Two-Month Check-up

Today, we had to take our little munchkin in for his two-month shots. We were very apprehensive about how it was going to go and whether Troy would be alright. I mean who likes being stuck with multiple needles in the span of a few seconds?! And it’s not like you can explain the situation before or after. So all you can do is try to keep him happy and distracted before, and then hold him and love him after. Despite the bloody-murder scream of outrage, he actually did surprisingly well. We were able to quickly calm him down with some food, and then after he ate, he fell into a quiet slumber. He was kind of in and out for the rest of the day, but all in all, I think we had a good experience.

My wife would probably disagree with me. The moment she saw blood and heard his cries, she was bawling herself. She couldn’t take it. Her nose was so red and puffy, as she tried to hold back the sniffles, that I told her she looked like Santa Clause.

Now we wait to see if he has any side effects to the medicine.

Ogre

My wife was feeding Troy today, and when she got done, she shifted him to burp him. Before he was even in position, he let out this long, deep, loud belch that lasted for several seconds. We were both so shocked by it that we looked at each other for a full minute before we busted out laughing. It sounded just like Ogre from The Revenge of the Nerds. He’s not quite up to Booger level yet, but he’s certainly well on his way!

Monkey Feet

My son loves to pump his little legs a hundred miles a minute until he manages to successfully kick the covers off him. But his latest thing is that when we try to put the covers back on him, he’ll lift his legs in the air to prevent us from covering him again. I have started to wait with the covers in the air until he gets tired and lowers his legs, but he’s figured me out. So now he’ll reach out with his feet and grip the cover with his toes to hold it so I can’t pull it all the way up. He has such amazing strength in his little toes, that I told him he had monkey feet. He giggles at me every time I tell him that.

Footloose!

Today, Troy and I were dancing to Footloose. Well he was dancing, and I was making him dance while he laid in his bassinet. He seems to like when we gyrate his arms and legs in tune to the music, and Footloose is the perfect song for him to cut loose to. I told him when he’s older that I’ll take him dancing to learn all the different steps, so he can show some lady a fine time one day. Girls like a man that can dance!

Reckless Love

We were watching church today, Troy sitting in my arms. At the beginning of the service, the band was singing Reckless Love. I started to sing along with them, and when it got to the chorus, Troy started waving his arms in time with the music and “singing” too. His were more noises and indistinct words, but he made them in time with the music, stopping at the correct places. It was so cute and adorable to hear him praising God.

Daddys Matter Too

The last couple of days, my son has sought me out. He gets restless until I hold him. I like that he likes being with me. After so long of him only connecting with his mother, it’s nice to be wanted too. I like that he feels safe and warm in my arms. I like that he can find rest pressed up against my chest. Curled up on my lap, head resting against my shoulder, he drifts off to sleep. I caress his tiny little toes and his soft little feet, feeling the ridges where the skin has wrinkled with his repetitive flexing and scrunching. I feel his weight heavy and warm against me, which rises and falls with each even breath. And I am happy.

Superhero

My wife got our son a new outfit that had these really baggy bottoms. It looks like one of those paraflying suits. I told him that it’s his superhero outfit, so he can fly after the bad guys. All he needs is a big "T" on his chest and a cape, and he’ll be in business.

So, of course, I had to accommodate him. He's now ready to punish evil doers...and parents who don't get his bottle fast enough!

Marathon Man

Here I am awake at 1:45 am on the first baby shift, waiting for him to wake up and want his bottle. I woke up almost 2 hours ago, thinking that he was close, so I decide to just stay up. Now, I’m afraid to go back to sleep, because I just know that when I do, he’ll choose that moment to finally want it. But I’m also still awake because I’m intrigued to see how long he’ll actually go before he wants it. It’s already been over six hours, clearly the longest he’s ever gone in between bottles. I have been tempted on several occasions to just wake him up and get it over with, but despite my exhaustion, my curiosity around his endurance is winning.

UPDATE: He made it 15 more minutes, after my original post, for a total of 6 and a half hours. He shattered his own personal record of 5 hours. Quite impressive.

Two Pack for Sure

Since my wife has been doing exercises with the baby during the day, he’s starting to look more buff. I especially see it in his abs. She’s been doing a lot of legs up to his chest, helping him stand, and tummy time which has been working his core. He has a definite two-pack going on now, where he just had a mini keg before!

Jumping in a Bear Pit

Troy is so eager to hold his head up by himself. If I hold him upright against my shoulder, then he spends the entire time lifting his head off my shoulder and wobbly looking around. He leans his head back and then when he feels the weight getting to be too much and he’s losing control, he over compensates the other way and ends up head-butting my collarbone. The way he does it with such violent force is like he’s doing it on purpose. I imagine us locked in an epic battle, and I have used my size and strength to capture him and slowly squeeze the life out of him. And he with one last-ditch effort, throws his head back and slams it into me in an attempt to disable me and take me down with a single blow. The problem is that it usually ends up hurting himself, and the whole scene ends with him crying and blaming me for hurting him. I imagine him at this moment, after all the plotting and planning to take me down, quoting Ron Burgundy when he jumped in the bear pit, “I immediately regret this decision.”

