The amazing power of a sleeping infant

November 25, 2008

Have you ever noticed a sleeping infant is like a drug? It almost every aspect. I mean almost everything in the world of the baby somehow revolves around sleep - either yours or the baby's. I mean, sure, there's "eating" and crap that like - but man, for the first couple of months - it's sleep.

First, especially trying to coax your baby to sleep, sleep is like crack. You (okay, maybe you won't but I will) will do almost anything to get him to sleep. It's pathetic. I mean ANYTHING. Drive over 60 in a parking lot? When you have a baby who wakes up screaming anytime you drop below 60 - yeah, you'll do it. That actually sounds like an awesome movie. You are being held hostage by a terror beyond your control - drop below 60 and it's the end of us all.

And then when you aren't able to get the wee one to sleep, you really start to lose your mind. It's like you've taken some bad acid or something (I've heard, I mean how the hell would I know?) When it's 4am and you have a one month old who just looks up at you totally happy and wide awake looking up at you with a "hey - how you doing?" sort of look, you start to panic a little. Not only do you panic with a, holy crap - why isn't he going back to sleep, sort of way, but you actually start to lose your mind. You start talking to yourself and cease to have a functioning brain. By the way, Julie thinks I am impossible to be around if I haven't gotten enough sleep (enough sleep in this case being four consecutive hours). She walks around basically telling me how miserable I am. That is really helpful too - totally puts me in a better mood.

But my personal favorite is when he is sleeping in your arms. It is the worlds biggest sedative. He's all warm and we have this fuzzy blanket on him - and it is impossible to stay awake. I mean you try, but you can just feel your eyes started to weigh like 400 pounds and your head starts to do that slow nod where it sways and sways and the slams back jolting you and the baby awake. That's awesome, and completely unavoidable. No matter how hard I try to stay awake, when I am holding, you can feel this wave of sleep wash over you.

And when you finally lay him down and he settles in (and now you can go to bed), it's ecstasy. Its just such a stress release - it's like 'finally, he's down. now I can go accomplish 400 things before he wakes up.' For me items 1 through 399 are sleep, but Julie actually tries to get shit done.

Sometimes you just know it's going to be a bad day

Nov. 24, 2008



So sometimes you wake up in the morning and you just sense that it's not going to be the greatest day. I had one of those last week, and just as I sensed - it sucked. Started out with Riley alseep in his bouncer, and Julie gets up to take a shower. I am just finished getting dressed, when I just hear this insane yelling coming from Parkers room.

I go to check it out, and he is up and he is PISSED. I don't actually know about what yet, but I suspect that it's because he's had a cold and fever for the last week - so he generally feels like crap. Fair enough, I can understand that. I try to talk to him in a very concerned fatherly way "What's the matter big guy?"

It kind of goes downhill from there. I wasn't the one he wanted. Mommy is the cuddler, I am the entertainment (dance funny man!). So PK comes running at me yelling "NOOOOO! NOOOOO!" trying to push me out of the room. Buddy, I am something like seven times your weight - I'm not exactly going anywhere. Whatever - I try to stay calm and try to help him catch his breath, and, you know, usual actual words other than "NO!" Didn't work. This kid yelled at me for ten minutes at the top of his lungs. He couldn't speak, he was so hoarse.

It sucked. I mean really sucked. Now I'm getting late for work, but I'm not going to let this fire breathing four year old push me around, so I dig my heels in determined to work it out rather than just let Julie come in a calm the situation down. But here's the thing, when someone is just screaming at you; it's really REALLY hard to stay in control. It can very quickly spiral wickedly downhill. I mean, I get it - he's sick and he was jolted out of sleep because he can't breath because of his stuffy nose, but he was totally pissing me off. The scene actually looked a little like this:





That is not good times. But after another ten minutes of this, and making no progress - I changed tactics. I got really really calm; I channelled my inner Stuart Smalley.

"Buddy, I get it. You're really mad right now. If you are mad at me, I'm really sorry I upset you so much. But I need you to take a deep breath and tell me why you are so upset."

