Okay, that's gross...

Prior to Addie being born, multiple experienced parents told me something akin to this: "You think it's gross now, but when it's your baby, it just doesn't bother you." Saturday night, Addie marked a first in her life. Shortly after we laid her down in her crib, Addie let loose her first (of many, probably) bazooka barf. Fortunately (or unfortunately, as it must have been spectacular), I did not see Addie unleash this targeted missile of goo. I discovered the evidence when I tried to lift Addie out of the crib only moments after the event.

Doing my best CSI:Montgomery, I was quickly led me to the conclusion that Addie was the culprit, as she was the only person in the room with the equipment (and motive?) required for a decent bazooka barf. Contrary to the wisdom provided to me from the parents above, and despite the fact that I love Addie dearly, running my fingers through a pool of half-digested milk was pretty grody. And Addie had it all over her. It was in her hair, all over her nightgown, and it soaked through the sheet and down through the mattress pad. Really, I'm rather impressed with her ability to empty the contents of her stomach in one triumphant spasm, but still--gross.

I would like to say that my first reaction to running my fingers through baby vomit was to whisk Addie out of the crib and take charge in Operation: Infant Hose Down. However, as soon as I processed that Addie had thrown up an entire stomach contents' worth of milk, I panicked and called Anna for help. Fortunately, Anna knows what she's doing, and easily took care of cleaning Addie. I took over the role of post-bazooka barf clean-up crew. After I put up the biohazard tape, drew some chalk outlines, and took applicable witness statements, I had all the dirty laundry in the wash.

Thankfully all evidence of the vomiting incident is now behind us, and Addie has not thrown up again, so she seems to be fine. She is clean and happy--but looking into her eyes, I'm afraid she's a recidivist. So now, I have to live with the knowledge that it's only a matter of time before she blows again. To all of you who told me these events aren't gross--I can hear you snickering.

Digression 1: Face!

When you have a new baby, you're awake a lot more than you would normally prefer. While I don't wish this state of sleeplessness to continue forever, it does have a certain hallucinatory, creative effect upon the mind. I find myself going down strange paths of thought as I sit with Addie, trying to rock her to sleep while Anna is catching a nap. Coleridge claims that Kubla Kahn was the product of an opium-induced dream; similarly, this blog has thus far been a product of sleeplessness and Mountain Dew (probably illegal in Utah!). This (and my writing about jams and ALF yesterday) has led me to today's digressive topic: renewing the use of the word face as a potent insult/categorical conversation ender.

This renewal of face began a few months ago at work, when one of our many divergent discussions ended with the coup de grâce: "Face!" I hadn't heard face used as an insult since middle school--but let me tell you, it is uncomebackable. As a result of its one-time usage, face is now a regular part of our lexicon, and I would be remiss if I did not pass it on. If you are not using face in day-to-day conversations, start now! You will be the envy of your friends and co-workers, as you will always have the last word. Don't believe me? Need some examples? I've written a short playlet to demonstrate (feel free to perform it out loud for full face! effect):

Friend A - "I think that the movie we just saw was pretty good."
You - "Yeah, pretty good at sucking! Face!"

Awesome, no? Who exactly got faced in the above dialog? Your friend? The movie? I don't know...but you win either way! Can Friend A come back with a cogent argument as to the aforementioned movie's quality after such an enthusiastic face? I submit that Friend A most certainly cannot! Start using face today, and thank me later.

And, for those of you thinking, "Paul, I thought this blog was about Addie?" My response to such a spurious accusation is this: I mentioned Addie at the beginning, or can you not draw inferences? Face!

One week down...

Addie has been home for a week as of this afternoon. It's been great, but I'm mostly nervous around her. She's so small, and I'm so uncoordinated. By my math, that's a poor equation that comes out with all sorts of bad remainders. So, I'm letting Anna do most of the Addie holding. For now, Addie and I have an agreement. I'll work to be more comfortable holding her, and she'll get some stronger neck muscles.

While watching Anna hold Addie, though, I've been thinking about what the next several years will hold. For the most part, I've been thinking about how to help her avoid the uncomfortable and embarrassing moments that I had, but I fear that there is nothing I can do, as it may just be a rite of passage. I know that middle school is several years off, but I already love Addie so much that I don't want her to have to go through that cesspool. Let me give you an example. Between 6th and 7th grade, my family moved from West Point, New York (I was an Army brat), back to Augusta, Georgia, where we had been stationed before. Being that it was 1990, and West Point was by and large a transient community, jams (Remember jams--long shorts/short pants...?) were still popular. So, the first day of school rolls around, and I show up wearing jams. I learned, very quickly, that jams were no longer popular in Augusta, as everyone had moved on to Duck Heads (freakin' Duck Heads). As a 7th grader, being the only kid wearing jams registered somewhere between catastrophically embarrassing and cataclysmically embarrassing.

