Every little thing (s)he does is magic...

Our second baby boy is almost six months old this month (19th). He’s beautiful, a joy, all the proper adjectives a loving parent could wish for. But he’s not been the easiest baby we’ve known. Since his birth, we’ve survived nearly 14 weeks of colic, and all the fun that comes with. We’ve made it through his first two teeth coming in, the drool, the biting, the whining. Diaper rash, the sniffles, some puking...the works.

After six months of saying, “Nope, no more kids,” we finally started getting a bit of a reprieve. Lo, he started sleeping at night.

He’s been holding himself up for months so we felt pretty safe putting him on his tummy where slept like…well, a baby. Now he’s sitting up and playing on his own and if he could just coordinate the arm pushups with the legs pushes, he’d be crawling.

And that, my friends, is where our newest challenge comes from. See, he doesn’t like sleeping on his back, so when you lay him down in his crib at night, you have to put him on his tummy or he immediately wakes up. The last few nights however, as soon as we put him down on his tummy, he tucks his legs under him and pushes his butt up in the air. Sometimes he’ll just stay like that, and heaven forbid you try and straighten his legs out, because 9 out of 10 times, you’ll wake him up. Instead, you just cover him up and pray he sleeps.

For the last two nights, he’s awakened himself by rolling over during his sleep and since he doesn’t like sleeping on his back, he wakes up and cries. We go in, cuddle him quietly, give him a sip of bottle and down he goes…only to wake up again a couple of hours later. The last two nights, we’ve gotten up four times both nights. This can’t go on.

Last night, we even tried the beloved swing, which we don’t generally like to use, but which usually works for 5-6 hours. No dice. Every 1.5-3 hours he woke up. I know babies are a challenge, but my Lord, can’t a parent catch a break? This is particularly troublesome because my wife is traveling for four days next month, leaving lil’ ol me to answer the midnight calls. I’m considering earplugs and toughlove. Cuz remember, I tried toughlove by itself a month ago when my wife traveled and I didn’t have earplugs. After 45 mins, I gave in.

You know what we need, a “Baby Whisperer.” Is there a TV show for that on the Discovery Channel? (Holy Crap! There is!) Here

Letter to the Medela breastpump manufacturer

Dear Medela,

I am writing you to express my profound joy at never having to listen to the sound of your breast pumps again. After two children and nearly a year of my life watching my wife use your product, I am on my knees thanking the good Lord that we are done with your product and that I will never again be awakened to the sound of the in and out suction and whirring noise emanating from your pump that you have so cleverly disguised within a computer bag. In addition, here are a few other things I won't miss about your pump:

• Having to drag it EVERYWHERE we go; on vacation, to church, intermediate-length car rides, etc. You cannot imagine how awkward this annoying thing is...not to mention that in order to save time, my wife uses it whilst driving (to mine own horrid fascination). This is accompished under the cover of a poncho-like drape that conceals what's actually going on.


• The inevitable delay of my wife coming to bed due to having to pump before doing so. This is especially troubling because of the timing involved. As my wife and I equally share responsibilities around the house, each of us ends up putting one of our children to bed, then one or both of us shower while the other putts around filling bottles with milk for daycare the next day, etc. However, when I'm ready to crawl in to bed, my wife is not because she has to pump. Therefore, I turn on the TV and by the time she gets in bed, I'm into whatever it is I'm watching and "relations" subsequently suffers.
  
• That additional cord in the car so that my wife can pump whilst travelling. Between my Sirius radio tuner, my radar detector, and the DVD player for the kids, the last thing I want is yet another darned cord plugged into the cigarette lighter socket powering the pump. Not only that, but you have apparently designed your car adapter to blow fuses every month and unless the wife tells the husband what's going on, she assumes the entire apparatus is bad and spends another $14 on what is really a 25 cent fix. Shame on you!
  
• washing those darned tiny bottles. Nuff said!


• etc.

In short Medela Inc., you have stolen enough of my joy for one lifetime--time that I will never be able to reclaim--and for this I bid you goodbye, farewall, arive derche and adios!

Sincerely,

A Happy Man

Blue / Pink / Indifferent?

It's amazing how quickly one can accept a situation and begin making plans for it, even if that situation goes against everything you've been planning up till that point in life.

My wife got up this morning and announced that she was terribly nauseous. Now, we've been pretty careful with the "relations" since our last son was born, but there might have been a time or two that our teenage years crept up on us and we excused off the hassle and just went with the moment.

