April 19, 2005

In two states yesterday was a long weekend. And yes, Massachusetts was one of them. It was Patriots’ Day (the original one, not the one that W announced to commemorate 9/11 — and he should know better, as Maine, his parents’ second home is the other state) and the running of the Boston Marathon. And boy was I glad not be running it this time. In fact, it was my first time since 2005 that I decided not to run it (you read that right).

Anyway, I finally took a whole weekend off, the first one since HBomb was born, and was rewarded with happy HBomb (during the day, anyway) and glorious weather. Two perfect 10 days and one hovering around 8.

On Saturday we went to Framingham, about 20 miles west to buy a new couch from Jordan’s Furniture. This wasn’t a planned purchase, but our current down-stuffed couch was losing enough feathers to make our friends wonder if we weren’t killing chickens in our living room in our spare time. I call to Jordan’s and a visit but one of their super friendly reps, resulted in us getting a full credit for the purchase price of the couch, and 14 days to make that decision. If you live in the area, and ever have any doubts about buying from Jordan’s, cast them from your mind. I highly recommend ‘em.

We found a great couch, then took the boy out for Sushi. He slept through the whole thing. Hooray! His first restaurant outing with mom and dad, and not a peep. We then went shoe shopping (oh, joy!) and met another couple with a son who was 1 day older than H and also a reflux baby. It was great speaking with a couple who was going through a very similar experience. Made me feel a little more normal about the whole thing. The going out for lunch, made me feel almost completely normal.

The rest of the weekend, we spent out on the back deck enjoying the weather. Well, that’s not entirely true, we spent some time off the back deck. Today should be warmer than yesterday and tomorrow we should hit the low 80’s! Tonight my parent roll into town for the rest of the week that will end with us going to a wedding on The Cape and spending our first night away from the boy. Weird.

April 14, 2005

Why is the abbreviation for stay-at-home-day SAHD (pronounced, I would think “sad”) Am I sad to be a stay at home dad? Nope. Is Hayes sad that I’m a stay at home dad? He’s crying now, but I don’t think that’s related.

Fact is, this is tough and taxing so far. Lots of work to do and very little time to do it. And I keep picking up new work. And then there’s this little guy, tha apple of my eye, who does his best to make me work for him. Ah, the conflicted life of a stay-at-home-dad.

But I’m not sad. Nor do I think the acronym should be. I propose we stop using the word “stay” in our description. Doesn’t “at home dad” mean the same thing? If we want more respect from the ladies and general public for taking on this most important role in the rearing of our children, I think we would be better served to be know as AHDs (”ad”s). Afterall, we’re a wonderful addition to our child’s upbringing, not a reason to get sad.

April 13, 2005

You may have noticed the new design. I guess it’s hard to miss. I thought it was time. I liked the other one, but it wasn’t modern enough for me… and my favorite part of it — the floating bottle — was like an inside joke, only those of you with Firefox or Safari could see it. This one’s more modern, more my style. You may have also noticed the Blogudio logo has taken a more prominent role in the design, too. Well, trying to drum up business for my Custom Designed Blogs. Do you want one? Now I feel dirty.

Other Spring Cleaning:
Retraction: When I wrote Good Morning America in all those post below, I meant the Today Show. In my defense, who does actually know which is which? They’re all parity shows, so it’s easy to mix it up. I bet their producers forget which show they work for too and show up on the wrong set all the time.

Those more eagle-eyed readers among you may have noticed that the headline at the top of your browser changed a while ago from “More Diapers. One man’s quest for modern fatherhood” to “More Diapers. Eric Sagalyn’squest for modern fatherhood.” I did this for good reason. I want to be the number one google search for Sagalyn. I lost the domain name race for sagalyn.com to my dad’s cousin. I don’t want to lose the google race. Incidently, the change of title moved me from page 4 to number 2-4, depending on time of day. Still looking for that number one spot. It still kills me that Lynne Sagalyn isn’t a real Sagalyn… she kept the name when she got divorced from a Sagalyn and she sometimes beats me. Oh well.

Does anyone know what happened to Being Daddy? It used to be one of the flagship daddy blogs, but there are no new posts since before the Super Bowl. And those posts are now getting flogged by post spammers. I hope everything is ok over there.

Well, I guess that’s it. Back to my regularly scheduled posting tomorrow.

April 12, 2005

Seems reporting on selective mutism is all the rage these days. Last month, it autism had that honor. The New York Times has a very thoughtful article on the subject, The Child Who Would Not Speak a Word that has an awful lot of good information on the subject. Worth a read, if only to see how off base they were with diagnosis of the condition only 10 years ago.

April 11, 2005

Hey, did anyone notice the Sox beat the Yankees? Sweet!

Day one went unlike pappa larges’ day one. Mine started with a good Good Morning America Johnson and Johnson airplane “Who thought staying at home would be more rewarding?” commercial. Not sure if you’ve seen this one yet, but it’s pro father, and seems to be about a SAHD. At least that’s how it struck me, which is all that counts.

From there, I iChated with Cameron, sent HBomb off to one of four 30 minute or so naps and did some work. Pretty nice, actually. Weird thing was, I also started to feel guilty that I wasn’t paying enough attention to him. Every time I started to do something that wasn’t HBomb related, I was instantly drawn back to his mostly smiling face. It’s funny how priorities change. But so far — and it could get much, much worse (hear that jinx gods?) — I like this.

April 10, 2005

In a surest sign of spring yet, the late 1990s Honda Accord parked in rock-star parking directly infront of our place has moved. So what? So, it’s been there since before HBomb was born, that so what. Street cleaning has begun, and so it must move. And it has! Bring on rock-star parking! We missed you.