Two months later--

Lev is pacing back and forth, holding a screaming Marie. 

"This baby is a demon. This baby is literally the spawn of Satan."

"Do you want me to hold her again?"

He passes her over. "Not like it matters, I won't be able to hear myself think anyway because the baby won't stop screaming."

"You could go out," she suggests, petting the still-screaming baby. "Shhh. Marie, if you don't want your bottle or a change or a burp or a song, there's really only so much we can do for you."

The child is NOT PLACATED.

"I got out this afternoon, got some tempting done. --Are you sure you don't need some time off, I can take her?"

"I think I'm fine? I keep worrying that there's something horribly wrong that she can't tell us about, but I don't know what can be done about that -"

"No, I think it's normal-- she could have stomach problems, we could try a special diet, but the books all disagree about whether that's the cause of colic--"

"Yeah, I know, I just - I feel like we should be able to outperform humans here? Babies sleeping peacefully to angelic lullabies. But no. She's just miserable. All the time."

"Oh honey," he says to Marie. "It's so hard being a baby."

Marie agrees that is is VERY VERY VERY HARD. 

"It won't last forever," he says, partly to Marie and partly to Kairiel and partly to himself. "At some point you are going to stop crying."

"It's supposed to stop before six months, right?"

"Half the time by three months, 90% of the time by nine months."

(Excellent husband who knows excellent things.)

"Good. OK. We can - probably avoid going completely insane for that long?"

"I have such a new understanding of why the baby books kept telling me not to shake the baby. --At least I don't need sleep."

"Yeah. Very very grateful for the lack of sleep deprivation right now."

One year later--

Lev feels that three times a day is entirely too many times to eat. Lev considers himself a person who likes food, and regularly has it as many as four or five times a week. But three times a day is just EXCESSIVE. You wrap up one meal and you immediately have to start planning for the next one.

He considers whether it would be suspicious to miracle up some mac-and-cheese instead of cooking it. 

Marie is HUNGRY and would like her food NOW.

"...seven minutes, Marie," Lev says, surreptitiously causing the water to boil slightly faster than physics would generally predict. "Seven minutes and you can have some mac and cheese with veggies and hot dogs. Won't that be good?" 

Marie is not yet capable of speech, and so she bangs her spoon on the table and babbles.

"...Unfortunately, Marie, we cannot violate the laws of physics. The food will be ready when it's ready"

(They totally can violate the laws of physics but the devil is the Prince of Lies.)

Marie is going to cry about their inability to violate the laws of physics, then.