Be Prepared!

My, my how life has changed.

After having our second child last month, and reflecting back on how much things have changed over the last couple of years for my wife and I, I thought I would share a little of my "knowledge" with some expecting parent friends that I have.

You are always told by friends who have children things like "Be prepared to never sleep again", "Say good-bye to life as you know it" and blah blah blah.

Obviously your life is going to change, you're bringing another human being into it that you are responsible for. But the change is good and completely worth any sacrifice you have to make.

However, there are some unexpected things that you can't foresee and that is where my list begins...

You can never be prepared for everything that comes at you with your first child, but I hope this helps... at least a little.

Be Prepared...

Be Prepared to spend many nights sleepless comforting your new baby.

Be Prepared to make the strangest noises you've ever made until you find one that soothes them.

Be Prepared to feel like you're sleeping standing up as you comfort your little one.

Be Prepared to see things or hear things in your sleepless hallucinations... it's ok, I saw them too!

Be Prepared to argue with your significant other for no apparent reason in the middle of the night... you're both tired, it happens.

Be Prepared to agree to disagree. There is no wrong answer, just try to find some common ground.

Be Prepared to sleep at times of the day you haven't slept at since that three-day bender in the early 90's. Sleep when you can, you'll need it.

Be Prepared to not care what the house looks like, the baby and your rest are more important.

Be Prepared to cry for no apparent reason, it happens (Dad's too!)

Be Prepared to get frustrated, aggrivated, and upset when your baby won't stop crying. Those are the only "words" they know, you'll understand them soon enough.

Be Prepared to put the baby down when they are crying. It's OK, they are fine and you're still a great Mommy/Daddy.

Be Prepared to find yourself gravitating toward the "Baby Story" shows on TLC.

Be Prepared to not know what comes next. You'll figure it out.

Be Prepared to think "HOLY SH*T I MADE YOU!"

Be Prepared to stare at your baby for hours... it doesn't get old looking at them!

Be Prepared to not feel bad about asking for or accepting help from friends and relatives, that's what they're there for!

Be Prepared to have more food in your fridge than you know what to do with (see above)!

Be Prepared to call your doctor/nurse more than you think you should. We've all done it!

Be Prepared to get advice from EVERYONE... do what you think is best, not what someone else tells you to do.

And most of all ...

Be Prepared to love someone like you've never loved ANYONE before.

The experience is amazing, cherish it, they don't stay that little for long!

Another one on the way and nowhere to put it!

With another baby on the way, actually, due tomorrow, August, 12, we are getting very anxious and excited about the new arrival as you can imagine.

First of all we have an 18-month-old daughter, Isabelle, and dealing with her alone is one thing. Dealing with an 18-month-old and a newborn is going to be an entirely different ballgame.

Secondly, we don't know if the new baby is going to be a boy or a girl, so that definitely adds to the excitement and anxiousness. If it's a girl, we don't really have to go out and get anything new because well, we have tons of little girl baby clothes that Isabelle wore not-so-long ago.

If it's a boy, it'll be exciting and different. But, we will have to go out and buy new "Boy" clothes. Of course, we'll have plenty of green and yellow outfits for the baby to wear, but you know new mothers, she'll be out buying new "cute" boy clothes the second she has a chance.

Lastly, we live in a small Cape that currently is only set up as a two-bedroom. Earlier this year we started rennovating our basement to make a second livingroom/playroom, office and a second bathroom. This would free up our current living room of the mountains of toys. Allow us to move our office space to the basement and free up the current office as the new Master Bedroom and have the two bedrooms on the second floor for the two kids. Isabelle would move into our current bedroom, and the new baby would go into the nursery where Isabelle now sleeps.

However, the best laid plans often have their hiccups!

The cost of actually rennovating the basement has, as usual, gone way over what we had originally budgeted. About $10,000 over, or $10,000 more than we actually have to spend. We are almost halfway done, but still need to do tons of work. The house is in complete dissarray, because for starters, we currently don't have a basement to store any of our clutter because the basement is completely empty and in full "construction zone" mode. All of the additional "stuff" (we'll call it "stuff" to keep this Blog PG) is stacked in the corners of our office, mudroom, on the back deck as well as in a 5x10x10 storage container on the side of the house and the baby is due TOMORROW!

Now obviously, the baby will sleep in our room for the first few months. But, the fact that our lives are going to be completely turned upside down because of the new baby (hopefully this one will love to sleep through the night right away), and the house being in complete shambles because of the construction of the basement makes it even more difficult to try to relax and enjoy everything that is going on!