I think me being so calm (and apologizing, which Julie will suggest is something I never do (but when you are never wrong, what can you expect?)) kind of freaked him out, because it worked. After 30 minutes of pure hell - he switched an off switch and it was like it never happened. Might be easy for the three year old, but my head was spinning.

I think it's fair to say that PK is also having some adjustment issues. Nothing directed towards Riley or anything, who he seems to adore - but some of the stuff he's doing it making my head want to explode.

My Shadow

November 18, 2008

So I have a shadow. Now one would think that it would be a large shadow generally speaking (you know, 6'5" 500lbs), but my shadow is actually relatively small (about three feet) and weights about 30 pounds. There's actually a perfectly reasonable reason why the little man is following me around all the time now (other than my awesomeness, of course). Julie is at home all the time now, so PK actually gets plenty of mommy quality time. But what that means is that when I come home, I'm like a celebrity. I go up to change, he wants to change. I wear short sleeves, he wants to wear short sleeves. Follows me everywhere. Although he has taken a little break this week because he has a fever. Dad is not so good at the cuddling -that is reserved full time for mommy.

W tend to do things like go and play some football. Of course when PK plays football, he just tackles. It -doesn't actually matter who is carrying the football - he just comes running at you at full speed and then lunges at you to try to knock you over. He's amazingly effective at knocking me over.

So it's cute having your very own shadow - but it seems like I have a shadow who is really trying his best to piss me off sometimes. It's like he finds a tender spot (say, procrastinating - which I say with a full awareness of the irony) and keeps poking it. "Does this bother you? Yes? Okay, how about this?" It's like Parker, seriously - don't lay your head on the toilet, that's just disgusting, just get ready for bed, okay?

Julie thinks that while PK probably is testing me more these days, it's more a function of the fact that I don't operate well with a lack of sleep, and so I'm operating on a pretty short fuse. I thought about it....um.....no.

And as a matter of fact nobody operates as poorly as Julie does lacking sleep. For the last two days in a row - at around 5:30 or 6:00 when Riley is waking up she rolls over and begs "Please can you do downstairs and feed him? I will pay you one million dollars." Then she tries to talk about how she just got back to sleep because Riley puked all over himself and needed to change his outfit, blah blah blah. It's pathetic.

See how supportive I am? I rule. Here is the one thing I have learned about giving the wee-child a bottle. While a room temperature bottle might be okay - a cold one causes Riley to lose it. I, of course, learned this the hard way one morning when he was screaming to be fed and I started to panic, so I just gave him a cold bottle right out of the fridge. He took two sips and man was he pissed. He picked up the bottle and threw it at my head.

Kind of hurt too.

Twins?

November 10, 2008

Okay, so I don't think I'm alone in this one, but looking at the side by side pics of Parker and Riley at roughly the same age - I think they look really similar. It's like they are siblings or something. Weird how that is working out. Although, of course, the pictures that I managed to upload don't highlight that fact at all because I am retarded.

So Riley has reflux, just like Parker did. That's awesome. We are really enjoying going through that again. I mean the spitting up of complete meals until it seems like he's choking. That's just good times - not to missed. I mean why wouldn't I want to go through that again.

Here are a couple of other things that I've noticed about the little guy (Riley that is). First - they new born stage really does kind of suck. Now Julie will get all fired up at me for this one, but seriously - they just sit there cry, eat, poop, and keep me up - and I mean quite literally that it is. And I guess I'm hanging out too much with a preschooler because I'm looking at Riley and thinking "okay buddy let's interact." What do I get? Nothing, except a lack of sleep. So it sucks like 90% of the time. But then there are times when Riley wakes up and you are holding him and he just kind of looks at you and smiles. That makes everything worth it. It is one of the most pure moments ever.

