The Great Ferber / Spock / Sears Smackdown

Nothing is more important to young parents than the validation they get from parenting books telling them they're doing the right thing. While some of our friends of successfully "Ferber-ized" their kids, by letting them cry for progressively longer periods of time, our status as "tofu-hating hippies" (THH) meant that stories of babies crying until they vomited meant we'd never be able to handle it. Kate has the uncanny ability to scream herself blotchy in about 40 seconds, I'm pretty sure we're afraid she'd grow tentacles if we let her scream for more than a minutes. (more...)