Pathos of the Lamb

6:04 a.m. -- 4 mos., 21 days

My father knows how to make animal noises. No "bow-wows" or "moos" or "oink-oinks" for him; his are more like barnyard impressions. As kids we thought of him as the Rich Little of animal sounds.

When he barks his signature bark -- that of a midsized pooch, starting with a hint of a growl and ending with a high-pitched plaintiveness -- neighborhood dogs have been known to turn to see the new mutt on the block. We weren't around enough cows to see if they could be fooled, but I always thought Dad's bellow particularly impressive. Cats, goats, roosters -- all sound truly animalistic. He also does a mean Woody Woodpecker.

So the bar is set high when I read Baby A's animal books, of which there seem to be quite a few in our library. This is good, since at this stage Baby A is more in love with sounds than images. The most successful of our daily reading sessions center on books with large pictures and one-word captions, with a soundtrack provided by a father desperately trying to imitate his own father.

Her current favorite is a flip-a-face book. Half its pages are set with generic cartoon eyes, nose, and mouth, while the other half feature semi-crude but recognizable cutouts of animal faces. Baby A's favorite is Cat; when I meow, she twists in my lap to gaze up at the sound. Her second favorite is Chicken, with its combination of high pitch and explosive "clucks." I've read that infants enjoy sounds at a high pitch, which is presumably why adults -- myself certainly included -- so often lapse into girly idiocy in their presence.

Continuing the face flipping, Baby A also approves of Dog (not at Dad's level, but in the ballpark), Pig (snorting is fun, with a couple of "oinks" thrown in to help her recognize the term down the road), Fox (not in Dad's repertoire, so I've improvised a "yip, yip, yip!"), Raccoon (dogged if I know, so I say "Shhhh -- raccoons are very quiet"), Panda (ditto).

Toward the end of the book are facing pages of Lion and Lamb. The first couple of times through, I tried to keep my lionine roar at a mellow level. I need not have worried. Baby A's favorite stuffed toy, along with Pat The Bunny, is Roar The Lion. Mostly she likes to suck at Roar's fuzz (which on a couple of occasions has shown up in her poop), but by now she's inured to the sound that greets her each time Roar is plopped into her lap. So even my loudest "roars" elicit, at worst, a startled widening of her eyes.

Lamb is a different story. As a class, Dad's ruminant impressions have always been among his best, with goaty little bleats or "baaas" emanating from somewhere in his sternum with particular lamb-like resonance. These sounds have long seemed to me vaguely sad, with a forlorn quality made peculiar by the animal's general cuteness and absence of expression.

But I'd never given it much thought until Baby A. Every time she hears my lamb sound -- a pale imitation of Dad's -- her face crumples, she puffs her lower lip out, and she starts to cry. To stop full-blown, tear-filled squawls, I have to hurriedly flip forward to Fox and start yipping. The first time through I thought it was a coincidence, but there's no doubting the effect -- my lame lamb impression strikes her as the most pathos-filled barbaric yawp in the history of the universe.

This new power, like many unanticipated effects of parenthood, must be handled with care. Not wanting poor Baby A to burst into tears every time she approaches a farm or petting zoo, I've been trying to get her accustomed to my bleating sound. So when we're cooking or having tummy time or when she's feeling particularly chipper, I occasionally will break into a quiet, gentle "baaaa." Outside of the reading environment -- sitting in our favorite chair, pawing at the pages, gradually building up from Pig to Panda to Chicken to Lion to Lamb -- the sound seems only to make Baby A look confused.

I count this as progress. M, for some reason, accuses me of cruelty to babies.