April 10, 2005

Hi! I’m up. I’ve been up since 2:30. Just went out with the smiley boy to the living room to watch my movie. Cathleen and Cameron, I think you misunderstood my post a couple of posts ago. I don’t care if he sleeps through the night– and don’t expect it will be an everyday occurance if it ever happens. All I want is some sort of pattern that lasts more than 2 days. You know, so that when he wakes up a t 2:30 and quickly falls back asleep, I don’t stay awake waiting for expecting him to wake back up. Yes, that would be nice.

April 9, 2005

With my last week at work (for a while, anyway) over, tonight we switch schedules. I go from the late-night guy, to the early morning guy. No more late night posts. Hello groggy morning posts. As least I have the Spoonge Bob movie to look forward to tomorrow morning.

April 7, 2005

Well, seems if it’s not one thing it’s another. On our quest to make Hbomb the perfect robot baby, we’ve run into another snag: he just ain’t sleeping. For a while there he got into a pattern. 4 hours, 3 hours, 2 hours and wake up. It was awesome. Now… nada. We’re lucky if it’s 3 hours, 1 hour, 1 hour, wake up for 2 hours, then 2 hours.

We thought the time change would throw him back into a good sleep pattern, since we thought he was going to bed too early. So the day before day light savings he goes to be at 6. Day after day light savings he goes to bed at… 6? How the f’ does he know? I mean, really. One of these days I expect to catch him smoking and drinking the liquor when he thinks no one is looking, then playing baby again as if we didn’t notice. It reminds me of the old Marvin cartoon where Marvin, the infant, says “Hi Dad!” and his dad looks confused then Marvin says “April fools!” And everything returns to normal. I wonder if HBomb isn’t just making up a new malady when we solve one just to keep things interesting.

Pathetic fantasy ramblings aside, this is yet another thing we’d like to get sorted out. One of my best friends told me that when he had his kid, the nights were awful… and then one day, when he finally got to the point where he could no longer take it, his son’s sleeping patern just changed. We passed that point about a month ago. Maybe it’s all HBomb’s drinking when we’re not looking. Come to think of it, the Grey Goose was tasting strangely like water…

April 6, 2005

It started about two weeks ago now, the silent ballet of HBomb’s hands. It’s a clutching. A grabing. An intermingling of fingers. A Montogomery Burns hand wringing. This ballet of his.

I first noticed it while giving him his 11PMish feeding. While he stared at me, his fingers danced their ballet over one another. I woke up Jen.

“Look at this!” I exclaimed, hardly in my late night bedtime voice.

“What?’ She asked, suddenly wide awake.

I felt bad that I was waking her up for it. But when I showed her, I realized, as I had hoped, that she was just as excited about it as I.

Now it’s become a grasping of things. He grabs his blanket and like a drunk hoists it toward his mouth. He’ll grab my fingers and do the same. It’s slow going, but eventually everything he can move finds his mouth. Though rarely does it make it in.

These are amazing times for our new family. Amazing,

April 5, 2005

Interesting, if not absurd, article on CNN.com today… one of the few not pope related. It seems that more teachers are straying away from red ink because of it’s negative conotations. That, and parent’s complaints. Now this seems a little out of hand to me, not because I’m a “tough love” advocate, but because COME ON! How senstive are we?

I was a solid B student. I had my fair share of red ink. I failed many a spelling test — I know it may be hard to believe. Do I feel like less of a person because I knew the painful smear of the red ink? No. Do I think that perhaps we’ve gotten a bit ridiculous when it comes to protecting our children from the “horrors” of life? Do I think that by sterilizing our children of the small traumas — name calling and bruised knees among them — of childhood that we may be creating adults without the mechanisms to deal well with the difficulties of disappointment? Do I think this has something to to with the collective rising anxiety of the greatest country on earth, the United States of America (sorry Cameron)? Yes, yes and you bet your ass I do.

This just in, Superintendent Cancels School on Fears Children May Get Their Feelings Hurt.

Thoughts?

April 4, 2005

Well, today is my last week at work, as Jen goes back a week from today. That’s right, I’m going to be a stay at home, work at home dad. Starting next week.

Starting next week.

Starting next week. It’s starting to sink in.

We’ve been discussing this for… well… since we found out Jen was pregant. Child care in the city of Boston is outrageous, setting us back around $2k a month for a reputable place. We figured that I could actually make more money for the family by working from home 20 hours a week then I could working 40+ and putting HBomb in the care of strangers.

Jen’s got the health insurance and the higher paying job, so she’s the obvious choice to go back to work. She also has a job that needs to see her on a daily basis and have her work 8 hours in a row, unlike my job for a black ops unit of the CIA as a web designer, which allows me to work from home at off-hours.

In the end it was an easy choice.