So the question is, how can I prevent Addie from having her "I wore jams to the first day of 7th grade" moment? How can I prevent her from having to deal with the "cool" kids? You remember the cool kids, right? The kids that nobody really liked but wanted to hang out with anyway? (Note: if you were a cool kid, you probably do not remember this. Sorry to break it you this way.) That same 7th-grade year, I somehow found myself sitting at the cool kids lunch table for a few months. What I most remember about that time was that I "lent" Chuck Long a dollar just about every day. The sarcastic quotation marks should clue you in that I functioned as a lunch-time ATM. Perhaps that near-daily dollar was really a cool kid tax that I had to pay--which is too bad, because I could have used that money to buy some cool ALF merchandise.

I know my parents wanted to help me avoid things like the jams incident, yet they were powerless in the face of 7th grader who was sure that jams were the long shorts (short pants?) of choice. So, Addie, as you make your way forward in life, just try to listen to me when I tell you that jams are not cool (unless you wear them ironically, then they're awesome). Good luck, kiddo!

Oh, and since you were going to look it up anyway:

Advertisers are nothing but a bunch of liars!

Brace yourselves folks--my experience with Addie this week has led me to some unbelievable news. Get this--advertising is not always genuine!!! (Note: the level of shock is directly proportional to the number of exclamation points used; so three is quite high on the shockitude scale.) How did I draw this conclusion, you ask? It was after I saw this ad from E*Trade:

Note that the baby in the ad talks, makes pithy comments about how you are no better than an infant if you don't use E*Trade, and uses a PC (and a Webcam!) with relative ease. Addie can do none of these things! I know because I checked. To be scientific about it, I sat her down in front of the computer with me, and I allowed her to try to type/trade stocks on the Internet. You know what--she can barely type! To illustrate, here's an example of what she typed for me: afguiwe10u9n. That took her two hours! I hoped that if I opened www.afguiwe10u9n.com, it would backdoor me to E*Trade. It turns out that the Internet is unfamiliar with said URL.
How can Addie trade stocks if she can't type? (And don't get me started on using the mouse.) Why would E*Trade want to imply that my child should be a financial baron by now? Am I to worry that Addie doesn't speak with attitude to spare, mocking those who don't like to trade online? Why E*Trade, why?

On a happier note, Addie can spit up equally as well as the E*Trade baby; so at least I know we're on the right track. Maybe, if given time, Addie will be a regular John D. Rockefeller, trading stocks with the best minds on Wall Street. I expect this will happen in the next couple of weeks--if not, my faith in advertising will be irrevocably shaken. Next thing I'll hear is that Sonny is not actually "Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs," and this I cannot abide.

The menagerie approves...I think

One of the infant-centered features of our house is that Addie has five built-in playmates in our pets. I can say playmates now, but before we came home, I was afraid that these five playmates were going to be fur-covered missiles of doom. While I know that none of our animals (three cats and two dogs) are nefarious feline/canine super-villians bent on the destruction of children, I do know that they are all incredibly curious as to the contents of the little bundle we brought home on Friday, and that makes them slightly unpredictable.

Once Addie was discharged, Anna and I decided that our first order of business was to introduce Addie to our Golden Retrievers, Abbey and Mollie. I love our dogs--they're just not particularly graceful or coordinated. I knew that Abbey and Mollie would love Addie and protect her--I was just concerned that they couldn't really control themselves around her. Fortunately, it turns out the dogs are really gentle with Addie--the only thing is that they like to lick her as if there's no tomorrow. I don't blame them; I don't think they've ever smelled a baby before, and they're just interested--but it's been hard to keep them as gentle as I would like them to be. But, as you can see from the picture below, Addie has a new friend in Abbey.

