Good morning, John, and good morning, Alice. And welcome to Earth.

It's a wonderful, terrible place and you are a member of its most wonderful and terrible species. And you're being born into what may be the most interesting time in human history. If all goes well, within your lifetime, humans will walk on Mars, computers will become intelligent, and paralyzed will walk again, absolute poverty will be all but eliminated, and you, Alice, may very well live to be over 100 years of age.

Or, maybe, this advanced, peculiar, unique institution of human technological society will implode, taking all humans and a good piece of the Earth with it. It could go either way, really. In any case, both you and I will be a part of that future, but luckily, you don't really have to worry about any of that right now, because you're a baby. You just have to worry about being a baby!

But nobody ever said that being a baby was easy, and so I, your uncle Hank, have created a simple guide to "How to Be a Baby in Six Easy Steps".

1. You are stuck out here, so get used to it. You probably don't know this, because you're a human baby, but... human babies are born pretty premature when compared to other placental mammals. This is because our heads have evolved to be super big, and they're hard to get out of the mom, after a certain point in development, and so you're basically still an embryo, which is really unpleasant, to be outside of the mother at that point, so it's gonna to suck.

You're going to want to be swaddled and warm, and you're going to want whooshing noises and stuff like that, and I suggest you just cry, until that stuff happens.

2. Speaking of crying, you will discover that making a really terrible noise is actually very easy for you - it's basically just like making any other noise - but you're going to want to look like it's really difficult, like squinch your face up, and get it all red and puffy, and cry. Your vocal chords, right now, are designed to tap directly into your parents' sympathy centers, so that's going to be a useful tool for you.

3. I would suggest that you do a lot of sleeping, but not in like normal human ways. You're going to want to sleep for about two and a half hours at a time. That way, your parents will approach, but never quite achieve REM sleep, which is going to be hilarious when they start having hallucinations.

4. Put stuff in your mouth. Turns out, because we are so underdeveloped as newborn babies, your nervous system is really terrible. So far, complicated sensing, is really only right around here. So if you want to know what something is, you just go... [unintelligible gibberish, as a result of a box in Hank's mouth]

5. Communication is the key to any effective relationship, and you will only really have two ways to communicate right now. One is the crying, which we discussed previously. Crying is something you want to do, just whenever. Pretty much all the time, it doesn't matter really how you're feeling - hungry, sleepy, thirsty, you don't like that smell, your butt feels weird, you're just bored - cry. Just cry, in all of those situations.

But number 6: you have another communicative tool, one you want to be more sparing with, because it is extremely powerful - and that is your cuteness. Be careful with your cute; it is extremely potent. Your cute is not just about inspiring love and devotion and getting pinches on the cheeks, and people saying, "You're so [unintelligible babytalk]!"

Cute is the key to our hope - our ability to see beyond our own lifespan, to feel as if we are part of a continuum that stretches back to the first self-replicating lifeforms. Your cute reminds us that our decisions we make now will someday affect you, and your children, and your children's children, and that you are the next step, and hopefully a better step, in this wonderful and terrible process that we call humanity.

I hope that's not too much pressure - Alice, I wish I could see you right now! And hold you and go, Pffft over your belly. John, I also wish I could see you, but I won't for a little while, but Craig, I will see you on Tuesday.