We have this free-standing air conditioner in Elliot’s room.  It’s a gigantic hulking thing, taking a up a big chunk of the space near the window.  It’s the height of R2D2 with the same girth left-to-right, but slimmer front-to-back.  Anyway, this thing is programmable for a certain temperature, and it makes a loud clicking noise every time the A/C part of the unit turns on and off.  And that clicking sound--- as I write this, sitting here in the living room at 6am, listening to the ebb and flow of the noises Elliot makes--- wakes him up.

The ebb and flow of Elliot's noises is rather beautiful actually.  It goes back and forth between truly upset and vaguely annoyed, and not unhappy at all. At some point, if he gets very upset, they cross a line, the noises do, and become real distress and anger and betrayal at his parents and the universe and the Gods of Fate (all of which are somewhate conflated at this age, if I read my child development theory correctly).

But below that threshold, there’s a certain noodling noise that he makes, that’s kind of like a cry, in that it is high-pitched and sounds like it’s coming from a baby, but is in other ways not a cry at all.  There are characteristics to it.  It can have a sloping quality as he drifts off to sleep, trailing away as he struggles to maintain consciousness.  It can be curious, even interrogatory, the cry of a puzzler who can’t quite figure out where the last few pieces go.  It can be meandering, wandering up and down the scale like he's telling himself a story or conversing with one of the stuffed animals in the crib. 

Of course, I have no idea if he is conversing with a stuffed animal or poking a crib slat or has his face against the mattress.  As my high school physics teacher explained years ago (perhaps he had children), the act of observing a phenomenon changes it.  I cannot open the door and watch Elliot cry without affecting the cry.  This has a lot to do with an old house and a sticky door and a street light that is directly over my shoulder as I crack open the door.