Inventive Ways To Make A Baby Stop Crying

I have one month under my belt as a dad of twins. My kids are awesome, but my kids are babies. Babies cry. Babies cry when something is wrong. They cry when they are hungry. They cry when they are bored. They cry when San Antonio Spurs are on TV. At least my kids do. It has nothing to do with being a HUGE Lakers fan, but I think my twins really hate the Spurs. I was trying to watch their game the other night and my son hulked out. The only thing that seemed to calm him was turning the channel. True story.

Thanks to a bumper sticker I know that you Never Shake A Baby Never Never Never. So with shaking being out (sense the satire) I have had to come up with some creative ways to stop my twins from crying. I may or may not have tried all of the below...

• The baby whisperer. I was one time at a family member's house and they had The Pet Whisperer on their TV. I would rather flush money down the toilet then own a pet so I don't visit this channel. Since it was their house I was stuck watching it. What I saw was some dude who would whisper to dogs to get them to obey. How does this apply to babies? Well, one of the first times my kids started crying I started whispering. It worked. My wife now calls me the baby whisperer.
• The car seat. The car seat should be renamed magic. For some reason putting a baby in a car seat magically makes them stop crying...at least for a short while.
• The car ride. Something amazing takes place when a crying baby is placed in the magic car seat and then driven around. It's called silence. As a parent of newborn twins I don't hear a lot of silence...except when we drive around with them in the car seat. I have some friends who told me they did this late at night because they couldn't get their son to stop crying.
• The Justin Bieber. Now the magic car seat and driving work wonders unless your baby is hungry. We found this out when we left a friend's house around a feeding time. The twins were sleeping and we thought we could make it home before they woke. Plus we had the advantage of the magic car seat and the car ride. Boy were we wrong. About .5 seconds after getting in the car my son, Hayden, woke up. We made the parental decision to speed home to feed him instead of stopping on the side of the road. I tried playing multiple songs but nothing helped...until Bieber. Justin Bieber came on and we got silence.
• The blasting radio. If the magic car seat and the car ride aren't working and you don't have any Bieber then you can try blasting the radio. I'm not sure it really helps them to stop crying but it does make it more tolerable.
• The barking like a dog. I think this scares them, but it does stop the crying for a few seconds.
• The scream. This is similar to the barking like a dog but it involves you out screaming them. I don't recommend this if you have neighbors. Or if you spouse is sleeping.
• The hand under the head. For some reason placing my hand underneath my son's head while he lies in his crib has stopped him from crying, and caused him to pass out into a deep sleep. It is funny to watch.
• The windmill. My brother invented this technique in a late night of desperation. This is where you old the baby high in the air and then lower them making a circular motion. It worked so he taught it to me.
• The mysterious twin switch. One day one of the twins was crying like her dog just died. We don't own a dog so I couldn't figure out what was wrong. I decided to sit her in the crib next to her brother. A funny thing happened. He looked at her, paused, and then started crying. She mysteriously stopped crying. This didn't really help my problem because now I had a different baby crying.
• The calling on the name of Jesus. I may or may not have said in a Biblical tone "in the name of Jesus stop crying." The results have been mixed on this one.

So if you are a parent, a babysitter, or have just spent some time trying to sooth a crying baby then what inventive ways have you used to make a baby stop crying?