White noise

I've read in a couple of places that one surefire way to get a cranky baby to sleep is to put the baby in a bassinet or car seat on top of a running clothes dryer. Supposedly the combination of the steady background noise and the vibration soothes them right to sleep. I think this advice cropped up before the days of vibrating infant bouncy seats.

Last night we plugged in our window air conditioning unit and fired it up for the first time. We had it on low, but it makes quite a racket on any setting. It's not an obnoxious, rattly sound or anything, but it's like a car distantly revving its engine -- all the time. I was a little bit worried about getting cold, so I crawled into my winter weather sleeping bag (also great for combatting disputes over the sharing of the sheets and comforter) and lo and behold, I slept the deep sleep of the dead. It was great. I hardly moved all night long and woke up sufficiently refreshed to drag myself out of bed by 6:15. Quite a feat for me.

Now that we have the white noise, if I could track down one of the those motel vibrator beds, things would be just perfect. Jared once drew me a diagram of how they worked (something about a big propeller underneath or something) and said he could build one. I'd better have him look into that again.