Unwakeable

In lieu of representative UFC
violence, here's some puppies.

While Grace often has a tough time falling asleep, once she's out, she is out cold.  I'm talking UFC, Bisping after Dan Henderson's Mortal Kombat Finish Him Punch out cold.  She's been to two parties in her life, and both times slept through the entire thing.

The first time, a couple of weeks ago, Grace continued a longstanding family tradition of passing out at a kegger, dozing through my sister's annual backyard birthday party/salute to binge drinking.  Unimpressed by the yard's Drunk Olympics, Baby Grace barely made it out of the car seat for the three hours we were there, dozing straight through the revelry.

All dressed up for a 4 hour nap.

Last weekend Grace pulled off an even more impressive feat, sleeping through a 100 guest Communion party that included being held by a bunch of newly met aunts, uncles and cousins to the sounds of a blaring DJ.  My daughter's comfortable with people, and likes nothing more than being held, so the former challenge was no threat to her rest.  The latter though, was remarkable.  You try taking a nap to jet engine decibel dance music. 

Most babies wouldn't have stood a chance of sleeping in such an environment, but I have an explanation.  Grace has been trained to handle loud, terrifying noises from the womb, due to my then pregnant wife's high volume completion of Bioshock 2 on the XBOX, not to mention exposure to a steady stream of prenatal Law & Order SVU.  Chalk one up to desensitization!

Dozing with Cousin Scarlett

Grace TV

Carrie and I love watching Gracie sleep, to the point of obsession.  As part of our nightly routine, we hook our video monitor up to the television and watch her doze in serene peace until we pass out ourselves, which we affectionately refer to as turning on Grace TV  [Note to expecting parents, the Mobicam wireless video monitor is all sorts of awesome].  Tonight, our baby watching took a meta turn. 

Grace has been pretty restless the last few evenings, staying up from around 7 pm until nearly midnight.  We've tried the usual feeding, changing, attention, rocking, swaddling and, out of desperation, the pacifier (a post for another time), but none of that has helped to settle her down.  The next step was toys, and there we found a solution.

We put a light-up, fish tank replicating, lullaby playing music box/baby TV (great gift Grandpa Mulligan!) in her bed, which instantly got Grace's complete attention.  Within seconds, she had a beaming smile, which is pretty much the first time she's smiled specifically at something that's making her happy, other than passing gas.

I know this because my wife and I were both standing over our daughter, watching her watch her own version of Grace TV.  Her happiness was mirrored in our faces for the next 10 minutes, as we silently looked on until she, just like us, peacefully fell asleep to her favorite show.

A much better show than NCIS.

Obsessive Compulsive De-Boogering

I'm sure that this is just the first post of many about how I annoy my daughter.

Like many newborns, Grace's nose is stuffy most of the time.  She can't blow her nose and lays on her back almost all day, so snots tend to build up quickly.  Of course, we only discovered this after Grace was home for a week, which led to a panicked night and a first thing in the morning trip to the doctor, who assured us that everything was fine.  Then, she gave me a fateful instruction: regularly treat the baby with saline drops and keep her nose clear with a nasal aspirator.

And thus, an obsession was born.

Torture instruments of The Boogie Inquisition.

It's become my mission in life to combat the boogers that are infiltrating my beautiful girl's poor nose.  I analyze every noise she makes, interrupt feedings for visual inspections and, to Grace's great chagrin, administer the treatments.

First the drops, a messy endeavor which leaves half of her face soaked as she recoils from the dropper.  Then, worse, the aspirator, a medieval device for poking and prodding the deepest recesses of her sinuses.  What should be a minute of discomfort becomes fifteen minutes of maniacal hunting.  Annoyance registers with my baby and stink eyes are doled out with incredible frequency.

Someone call my hair a therapist.

The worst part is, I know firsthand how it feels to be traumatized by parental obsession.  By own father had a deeply unhealthy need to cut my hair evenly.  Some of my first memories are of sitting on a chair in the bathroom and staying still, impossibly still, for what felt like hours as my dad studied one side of my head then the other only to judge his work imperfect and begin cutting again.  The stress of perfectionism and fear of inevitable scissor nicks still haunts me to this very day.  In fact, I think the reason that my hair is falling out is not genetics but a residual effect of my ordeal.  My hair is actually afraid of reliving this experience and think it would be safer in my shower drain than on my head.

Barber issues aside though, my pops did a great job with my sister and me, the type of job I'm trying my best to do.  But, regardless of my effort and intentions, I'm inevitably going to find ways to break Baby Grace.  If I get enough of the big things right though, this will all turn out okay.

A Light Workout

Getting some exercise in with a few moments of belly time.

 

 Now enough of that, get me the hell out of here!

What Baby Knows, What Baby Doesn't Know - Part 1

Most new parents are obsessed with their baby's development, and I'm certainly no exception.  I'm always on the lookout for the first signs of burgeoning skills and am constantly trying to teach Grace, even though I know she's too young to pick up on most things.  When I hold her, I tell her about noses and ears, fingers and toes.  Walking her around the house is time for an introduction to colors and shapes.  It'll be months until those lessons start to sink in, but there are other discoveries she's made about the world that are already easy to see, where she's moved beyond pure instinct to a more developed level of understanding.  Of course, there's plenty more concepts that are still well beyond her grasp.

What Grace Knows - Navigating Daddy

Grace sees me not so much as a person, but as equal parts restaurant, jungle gym and mattress.  Whether hungry, sleepy or looking to play, she knows what she wants when she wants it, and how to move around me in order to get it.

Feeding position
(were you expecting me to
dangle her from her ankles?)

