In the 80’s, you’d see all these people walking around with boomboxes on their shoulders.

This was before the technological advancement of the Walkman.

If you wanted to take your music with you, the way you did it was to get a bag of cassettes together and get some fresh D-cells for the boombox and you were good to go.

You could sashay down the street with 20 pounds (or 50 lbs. if you were really blessed) of electronics on your shoulder and share your music with everyone around you.

You could turn a ride on the bus into an instant party if you had a big boombox with you.

It was a happy time.

Everyone shared.

This morning, I was thinking how much more efficient a baby is than a boombox.

Our new baby, Sparrow, only weighs about 7 and a half (give or take an ounce) lbs., but when you put her on your shoulder, and she’s crying because she has gas or something, she can really rock our world.

It is amazing how disproportionately loud she is.  She is a little baby still after only a couple of days of being around, but she can really yell.

It’s amazing how loud she can be.  She can really get our attention.

I guess, like the guy with the boombox, we can share, too.

Last night was the first night home from the hospital.

Now, I’m a little tired.  That baby was up some in the night.

I’m not going to say I’m tired if I can remember not to, though.

Jenny is really tired.

I will be on a bad list if I complain about how tired I am.  I’ve got an easier row to hoe right now…I’m not that tired.

This baby, like a boombox on a bus, really dominates our space.

Who would have thought that would happen?  How’d this baby get so powerful less than a week after arriving on our planet?

As much as she can communicate what “her way” is, she gets it every time.

She is smaller than the smallest midget…I mean “little person”….but she can really throw her weight around.

Now is not the time for us to be strict disciplinarians with Sparrow.  It’s too early for us to tell her how to act…to stress that Mommy and Daddy don’t like to be yelled at in the middle of the night.  It’s too early for that.

So, for right now at least, we let her get her way.

If she needs something to eat in the middle of the night, I’m not going to tell her she has to wait until morning.

Jenny will just have to help her with that.

That’s the way we roll.  We’re the adults.

We’re in control.

Technology has advanced now.  We don’t carry our music on our shoulders.  We don’t have giant boomboxes on the bus anymore.

Now we have something much smaller than a walkman, even…smaller and filled with more music than we could ever have imagined carrying with us all those years ago.

Now, we have a little, hungry baby to carry on our shoulders…sleeping and smiling, cooing and crying…checking it all out like a hungry little wise man.

Now we have a Sparrow on our shoulder.

We’ve really come a long way.