Out to Eat

Berkley has grown quite a bit lately and life is a bit easier. We are still quite the slaves to his nap schedule, but he's down to almost 2 good naps a day, so this means we have more flexibility to go out for longer periods of time.

So, when we're out we often get hungry and want to eat. So, we go to a restaurant. This is more difficult than advertised.

You'd think we could just grab a high chair, plop him in it, give him a toy and enjoy a meal. Ah, no.

Here are the issues with that little slice of utopia.
1) He doesn't like to sit in the chair for more than approximately 4 seconds.
2) Whatever he is playing with he throws on the floor every 10 seconds.
3) He is loud sometimes, and at 8 months doesn't quite get "shhh."
4) Sometimes he's getting towards nap time, and so he wants to be held.
5) Sometimes his teeth hurt, so he wants to be held, and whine.
6) Although he feels great and doesn't mind the chair, and hasn't dropped the toy, the salt, pepper, our food, and anything else that is not okay for him to play with is infinitely more interesting and he wants it.

So, when spending hard-earned money to go out and eat, there is a 7% chance we enjoy a meal, and a 940% chance one of us tends to him while the other eats, then the other gets their food boxed up to take home so he can take the next nap in today's schedule.

Daddy Day Care

Courtney had to go down to Charlotte to spend time with her mother and grandmother last night, so I came home from work and kept Berkley. (See previous post: "No More Weekends...)

Well, she took off Friday evening, and here's what happened.

I played with Berk for about an hour in the floor. We basically chewed on everything we could get our hands on.

Then 6pm rolled around, so I put Berk in the Baby Bjorn and we fixed some pears and prunes. The prunes were from Gerber Organics, but I had to actually cut up a pear, steam it in the Baby food cooking machine, blend them up, and feed them to him. It took about 10 minutes to eat those items up, so then we practiced drinking from a straw for a while. Not like sucking water through it, but rather me dipping a straw in a cup, putting my finger on the other end, and then letting it go when I get it on Berk's lips. He's a big, big fan. Cold water must feel good to his gums.

So after drinking 4% of the water presented and drooling the rest down his shirt, I changed his clothes and fed him a bottle. That went way fast, so it was 6:30 and he was still pretty awake, not quite ready to sleep. So I just put him in his crib and turned on the mobile.

The mobile is pretty high up there. But he's persistent, and he pulled himself up by the sides of the crib, got propped up on his knees, and caught the mobile dudes going around in circles and gave them hell. He's been after them for about 3 months, so I couldn't say no. Accomplishment feels so good I encouraged it.

Eventually he got whiny, so I put him in the sleep sack, rocked him a minute, and he was out. Night, done.

He slept from 7pm until 7:15 am.

After he went to sleep I came to a realization: there wasn't anything to do. And I was sort of stuck at the house. I couldn't exactly call up a buddy and go out for a beer! So, I had a few Sammy Smith beers right here on my couch and watched a guy movie. Terminator. Awesome.

Today, Berk and I went to Home Depot (or Lowes, same thing) and bought some roofing materials. He's a big hit in those types of places. I guess it's because he's a happy kid and makes eye contact with people.

All in all, it's been a successful 24 hours of Daddy Day care. Nobody died, so I feel like we're winners.

The End of Weekends

I presume most people look forward to the weekend. If nothing else, I know this from Facebook.

"TGIF!!"
"This has been the longest week. Bring on the weekend!"
"I wish it was Friday."
"Yaaaaaa for Friday."

And on and on. You can't go four Facebook status updates without seeing something about somebody's weekend.

But I've noticed that this isn't as prevalent among parents of young babies. And here's why. When you have a baby, there is no weekend.

While the week used to be filled with days of work, then the weekend was a time of projects, or rest, or socializing with friends, now the weekend is just another couple of days on the schedule.

If you're staying at home with a baby, obviously there's no difference in Tuesday and Saturday, except there's another person in the house. If you're working, the only difference is that you're at home, working for a baby rather than working at your M-F job.

Don't hear a complaint in this, it's part of the deal you must understand when you decide to have a baby. Your life is no longer yours. You have signed up to live and provide for another for several years, and their needs are going to come before yours even when you've had a crappy week, or got a babysitter and had a few drinks, or you're dead tired from sleeping just a few or no hours.

But know, if you have a baby, there are no more weekends, just a couple of days where you don't go to work but instead do baby things.

