The intellectual equivalent of a ham sandwich.

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Wedding Vows

My wife and I decided sometime after getting engaged that we would write our own vows. I’ll admit, I felt overly confident about this. I thought, ‘I can knock this out of the park – it’ll be great.’ In reality? Eh.

Our officiant was a friend of my wife’s family, a good friend and neighbor of her grandparents. We met with him and told him about our plan to write our own vows. He was enthusiastic about this (and everything, really – he was a ton of fun to have as an officiant and gave very beautiful remarks at the wedding). He suggested that we email him our vows once we wrote them, and he could provide feedback if we wanted.

The idea was to have short vows – four or five bullet type items rather than a long speech, or a paragraph for each point. Yes, your wedding day is all about you … but P.S., there are a ton of people there waiting to drink, eat, and dance so uh … keep it snappy.

I sat down, thought about it, and poof, wrote down some vows. I sent them off to our officiant and went merrily along … until his reply. It went something along the lines of, “hmmm, these are good … but keep thinking.” That’s a kind way of saying: nope.

I asked my wife if she had emailed him, she said yes. Then I asked what kind of response she got, and she said that he liked them. Huh.

My vows must really stink. I asked my wife what she was thinking for the vows and she said, “oh something simple, and nice. Just not something cliché and cheesy like <and THEN! And then she said pretty much exactly what my initial batch of vows were. Brutal.>”

Clearly it was time to go back to the drawing board. I wrote a new set of vows that were ok. They were no longer cliché, but they weren’t good. It was my backup plan. I didn’t bother sending them to the officiant because I knew they were just ok. I thought the best plan would be to let all of this ruminate.

I don’t like to be rushed when it comes to creative genius (though I do like to oversell my abilities by saying phrases like ‘creative genius’). I was looking for real inspiration, like Calvin would.

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It’s a Wednesday, the wedding is on Saturday, and I’m out for a jog. I’m listening to Wild Child, and one of the lyrics rumbles and tumbles through my brain like a wand just cast a spell on me. Suddenly the vows spill out of my brain and the only struggle was jogging home repeating them, over and over, over and over, so I wouldn’t forget them. Having already packed most everything in my apartment and moved it to my wife’s apartment, the only paper I had at home was a bit of junk mail to write the vows on.

After the wedding our officiant commented on my choice of paper that I pulled out of the inner pocket of my jacket, it was a neon green colored slip, but my wife liked the vows, so I guess it worked out ok.

(We just had our third wedding anniversary. Congrats to us!)

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4 Months and Counting

Hey there sports fans. Time has passed and the kiddo has continued to grow.

This last month was an interesting one with highlights including: bloody stool, multiple doctor trips, and a new diet for my wife. The adventures!

We have come to learn that the kiddo has some food intolerances, and as a breastfed baby that unfortunately means a less fun diet for my wife. At first she cut out dairy (cow’s milk) which is the most common cause of digestion woes for babies. This helped his poop (Lordy Lordy, the amount of talk about poop is truly surprising … it is such a common topic). BUT, the poop was still strange AND, on top of that, it still showed blood one time.

Based on what my wife read (and later confirmed by two docs) dairy is culprit number 1, soy is number 2. And soy, in case you are like me and unaware, is in just about everything. And it goes by a number of names, so good luck weeding it out at first pass.

That’s a lot of rambling on about diet and poop and such. Let me (too late, self) sum up.

Food intake was rough, which led to an unhappy belly, which led to an unhappy kiddo. This led to an overtaxed mom and dad. Overall status: unpleasant.

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That’s not my baby, he is apparently a baby for sale from Amazon.

The change in his diet has taken him from running the show, to us keeping pace a little. Another great helping in keeping pace is a little chair. Now you can eat breakfast while he happily stares at … you, or these little plastic smiling faces.

And, side note, smiles. They are wonderful, and magical, and make you feel like the most special person ever. And then … and then your child spends minutes smiling at a tiny, plastic, yellow smiley face. And you thing, ‘hey … dude …’ I enjoy anytime he smiles, it just makes me laugh that I work hard for them and I am tied with a yellow, smiling, plastic face.

What else from my meandering mind grab bag?

Oh yeah, sleep. The sleep is still not so good, and my wife and I are beginning to feel a little … guilty? Worried? Nervous? about the fact that we have yet to instill any real sleep rules. But our rationale is his stomach just recently began to be well enough that he’s calm more often and less crazy to lull to sleep. Although as I type this my wife is in the rocking chair and he is just staring at her when he should be asleep. So … that’s good.