What's in a Smile?

I love my son’s smiles. He has different ones. 

There’s the “wild and free” smile that he uses when he’s kicking his legs and pumping his arms for no reason at all. 










There’s the “humor me” smile that he gives me when I’m doing something goofy. 

There’s the “I crack myself up” smile that he gives himself when he blows bubbles. 

And there’s the “I love my mommy” smile that he gives my wife when she’s talking to him and telling him what a beautiful boy he is.

But my all time favorite has got to be his “I’m up to no good” smile that he gives us when he’s being mischievous and trying to get away with something. He tilts his head down and looks so coy and innocent, but there’s something in his eyes that tells you he knows exactly what he’s doing. It always makes me laugh.

Promise to My Son

As your father on earth, I promise to teach you about God, your Father in heaven, who leads us through a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. And about Jesus, His Son, who became a man so that He could die for our sins, so that we no longer need to live under the punishment of the law, but are free instead to have a personal relationship with God. And about the Holy Spirit, who inspires our creativity, imagination, and dreams. I promise to try to be a worthy example of a Christian man, exemplifying a Christian life and always pointing your eyes to heaven. I promise to teach you the stories of the Bible and help you when you have questions. And I promise to love you unconditionally, no matter what might happen between us.

Moms Can Never Take a Sick Day

My wife and I have both been sick with colds this week, which really sucks when you have an infant in the house.  It’s not like you can huddle up in a corner and shun the world until you feel better.  He still needs taking care of even if you have no energy to do so.  And it’s really easy to want to just let your partner take care of everything while you go on being sick, which doesn’t work when they’re sick too.  Besides, even if you tried to do it, you’d quickly feel sorry for them and guilty for not taking care of them at the same time.  So, here we are, both suffering, taking turns and doing the best we can to push through it without getting our son sick as well.  I guess it’s true what they say, “Moms (and dads) can never take a sick day.”

The Pacifier Game

My son finds great entertainment in spitting the pacifier out of his mouth just so he can watch us put it back in again.  He truly wants the pacifier, because he cries when it falls out.  Or possibly he only wants the pacifier so he can spit it out again.  We are expected to play the game by his rules for as long as he deems the game should go on.  So, for an hour, I have been picking the pacifier up when he spits it out and putting it back into his waiting, expectant mouth, simply so he has the supreme pleasure of spitting it out again.  And every so often, he will be doing a jig in his crib with arms and legs flailing in all different directions, and he accidentally (or maybe not so accidentally) hit the edge of the pacifier and fling it to the farthest corner of the crib.  Although, I sometimes believe this is possibly out of spite or maybe just to see how committed I am to the game.

Baby Fitbit

My son was sound asleep today, and then all of a sudden, he wasn’t. He was wailing like a siren, and he wouldn’t stop until I picked him up and walked around the room with him. After a few minutes, I set him down, and no sooner did I sit down, than he started wailing again. I picked him up and walked around, and he stopped.

I have decided he’s a more annoying, albeit more effective, version of those Fitbits that tell you when you’ve been idle too long and need to get up and walk. Apparently, I had not walked enough today, and he was letting me know. An hour later, and seven trips up and down the stairs, and he was satisfied that I had fulfilled my step requirement, and he fell back asleep.

Sh!tstorm

Today, my son and I have both had really bad gas. Because of it, I have been able to stand near the baby, expel the foul air, and blame it on him. By some miracle of nature, my body has adapted to match his, so that it’s impossible to tell our flatulence apart. This means that my wife has accepted the flatulence as his without question. At least until I accidentally did it from across the room and was too far away to pass it off as his. My wife didn’t accept my theory that he did it by ventriloquism, so I was forced to lose my credibility as she started to question every other incident today.

But in the end, my son got the last laugh, because he bottled up his poop for the entire day and let it out in one hellacious sh!tstorm all over everything! His arms, legs, feet, back, and stomach...my wife’s pillow, pants, and shirt...my hands and arms...the changing pad cover...and the floor. And it reeked!!! A hundred times worse than anything I had blamed on him today. And as I violently tugged wet wipe after wet wipe out of the warmer, the feel and stench of drying feces clinging to the hairs of my arms; the cheeky, little bugger laughed at me! His first laugh, and this when he chose to reveal it.

Down Feathers

My wife came up to me today and said, “Do you know that the baby will lose all of his nice, soft hair, and it will be replaced by new hair? And that hair could be a different color, thickness, and curliness?” I said, “Yeah, it’s like a goose where they have down feathers to start and lose them to be replaced by new adult feathers.” So, now we’ve started referring to Troy’s hair as his goose hair.

It's already getting sparser and thinner, like a middle-aged man. It's like his head keeps growing, but the amount of hair is staying the same. Personally, I wouldn’t mind if his hair got darker and thicker and curlier, like his mama’s. She has nice hair. Mine is too thin and straight, and I always wished it was different.