Let's Get Spontaneous

Last winter, when Courtney was slightly pregnant, I took a little trip with a couple of life long friends to see a Wake-NC State basketball game in Raleigh. They both have kids, and knew I was going to have my first. My buddy Tom says to me:
"You know, once you have that kid, there isn't going to be any more jump up and do... well anything."
Tom, is turns out, is a soothsayer.
And when you first have a baby, it's sort of a trick, because they sleep non-stop once they get good at sleeping. But then as the baby gets a little older, as in beyond two weeks, THE SCHEDULE begins to rule all.
And honestly, we're pretty "roll with it" parents. We're cool with Berkley sleeping wherever, or eating in the car, etc. But all in all, it's just nearly impossible to jump up and leave the house with a baby. It's a minimum of 30 minutes of planning and packing and diaper changing and feeding, and nap finishing and clothes changing and stroller folding and whatever else before you can actually walk out the door.
So be warned if you're considering having a kid. Unless you're going solo, don't get in a big hurry.

Babies Make You Fat

We're going to take a quick zoom forward to present day for me to mention that I have gained right at 25 pounds since Berkley was born.

And I'm not constipated or anything terrible like that, so I'm pretty sure it's fat. Courtney, on the other hand, has lost quite a bit of weight and size. Good on her.

I'd just like to mention that they don't sell men's pants at Babies R' Expensive, and this is about the only store new parents visit.

Seriously, 25 pounds. And I'm not big "what do I weigh?" kind of guy. I mean, whatever. As long as I closely resemble a Greek god while walking down the beaches of the Carribbean, I'm not concerned with my actual weight. But I went to put on a suit to head to work the other day, and it was one I literally bought a feew after Berk's birth. Pants no fit. And I mean NO FIT. Not even close. 2 inches from meeting in the button area. Wow.

So I found a scale, which isn't that easy because we don't have one at the house. But I searched, and found one near the office in the hospital, and yep, 202lbs. 202! I have never weighed over 200. 175 is about an average for the past 10 years.

Wow again. So I thought about life for the past 5 months. And it is three things. Mess around with baby is one thing. Sleep is one thing. Work is one thing. None of those mean keeping off extra weight, especially when you're eating lots of take out and food that is not prepared at home.

So, reality #90 that I was not prepared for when having a baby is that not only does Mom have to be careful about her diet to care for baby, and then lose the weight after, so does Dad. I'm on it. Headed out to the gym now.

Home with New Baby

So, about 9am on the third day in the hospital we packed up the mountain of baby stuff with a little help from the hospital nurses, stuck Berkles in the baby seat we had studied over for 30 minutes in the store before finally selecting based on color, and off we drove, headed home with our little bundle of joy.

The little booger even fell asleep on the drive, all half a mile of it. How cute. So, we took the seat inside and put it in the middle of the den, went in the bedroom and went to sleep. Turns out that's a bad idea, but we didn't know babies don't get much oxygen while sleeping in a baby seat. Looked happy to us, and after sleeping no longer than 37 seconds in a single stretch in the hospital, we left him there. Hell, I'd have left him on the roof if I thought he preferred it at that point. And so we all slept. Joyous, wonderful sleep, for a couple of hours.

Then he woke up, which was fine. Time to eat. So, we tried breastfeeding. And here was our schedule for the next 10 days:

Minute 1: Baby cries like it's hungry
Minute 2: Courtney whips out a breast, and somebody, just whoever is close, brings the baby over to feed.
Minutes 3-30: Baby screams at breast as if it's made of actual fire and is burning baby.
Minute 31: Baby magically latches onto breast and drinks for a while.
Minute 60: Baby falls asleep
1Hour Minute 20: Baby cries as if it's hungry...
Rinse, cycle, repeat.

Except sometimes, we skip the sleep part. All total, there is on average negative 432 minutes of sleep per day. In contrast, there are 7 migraines and at least fifty-eleven tears. And keep in mind, the baby can't make tears yet, so they're really all mama's tears. If someone came to our house they would have been justified calling social services, or maybe the police. Social services to say "there is no way these two people can care for a child, they need help." The police to say "obviously someone is coming in here and torturing these people when no one is around. Maybe the Chinese and their advanced methods with sleep deprivation."

So, finally I called BS on this whole situation and make Courtney give me one reason to not give the baby a bottle. In her totally destroyed and mind-altered state she couldn't come up with one in 10 seconds, so I made a bottle, and Berk drank it as if he had just caravaned across the Sahara.

And so that was the end of the great breast-bottle debate in the Willis house. Courtney was not happy and neither was I. We presume all the screaming at the breast meant Berkley was less than amused. But since the first bottle, all cartwheels and sunshine, much better sleep for everyone, etc. So, we stuck with it.

And after 7 days of wearing cabbage and ice packs on her breasts, Courtney's breasts returned to normal from the size of small planets.

