Raising Daddy

• 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:

  

• 20Dec

  New Holiday Traditions

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

  Sara and Lainey- Christmas 2008

  From time to time my boss, Michael will talk about his two youngsters growing up too fast. I still remember when the older of the two little ones started kindergarten. He genuinely seemed sad that she would no longer get to stay at home with her mom day after day and play games, bake cookies and take trips to the grocery store with her.

  I laughed at him then but now I almost understand where he’s coming from. Like me, Michael is a big kid at heart. In fact, our office antics are legendary. Every day we’re playing a different joke on one another, telling a different funny story even secretly planning a prank to top the other’s last.

  Michael instills this childlike spirit in his children. Evidence of it is littered in his stories and I see it in his little boy every time he comes to visit in the office. The first thing his son, David always wants to do is wrestle, fart on me or play with something fragile off my desk. He’s simply a perfect little, carefree version of his dad.

  I was looking down at Lainey this morning, lying in bed beside me while her mother took a shower, and I felt a little bit of Michael’s sadness. It wasn’t that I was sad she was already a month old in the blink of an eye (actually, I can’t wait for her to get a little older), it was that I only had a few short years until she would be off to school too, taking on responsibilities of her own. No more endless play time or carefree afternoon naps.

  It’s hard to watch children gradually lose that innocence they have almost naturally. It’s just plain fun to see kids who are so energetic, playful and in love with life like Michael’s kids are. Every decent person wants that for their child and I want that for my child too. In Michael’s children, the spirit almost seems amplified. It is almost as if they know no other emotions either than love and happiness. I genuinely think it is a direct result of his joyous spirit and attitude. In fact, the man can be so joyous that I think he secretly wishes he could go back to believing in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny too.

  Honestly, sometimes I wish I could believe again too…

  So tonight, I’ll start a new tradition with Lainey and Sara. It’s been a rough holiday thus far, but things are going to get better. Tonight, I plan to crawl up in the attic and do something I haven’t done over the past few years. I’m going to pull down our stiff, acrylic Christmas tree, the tangled lights and dusty ornaments and the three of us are going to decorate that meager artificial pine tree to the best of our ability.

  I know Lainey is too young to know what is going on, but Sara and I will get to have our fun. And hopefully it will be the start of our lifelong tradition of passing on as much laughter, happiness and a pure passion for simply being alive that we can.

  I do not want her to simply live life, I want her to eat, drink and breathe it. I want her to be enveloped in it and I hope that she loves and enjoys it as much as I love and enjoy her. Then hopefully she will grow up to be a better person than I or her mother ever dreamed of being… and maybe cure cancer or do something else awesome like that.

  So cheers to happiness, health, cheesy decorations and maybe a little fruit cake.

  Merry Christmas.