Kaiser Walk

My son likes for me to hold him in my arms and "Kaiser walk" (also known as goose stepping) around the den. So I have to make these slow, exaggerated steps while I’m walking so he bounces and jiggles with every step. It's hard for someone who has practiced his whole life to be a ninja, but he won't calm down if I'm gentle about it. Maybe it reminds him of riding around inside my wife. She's usually in a hurry everywhere, so her gait is hard and deliberate.

Amputation

My son had a rough day today. My wife said he didn’t sleep all day, because of gas bubbles in his stomach, so he was fussy all night. After a warm bath and a lot of snuggles, he finally fell asleep in my arms. Knowing he had to be exhausted, I let him sleep. I figured he’d wake up after 30 or so minutes and want some food. But it’s been 4.5 hours, and he’s still fast asleep. Which wouldn’t be such a big deal except my arm has completely fallen asleep underneath him, and I desperately need to pee. And yet, seeing his angelic face so peaceful in sleep, I’m tempted to acknowledge that I’ll need to amputate my arm and pee all over myself before I wake him up. I would have to be the worst father in the world to put a little thing like living life with two arms and being dry before the happiness of my son.

The Comment Card

Earlier today, my son was screaming bloody murder because I was not moving fast enough to get him situated, put the burp cloth in place, and shove the bottle into his mouth. Imagining him as some irate customer at a hotel desk, complaining about the service; I put on my best professional, yet condescending hotel receptionist voice and said the following:

"I’m sorry to hear that you’re dissatisfied with the accommodations here at our establishment. Please feel free to fill out a comment card, and our management team will consider your feedback in order to improve your stay. For the time being please enjoy this complimentary bottle on the house."

The little cheeky bugger actually held out his hand for a pen!

First Word

My son said his first word today, although my wife doesn't agree with me. Honestly, I don't really think she heard it which is why she doesn't want to acknowledge it. But he clearly said it, and I have witnesses that heard it too. So it's official, his first word was "glurb," which according to the urban dictionary either means a sound made when eating a soft, wet substance or a random insult.

To be honest, I'm more worried about the second definition. I have a bad feeling that he's randomly insulting me, or at least attempting to, but he doesn't know any good insults yet. So instead he's just saying "glurb" as a placeholder for an insult to be delivered later!

Guardian Angel

When I am feeding my son, he always looks intently at something over my shoulder. He will stare at it the entire time without averting his eyes. At first, I thought he was focused on the ceiling fan or something in his line of sight. But today, I decided that he's actually looking at his guardian angel, who apparently is standing behind me. I've heard stories that babies can see angels, but since we can't ask them, we won't know for sure. So, I figure this as plausible an explanation as anything else.

The Dream

Today, my son woke up and started talking in his baby speech. When he’s talking, I’ve noticed that he expresses himself with hand gestures, so he was also gesticulating wildly while he was talking.

Determined to engage him in conversation, I asked him what he dreamed about last night. As if on cue, he started talking. When he paused, I reiterated what he had supposedly said about his dream and followed with further inquiry to prompt him for more detail. Each time I spoke, he got quiet, and each time I stopped, he started talking again. Back and forth we went for 20 minutes.

The conversation went something like this:

Me: So what did you dream about last night?

Troy: Ah, eh, uh-uh, eh, ah.

Me: How did it feel to fly like that?

Troy: Oh, ooh, eh, ah.

Me: Awesome, I think flying as a wolf with a red cape is so cool! Did you know that we’re descended from wolves? That’s why we like nights with bright moons so much. So, what did you see from up there?

Troy: Ah, uh, ooh, eh, eh, ah.

Me: I understand that people would look like ants from that high up, but when would you have seen an ant?

Troy: Ooh, oh, ah, eh.

Me: I see, I didn’t know that you were looking things up in Google while daddy was at work. What did you do after that?

Troy: Ah, eh, ah, ooh, oh, oh, oh.

Me: Wait, you flew down and had a picnic in a tree with mommy and daddy? Why would you eat in a tree?

Troy: Oh, eh, uh, uh, ah.

Me: Well that makes sense. I guess I hadn’t thought about that that way before.

And so forth and so forth. I had to translate his side of the conversation for my wife, because she’s not as fluent in baby speak yet.

Pride

Today, our son had a milestone moment. My wife was doing tummy time with him, and he actually was able to lift his head, hold it steady, and turn it to the side. He’s ahead of schedule with everything. Smart and capable little guy. #veryproudparents

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As I sit here tonight with my little prince asleep in my arms, I can't help but think that one day he'll be too big to do this. Right now, he's tiny enough that he fits into the contours of my body with his little head in the crook of my arm. But one day, he won't fit anymore, and that will be a very sad day. I will miss these times, when it's just the two of us, enjoying a snooze and sharing body warmth. I am going to cherish them now, but all too soon, I fear my little prince is going to grow up. And then, he won't want me to hold him anymore.