It makes me wonder how the people who "horde" stuff function.

Hopefully, we can figure out a way to get things finished so we can put our house back together and we can all have a nice comfortable and cozy house to live in with bedrooms for both of the kids. A nice new playroom to play in and keep all of their toys. An office for mommy and daddy to do work, since we both work from home at least once a week. And also make our house look presentable for friends and relatives to come over and visit us since its going to be a little more difficult to lug everyone around along with the two dogs.

But, right now, it is what it is, and the baby is going to show up any day now. Hopefully by the time the new baby does get here, we'll have figured out a better plan and a place to put them!

So, if you have any get rich quick schemes up your sleeves, please send them my way. I need roughly $100,000 within the next week or so.

If I Face' and 'Space, do I have to Tweet too?

Are we really being social, or anti-social being part of all of these "social-networking" sites.

I understand that the social networking thing is huge. It's a great way to keep in touch with people who you would otherwise not keep in touch with but it's also an amazing time-suck!

The other part is, you have to figure out what your intended audience is. I mean, should I be writing this blog on Twitter, so that all of my friends (none of which are on Twitter that I know of) could see this blog post automatically? Or should I just post a link on Facebook to say "Hey, here's another story about my life... look at me... look at me!"

We now live in an extremely vain society, where 1 1/2 year old children can't even wait to see what their picture looks like, because they say "Lemme see, lemme see" two seconds after you snap a photo. Can you imagine waiting a FULL MINUTE to see a Polaroid "Instant" picture develop before your eyes in today's society? I mean seriously, I think some kids would have a nervous breakdown waiting that long. Or, at least they would have sent a text message to twelve of their friends saying that they were waiting to see a picture develop.

Everything is "instantaneous" and we all love to share. Photos, stories, experiences and whatever else we can think of. It's great for keeping in touch with family, and showing photos of your kids to friends and relatives in other countries who wouldn't otherwise get to share and experience the same things at the same time as people living next door if the technology wasn't there.

However, this past weekend we were at my wife's parent's house looking through old photo albums looking for a baby photo of her for a work related event at her company. While physically browsing page by page through the albums there is a certain kind of heartfelt intimacy and nostalgia to the hard bound photo albums. The time, effort and care that went into putting those albums together over the course of several years provides you with a different kind of feeling and family history.

Now, I post my photos to Kodak Gallery or Flickr to share them with friends and family, or even a "baby blog" website for my daughter, which is great because I can provide the story along with the photos. But, there is just something so much more personal and emotional about flipping through the pages of a photo album that was put together thirty-plus years ago.

Flipping through those pages got me thinking about where these photos and websites are going to be thirty years from now? Will my kids, or my Grandkids be able to click on a website and "thumb" through our photos and stories when they're looking for baby pictures for a company event?

The way things have gone in recent years, or even months, I don't know if those sites, or companies will be here thirty years from now, so I think the "old fashioned" way of keeping photos is going to be the best way to retain these pictures and stories. I may even start creating a soft-bound book and include the blog stories along with the pictures. It's just something to ponder.

As for all of the social networking sites, I think I'll stick to just two for now, and wait for another one to come along in the not so distant future and see what that offers us and where it takes us. I Face' more than I 'Space now, and I have two blogs with another one on the way (since baby #2 is just months away) but I don't Tweet. However, according to the name of this blog, I do chirp!

A Brutal Week!

The past seven to ten days have been pretty brutal. Not in the fact that things are going badly or that any "major" changes have been happening, there is just one thing that has been making the last week or so really tough… Lack of Sleep!

My daughter, Isabelle, is teething. At least we think she is teething. So, she has not been sleeping through the night very much since the Friday before last. She has been waking up between 1 and 3 a.m. a bit fussy and then when you settle her down, she just doesn’t want to go back to sleep, she’s ready to party. At her daycare, they actually call her “party-girl”, I hope that moniker goes away by the time she’s out of pre-school, God help me!

Whenever this happens, Daddy has night-time duty. So, I get up with her and I either bring her down into the living room and put her into the swing and we watch a little television, while Daddy tries to catch some more z’s on the couch. However, this method that used to work like a charm and lull her back to sleep has failed miserably in recent attempts.

She now begins throwing her binky and monkey blanket about the room and leans over and looks at me while I sleep on the couch with her arms dangling over the edge of the swing like a monkey swinging by its tail off a tree limb.

