The First Month

As I write this, I'm finding it particularly hard to concentrate because Teddy is beside me in his swing, and the swing music is overly precious and deafening. He hasn't had a great track record in the swing (you're lucky to get him in there for more than ten minutes before he starts to scream bloody murder), so when he's actually in there and content I hate to mess with any of the conditions. Maybe it's the music that's making him chill, maybe it's the smell of my unwashed body that keeps his rage at bay. Whatever: I don't want to mess with it.

And holy crap: he's asleep. YEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!

His sleep (or lack thereof) has been the biggest challenge, or at least the biggest challenge for me. He's also got thrush right now, which is no great shakes either, but at least with that we've adjusted to our new routine of filling his mouth with foul things and boiling the entire house once a day. With the sleep, each of his problem days have been a little different, and we get caught off guard every so often. Like last night from midnight to 2:30, where he woke shrieking every ten or fifteen minutes (but then was totally cool the second he was picked up and he went instantly back to sleep). He's a weird little dude. He seems to equally dislike the act of going to sleep and the act of waking up. As Sarah said: inertia is his friend. Sample below.

One thing that has really surprised me, (beside the dehydration, and the thrush... and the velocity of the pooping... and the the fact that our four week-old has a mullet) is that I've watched a remarkable number of movies since this kid has been born. It started thanks to late night wake-a-thons. Through the night, Teddy typically eats at 11pm, 2am, and 5am, and after he eats he's generally up for an hour to an hour and a half. So I quickly discovered that having a movie on makes the whole thing less boring. (You're thinking its heresy for me to suggest that my own child bores me, and I'm not saying it's true generally, but when it's 4am and his eyelids are closing at the rate of one millimeter every five minutes, rest assured that it is jezus boring.) Now that I know I've got this built-in movie time, I plan ahead, rewatching classics and old faves, catching things I've been meaning to see for ages. But those first few days it was just whatever was on. "Hey, Shanghai Surprise. I would... totally like to... watch... that. Hooray."

I've been back to work for a week and we've been very fortunate to have Sarah's parents backing us up at home. I found that first day back surprisingly easy, and then Friday came and I felt like a sack of hammers. Weekend was good though and I'm reasonably recharged.

And I suppose that's it for now. Oh, except that I don't think I've acknowledged (at least on the blog) that Sarah won that last bet. Obviously: yeah, Teddy looks way more like her than me. But take a look at that top picture again. Kid's got my hands.

Poor kid.