Part of my posting this is for myself, so that I’ll remember things. Unfortunately the main thing this seems to be conveying is that I have lost all ability to organize thoughts in a cohesive or pleasant to read manner.

Sorry about that, future self.

Ok, I’m done with this. My wife bought me some LEGOs for Christmas and it’s go time.

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Is the Fog Beginning to Lift?

The kiddo is approaching 3 months of life, so it’s time for an update from the rambling, scrambling, tired, wired, and foggy brain of dear old pops. Aka, me.

My sister had told me about a book she read that mentioned that the first 3 months of life are almost like a fourth trimester, where they are so dependent on you that you’d almost think ‘why didn’t you keep cooking?’ Although, the physical ramifications of that would be dire. With that in mind, my wife and I thought, ‘so what’s that mean for us?’ With him being almost 2 months early, does that mean a 5 month long ‘fourth trimester?’

One positive note is that him being early really throws off any thought of tracking him against the ‘normal’ milestones. From a book I have read some of (note to self: get back to that after this post) it has information like, ‘at this age, you can expect your baby to be doing … you can be delighted if your baby is doing … and you can be over the moon if your baby is doing …’ But with preemies, you go based on the ‘adjusted age’ or how many days old he/she is after their due date. Our kiddo is almost 3 months old real age, alost 1 month old adjusted age. This has resulted in a hodgepodge of behavior that is sometimes older than his adjusted age, sometimes not. And when you combine that with the fact that every baby is different anyway it almost makes you think it’s pointless to try and track and compare every little thing. Pft. Like that’ll happen. What else will I do with my time but to be equal doses of proud and afraid?

I have been on the receiving and giving end of this – the instant calm. It feels like such a compliment when the kiddo is fussy, angry, crying, upset, you name it … and then I take over holding him and a calm washes over him. That’s pretty wonderful. To be fair, I think it’s often a change of scenery that does the trick for him, so I really shouldn’t take that much pleasure in it. But it’s great. (And when I hand him over and he calms … well fine, I didn’t want to calm you anyway!)

There is a distinct baby clothes market for those who have yet to change or dress an upset baby. My wife and I bought into this market before his arrival, and I think clothing manufacturer’s know what they’re doing. That outfit that is absurdly cute? Probably impossible to put on or take off without your child making you think he or she is going through a hellish torture session only Dante could dream up. There are outfits that are enjoyable, and not tortuous, and each parent probably has their own preference (learned after a few weeks) for what type they prefer.

Lately he has begun to give occasional ‘social smiles.’ For those of you not in the baby know, it’s like this. There is the ‘gassy’ smile (that’s what people say, no one knows why babies occasionally smile) that can happen right away (I think?) but it’s not a conscious choice. AND, the smile is not a full face smile, it’s more like the mouth just moves … you don’t see it around their eyes. Later, the baby might experience something, or look at you, and give a ‘social smile’ which is an ACTUAL, I CHOSE THIS SMILE FOR YOU kind of smile. It’s magical. My parents were in town recently and Sunday morning I got up with him at 6 am, I picked him up and he gave me a big smile for I don’t know how long. 30 seconds? A minute? It was long enough that my wife was able to get back from the bathroom and see too. It was magical. And then, last week on Wednesday, I got home from work, picked up the kiddo from my wife and BOOM, he gave me a little smile. I don’t know what it is to be addicted to drugs, but I can’t wait for my next dose of a little smile.

Speaking of random rewards, the kid can be like a video game. You just grind, and grind, change diaper, feed, dance, change diaper, ask him why why why are you still crying what is wronnnnnng?, dance, attempt to feed, get an angry look, dance more, pace, wrap him up tigheter, dance, finally feed, burp, dance, etc. And randomly in the mix of all that you may see a little smile, a glimmer of hope, and you think YES, more of that! Video games are designed to give random rewards, with random weights to how big a reward it is, and as you play more the rewards are spaced out more so you just keep grinding, and grinding … But, you know, instead of a new fictional gun or armor it’s a smile. From my son. Which is pretty glorious.

Those random rewards are the rays of light through the fog that is being tired, being wary, and being tested by the tiny screaming controller of your life. Nature, well done. A baby’s cry is a whip cracking motivator that’ll spring you into action. Or, if the cries continue, sometimes lead you to put the kiddo down, take off your hoody (he’s a toaster) take a deep breath, and pick him back up to try again.

Wish us luck.

Sincerely,
A Dad Who Thinks He Has Original Thoughts But Countless Centuries Have Thought Variations of the Same Thing

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