I do have to share the quick story about Riley's first bath. Complete disaster does not even come close describing it. So Julie and I are sitting there talking (about my inconsistent parenting, I believe), and the bath is on our sink. And so Julie is filling the water in the tub with a bucket. And after like 10 minutes the tub is barely getting full, and so finally Julie asks "what is that sound?" I look over and there is water pouring out of the tub, all over the sink, into all of our cabinets and drawers ruining. And it's like 10 at night now, so we have to put Riley into the papasan and empty out every drawer in the bathroom. Water is everywhere, Riley is awake and just sitting there looking at us going 'what the hell is the matter with you guys?' So finally around midnight we have finally straightened the bathroom up, so we figure we might as well bathe him now.

The bath itself was relatively uneventful until Julie starts to rinse him off. I say to her "why the hell are you spraying me with water?" She's not. Riley had decided the warm water was a little too relaxing and peed all over the place. And when I say place, I mean me. All over me. Sucked.

And then to put a perfect finish on the evening, after Julie feed Riley - I am standing there burping him with him over my shoulder. And he burps - and then I feel a very warm liquid half way down my back.

The little guy vomited all over the place. It was a little freaky actually because it was almost two cups of vomit or so, which my shirt so willingly absorbed.

Amazing

I cried last night. I did not expect that at all. There I was sitting holding Riley with Julie sleeping next to me and they announced that Barack Hussein Obama would be the next president, and out they came. Don't worry, I quickly bottled them back up - because I'm a Keenan, of course, we don't show emotion. But there they were for the briefest of moments.


And then I tried to figure it out. What the hell was I crying for? My taxes are most likely going to go up. I'm not black. 150 years ago black people were property. Literally, they could be bought and sold like milk or food. One of the reasons we are the country we are is because for the first 75 years of our founding we could own other human beings. It's woven into who we are, we have to accept it and move on. And I do believe with the election of Obama, we actually have started to move on. It is a very dramatic symbol as a nation.


But here's the thing: I didn't want to vote for a symbol. While a symbol represents something significant, it doesn't actually DO anything. No, I didn't vote for a symbol. I voted for hope.

Hope that he maintains the same calm demeanor he exhibited as a candidate. Hope he governs from the center. Hope he can repair our international reputation. Hope he governs according to the Constitution and a respect for the rule of law. Hope he frustrates liberals almost as much as conservatives. Hope he does believe in the power of the market, but recognizes that it sometimes fails. Hope he appoints intelligent but not ideologues to cabinet positions. Hope he is humble about American power.

I just I really am looking for the anti-Bush. It really has been a long eight years. But this is what is truly amazing about this country. With as much damage as has been done over the last eight years - we as a country (finally) recognize it, make the necessary adjustments and just move on to fixing the problems. It really is a great time to be American.

And lastly, Obama is a White Sox fan, which implies he is an excellent judge of character.

Chaos overruns the Keenan household

Movember 3, 2008

Wow. This is taking some getting used to. On one hand, as a second time parent, you're a little less stressed, more familiar with things... a little more experienced than the first time around. On the other hand, it is hard to describe the sheer chaos that errupts going from one to two children in the house. Quick example -- last Thursday is Parker's Halloween Parade at pre-school. The night before, I actually asked Julie if she thought we should set an alarm (clearly sleep deprivation had disrupted intelligent thought). Anyway, the alarm goes off in the morning, everyone is sleeping and Julie jumps in the shower. Within minutes, Riley is awake and ready to eat... NOW... and Parker decides to wake up early too. You would think this was a good thing because now we have a little more time for everyone to get ready. But perhaps you don't appreciate what a procrastinator our eldest son is. (While Julie and I have been nicknamed "Late and Later", at least it took us 16 years together to earn those labels. Parker has mastered this skill in a little over three.)

So there I am, trying to calm an angry, hungry baby and simultaneously motivate a pre-schooler to get dressed and ready for school. I was seriously losing it. This whole scene lasted maybe six minutes before Julie was out of the shower and on the scene to lend a hand, but by that time I was about to lose my mind. Here we are... only two weeks into this... and I am completely overwhelmed. Other than that, it's going well.

More tomorrow.