baby's side. Something about this project stinks as much as a baby's pooh-pooh diaper and I'm not gonna let this one slide. My daughter needs to take her lumps when necessary......but the only lumps here are the kinks in this baby's reporting mechanism. What a shame after a real learning and bonding weekend.
Anyhoo....all in all, tainted ending or not, we had a weekend to remember. It was exhausting and rewarding, it was fun and horrible, it went quickly yet lasted forever. My daughter learned a lot - most notably that she is in no way interested in having a baby for eons. And although I got a taste of 'gramma-ness' over the course of the weekend, I'm fine not tasting that again for well...eons.
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