Sophie Peterman Tells the Truth, Andrea Welch was my editor on this and when she called me, she said, “Robert, I have a book for you. It’s about babies. It’s about stinky babies.” So, oh, yeah, stinky babies. I know all about stinky babies!
When my daughter Josephine was born, my daughter Isabelle didn’t have the kind of sibling rivalry that Sophie does. Instead, she just suckled onto my wife. So Isabelle is like on onto Ruth, so the baby, you can’t leave the baby off to die. So I took charge of the baby. Okay? So as soon as the baby was weaned, which was only about six months, okay
And in those six months, of course, I was having little tea parties with Isabelle every night, right? You know, “Okay, here.” It was a ritual, you know, the tea party, whatever. Played with blocks for a while, then she’d finally get sleepy. But once I had charge of the baby, babies don’t care. You know, as long as you change their diaper, they’re not uncomfortable, you feed them, they don’t care who does it.
Okay? So Daddy got the job. And for 700 straight nights I walked a little path around the baby’s room with the baby on my shoulder to put her to sleep. And you can’t fake it; the baby knows. If you half walk for like only 10 minutes and the baby’s not out and you try to put her in her crib, she will wake up. You have to repeat. So it may take 45 minutes, it may take an hour and a half.
But you can’t stop until she’s asleep. And then you lay her down as gently as possible. Okay? And if she wakes up, you start over again. So, anyway, so when I got this book, I read the manuscript. I said, “Oh, yeah. I know that world.”
“My name is Sophie Peterman and I am here to tell you that if your parents ever ask, ‘Would you like to have a little brother or a sister someday,’ you should definitely say, ‘Nooo!’ That’s what I should have said three years ago when my Mom and Dad brought my little brother home from the hospital.”
“Everybody came over to see him. ‘Look at his teeny weenie, teeny, tiny fingernails. Aren’t they sweet? Look at his eensy, weensy little toes. Aren’t they precious? What a cute, widdle, itty bitty baby. Getchie, getchie, getchie goo.’ What was wrong with these people? Were they nuts?”
“My name is Sophie Peterman and I am here to tell you the truth. Babies are not sweet, babies are not precious, babies are not cute. Babies are YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE!” So, anyway, so she tells the real truth. And you love babies. They’re not what they’re cracked up to be.
