Sphere of Influence...

Make a note of it. Heather was the first one to get peed on! Which meant that bath number 2 was four short hours after bath number 1. Braeden may not be able to get off his back, or change positions, but make no mistake about it, his "sphere of influence" is pretty big. He can get you with spit-up from about 6 inches away. He can tag you with some pee from about 3 feet, and if that doesn't do it, the slightest whimper will stop me dead in my tracks from anywhere in the house.

I'm surprised that I'm the neurotic parent out of the both of us. Heather is the one who has a spreadsheet for everything and I'm more of a "we'll get a hotel room when the plane lands" type of guy. So imagine our surprise when we discover that I'm the one who can't sleep through a cough from him, and every little red mark that appears is surely the start of some exotic disease that hasn't been seen around here for decades.

Today's trip to Chili's was a fine example. We get our table and he's sound asleep in his car seat but we had to get the Ringling Brothers trained waitress that swore she could stack 40 plates and hold them over the top of him. Then for an encore I'm pretty sure I saw her juggling steak knives over my 5 day old son. I ate my entire lunch in about 3 minutes and then had a rabid stare for anyone who got to close. Everyone eating there today left with a great story about the cute baby and the Neanderthal father who grunted and paced back and forth like a Silver-Back Gorilla when they stopped just a tad bit too long for his liking.

So my next great challenge as a father is to learn to relax just a little. I spent most of last night swearing he was coughing every thirty seconds only to discover I was loosing sleep over the sound that the humidifier was making. I'm sure eventually it will happen. After all, he's got a full life of eating dirt, chasing bugs and riding his bike into a pond ahead of him. Someday I'll have to relax and let him do his own thing. Someday I'll have to trust that he'll make the right decisions and maybe decide not to ride his bike off of the roof. I just need to be there to give him the advice he needs. And maybe he'll listen to dad because, remember, he peed on Heather first!