33 Days Old

   We keep on telling ourselves that we got lucky.  Our daughter is awesome!  She’s not too fussy and sleeps.  And lets us sleep.  Of course, I’d say she’s awesome even IF she didn’t let us sleep. 

   We don’t want to jinx it, but so far, I think we’re doing ok with this parenting thing.  We’re doing lots of laundry and dishes.  The house looks to be in a state of organized chaos.  The laundry baskets are in the living room but full of folded clothes most of the time.  The floor could use a vacuuming.  But overall, we feel…. Ok.

   We go to sleep around 10 pm.  She wakes up for a feeding around 2am.  It takes 45 minutes to an hour to get her back to sleep and if we’re lucky she doesn’t wake up until 5:30 or 6.  Sometimes she’ll wake up 2 times in a night.  But after all the anecdotal stories about babies waking up every 2 hours and taking 2 hours to go back to sleep,  we feel blessed.

   One night this week she actually slept for 10 straight hours.  Too bad we couldn’t enjoy it because we were up every 2 or 4 hours worried that something was wrong.  A couple of inquiries later that day revealed that every parent experiences this.  So here we are with a 4 week old who slept 10 hours through the night.

   Maybe I’m just bragging here.  Chalk it up to my being an ass.

31 Days Old

I love interacting with my daughter.  She's pretty good at smiling.  Though it seems to happen at pretty random times.  But yesterday she smiled at me so I smiled back and she smiled again.  I still don't know if it's on purpose or not.  But it seemed like it had meaning.  Or I'm just a smitten dad.
   This is not one of those times.

The dogs have been great.  I think at times they still don't really know what to do with her.  So any time they come close to occupying the same space, we take notice.  Now we finally get to share the effects of Ricky's tail with our child.  And be asses while we videotape it and laugh.

29 Days Old

Here's a photo from a while ago.  Back when she was even more helpless than she is now.  And boy do I miss it.  

She's starting to figure us out.  Apparently, we're easy to train.  She'll fuss if we're in the room with her, but then she'll calm down if we leave the room.  Then she'll get fussy again if we come back into the room.  Yep, that's my daughter... needing affirmation.  Just like her old man.
   But how can you ignore a face like this?  I think the worst thing we could do right now would be to ignore the fussing and NOT pick her up.
   After all, she's only 4 weeks old and the changes we've see in that short period of time have amazed us and made us realize that this isn't going to last long.  Better enjoy it while we can.  
   Please note the Darth Vader preparing breakfast for his kids T-shirt.  His apron reads "worlds greatest dad". It's a funny shirt, but I'm not sure I could think of an assier dad than Darth Vader.

26 Days Old

Well, I made it to the end of my first week back at work as a father and I am Dog Tired.  

   Speaking of dogs, here's a picture of Von Bebe next to ours.  Well... his feet anyway.  And what this says about scale is either the baby is small, or the dog has big feet.  And since the baby was 9lbs 14oz when born, I guess the dog has big feet.

Seriously, though.  My wife and I feel like we kind of lucked out with our daughter.  She's given us lots of sleep at nights and is fairly easy to settle.  But apparently that doesn't count for much based on my desire to take naps.  I've never in my life wanted naps so bad.  
   Having been back at work, the weekends once again mean something and I am totally going to take advantage of this weekend and nap as much as possible.  'course, it's easy for me to say that now.  We'll see how I did on the other side of the weekend.

24 Days Old

   Every week brings new firsts.  This week bestowed upon me the wonderful experience of bottle feeding my daughter for the first time.  I’ve heard this can be a pretty big deal for breastfed infants.   Fortunately, mine took the bottle like a pro… at first.  She took less than two ounces but didn’t exactly finish with a smile.  I think she realized it wasn’t the same thing. 

   What I didn’t anticipate is the impact it had on my wife.  As we discussed it later, the realization that our daughter no longer needed food via my wife's boob had a negative impact on her.  I can only imagine what it is going to be like when we drop her off at college.

   This video isn’t a first for this week.  She’s been sucking on my finger for a while, now.

   We’ve started calling her a little gremlin.  I think this is because of the look in her eyes.  Sometimes she sneezes/coughs and it sounds a little like Gollum from the LOTR movies.  Both my partner and I do Gollum’s voice at those moments.  I hope our daughter doesn’t hold this against us. 

   I didn’t have a lot of home videos taken of me when I was growing up.  I’m sure my parents had fun with me the way we’re having fun with (making fun of) our daughter.  The joys of modern technology now give us the opportunity to document these precious moments and show them to the future partners of our children.  It has never been so fun to be an ass.   

22 Days Old

  It’s my first week back to work and already the best time of day is when I walk through the door and see my daughter.  She may be crying, smiling or filling her diaper but it doesn’t matter.  My day is made.  

  I had always imagined myself being a dad.  I imagined myself doing all the fatherly things a father might do.  But now that I actually am a father, it is so much better than I ever could have imagined.  And this is simply from the act of coming home at the end of the day.  

   But that won’t keep me from being an ass as seen in this video:

Yes, I realize she’s an individual already fraught with emotions and desires of her own.  But that doesn’t mean I still can’t manipulate her like a puppet or plaything for my own enjoyment.  At least until she starts driving or something.  

20 Days Old

We love looking at our daughter.  We love looking at all the things she does.  Which really isn’t that much since she’s still mostly a helpless flesh pod.  But during these first three weeks there have been some rather small developments which are actually awesome to behold as a father.  Around week 2 the random arm movements actually start to have meaning.  She can almost bat away my relentless attempts of poking her about the face just to get a reaction.

   But this pretty much stole my heart.

When those little digits curled around my finger and actually grabbed it with purpose, I was so proud of her.  Seems like a silly thing to be proud of.  But I am.