Hey! Hey Kid! C'mere, I Gotta Tell Ya Somethin'.

So this is what it’s come to: Frankie, unhappy with the amount of attention she’s gotten the last three months, tries to drive an early wedge between Max and his parents. It’s kinda like that creepy guy from the first “Charlie and Chocolate Factory” movie. The one that grabs the kids right after they find the ticket and whispers suspiciously into their ears as they nod agreeably.
What made me nervous here was that indeed, Frankie was all “whisha, shusha, shoosha, hoosha, wiss, wiss, hoo!” in Max’s ear and, indeed, Max did nod agreeably the whole time: “huh-uh, yeah, yeah, uh-huh-uh, right on!”
Emotionally needy poodles and impressionable babies: my recommendation? Something in a Lab or a Retriever. Then their conversations will be more along the lines of: “Hey, do like dog food? ‘Cause I do. Also, I like chewing. I can tell you’re a chewer.” It just seems more innocent.

And, Then, Things Got Weird

Max’s face and head seem to change slightly everyday. I’m not sure if ye olde Alzheimer’s is kicking in already or he’s just growing really fast or if it’s a little of both but, I swear, every morning, he seems just a little different. Better, newer, but different.
Regardless of each morning’s mighty morph, it seems that my family’s head-shape gene is currently dominating. This results in moments on the changing table, with the right light, at the right angle, it pretty much appears to me that I’m changing my Dad’s diaper. Or, at least changing the diaper of a baby that suddenly has my Dad’s head.
Head down: wipe, wipe wipe. Glance up: Woah!
You get the picture.
It certainly makes the little Dr. Freud in you do a double-take when you’re concentrating on the mess down there, you glance up at the kid’s face and it’s your Dad, lookin’ at you all googly-eyed.

The Red Pill or The Blue Pill?

At some point in your life, and certainly since a certain movie came out in 1999 (ahh, remember the Nineties?), you’ve probably wondered (or you should have) if what we think of as “real” is really real. Could what we perceive as our waking life be a dream? Could it be someone else’s dream? I’ll leave the massive questions here to the big dawgs.
For a baby, though, you have to believe that there’s not much of a boundry between waking life and dreaming life. I mean, if your dreams are partly a hashing out of input from your daily life (I was doing returns at Costco but, it wasn’t Costco, it was Yankee Stadium) then Max must wake up(?) a little confused:
“Man, I was just dreaming that they were looking in the crib at me. Now I’m awake and, there they are, looking in the crib at me. Yesterday, during my nap, I dreamt she fed me. Then, what do you know? She woke me up and fed me!” Ninety days of life isn’t enough to give you the super-fun, surreal dream action. . . . at least, I don’t think so.
I wonder if we can get Max to dream about how much fun he’ll have mowing the lawn.

Not Exactly Grandma's Brownie

A relatively typical day for the three of us includes some sort of variation of the following: get up; feed Max; hang out with Max; shoot pictures of Max; try to get ready for work; race off to work; whoever went to work comes home; put Max to bed; load pictures from earlier on computer.
Then what happens is, I think, a fairly new thing: We sit in front of the computer and marvel at our little boy. We laugh at that day’s shots and then go back and look at shots from when Max was first here. We get all giddy, looking at how big he’s gotten and how he’s smiling now and how he spanked Lamby three times today and two times yesterday. We do this for a little while and then we watch a Netflix or catch up on stuff that we’ve Tivo’d.
There’s something so spectacular about having a visual recap of each day. And something about being able to quickly Picasa back a few weeks and see how he didn’t quite fill out that onesie as much as he does now.
A while ago, when I was smarter, I might think about the new way in which our relationship with the boy is mediated by this quick digital photography. In a funny way, I would’ve thunk, pictures, being what they are, make it all seem more real, even though, right, it’s less real?
However, those days are behind us and, now, I just wipe my son’s ass. Then I go into the living room and look at pictures of him with my wife until, laughing like stoned teenagers, we wipe tears of joy from our eyes.

No Mother's Day Post?! I Have No Father!

Katie and I went through the list of holidays yesterday while we getting ready for a little Mother’s Day event. Now that Cinco de Mayo has filled a little hole in the month of May, the only month left without a drinking/card giving holiday is August and I have to believe it’ll only be a few more years before the beer brewers/card companies cobble together some sort of way for us to get wasted/buy cards in poor, lonely August. Maybe it’s because August is just so hot, I don’t know.
Regardless, Katie? Max and I want to thank you for just being the most amazing Mom! No matter how much love in in Max’s eyes when he looks at Lamby, I know that he loves his Mom. For me, watching Katie these last couple of months and in the days leading up to Max’s arrival, has been a revelation. Katie’s status as the Goddess of Truth and Beauty has already been well established but, now, as a Mom, she is almost indescribably great.
Remember that movie? The one you knew was going to be good while you waited in line? All the right actors, the right director, a great story: you knew it was going to be great. You go in, and you’re just blown away: you want to go back in and watch it again. You want to tell all your friends to go see it. . . now! It was so much better that you thought it was going to be. You’re seven again and Luke Sywalker is saving Princess Leia. Or better, Westly has just saved Princess Buttercup.
That’s how it is watching Katie be a Mom. . .times a thousand. It’s more beautiful and perfect than anything you could have have ever imagined. But, there they are, Max and Katie: real, wonderful, life. Happy Day After Mother’s Day!