Our next challenge was sleep (for the baby). We both used to go to bed at about 11, and sleep for 8 hours, straight. No waking up, no going to pee, nada. Babies are horrible at that it turns out. I slept light and if I woke up I was up for good. So, we went on a search for how to teach Berkley to sleep.

And after trying the cradle thingy, and his bed, and our bed, and a sleep sack, and a swaddle, and the couch, and the car seat again, and even pondering that roof idea, we settled on just dealing with it. We'd feed him about 10, then put him to bed until about 3am, then feed him, then again about 6am. This is not the same as sleeping 8 hours straight.

This went on for a couple of weeks, until someone suggested the novel idea we just NOT feed the baby in the middle of the night. Swaddle him tight, shut the door on the way out, and then walk back in there in the morning. That's it. This sounds very simple. We would feed Berkley about 7pm, change his diaper, put him to bed swaddled like a mummy (I call this baby jail), then close his bedroom door and do our thing until we went to bed. About 7am we walk back into the room and feed him again.

This is NOT so easy. The baby cries. And when you live in a home the size of a postage stamp, you hear it, all.the.time. But, sure enough, after a couple of nights he started sleeping the whole night. And has pretty much done just that every night since.

In The Hospital

Here, in this post, I tell you about our hospital stay. The one directly after the baby was born.

So, squirt, out came baby. And then the fun really began. The doc announced to Courtney that it was time to get the placenta out. By this hour the drugs from the epidural had kicked in, so he could have announced it was time to remove her kidneys with a butter knife and all would have been good. I, on the other hand, had heard some not so fun stories about this little process, and I was NOT drugged up. So, to work he went massaging her belly and being very nice about the whole thing while I stood watching with trepidation. Luckily, this went much quicker and more smoothly than the actual birth, and out came this... thing. It reminded me of a really shiny/silvery gallon sized zip-lock bag with spaghetti sauce inside. I was WAY more interested than I thought I would be. The doc noticed our interest and so yep, he just brought it right up into our faces to check it out. He turned it inside out, so then it was no longer silvery and slick, but instead very much like carpet in consistency, except still reddish purple and wet. So, there you go, time to play with new baby.

We got to hold him for 13 seconds, then we brought the families in to see everything. My 4 parents, my sister and her boyfriend, and Courtney's mom were there. Her dad was on the way.

So, in they all trooped, and the baby got passed around, my sister's boyfriend announced he was happy to be an uncle, and much merriment was had.

Then 15 seconds later, it was time to move to the "not so expensive, not as nice" room. So we all trucked down the hallway to a room to stay a couple of nights. Halfway there the fire alarm went off. Super.

We finally get into this room, everyone heads home, and we're alone, with this baby. We tried to breastfeed. How hard can it be? Take baby mouth, put on breast. Whammo.

NOT whammo. We turned, pinched, contorted, and the baby was just getting more and more angry. So, we gave up, and a little while later a nurse came in. She showed us how to do it right, and baby drank a little and went to sleep. Parenting is so simple.

10 minutes later, baby started crying. Well what the hell little man? You ate, your diaper is clean, you're all wrapped up and warm, nothing is wrong. And so on it went, through the night. Happy and sleeping a while, crying a while. Not a lot of sleep was had. It should be noted that for those without children that a baby crying in the room with you is roughly equivalent to someone exploding a 50 megaton nuclear bomb. Courtney was exhausted. I was pretty tired myself. About 6am, we sent the little guy to the nursery and slept in bliss for a few hours.

About 9, they brought him back to have more breastfeeding lessons. It went pretty well, and he ate a while and went to sleep. Through the day people came by and we told the same birth story over again and again. And the baby just sort of did his thing. Cry, sleep, pee, poo, rinse and repeat.

That night, we're alone again, and here we go. We want to be with the baby, but there was not much sleeping happening. And we try to breastfeed, but it isn't going all that well. The baby is best at screaming at us.

So, back to the nursery the baby goes, and to sleep we go.

Throughout all of these 3 days, it should be noted that Courtney is having to wear these gigantic maxi pads with an ice pack in them. I have no idea how she was comfortable or slept for one minute.

Also, if everyone did get settled and about to sleep, someone, anyone would barge in the room and want to test the baby's hearing, or make sure Courtney is drinking water, or something. Pure craziness.

Next morning, it's time to go home. They have circumcised the baby, we're all packed up, and down to the car we go. We live about 3 blocks from the hospital, so it's a short drive.

And upon getting home, the little man slept hard for a few hours. We all slept, more exhausted than we've ever been.