Brain Dump

That Helpless Feeling

Nothing worse than sitting in the delivery room with a wife who is clearly in pain, and knowing that there is little you can do. Worse is knowing that her contractions are not labor, so she is simply in pain for the sake of pain. The little bugger refuses to engage and come on out, and he's making mom angry. The wife is one tough broad, and I rarely see her cry; she's in pain. More tears tonight than I have ever seen. I hope we come out of here with a baby, and not another dry run.

Precarious Part II

I have to stop taunting to gods.  First I shot off at the mouth about how great my July was going, and things corrected themselves.  Then I gave a little missive about how precarious life is.  The next morning (the. next. morning.) my wife was spotting and we spent the day in the hospital.  I've been quiet on this one until I knew more about what was going on and I felt comfortable talking about it.  We almost lost the baby.  Things are fine, but she's been on bed rest since.

Not sure I am going to be able to do my race this weekend.  If it weren't for my wife's grandmother coming out to help, I don't know what we would have done for the last week.  It was sad enough to think "I have no family to call for help," but to have to say it out loud sucked.  We should get the all clear on Thurs, but who knows?  Scary stuff to be sure.  It's like I keep saying...life gets more difficult the older you get.

Precarious

I was reminded this past week just how precarious happiness can be.  A neighbor of ours lost their baby at month 7.  Think about that for a minute.  I can't even begin to imagine what that family is feeling.  Also, the wife of a good friend of mine had a chemical termination of a new pregnancy.  They're handling it quite well.  In fact, he's being as pragmatic as I was when it happened to us.

All in all, despite all the family members I have lost in the last couple of years, I can honestly say that wifey and I have been exceedingly lucky with how healthy, happy and amazing Chickpea is.  I can only hope child 2.0 is just a content.

Another Experiment

OK, it would seem my traffic has gone up quite a bit in what I now refer to my post-Amalah citation.  During my wife's pregnancy, I started keeping a log with the intention of publishing it.  One of my gripes during the pregnancy was that there were no pregnancy type books that take a step back from all the science and other hoo ha nonsense, and just talk about what's going on, and more specifically from a man's point of view.  Oh, and to make it funny and enjoyable.  So that was my quest...to write that book.  The question I now have is would anyone read it?  I suppose I could try the more traditional route of trying to get it published, but I think in this day and age, self publishing to a known audience feels so much cooler.

So I am thinking of offering it up here in slices (for free) to you my readers.  If enough of you respond (email or comments is sufficient), and by "enough" I mean people that aren't related to me, I will post the first section, and each week subsequent sections (the book is sectioned by weeks of the pregnancy, but I will prob post more than 1 week at a time).  The only thing I would ask at that point would be that you give me feedback, and send it around to your friends if you like it.  The target is men who have pregnant wives, but my wife (totally a biased audience) loved reading it, so it's for you ladies as well.  So there you go...raise up the voices and I will share the tome.  Otherwise, the book will probably die a slow, lonely and painful death brought about by apathy.

There's a Right Way, and a Wrong Way...

Make no mistake.  There is a right way and a wrong way to hold a baby.  I leave it to you to make up your own mind which of these photos is which.  Now, before any of you send me any emails about how the baby is not a football, I got it...I understand.  Little Chickpea was not harmed during the filming of my Heisman glory days.  As for the rest of you dads wondering how to get the mother in laws and grandmother in laws up in arms, well, just post a picture of you holding their newest beloved addition to the family like a football.  I'm sure my wife's cell phone minutes will be over the limit this month.

Rules of Engagement

As with any good encounter where there is a victor and a vanquished, dealing with a fussy child has it's own set of rules.  The one that I am appreciating the most at this point is the "warning shot."  Most children that I have had occasion to look after did not adhere to this rule of engagement.  They would simply let loose in one shot, unleashing a cacophony of sounds which is nothing less than the antithesis of pleasing.  This aural reverberation was their way of letting you know that the battle had begun, and you were under attack.

As I said, Chickpea adheres to the strictest interpretations of the rules of engagement, and to that end she gives us a warning shot.  When she is unhappy about something, instead of unleashing hell, she simply lets one shot cross our bow.  This warning shot is usually a short burst of noise, letting us know that war is precipitating, but can in fact be avoided should we agree to her terms.  Chickpea must think that she is the Hannibal of babies, because she seems to believe that we will simply roll over to her demands.  She believes that one warning shot is all she needs.  She's right of course, but we are trying not to let on so quick.

