The Missing Sound

As most of you know, Carter loves his doorway bouncy seat from his Cart Cart and Nonna. The nice thing is that he can bounce away in relative safety as he can't go anywhere but up and down, so you are able to walk to the other room, or go the bathroom, or other short term activities that are within earshot. You can always hear the repetitive sounds of the spring squeaking away with each bounce:

~Squeak, squeak, squeak~

~Squeak, squeak, squeak~

The sound you are listening for and the sound that strikes fear into every parent's heart goes something like this:

~Squeak, squeak, squeak~

~Squeak, squeak, THUD!~ (Likely followed by some form of screaming from both the child and parent)

Luckily, that sound has never happened at our house. What did happen that caught us by surprise was the following sequence as we had stepped into the living room just out of sight for a moment:

~Squeak, squeak, squeak~

~Squeak, squeak, ...


Yup, silence. No squeak, no thud, no noise at all. We stuck our heads around the corner to find the following situation that produced this, now understood, sequence of sounds.

Fast asleep. He had bounced himself right to sleep in lieu of fussing and taking a regular nap. In retrospect we may have missed a few signs of just how tired he was, but he slept peacefully in his bouncy seat, even occasionally "waking up" and reflexively bouncing himself back to sleep with three or four gentle pushes.

At least he is learning to sleep when he's tired, whenever and wherever.