I’ve discovered that I like screaming babies.

I’ve got to be kidding, right?

But, no. Over a two-week “staycation,” I got to join my wife as she helped our next-door neighbor who has been juggling being a first-time mom while taking a full schedule of college classes. The mother has the baby most of the time as she nurses and bonds with the little girl. But when a paper is due or a test has to be taken, the now five-month-old infant often is at our house.

The baby would get fussy, of course — being tired or having gas bubbled in the stomach will do that. But more often than not, when I picked her up, she would stop crying, stare into my eyes and listen as I softly talked or sang songs to her while walking around the living room.

One day last week the mom called and in the background my wife and I could hear loud, and lots of, screaming. Apparently it had been going on for some time. I was sent next door to gather up the baby and bring her to our house to give the mom a break.

The mother opened the front door and I could hear the screaming coming from the bedroom. “I can’t get her to stop,” she said as we went into the room. “I’ve tried everything.” I walked up to the baby, said “hi,” she looked at me — and stopped crying.

I’m now officially “the baby whisperer.”

I don’t think there’s any magic. More likely it’s that I don’t have the stress of being a mom/college student. It also could be that I’m making amends for my own time as an infant.

Some time after both my parents had died, an aunt asked me if I ever had wondered why I was an only child. “Why,” I asked? “You were a colicky baby” my aunt said. “You cried constantly for six months.”

I think I have a ways to go before I balance those scales.

Craig Groshart is editor of the Issaquah & Sammamish Reporter. He can be contacted at 425-453-4322 or cgroshart@bellevuereporter.com