Odd Pangs of Jealousy

I can tell you this right now: Max has never, ever looked at me with such a look of absolute adoration and love. He’s very into his Mom, and rightly so, what with the whole “life-giving-milk” thing they have going on. Even so, I don;t know that Katie or the vehicles for said life-giving milk have gotten the glowing look of love you see here.
Max is in love with his Lamby. Between Lamby-spankings, he sits in his little chair and talks to Lamby, telling her, I assume, how he loves her so much more than his parents.
I figured it would be a few years before we were supplanted by some new iteration of a Playstation but, here we are, replaced by a blue, plastic lamb with a red and white spinny ball. Oh, they grow up so fast!

Max Shakes Off the Sign, Checks the Runners

Max is moving up from fleece appreciation and button-eye pulling to full-on low motor function activities. What this means to his parents is that he is fully aware that he is gleefully making the red and white ball on lamby spin around. What this means to everyone else is that we are moving that toy into the path of Max’s already moving hand. I’d say the truth lies somewhere between.
The funny thing is, because he’s doing all of his lamby spanking with his left hand, even Katie’s thoughts turned to the millions he could earn as a baseball pitcher. Seriously, if he had starting whacking away with his right hand, we’d be pumped but not thinking that he’s the next rightie for the St. Paul Saints. But, since he’s currently a southpaw, here we are wondering if he might be the next Sandy Koufax.
Either way, we’ll be moving Max up from AA ball soon. He’s showing lots of promise!

Bee-Bop-a-Roo-Bop. . . Ewwww. . . What is that Smell?

Right off: sorry about the Prairie (Ho)me Companion reference.
So, as you’ve probably gathered, I’m not much for actual baby information. That is because, firstly, I know nothing about raising babies and, secondly, as soon as I say “here’s the way to get your kid to sleep” or “here’s how to wear a Bjorn under your clothes”, I’ll be be wrong. There are many ways to skin any number of cats.
However, I can safely pass (no pun intended) on this bit of wisdom: Moms? DO NOT EAT RHUBARB WHILE BREASTFEEDING. Trust me when I tell you that the oder-rific results are pretty spectacular. And not in an “early morning sunshine” kind of way. It’s more in a “Is there a landfill near here?” kind of way.
In fact, while I knew that the leaves of the rhubarb plant are poisonous, the more research I do, the more freaked out I get. Seriously, when the gloriously tart stuff I grew up eating in cakes and pies turns out to have a chemical in it that requires an MSDS sheet, you have to take some small pause.
Sadly, rhubarb always meant “spring” to me. Now, it just means metal polish, writing ink, bleaching agent, and stinky baby farts.

Thou Shalt not Covet thy Neighbor's Bjorn

Whew! I checked my laminated, wallet-sized list of the Ten Commandments just to make sure this one wasn’t on there, and it’s not. Guilt-free coveting! Max’s little buddy, Finn, swung by my work the other day and, lord, his newer, higher-tech Bjorn was much sexier than Max’s Bjorn. Please, nobody tell Max: BabyDaddy has Bjorn lust for another Bjorn. Well, I guess, really, you shouldn’t tell the Bjorn.
Finn’s Bjorn had nice, quiet, plastic hooks and latches rather than the big, noisy button snaps. Also, it looked much more comfortable to wear under the clothes, making my whole “never-take-off-the-Bjorn” thing a bit more workable.
See, this is why Capitalism sucks! There should only be one kind of Bjorn, you buy it with your wheat credits, and you stand in a really long line to get one! Although, I’d have to give up my Tivo and Netflix, wouldn’t I? Yeah, Capitalism!

I Got Your Time Machine Right Here, H.G.!

It’s gettin’ like a D’Angelo video shoot in here.

My Dad and I were talking yesterday about how much faster time goes once you have a kid. He kinda of laughed, remembering, I think, how much his world sped up after I was born. Time seems to go faster as we get older, I’m totally aware of that. But, now, after the kid, time hasn’t just sped up, it has exploded.
Actually, well, let me (and you’ll have to stick with me here) put it this way: There’s this toilet. It doesn’t use water, it uses heat. You do your business, close the lid, flip a switch, and — fa-pooom! — yesterday’s lunch becomes a little pile of gray ash. Incinerated! And, that, my friends is what a kid does to time.
Don’t take this the wrong way. I do not see the post-kid time in my life as being “flushed” down a fire-y toilet. It just seems like — fa-poom! — today is over; fa-pooom! It’s already tomorrow. Fa-poom! Max is in grade school. You get the point.
I guess I now know why Dad spent so much time on the can with the Sunday Fargo Forum.