The cats have been a similar story. Like you would expect with cats, their interest in Addie lasts for a moment, and then they don't really care anymore. Our oldest cat, the diabetic Miles, was the first to walk up to Addie to check her out. Anna and I prepared to intervene to protect Addie if necessary, but it turns out that Miles sniffed Addie for a moment and then promptly proceeded to step right over her like she wasn't there. Winston, our 14-pound fatso, is really only a concern if he accidentally sits on Addie. Despite any potential danger he may pose, Winston is pretty freaked out by Addie's crying. He maintains his distance, and I don't really see him approaching Addie for a while. It took Winston at least two years to let me pet him, so I think Addie will probably be a teenager before Winston makes up his mind about her. The offender I was most worried about was Fuzz, our Persian/Siamese mix. Since we set up the baby furniture, Fuzz has taken a liking to sleeping in the crib. Naturally, Anna and I were concerned, as we didn't want Fuzz to sleep on Addie accidentally. Fuzz seems to be okay--again, just mostly curious. I hope that all three warm up to Addie, so that they'll be alright when Addie's old enough to inadvertently torment them.

So, all seems well with our animals, which is definitely a good thing. Looking back, I'm just glad that we didn't bring Addie home to our pet situation a couple of years ago. When she was at Churchill Academy, Anna starting raising gerbils and rabbits with her science students. While it was a great learning experience for her students, we ended up taking care of a boatload of gerbils, most of whom were quite evil (trust me, one of them was named Spawn of Satan--long story--but that gerbil was beyond mean). Additionally, all of the individual gerbils required different care--some had to be alone, some could not be with others, some couldn't be with members of the opposite sex. It was like running a nursing home for the criminally insane. Given our pet history, I'm glad that Addie won't have the opportunity to become a modern-day Willard, commanding an unholy army of gerbils. Instead, all she'll command is a five-animal army of uncoordinated doofuses. The world is safe.

Babies cry a lot

Prior to Addie's arrival, I knew that babies cried a lot. However, I knew that as soon as a baby started crying, I could count on their parents to take care of them. Now that I am a parent, I know that I have no idea how to stop Addie from crying--save hand her to Anna. Anna seems to have a better grasp of this than I do, but I'm slowly picking it up. From my reading on the Internet, and what everyone told us at the hospital, apparently Addie is crying either because she is: a) hungry, b) needs a new diaper, or c) wants to sleep.

I know I'm a new parent, and I'm probably in no position to reintrepret thousands of years of parenting wisdom--but I think that Addie is not hungry, in need of a new diaper, or tired. I think that she's worried about the economy. When she says "wah"--I hear "Dad, with the economy in turmoil, the dollar weakening against the Euro, and the presidential race becoming more vitriolic by the day, how am I to have assurance that my economic future is accounted for?"

This question, again, phrased as "wah," troubled me. I tried to tell Addie that the dollar strengthened against the Euro on Friday, that new home sales were up two percent during the first quarter of 2008, and Bear Sterns is being reevaluated at a higher buyout price. Surely, I said to Addie, this must raise your spirits, as many experts believe that these factors point against an economic recession--isn't that great?

Again, she responded with "wah," and her cries continued unabated. How could I respond to Addie when she laid forth such a strong rebuttal? Given the fact that I couldn't convince her that downs are a natural foil to the ups of a market economy, I decided that she probably wanted Anna. I hope that she can better explain the free market. Or, Anna will feed her, change her diaper, and put her to sleep--which is probably what Addie wanted in the first place. Give me a break; I'm learning.

Addie comes home

It's Friday night, and I'm back in the living room where, on Tuesday, Anna sat in the recliner, thirty-eight weeks pregnant. Everything is approximately the same, except now Anna is holding Addie, who has been released entirely into our care. While I'm now thrilled that Addie is at home, my thought process this morning ran as such: Oh good, Addie's coming home. --to-- Oh God, Addie's coming home! Given the fact that most of my knowledge of child raising comes from ABC's early-90's TGIF lineup--I'm afraid I'm in trouble. But, I have confidence in Anna, and if Full House taught me anything, Addie will a toddler at least by the end of the first season.

Well until Uncle Jesse shows up (have mercy!), I'll tell you a little bit about how the hospital deviously deprives you of sleep after you have a baby. Don't get me wrong--it's nice to have the help that the nursing/hospital staff provides, but, man, they never stop coming into the room. It doesn't matter what's going on at the time, it's just one staff member after another. And they seem to come at the most inopportune times. Last night, finally, Anna and Addie are asleep in the bed; I'm falling asleep in my recliner (That's right, I slept in a chair--I just pretended that I was flying, and I had an awesome, first-class seat.) and in walks a tech to draw Anna's blood...at 4:30 in the morning. I'm no doctor (at least in the traditional sense), but I'm pretty sure Anna would have still had an ample supply of blood to provide a few hours later. Oh well, sleep's overrated anyway. Nitey nite.

