Buns do all sorts of things, and since I have only the one bun, I have nothing to compare his antics against. In some cases this isn’t a problem: for example I assume, having seen a lot of it now, that orange poop is normal.

But some things never cease to have the power to make me panic. Not a big, “Let’s go to the hospital right now” kind of panic, but a slow, “What if?” panic, one that has the potential to flower into a full-fledged crisis.

The bun has started wagging his head back and forth in a vehement sort of way, for no particular reason, at any time. It looks like he’s telling me “No way, mom,” but since I’m pretty sure that he can’t actually articulate that yet, I’ve been left to ponder what it does mean. I wonder if he’s got a nervous system disorder, something exotic that I’ve never heard of, but I’m either too lazy or too nervous to research possibilities. So I move on to more mundane maladies.

“He’s autistic. I’m sure of it.” He doesn’t have any other markers of autism, and he’s too young to really identify it anyway, and it just doesn’t seem right. I turn my thoughts to mull over the only other possible culprit.

He’s insane.

Now, he’s not afflicted with that quaint hyperbolic insanity that all of us are afflicted with (“Omigod, you’re totally insane, Midgie!”); I know that he’s actually insane.* And I wonder briefly as he’s wagging his head–and I’m wagging mine because I feel the need to be a part of whatever he’s experiencing, even if it’s insanity–I wonder what it’s going to be like to care for a child who is completely crackers.

And then he stops wagging his head, and I look at him, and he’s just another normal baby again. All a part of the symptoms, I suspect, wagging one second, placid the next.

This morning my husband, being smarter than me in many respects, looked it up to ease my worried mind, and he discovered that many babies do it as a mildly intoxicating form of baby entertainment. He’s giving himself a buzz.

This is something I can get behind whole-heartedly.

Now when I wag my head in response, I realize, “Huh. That really does feel pretty good.” And that if one wanted to point fingers at a nut-job, I’m as good a candidate as any.

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