Should the occasion arise that gun fire breaks out, take cover!  What alarms me about little Chickpea is not only the ferocity of her battles, but her proclivity for sustained and unyielding suppression fire.  She has, in more than one instance, sent her poop flying, causing her parents to dive for cover.  Mommy doesn't quite yet understand the true nature of the combatant, and she needs to learn how to use a diaper to provide adequate cover for herself and her men.

More alarming still is the "magic bullet" nature of the her poop.  The other day I heard my wife taking fire and ran to the bedroom to see if she was OK.  What I did not understand was how there was poop on my side of A CLOSED DOOR.  How it got there, we may never know.  That Chickpea is capable of doing such things, well, that is alarming, and something to keep in mind for future engagements.

Thankfully, Chickpea has only felt the need to open fire on us a handful of times.  She's a gentlewoman, and fights accordingly.  For now, I will take all the warning shots that she wants to give us, providing us ample warning, and allowing us to yield to her demands without taking too many casualties.

Anti Trust Suit?

The little one continues to amaze.  She doesn't do much, but I do like to stare.  There is a question, however, that I would like to pose to the rest of you.  Given that I used to work at Microsoft, it became ingrained in my thinking that when you are unhappy with something you are supposed to sue.  That's what our competitors did to us.  Think what you will about the whole anti-trust suit, but at the end of the day, the whole discussion was silly.  People thought it unfair that Microsoft "bundled" so many features with the operating system.  With that said, to whom can I complain about what I believe to be illegal bundling with my child?

"Illegal bundling," you ask?  Why of course.  While I am happy with the base functionality of the child, I have to say that I would have preferred to pick the pooping feature of my liking.  I mean, how presumptuous is it to think that I want the poop feature that is included?  There's no way to remove this feature, and certainly no other providers can even get into the market because of this bundling.  I can attest to the fact that there are plenty of software companies out there that can produce crap just as well as my child.  The only benefit is that I don't have to pay my child an 18% maintenance fee.

Further, I would like to have the crying function removed.  At the very least, allow me to shop for the crying tone that I like, and not the default tone.  Surely Apple could figure out a way to include a new set of crying melodies in the iTunes music store.  Imagine if you could do for your child's crying what you can do with your phone.  Cry-tones!  That would be cool.  Unfortunately, the feature is non-upgradable and a fully closed system.

Lastly, why can't I get a neat screen saver for when my child goes to sleep?  I mean, she's cute and all, but when she's asleep, there's nothing for me to view.  At the very least, give me a throw back to 1992 where I could maybe have some flying toasters or something.   Left to my own devices, and nothing at which to stare, I was forced to entertain myself.  Only later in life will Chickpea fully understand the dangers of falling asleep when Daddy is bored.

The First Week

Well, I used to think that I could write this blog with little or no pressure at all because all of my readership was either family or friends.  One of the unintended consequences of yesterday's experiment (with the help of the awesome Amalah) was that I now have way more readers, from all over the world (Norway?  are you kidding me?), who have let me know, in no uncertain terms, that they are excited to see what I have to say on this blog.  Wonderful.  Nothing like pressure.

So for this, my first post AA, or "After Amalah," I decided to write about my observations about the first week of fatherhood.  Truth be told, it's not too bad.  Now, I am fairly certain that this has everything to do with the fact that we have the most calm baby ever.  In fact she is currently working on her first book, The Zen of Being a Baby.  The only time that Chickpea cries is to let us know that she has soiled herself or if she is hungry, but one is leaps and bounds more important to her than the other.  If hungry, she cries and cries.  If soiled, well, she just cries a little bit, as if to say "I have soiled myself" and then waits patiently for us to change her.  I'm not sure if I should be happy or worried that my baby chooses to wallow in her own crap.

Something that they don't tell you about when you go to your birthing classes is that you will basically not be able to sleep when you bring your baby home.  No, not for the reasons you would think.  You see, this little person is 100% dependent on you, and you, being the neophyte parent, have 0% of a clue as to what you are doing.  Therefore, you start to think that you are responsible for some of life's more mundane and automatic tasks like, oh I don't know, breathing.  Every five minutes we were checking Chickpea the first night to make sure she was still breathing.  The easy solution to this problem turns out to be a motion sensing device you can buy at your local Babies R Us.  It's a weight sensing device you slip under the mattress, and sounds an alarm if it doesn't sense breathing or any other movement for 20 seconds.  Peace of mind apparently costs $99.99.  This is a strong, strong product endorsement for the new parent.

For all of the parents to be out there, here's another one that I didn't know.  People will tell you that you will be tired all the time, and it stands to reason that you would be tired because you are getting no sleep.  That's not the case.  It's all of the interrupted sleep that's the problem.  When a child needs to eat every three hours, you tell me how you are going to feel like a human being in the morning.  Even if you get three stints of three hours, you are dog tired in the morning.  I rarely need more than five hours of sleep a night, but I have been tired all week.  It's nice that both my wife and I are home this week, so we can play tag team on taking naps during the day, but "night" has somehow lost its meaning.

I could write about the poop and the feeding, but those are the widely covered topics elsewhere in the blogosphere.  No, you will find me trying to dish the straight poop (pun intended) on the topics no one seems to talk about.  No one told me my wife would lose it on the drive home from the hospital.  Why?  I really don't have the foggiest idea.  I think she didn't like my music selection.  Apparently, she didn't like it at all.  She lost it today too.  Something about not wanting to hand the kid to a stranger in day care in six weeks.  Yes, six weeks away, but let's cry about it now.  Crying.  Well, I tried the whole "Tom Cruise has studied psychology and he said you shouldn't be crying" thing, but that didn't work.  I was at a loss for Tom Cruise wisdom to drop on my wife to get her to calm down.  A well placed kiss and hug did the trick.  Be warned, they will cry.  Be ready with a hug and a kiss or things will get ugly fast.  Oh, and Starbucks.  Wives can be bought off with Starbucks.

Amalah My Captain

Wow, submit a question to Amalah, the Queen of Blogs, and apparently you get a ton of traffic.  Simple request to her, she obliged, and her faithful come.  It's very much appreciated.  Please participate in my wife's and my on-line experiment to get well wishings for our new one.  She still doesn't do anything interesting, but damn do we waste a ton of time staring at her.  Amalah, our many thanks...

UPDATE: Because, seriously, I would have been happy with five or ten comments.  Fifteen in what appears to be less than one hour...holy cow!  Thanks so much, and keep 'em coming.  It's delighting my wife to no end (and me of course).  Hopefully you guys like what you have read and will come back soon.  This is certainly something fun to do between explosive pellet poop, feeding and sleeping.

UPDATE #2: OK, well, the people at Typepad have called because there is suspiciously high amounts of traffic on my blog.  They are concerned that someone has either co-opted my site and is using it for nefarious purposes or that there is a mistake in some DNS server somewhere. :)  Much love to the 59 and counting comments.  I like doing creative things for my loved ones (like one of these for the Chickpea's room - chalk full of photos of Mom & Dad smiling, or this more recent attempt at being creative - let's face it, I'm an MBA and an engineer, not a creative type, but I try...), so it will be fun to see what I can do with all these kind thoughts from you folks.

Cutie Watch Day 6

The avalanche of photos continue.  Of course, wife and I (or should I say mommy and I <g>) are still trying to get folks to leave some nice comments for the little Chickpea in our social network experiment.  Many years from now, we would like to share with her the nice notes strangers left for her.  My wife fears that some people will say that she is not cute.  I actually think that this is a good thing, provided that those notes are left by boys that are close in age to my daughter.  The less boys who think they might one day darken my doorstep the better.

Action photos are always nice, even if you have no idea what the particular action was.  This could be a yawn or a yell, though truth be told, this is one mellow baby.  Not a whole lot of crying out of this one.  That said, I have taken to calling her by a new nickname, a throwback to my days on Wall St.  I have dubbed her "Squawk Box" for the intermittent noises that erupt from her from time to time.

I am sure that I am neither the first, nor the last parent to wonder what will become of their progeny.  From this picture, I can see a future in politics.  Or perhaps a high browed socialite who simply waves off the masses.

Should there be any question about the authenticity of my daughter's ghetto credentials, one must only remember that even in the womb she was throwing up gang signs ("West Si-ede!").  It's good to see that even in this new 'hood, she has stuck to her roots and not forgotten from whence she came. (editor's note: should you be wondering what gang members use the word "whence," we would like to refer you to the Verona Thug Posse.)

Of course, it is entirely possible that she will become a hair stylist, because it is clear from this picture that little Chickpea is none too pleased with the persistent mohawk that daddy seems to like giving her.  You can almost hear her thinking "WTF is up with you pops?"

This is a gratuitous shot for the family members...your pleas have been heard.  The deafening cacophony of your amalgamated torrents have coalesced in my weakened and sleep deprived brain.  I give you..."hair clips!!!"  As for this photo on the right, I know that it's probably gas, but that's a smile dang it!