So, I have a daughter now

It's Wednesday night, March 19th, which for me, will forever be known as my daughter's birthday. I'm simultaneously thrilled, exhausted, apprehensive, and incredibly overwhelmed. I find it hard to believe that I'm now responsible for every facet of the life and care of the little person sleeping in our hospital room.

And while the new-found responsibility is humbling and awesome, probably the most lasting impression of the day is that I now know that I was woefully unprepared for the visuals that childbirth would present to me. Some things do not need to be blogged about in detail, and I will not do so here. But, as I need to report my impressions of the event, I will sum it up in one word--ew. The fact that something so beautiful can come from something so nasty is absolutely amazing...but really--ew. Anything I have ever seen in any horror movie to date does not compare to the reality of childbirth. Perhaps the next Saw movie will feature a torture victim escaping from the womb, because--ew. Seriously...ew.

All kidding aside, though, I wanted to devote a paragraph to Addie in the hope that she will one day read this. Addie, you have torn down my life as I understood it, and rebuilt it in a way that I never could have imagined. All of this, you did in a matter of seconds when you first looked into my eyes, and I saw the glimmer of recognition in yours. I love you more than I could have possibly understood yesterday, and I know that, somehow, I will love you more tomorrow. I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that you are the greatest accomplishment of my life.

Cheers to all.

Umm...I didn't mean I was actually ready for this.

Right now, I'm sitting on a couch in Anna's labor and delivery room. She is resting post-epidural, and it appears that it will still be a few hours before Addie will be born. So, I thought it's as good a time as any to update the blog. As I've sat in the room with Anna this morning, I've come up with a new entry to add to the list of old wives tales that will bring about labor. It appears that starting a blog about your soon-to-be-born child will most definitely do it. Post number 1 goes up at 8:00 PM yesterday, and then, lo and behold, Anna's water breaks at 2:45 AM this morning. This can only mean one thing. With the awesome power of my blogging, I can cause labor.

I know what you're thinking--"Paul, are you only going to use this new-found power to generate labor via the Internet for good?" Fear not readers, I will not bring about labor with my blogging skills for profit or fame--I will only act in the best interest of humanity. Perhaps I will be featured in the next X-men movie as: The Blogger, the super-hero that can cause labor at will and has a preternatural understanding of web-based programming languages! (I'm not sure how I would use HTML to fight crime, but I think it would be a useful power to have, say if Spider-Man ever wants to start up an e-commerce site.)

Man, I'm tired. More to come...

Entry the first...

As I sit typing this, my wife, Anna, sits in our living-room recliner, thirty-eight weeks pregnant. She is carrying our daughter, Addison Marie, due on the 28th of March. Addie (that's what we are going to call her) is my first child. If modern medicine is to be trusted, she will be living in my house within the next two weeks. To me, this knowledge is both awe-inspiring and panic-inducing. I've held approximately two newly born infants, and I don't feel as though I have this integral part of child rearing down. My knowledge of holding babies, prior to a week ago when I held a five-week-old, was limited to how a pastor will hold a baby during an infant baptism. Apparently, the pastoral grip at the baptismal font is not a particularly natural or nurturing way to hold a baby. One hand under the head and the other hand under the rear, thrust out in front of yourself holding on as if you were involved in a go-for-broke red rover game is--so it seems--not entirely comforting to a baby. My wife tells me that I probably don't want to hold our daughter that way. I think that she is slightly concerned about my lack of baby-centered experience. So am I.

With Addie soon to arrive, I've decided to start a blog dedicated to her and my sure-to-come foibles with new parenthood. I've flirted with the blogosphere in the past. At one point, probably a year ago or so, I wrote an entire first entry that I was quite proud of. Blogspot did not have a save now feature at that time, so naturally, I lost my entire post. I guess I didn't really feel like recreating my entry, so I dropped it, and haven't thought about it again until recently. Now, on the eve of my genes being able to look at me, I'm starting again. Maybe Addie will look back at this and be able to see a window into her childhood, or maybe she'll be horrified when I read these entries out loud to her first boyfriend (same diff)...either way, I think this should be fun (for you at least, apparently I won't be sleeping much). Stay tuned for more.