As cute as this really looks, it’s not so charming or cute at 3 in the morning.

The next phase after this 45 minute failed attempt is to bring her back upstairs to her room, and try to see if she’ll rock in the rocking chair for a few and put her cute little head on Daddy’s chest and fall asleep. Once again, in recent attempts, miserable failure!

Izzie pushes away from me and wants to get down and play with her toys and “read” her books. I mean why not, she’s wide awake right? So, I put her on the floor to play with her toys and she starts walking around her bedroom carrying any number of books or stuffed animals in a dizzying circular motion. I don’t know if the dizzying effort is for her, for me or to lull the stuffed animals into a false sense of security, but either way, my head starts spinning and Daddy needs to lie down on the floor.

While we are both now on the floor, Izzie starts handing books to me to read to her. I do my best to keep my eyes open and be at least mildly entertaining in the state I’m in. She usually gets bored rather quickly at my mediocre late night/early morning reading skills and takes the book from my hands barely halfway through and discards it immediately. She then picks up another book or toy and comes back over and basically sits on my chest or hip, bounces a few times, gives me a look and a giggle through her binky-filled mouth and goes back to playing with her chosen toy.

Our next fun step is cranky time. We’ve now been up around an hour and a half to two hours and we’re both getting sleepy again. Isabelle starts getting tired and rubbing her eyes. Daddy starts yawning and rubbing his watery eyes as well. It’s hard to tell which one of us is crankier at this point, but I’m going to have to lean toward Daddy.

Now, as much as you’re told not to give your baby a bottle in the middle of the night because they will get used to waking up to eat, you’ll do anything to get them to settle down and get back to sleep. To add to this, Isabelle hasn’t been eating very well lately because we think her teeth and mouth have been bothering her, so, she probably is waking up hungry as well, and that bottle isn’t going to hurt as far as I’m concerned.

And it’s a proven fact in the Daddy science book (that I am currently writing) that warm milk makes you sleepy and want to snuggle up with your stuffed animals. So, warm milk it is, and it usually does the trick. Lately, however, her awake times have been a little longer so, Sandy, aka Mommy, has been getting up at the four or five o’clock hour and giving Izzie the bottle.

To be honest, Mommy does have more of a magic touch when it comes to bedtime than Daddy does. It usually takes Mommy about 25-30 minutes to get Izzie back to sleep, and I welcome the peace and quiet and comfort of my bed after a long couple of hours awake in the middle of the night. Of course, getting back into bed and having to jockey for position with the two dogs is a story for another day.

What we did notice this weekend is that Isabelle’s two front teeth at the top that have come through, and two more on either side of her two front teeth are close behind. It also looks like two more bottom teeth on either side of her front teeth are on their way as well. Hopefully, when these come through, things will settle down a little bit and we can all get some sleep. Because I know I need it, and I’m sure everyone else in the house would benefit too!

It’s Official… I’m a Dad!

The past year has been an amazing experience, raising my first born, and figuring out how to do, what to do, when to do, why to do and what the F was that, is all part of the amazing process of raising my daughter.

My daughter, Isabelle, turned one on January 31st. She is the most beautiful, cutest and amazing thing I’ve even laid my eyes on. Except when she’s screaming her brains out at 3 a.m. and Daddy wants her to go back to sleep… but other than that, of course, she’s perfect.

The other day I picked her up from day care and brought her to the grocery store. I put her in her carriage and we were walking through the aisles and she started pointing and talking or more appropriately, making noises at different things she saw in the store.

So, being the good Daddy I am, I start repeating the noises back to her or saying the names of the things she was pointing at to her. What I failed to notice until later, however, was I was making goofy noises and sounds and talking gibberish outloud and the people walking by me started looking at me.

Then it hit me. I’ve heard people talking about doing anything for your child. And heard stories about people making complete fools out of themselves in public for their child’s amusement, but never really thought I would get to that level. But I obviously did while at the grocery store.

The best part about it… I didn’t really care what other people thought. Izzie was happy as can be, making noises, talking jibberish and saying whatever sound came to her little mouth. And I was happy enough to say it right back.

We had a great time walking through the grocery store which I’ve come to find out is one of her favorite places to go. As she never seems to get fussy while we’re in the grocery store and is always super talkative.

She definitely is my little princess and I’m her Dad, and I’d do anything for her. Even make a complete fool out of myself in the middle of the grocery store just to keep a smile on her face. How could I not?