With a "Do you think the drugstore is open yet?" she was out the door on a mission to get a pregnancy test. When she came home, she went straight upstairs and faster than I thought the test could return results, she comes back downstairs and says, "We're not pregnant."

Now, I know a lot of people think babies are Gods little gift and so on and so forth, but gift or no, I am not prepared for another baby. I was feeling pretty confident she might be pregnant though based both on today's little episode and a week or two of her feeling a tad on the puny side. In my head, even as I was lamenting, "Oh my LORD what're we gonna do?" I was also planning out how long it would take me to finish off a couple of rooms in my basement so we could still have a guest room if we had to turn our current upstairs guest room into a nursery.

Thank goodness no such plans will be necessary.

Apparently, she only has a tummy bug as she has slept literally all day and thus far neither myself nor the boys have any symptoms (which is suspect considering everyone I know who's had this, has also passed it to their entire household in a matter of hours). I've been careful to keep the boys generally away from her all day so if we're lucky, it'll stop with her. Of course, with the exception of my recent fishing trip, I just don't throw up. Stomach bugs don't affect me for some reason, so I'm not a good gauge of a bug's possibilities.

At any rate, today's over and now I can relax for a bit before my week begins.
And I can guaran-darn-tee that the next time the moment feels right, I'll be puttin' on my hat.

The Rhythm is Gonna Get Ya...

Let me warn my readers that this blog possibly contains TMI (too much information)

Do you remember that scene in the move, "The Family Man," where Nicolas Cage's character, Jack Campbell is laying in bed watching TV and Tea Leoni, as Kate, comes running into the room ripping off her clothes and the conversation runs like this:

Kate: The kids are asleep.
Jack: The kids, hon. Honey.

Kate: Sweetheart, I said the kids are asleep.
Jack: That's just great. Those little monkeys can be a real handful.
(Kate grabs the TV remote and turns off the TV)

Jack: Hey, I was watching that.
Kate: Not tonight.

Jack: Please leavemy socks alone. Wait. You want me...?
Kate: That is the general idea, yeah.

Jack: Oh, well, maybe we should grab a bottle of wine first. Kind of break the ice.

STOP!

That, my friends, is the sex life of a married couple with kids, in a nutshell. Let me explain.

When you're dating, you have that whole, unsure of yourself and each other thing going, and it can be kinda hot. You find out what the other likes, what they don't like. Then as you date and/or move into early marriage, you sorta find this rhythm and it works for you as long as you are able to mix it up a bit. Personally, I found that the job I held when I first got married, which required a good bit of out-of-town travel, worked out really well. I wasn't gone long or too often, but just enough...

Anyway, that all changes once you have kids. First off, there's the "cooling off" period, post-baby where mom is recovering and where normal people are smart enough not to tempt fate by trying to have "relations." Then, if mom is breastfeeding, or even pumping, that introduces a whole 'nuther chapter of unsavory conduct into the mix. I mean, who finds that sexy? I'm sure the last thing most women want to do after pumping is jump into bed.

But we're just talking about personal issues here, now let's bring the kids into the mix. One kid doesn't make a whole lotta difference because they take lots of naps and there's personal time to be had; but then, have two children and you might as well just call the game off due to a rain delay and catch the first bus home because there ain't no playin' gonna be happenin now. Nossir!

But then, let's say you DO find some quiet time. It's a fluke-a rare occasion-and not one to look a gift-horse in the mouth, you try to capitalize on the situation. Trust me, after several months, it's like "the first time" all over again. That rhythm that you had previously is gone, but unfortunately, that "newness" is gone too. So, it's like getting behind the wheel of a car you really like and haven't driven in a while. The clutch is a little sticky and maybe it doesn't steer as well as you remember it, but doggon, you let the top down and take her out for a spin. It's good, not as good as you remember, but maybe that's because you just haven't driven in a while, or maybe it's because the gas is old and some of the pep is gone...whatever. (my metaphors are starting to get to me...)

Anyway, now I finally get what all those TV shows and movies are trying to depict when they show the frenzied married couple trying to have quiet sex in-between kids naps, or after the kids are asleep and before one of the parents pass out from exhaustion.

This, my friends, is what men fear most. That loss of excitement and spontaneity. Perhaps women fear it too, I dunno. I obviously can't speak for them.