An Open Letter to 21 Year old Braeden

Dear Braeden,

This morning, (this Sunday, weekend, no-work morning) you woke me up at 5:45 am. I stubbed my toe on your exer-saucer and nearly broke my neck when I stepped on your rattle. I then fed you breakfast which you promptly spit up all over my bare feet. I thought I could grab a quick nap in the late morning but you only slept for 20 minutes and I just had time to clean your bottles out.

When you woke up, you slobbered all over my face and left the largest drool string I've ever seen on my forehead. I then changed your diaper and you thought it was hilarious when you filled the new one with poo before we even left the changing table. You've managed to leave bodily functions, clothes and toys from one end of the house to the other even though you technically aren't even mobile yet.

I'm writing this because I want to remember today and say thanks. It's been the best day of my life just like every day before it for the past 6 months. Love you buddy...

-Daddy-

Some "Ups" are better than others...

So, The Dink as we so affectionately refer to Braeden around the house has learned a few tricks in his 5.5 short months of life. I like to call them his "Ups". Braeden has been standing "up" since he was about 3 months old. We will hold his arms and he'll stand "up" and then he'll actually take steps forward with a little help. He doesn't have the whole "Balance" thing down but how many of us honestly can say we've mastered balance? So we'll call "up" number 1 standing. It's pretty awe inspiring to see such a little man accomplishing such a monumental task.

So what cold be harder than standing "up" you might ask? Well surprisingly to me, sitting "up" is much harder. It requires muscles beyond just the legs, it requires balance, and it requires a thorough understanding of your center of balance, which is hard to find when your head makes up 40% of your total body weight. But The Dink has it down now. He can sit "up" on his own! So I now submit for you, the steps in mastering sitting. I can honestly say I've never been so proud of anything in my life! (By the way, if you're still wondering who he looks like, check out the 5th picture down. Very obviously Heather...)

Is that Monkey Bling?...

This is what happens when Mommy and Daddy both get to pick out a Halloween costume. By the way, his initials are BMC...

7 mL from failure...

It's been a very busy last few months in our house. Thank you all for the emails and gentle nudges for news about Mr. B. He's been doing great and Heather and I have been very fortunate that he very rarely complains about anything. We're extremely impressed that he can read a clock already. Every three hours on the dot he lets us know that it's time to eat. And he's great about following his schedule and sleeping through the night! (except when Grandma Binnie is around... hmmmm...) But enough about him, we all know this is a blog about my struggles as a new father right?

My sister once had an idiot boyfriend that assumed that since she was part Hispanic, she should be able to speak Spanish. In his mind there was a lonely thought floating around that it was somehow encoded in her DNA to understand the language. I always thought that it was a stupid idea to assume that your genetic makeup could have anything to do with what you know or learn. That is... until now.

Braeden's bottles are all measured in ounces. 7 am - 5 oz. of formula. 10 am 5 oz. of formula. 1 pm 5 oz. of formula. Etc... - I can go to the sink at any time and put the bottle under the faucet, turn on the water and hit 5 oz. with my eyes closed every time. Want me to stand on my head and do it, because I'm sure I can? Left handed, right handed, behind my back??- Bring it on.

Here's the problem. His bottle is in good ol' American ounces (let's hear it for arbitrarily making a decision on how to measure things huh?) But his bottle warmer requires 7 mL of water. What The...??!! - How did milliliters get into my house? It takes me a good 5 minutes to hit that stupid mark. I fill it t0 4, then re-fill it to 10, pour out a little and I'm back to 3, re-fill and I'm back up to 11... I can't do it. I end up dripping water into that little cup forever trying to hit the mark. The only explanation is that, as an American, I can't use mL's at all. Even though there's a common-sense science that the entire rest of the world understands behind using a Liter based system, my U.S.A. brain just can't comprehend it. But I can beat it. Call it ingenuity, call it improvisation, call it whatever you want. I'm going to put a piece of masking tape over the measurements and mark off 7 mL. But instead of labeling it with a 7, I'm going to label it as .24 oz - and just like that, I've solved the genetic default I'm cursed to live with. That's right, prepare to see one man's mastery over weights and measures.

Rob - 1
The First Years Bottle Warmer Company - 0

-Rob, Heather and Braeden

The Rest of the Story...

I've tried to sit down and write this blog four separate times now. But I always feel guilty on the off occasion that I have a few minutes to do nothing... that I am in-fact doing nothing. So then I get up and wash bottles, or put in a load of laundry, or mow the lawn. It's always something. I am amazed that we weren't the most super-productive people on earth before Braeden got here, because we apparently had hours and hours every day that weren't filled with him. What the heck did we do with our time??

Last Sunday, as we were rapidly approaching the end of week 4 with Mr. Braeden, both Heather and I were feeling the pangs of insomnia. You could measure the longest stretch of sleep either of us had gotten over the last month with an egg timer. So on Sunday, with friends in town and the adults outnumbering the children 4-2 I decided to catch a quick hour long nap. I looked at the clock, which read 5:05 an asked Heather to wake me up at 6:00. She said ok and I was out cold before my head even hit the pillow. Before I knew it, Heather was next to the bed waking me up, and I have to admit, I actually felt a little refreshed! So imagine my surprise when I look at the clock and discovered it was after 7 pm.


My first thought was how sweet it was of her to let me sleep so long while she took care of the baby... Little did I know how devious my wife really is. As the story slowly unfolded over the next two hours, it was revealed that my innocent request for a nap was actually a calculated move in the epic battle of mommy vs. daddy. I asked her to wake me up at six specifically because I decided that an hour long nap didn't qualify as "Sleep" so when it came time to decide who would take what feedings, I wouldn't be handicapped by my foray into snooze-ville. Chalk one up for the guys, right? Wrong...

Heather saw right through my plan and decided that if she didn't wake me up until 7, then I had a two hour nap, which in the unwritten book of new parenting does in-fact qualify as legitimate sleep. So she intentionally left me snoozing for her own personal gain... well played Mrs. Carlton, well played. I guess that will teach me to underestimate her. Next time I want to take an hour long strategic nap, I'll set the alarm.

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-

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!