Couldn't you just say "I'm hungry?"

As is our usual custom at night, Lynn goes to bed much earlier than me. She's tired all day from dealing with Samantha; I understand that. Samantha usually goes to bed between 8-30 and 9:00. She was down, and Lynn went to bed around 11 or so. So I'm sitting in the living room watching the Rangers / Angels game on TV, and around 11:30 Samantha starts crying. So I go in and check her diaper, at this point, Mommy arrives on the scene.

Mommy was holding her, and her crying continued, and it reached into the sratoshphere. I had already started a bottle for her, and when I came in with the bottle, Samantha took it and it seemed like she tried to suck the contents out of the bottle in one giant suck. After a few seconds, mommy uttered the words "Couldn't you just say 'Daddy, I'm hungry'".

I busted out laughing at that, since it seemed that it is what Samantha wanted, and it was some SERIOUS screaming, way past her daytime "I'm hungry" fussiness. But it was a big icebreaker. A screaming child makes things tense, but that was a very funny line by my wife.