Sleep Deprivation and Metaphor Useage...

Sounds like a lecture you took in freshman psych, right? Here's the lesson to be learned from my first three weeks as a dad. I am not a funny man when I'm surviving on 3 hours of sleep a night. First off let me put this out there. Heather's mother has been staying with us since Braeden was born, and without her, we would be totally lost. She cooks us dinner, cleans the house and has even taken Braeden for the night on several occasions so we can sleep. So those of you out there that did it on your own, Kudos to you... suckers. But even with Binnie here to be our third parent during this "feeling out" period with Braeden, we're still in survival mode.

This brings me to an incident last week when I was commenting on how fast the little guy is growing. As of his doctor's appointment last week he's 8lbs 14oz! Of course immediately after that he had his first warm water bath and the resulting muscle relaxation took him back to about 8lbs even I think. Anyway, I made the comment "wow Braeden, you're growing like a weed." Now, had I been in my right mind I would have realized Grandma Binnie's affinity for anything flora and seen that comparing her first grandchild to a weed would bring out the claws. But I was running on 3 hours of sleep and was sucker punched into a discussion about how we shouldn't compare him to a weed. "How about 'growing like a tulip' or 'growing like a lilly'" came the other options. At this point my sleep starved mind was racing with visions of my first born child running around in leotards doing his interpretive dance of the first cool breeze of autumn... Growing like a tulip... How do you respond to that?

We finally settled on "growing like a dandilion". I guess you have to pick your battles. Now I have to start working on converting her to "imaginary superbowl parties" instead of "imaginary tea parties". I think she'll be ok with it as long as we can invite all of his stuffed animals. Except for the penguin. I think that guy is a closet Denver Bronco's fan. Here are some more pics of Meester Braeden for all of his adoring fans. And if you will email me at r.carl10@gmail.com I'm trying to put together an email list so I can send you all a quick note when a new post is up with pictures. - Thanks for the emails and letters. We appreciate all of them.

-Rob Heather and Braeden-