We went to visit family yesterday. This meant a lot of time in the car, which meant, for L, a lot of time in the car seat.

We discovered, much to our surprise, that L doesn’t really like the car seat as much as tolerate it. Imagine — she doesn’t like being strapped into a virtually immovable position for hours on end.

We think liquids might help, because she seemed to cry much less violently during that last hour when she was working on a bottle of tea.

In Poland, in summer, potatoes — those ever-present tenants of the Polish table — are always served with fresh dill. All told, I had to scrape of pounds of it during my years there, and no one could understand that I just don’t like the stuff.

“Tea!? You give your 5-month-old tea?” I can just hear the voices now. Well, to call it “tea” is really a stretch. It’s a special granulated herbal concoction J brought from Poland with her. It’s made specially for infants, and it’s made from dill and aniseed. To my nose, it stinks like the dickens, because I don’t like either one. But the girl likes it, and it eases her stomach, and it will undoubtedly ease time in the car.

After all, K and I buy green teas for the road. Why shouldn’t she have something to drink to?

Maybe it’s just one of those paradigms you slip into when your baby is breastfed. Additional drink is like additional food — unnecessary. What we’re learning is that that is only true — duh — for the first four or five months.