50 days old

   7 weeks old and we haven’t needed a pacifier yet.  Although there have been times that I’ve wanted one… badly.  But I can usually pacify her myself as seen here in her last bath.

This bath was a particularly rough transition.  It’s actually gotten as cold as it’s supposed to be in an Oregon February.  So the bathroom was pretty cool.  My wife undressed the baby in the other room where it was a bit warmer and then brought her into the cooler bathroom where I immediately plunged her into the warm-ish water.  Much crying ensued until she found my thumb.

   My wife is in her second week back at work now and Von Bebe usually wakes up around 4am.  My wife’s alarm is set for 6 so as you can imagine that doesn’t leave much time for her to rest after feeding her at 4.  I therefore bring the little one out into the living room and calm her and we usually end up on the couch until 7 am for her last feeding before my wife goes in for work.

   This morning I woke to the pleasant surprise of watching her suck on her own thumb for a change!  I think it might have been an accident, but hopefully she’ll be able to guide it in there on purpose soon.

   Speaking of her own thumb, check out this hand.  Is that not the most awesomest hand evar!  (Ignore the fuzz caught between the folds of her palm)

So our thumbs are slightly different sizes, but whatever.  As long as it helps to calm her so I can be an ass to check facebook or write in this silly blog.

43 Days Old

Today is my wife’s first day back at work.  For the next 12 weeks we are splitting our days.  She is working mornings and I’m working afternoons. We are grateful for both our employers working with us for this opportunity.  The timing worked out so that if all goes well, our daughter won’t be in day care until she’s 8 months old.

   My wife is a tough cookie.  After 6 weeks at home it was not easy for her to leave our daughter at home.  I think it was a little easier knowing she is with me instead of a non family member.

  So now here I am.  Up until now, I’ve been alone with her for an hour at a time.  But this will be my first real test.  I think already I am failing miserably since she is crying on the couch next to me as I type this.  Hold on a minute…

   Okay, I’m back.  She’s in the swing on the cusp of a hard nap while the Decemberists play on the I-pod.

   As hard as this has all been, my wife and I strongly suspect that a year from now when Von Bebe is running all over the place we will think of how easy it was when she just sat there and pooped and napped all day.  And then the same thing will happen when she starts talking.  My wife sagely said “If she can’t talk, she can’t talk back.”  I image 2 or 3 years from now we will feel the impact of this statement.

   Did I mention that my wife is a pretty smart person?  I can’t imagine what this experience would be like without as supportive a partner.  But that’s a blog post for another day.  

   Meanwhile, here's a photo of me being an ass and not paying attention to my daughter.

40 Days Old –ish

As the days start running together I thought it would be easy to at least keep track of time by the number of days that my daughter has been on this earth (not in the womb).  Especially after returning to work. 

   But it hasn’t been so easy.  It’s hard to keep track when most of our time is spent trying to appease the child.  It was pretty easy at first, but it seems like every time we figure out a way to quiet her, she decides something else is wrong.  Here is my attempt at a football hold.  This seems to work about 20% of the time for me.

When she is “vaguely dissatisfied” as my wife like to call it, I cycle through the list of things that have been effective.  Playing music, moving her up to my shoulder, walking her around the kitchen and shoving my finger in her mouth to suck on are all effective countermeasures to ease the vague dissatisfaction.  But I never know which method to use at any particular moment so I run through them all.  This is, of course, after the obvious triumvirate of standard baby needs: feed, change and burp.  One of these three is usually the culprit, but after all are tried, we enter into no man’s land of “try anything.”

   One of the most effective and disturbing methods is the computer screen as seen here.

We don’t want to be the parents that plop their kid in front of the television while we go do something else.  We don’t want our daughter to be brainwashed by the “idiot box” or have her intelligence sapped by electromagnetic devices.  Judging by the look on her face, it may be too late already. 

  But darn it, it’s hard not to be an ass when something as simple as a computer monitor can be a distraction for our fussy baby girl.

35 Days Old

Our parents tell us how amazed they are with all the new-fangled products and tools out there to help in the raising of infants.  The Moby wrap is one such device that is a miracle because it instantly calms the baby… as long as I’m moving around.  Though I suspect that most fathers 30 years ago wouldn’t be caught wearing a baby if they could help it. 

  The NoseFrida is another such device.  Those bulb nose aspirators are all well and good, but the NoseFrida is a bajillion times better.  It looks something like this:

Yes.  You actually suck the snot out with your own mouth.  I first saw this and swore I would never ever use it and it is the most disgusting thing on earth.  But when you have a crying infant late at night who sounds really stuffed up, you’ll try anything.  It is truly magical and when the baby instantly stops crying because she can breathe again, all is right with the world.  And now that I’ve got a 5 week old, I have seen much more disgusting things than a little snot getting sucked out of a nose.  Like this, for instance:

And all the tools in the world still aren’t going to keep this from happening:

As difficult and disgusting as this whole thing as been so far, I have to say it’s worth every second.  Just for this:

This turns all things assy into awesome.

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.