My daughter is mostly pretty quiet, but when she's hungry she lets you know it in the form of unholy, slasher movie level screaming.  The thing that's impressive is that she's learned to stop freaking out when I get her into feeding position, sitting down with her cradled in my left arm, not when she first feels the bottle.  The thing that's scary is that she can put herself into feeding position when I'm not expecting it.  At least once a day I'll be burping Grace over my shoulder and, like something out of Cirque du Soleil, she'll push herself up, toss herself to the right and dive into the crook of my arm, ready for a post-burp snack.

Burping equals boredom for Baby Grace, so when she's not diving for food, she's trying to play, and there's nothing funner than my face.  She lifts her head and climbs, pushing off my arms with her legs and finding handholds in my chest hair (ouch) and mouth (OUCH!) on her way to the summit of Mount Nose.

"You've got a Gracie on you."

After conquering the trip up my face, it's naptime, which means negotiating her way back down to her favorite sleeping spot before I get the chance to put her in the stinky bassinet.  This move is more of a slide rather than a dive, as she purposefully curls into a ball with her ear pressed against my chest, resting up for a few hours before the cycle begins again.

 What Grace Doesn't Know - Eating and Tummy Aches are Related

It's no surprise that cause and effect are lost on a 5 week old baby, not to mention the basics of human physiology.  Since those concepts haven't dawned on her, Grace's first response to clearing gas with a good burp or clearing something worse with a poop is to immediately demand more food, blissfully unaware of the vicious circle she's descending into.  Hopefully, she'll figure this connection out sooner rather than later, but considering the fact that her 32-year old father still eats cookies for breakfast most mornings and then complains about feeling tired and queasy by lunch, there's a good chance that she's genetically predisposed to never putting these pieces together.

Baby Ninjitsu

As any parent would tell you, newborns have a seemingly infinite capacity to amaze you, and Grace is no exception.  Day after day I watch in wonder as she develops new skills like learning to coo and holding her head up.  Just the other day though, she unveiled a brand new trick that you won't find described in any baby book.

Grace was up for hours, clearly overtired and none too happy about it.  About an hour or so into her raging scream-a-thon, my wife Carrie and I had all but exhausted our arsenal of baby-calming tricks (feed her, change her, swaddle her, rock her, beg her).  Afraid the neighbors were going to call child services on us, we decided to turn to our final option, gripe water.

For the uninitiated, gripe water is a liquid colic remedy for infants made with fennel and ginger.  Since hot ginger tea is my preferred hangover remedy, I had high expectations for its soothing powers going into fatherhood, which were only bolstered when it immediately cured Grace's hiccups the first time we used it.

So with an apoplectic Grace cradled in Carrie's arms, I poured a half teaspoon of the miracle drug and slowly approached.  Now, administering liquid via spoon to an upset, uncooperative baby is no easy task.  You have to negotiate flailing arms and a moving mouth, plus get it in there between cries.  After patiently waiting for my opportunity, I saw an opening and pounced.  That's when Grace unveiled her inner ninja.

Adorable baby or silent assassin?

In the blink of an eye, Grace stopped crying, steadied herself, reached out and grabbed the handle of the spoon - WITHOUT SPILLING ANY OF THE GRIPE WATER.  For comparison, I spill milk all over my face each and every time I eat cereal, but my daughter can snatch a spoon out of midair with perfect precision.

Carrie and I stood frozen in awe as Grace's sharp, purposeful glare said what her voice cannot. "Not today old man.  Try that again and I will kung-fu you butt into oblivion."

Of course, as soon as I could free the spoon I gave her the medicine, icy eyes be damned.  After all, ninja skills or no she's still just a baby and I'm a whole lot bigger than her.

I just hope she's not plotting her vengeance.

Nipple Confusion

A River Runs Through It (It Being My Sweatshirt)

As a new father, I knew I'd be peed on.  I just never imagined I'd be peed on with so much vigor.  Not once, not twice, but three times today, my darling 5 week old baby Grace decided to use her daddy as a diaper in spectacular fashion.

I don't know a whole lot about Grace's likes and dislikes just yet, but if there's one thing that I'm certain of it's that she hates - Capital H Hates - being changed.  With her, cold and wet are two painting the black strikes against you, and if she's hungry while you're changing her, that's a screaming, crying 12-to-6 hammer for strike three.

So, armed with that knowledge, I should've known better than to take her from the changing table to her bathtub sans diaper, wrapped only in a blanket and cradled tight in my arms.  "It'd only be 15 seconds," I thought to myself, "before she'd be in the tub.  Surely she wouldn't pick those 15 seconds to pee ."  But, alas, surely she did.

A torrent of tinkle raged from her bottom, soaking her blanket, my sweatshirt, my sock and the floor.  A sly little smile curled up at the corners of Grace's mouth.  A delighted cackle came from my wife, who witnessed the flooding with unrestrained glee.

One bath, one nap and one sock and sweatshirt change later, Baby Grace was up again, ready for lunch.  I fed her and, as is her custom, she pooped mid-bottle.  Putting the trauma of the morning behind me, I steeled my nerves and took her back to the changing table, opening her diaper to what could best be described as a crime scene.  Not 5 seconds into cleaning her up, Old Faithful erupted again, creating something of a *GROSS ALERT* poop mudslide */GROSS ALERT* spilling out of her diaper and funneling down her back.  It was way worse than the first round, but at least I didn't require another costume change this time.  Her outfit, though, needed to be burned and never spoken of again.

That had to be enough pee incidents for one day, right?  Wrong.  The very next diaper change, Grace was at it again, only this time I was ready.  I opened her diaper and waited her out, absolutely positive of what was going to come.  Sure enough, water works, only this time I caught it all in the dirty diaper, successfully saving an outfit and, for the moment, my sanity.

Still though, it's enough to give a guy a complex.