anyway.

That works, but yo forgot the most important point

big letters:

DON'T PANIC

Acrosse the top.

There's the occasional kicking thing, too. I always wonder what he's dreaming about when he's kicking because he doesn't know he can move himself yet.

OK, so that's the written text.

Now how does that link to our shared imaginative space?

Look how happy he is to see that nipple! Some things never change.

I wish I'd had that when Andrew was a baby.  We figured it out pretty quickly, but still.

Nothing like pulling up ole Anyway's website at work and seeing a couple nipples staring you in the face.  Glad my computer faces the back wall. ;-D

Peace,

-Troy

Now I want a "troubleshooting your game group" in the same style.

Is there text that goes with this? Or is there some subtlety here that is known only to parents?

Hey Larry!

Read for the author's voice.

As author, I have a certain attitude toward each of the 7 elements of the cartoon (the ???, each of the three arrows, each of the three outcomes) (8 elements if you count my title and text). The cartoon's all about me as a father, and thereby more generally about parents at large, fathers especially.

It's not a diagram, in other words; there's something I'm saying here, beyond the simple laying out of the facts.

Now, if you aren't a parent or a strong parent-sympathizer, a) what I'm saying won't mean much to you and b) it'll probably take some real effort to get. I'm relying heavily on the spark of recognition from fellow parents, the way they'll instinctively read their own parental voice into the cartoon.

So whether it's worth the effort to you to understand what I'm saying, well, probably not, but I have to leave that to your judgement as a member of my audience.

Larry! This is fun. I hope you're not too too frustrated.

It's a story, not a joke. In fact it's three stories that make up one story, kind of like Sliding Doors or Femme Fatale or Run Lola Run if you saw any of those.

Fit character in an unstable situation -> escalating to crisis and resolution -> landing at last in a stable situation.

There are two characters, the baby and the implied parent. The mother in panel 3b isn't a character, unless you figure she's the implied parent in all the other panels. (I don't figure that, but you could.)

What you need to bring with you to read the story is: a parent's instinctive identification of the situation as existing between the baby and the implied parent. The unstable situation at the beginning, the crisis, and the stable situation at the end - they aren't between the baby and her or his bodily functions, they're between the baby and the unpictured parent.

If you want to add nuance to the reading, get the age of the baby, and realize that the baby's not teething yet, but will be soon, and imagine how the illustration will have to change to accomodate that development. Heh.

I'm not a parent, but I certainly remember when my younger siblings were babies.

The question marks belong to the baby and go with his eyebrows and his little downturned mouth. The first panel shows the baby at the exact moment that he stops sleeping peacefully.

Like, "Oh, he's getting restless! What could that mean?" This is the transition from peacful, sleeping baby to adult intervention required. ???

Once upon a time there was a peaceful, sleeping baby. His dad was reading in a chair and he was sleeping bundled up in his little bouncy seat. He was smiling in his sleep and sometimes he chucked his little mouth - he was having happy nursing dreams.

Then, suddenly, everything changed. His mouth went down and his eyebrows furrowed. What was happening to him? He wasn't sleeping peacefully any more, he was on the verge of something terrible. Maybe he whimpered a little - anyway his dad looked up from his book.

"Stay asleep, baby boo, stay asleep" his dad said, gently, also desperately. "Please just sweet jebus stay asleep, I have to read this for class, and my arm is going to FALL OFF from holding you. Just sleep for ten more minutes. Please? Please?"

BUT IT WAS NOT TO BE.

That's the content of the first panel. Unstable situation!