Raising Daddy

• 25Jan

  The rocket ship has ruined my baby

  3rd Month (2 Months Old), The First Six Months No Comments
  

  I am so tired of playing Rocket Ship!

  Lainey recently passed the two month milestone of her life and has discovered something that has been a long time coming… her smile.

  I have always thought it was a bit sad that babies come out of the womb frowning, but it takes a few months for them to really master that picture perfect smile that every goo goo, gaa gaa crazy adult who tickles a baby’s chin, is looking for. We are born kicking and screaming but it takes a few good months for us to obtain the ability to grin even just a little. Sadly, frowns are natural but smiles are a skill that must be learn.

  Now nearly every moment spent with the baby has turned into an insane quest to create more smiles. Sara and I have suddenly began targeting Lainey with the camera, attempting to immortalize every single chuckle, smirk or grin in a photograph, and I swear it seems that every new grin is different than the last!

  Sara and I have even created new little games to play with Lainey, all aimed at baiting and hooking a smile or laugh. There’s everything from “Super Baby”, where I fly her around the room on her belly to “Daddy pretends to eat baby’s hands and feet time” to even a little game where I make popping and clicking noises with my mouth, which amazes her to no end. But the most successful game is “Rocket ship!”

  Rocket ship is a game where I stand Lainey up in my lap, hands around her waist, and stare her dead in the face. She looks at me, wide eyed and curious, seemingly unaware of what’s coming, then suddenly, “shhhooooooshhhhh!” and up she goes! Lainey comes down nearly every trip, smiling in amazement. Though she does not yet know how to say it, I can practically see her facial expression screaming, “Again! Again!”

  I expect the rocket ship ride could run for hours and hours, me lifting her up in the air over and over and lowering her back down countless times, and she would never tire of it. Every single pretend ride to the moon and back is a wonderful adventure to her. Even better than the smiles we receive after the rocket ship rides are her looks of excitement while waiting for her next ride. There in nothing cuter than holding her in place, watching her anticipate that next liftoff, feeling her ever so slightly push off with her little legs that are not even strong enough to scoot her across the floor yet.

  Now rides on the rocket ship are demanded regularly. Sometimes Lainey squeals and cries, impatient and restless and the only thing that can turn off those squeals is being stood up, standing alert and ready for launch. Right now it is no big deal; she only weighs in at 12 pounds. But I am sure in a few more months; my arms are going to really start feeling the burn from all those pretend trips to the stratosphere and back!

  I predict the next great game I invent to entertain Lainey will involve something mechanical that runs off half a dozen D sized batteries!  No more new games involving actual man power!

  Check out some of those new smiles!

• 13Jan

  Sick babies just plain old suck.

  2nd Month (1 Month Old), The First Six Months No Comments
  

  No Sleep Daddy!

  Dealing with babies is generally bad, but dealing with sick babies is really bad. I love and enjoy my little girl, she’s adorable, cuddly and cute, but dealing with her can be quite the challenge at times. Once they get sick, your job gets at least ten times tougher.

  Lainey has been sick for about three days now. Her nose is both drippy and stuffy (oxymoronic?), she’s nearly sleepless and she barely eats. Every time we lay her on her back she starts choking on the runny goo running down her throat. At times she cries for no apparent reason at all, other than the fact that she feels absolutely horrible.

  We’ve been dealing with it best we can; I have hooked up a vaporizer, we started attacking those little nostrils with the squeezie, snot sucker thing and I have taken to the superstition that I can literally smother the sickness out of her with continuous doses of little kisses. If only the diagnosis of TLC really worked! All it’s gotten me is my daughters cold.

  For the past week we have consistently caught maybe four or five hours a night of shut eye, all broken up into little blocks of 45 minutes here and 45 minutes there. This is truly hell. Last Friday I came home from work excited to have a break from the tough week I had just been through, every fiber of my being was ready and expecting a break, only there was no break… Laney does not take breaks from sleepless nights.

  Yesterday I stayed out of work to take her to the doctor, turns out she has a cold and all we can do it wait it out. I am guessing that’s exactly what I have too, the wonderful Rhino Virus. So now it’s simply Lainey (and me) against the common cold, and we are getting our asses kicked.

  The sleeplessness started once Sara started back to work a few weeks ago and stopped tending to Lainey all night. To counteract the effects of my overnight duties I started the ritual of injecting coffee directly into my veins each morning. It was the only way I could cope with the sleep deprivation. I have since become a total junkie. Sadly, the coffee at work is abysmal. It’s utter crap, it taste like bitter, used up dish water. I imagine I could soak my dirty underwear in a bowl of cabbage juice, warm the juice up in the microwave, add artificial creamer to it and it would taste better than the coffee at work.

  Our office coffee machine is a decade old behemoth that only heats the water about as hot as a bath and instead of percolating or even slow dripping the coffee, it just dumps the water right through the grains, resulting in a bitter, weak, pathetic cup of Joe. It’s a mini waterfall of sorrow.

  Still, I consume copious amounts of the dark, lukewarm, bitter liquid. Cup after cup, I drink until I shake and jitter. Then I come home mentally drained and ready to go to sleep, only Lainey says no… no sleep for you Daddy, no sleep for you…

  This morning I walked into the office a zombie, feeling as if Satan had appeared as a little demon while I napped the night before and taken a massive dump in my ear. My throat was scratchy, my eyes ached and I so badly needed my coffee fix. I rounded the corner in the office to where the water cooler and coffee machine sat only to discover that the coffee pot was gone.

  “Oh God no.” I whimpered. I called to my non-coffee drinking boss and asked flatly, “Where’s the coffee pot, dude?” There was a sternness in my voice, and quiet hint of psychopathy. “I’m not sure where it went, it must have broke.” He said indifferently. “I’m going to Quiktrip.” I replied. Then I turned and walked right out the door.

  As I approached the QT, I began to salivate. I needed this cup of coffee more than anything I had ever needed in my life. I pulled into the turning lane, slowed and started my turn when suddenly A BLUE MINI VAN CUT ME OFF!

  A blue mini van made it’s way around me, butted in front of me in the turning lane and nearly met in a T-bone with an oncoming truck!

  I hit the gas and rode up on her rear. She swooped around and took a parking spot. I turned and looked to her, daggers must been shooting out of my eyes. Then suddenly I uttered, no I screamed the absolute worse word you can call a woman.

  “You stupid C-U-#-%!”

  Because this is a family site, I won’t actually write the word, but you know the one. She looked at me with fear in her eyes, closed the door, got back in the car and drove away.

  I went in QT, grabbed the biggest cup of coffee they had and sipped it. It was piping hot and nurchuring. Suddenly I was relaxed and the world seemed like such a better place.

  Now it is the evening, I am home, Lainey is still sick and I dread the evening ahead. Another sleepless night, but tomorrow I will come to work prepared with a giant cup of coffee in hand.

  It’s the best thing in the world when Lainey smiles at me, but babies (especially sick) just plain old suck.

• 05Jan

  The Prodigy Pooper

  2nd Month (1 Month Old), The First Six Months 2 Comments
  

  Lainey is happy after her poop!

  To date, my child has soiled over 550 diapers in her seven short weeks of existence! I had always heard complaints about babies using quite a few diapers, but I never quite realized just how rabid that consumption actually was until now.

  The market for diapers is so lucrative that retail outlets across America designate entire aisles to them, countless dollars are spent on ad campaigns and the most prestigious brands feature little prints of our favorite children’s cartoon characters.  My baby barely knows who I am, much less Whinny the Poo, Oscar the Grouch or Elmo, but that does not mean we can’t put the cute characters on the diapers in hopes of winning over a few more parent’s dollars!

  On past visits to the local Costco, I used to laugh at moms and dads forking over their hard earned cash and leaving with giant boxes of Pampers and Huggies under their arms. I used to think the idea of buying a block of 200 of the undergarments at once was ridiculous. Now I buy the giant blocks as well, the larger the box the better.

  Day after day, I am nothing short of amazed at Lainey’s propensity to produce poop. She is nothing short of amazing, a true phenom, a real sight! She is… The Prodigy Pooper. Lainey can lay a fresh poo-pattie in her little stool sack easily once a hour, and naturally the child lacks any sense of shame.  Lainey poops all the time, any time.  Day or night, rain or shine, asleep or awake, this kid is laying a turd.  It is not unusual to be snuggling her, her eyes just slightly cracked open as she feeds, then witness her just ever so nonchalantly stop feeding, back off the bottle for a brief moment and grunt.  Suddenly you feel it, that warmth in the pit of your hand you’re using to support her bottom.  You instantly become aware that there is only a thin layer of diaper between you and the sludgy sewage that your precious little girl just produced.

  A short while back I was watching Lainey by myself. She had just finished sucking down a bottle and the aromatic evidence of her readiness to be changed filled my nostrils.  I picked her up, took her to the crib to be changed and pulled off the dirty diaper.  While in the process of scrubbing the little monster down, I turned to sneeze.  As I turned I went to fetch a Kleenex from the restroom… then it happened.  I had broken a cardinal rule of diaper changing: DON’T LEAVE THE POO HOLE EXPOSED!

  Suddenly I heard it, “Uhg!” then SQUIRT!

  Lainey grunted and out came a stream of the mustard squirts!  The watery stool shot across the room just missing the back of my leg by inches.  I was amazed.  I ran to gather the tape measure and my digital camera.  I was in pure disarray.

  Lainey’s poop cleared the side of the crib and made it roughly four and a half feet across the room. It took half a bottle of carpet cleaner to scrub it out.  What an amazing feat for such a little girl.  I see bright things in her future.  I have never been more proud as a father and I now proudly flaunt the fact that my baby can squirt poop farther than yours!

  Needless to say, next time I have to sneeze while changing her, she’s getting a face full of snot. Better her than me.

  Check out the photos for yourself! Click to bring up the lightbox: