Sunday, 01 August 2010

Today was a bit exhausting. First, the midwives paid a visit. Isla now weighs seven pounds and six ounces…which is exactly what she weighed the day she was born.  This shows that she’s a voracious eater, since babies tend to lose weight in the first few days after they’re born. So, if indeed Isla did lose some weight during the last 100 hours of so, she made up for it.

This afternoon, Jennifer’s parents and grandma paid a visit. Jennifer’s mom had already been here before, but for her dad and grandma, this was their fist time seeing Isla. I took a picture of Jennifer with her mom, grandma, and Isla, which I think is pretty cool, since it’s four generations of girls. It kind of matches a similar picture, taken four years ago, of me with Owen and my dad and his dad.

Then, later this afternoon, my sister and her husband came by. My sister had a bagful of clothes for the baby. She also had two books of mazes for Owen. For some reason, during the past few days, Owen has been trying to locate this book of mazes he used to have. I don’t think we have that book anymore, and I tried looking up mazes online, but my internet access has been spotty. So, when my sister asked if we needed anything, I asked her to pick up a couple of maze books for Owen. I think it’s a good idea, if someone’s gonna come over with a bagful of stuff for the new baby, to also bring something for Owen. So that worked out well.

Also today: Owen passed out the chocolate cigars for the first time. He seemed very proud to do it.

Monday, 02 August 2010

Today we made some ink footprints of Isla’s feet. Yes, yes, I know it’s a little bit later than hospital’s recommend, but hospitals can go fuck themselves. Actually, the midwives left us some acid-free paper and a Kleen-print footprinter a few days ago, but we didn’t like the results. I mean, it seems like a good idea: you just place the infant’s foot on this screen, and press it onto paper, but the results aren’t as appealing as the old-fashioned approach of just getting a whole bunch of ink everywhere. So I went out and bought an ink pad and some more paper. It took about five tries, but I think we eventually got it.

And this brings up something that annoys me about stores lately: too much selection. Michael’s has about six million different kinds of paper for sale. I guess that’s fine, because I know different kinds of paper have different uses, but I just wanted to buy a couple of acid-free white sheets. That’s it. White paper. Couldn’t find it. I actually had to go ask for help, and one employee had to actually page another employee who “specializes” in that sort of thing. Even that person had two options for me. Sheesh. Can’t a guy just buy plain white paper anymore?

Tuesday, 03 August 2010

Isla lost her cord stump today. This is a big milestone that, evidently, is a little on the soon side. Owen called my mom today to give her an update on how the baby is doing, and when he said she lost her cord, my mom blurted out (because my mom blurts out everything): “Oh my, already? That was quick!”

Her belly button still looks puckered up and has some scabbing in it, but I’m glad that cord stump is gone, because- ouch – that thing looked like it hurt. I was always afraid that I was going to accidentally rub past it when picking her up or putting her clothes on. So, at least that’s one less thing to worry about now.

Also: on to the matter of updating this blog. I really tried to update it sooner, I really did! My problem, however, has not been the business of taking care of a new baby and a recently-gave-birth wife, or of losing sleep, but of the internet itself. My wife has complained about our poor internet service for sometime, but until last week, it hasn’t been a problem for me. I’m not sure why my computer was successfully able to get onto the internet, but hers was not, but now I appear to have the same issue. For the most part, I’ve been updating my blog during my breaks at work, so our internet operation at home has been a non-issue. But now, with so much time off of work, I’ve been trying to spend more time online here at home, and the WWW just isn’t cooperating with me. Stupid free wireless that I’m stealing!

Wednesday, 28 July 2010

So, I am a father…again. But this time to a daughter! Isla Fayette was born on 28 July at 5:04 in the morning. She was born on a Wednesday, just like her dad. Unlike Owen and me, however, she was born on a bright, sunny day (once the sun rose, that is).

Regarding the birth, there’s probably not too much else I can or want to say here on this blog beyond what I already wrote on Owen’s blog, which you can read here: CLICK THIS. I suppose it’s time to update that blog, too, since it’s not just for Owen any longer.

Speaking of Owen, he’s been a big help. He’s more than happy to hold Isla, or just put his hand on her head. He helped me drain the tub, too. He kept making sure the line wasn’t chinked and he kept running into the bathroom to ensure the water was draining away down the toilet.

My two big concerns about having the tub here at the apartment were, first, that the weight of the tub would cause it to go crashing through the floor and, second, that I’d do something wrong in filling or draining the tub and end up spilling a couple of hundred gallons onto the floor. As it turns out, a little bit of competence – and some of that help from Owen – keeps any spills from happening. The only slight problem I had was that, contrary to what the woman who delivered our tub told us, I couldn’t just set the hose in the toilet and set the seat on top of it. This is because either the water pressure was too strong and it flung out of the toilet, or the water pressure was so weak that the weight of the toilet seat squeezed the hose and prevented the tub from draining. So I pulled out the trusty duct tape, and all was well.

Actually, living in an apartment provided two positives for using a birth tub. First: there’s essentially unlimited hot water. See, in a house, I would maybe have 50 gallons of hot water, and then would need to wait while the heater refilled and heated before filling the tub the rest of the way. But here, I just turned on the cold and hot water all the way and – viola! –the tub was filled in <30 minutes. Second: big garbage bins. In a house, I would’ve had to stuff a lot of stuff into our garbage bin, but here, I just carried out the tub liner and some other pieces of trash and flung them into oblivion.

Thursday, 29 July 2010

Today, Owen and I ran out to Abdallah Chocolate Factory in Burnsville to pick up some chocolate “It’s a Girl!” cigars (which you will receive if you are one of Isla’s first 24 visitors). Afterward, I asked Owen if he wanted to see where I grew up, since it’s only about a mile from the Chocolate Factory. Owen said yes, so I drove on.

I drove him to a mobile home park. I lived in that park for nearly 15 years: over seven years in one mobile home, and seven more years in the next mobile home. It was very strange driving into the park. After years of sitting in the back seat as a kid, or riding my bike around the park, suddenly I was there as an adult. All sorts of memories came flooding back. I showed Owen the hill my sister and I used to race our bikes down, I showed him where I waited for the bus, the Laundromat, the playground, and I even pointed out the former residences of people I used to know.

But here’s the depressing thing: neither mobile home I lived in was there any more. I knew that the first one I live in was gone, because that one was gone years ago. So I showed Owen the lot where mobile home #24 was located, but then when I took him over to lot #56, well, that mobile home wasn’t there either. It was replaced with an inferior mobile home.

That’s another thing – I know it sounds silly to say so, but Camelot Acres used to be a nice mobile home park. My parents even had to pay extra to live there because it was rated the nicest one in the state. They had all these silly rules, like no playgrounds in the yards, no fences, and no dogs, just to keep the place looking nicer. Unlike nearly every other mobile home park, they didn’t have any speed bumps, either. Now…things are different. There’s a trashy fence behind lot #24, blocking the hill where we once grew a massive garden. Lots of yards had rusted, cheap playgrounds, and worst of all – there are now speed bumps! Yuck! Even the park – which used to have that regal sounding name of Camelot Acres (the rental office was built to look like a castle!) – has now changed its name to Arbor Vista. Arbor Vista? What’s with that? That’s like, the blandest name ever. What housing community doesn’t cobble together two words consisting of something relating to plants and something relating to how those plants are treated?

I think Owen could sense my disappointment. Me, I was surprised how disappointed I could be about a freakin’ mobile home park I haven’t lived in for many years.

Friday, 30 July 2010

Today was the first day that felt like a new routine was starting. There was no visit from the midwives today, and Owen and I didn’t go out to run any errands. The four of us just stayed home. We took some pictures of Isla in her coming home outfit, and we shot some video.

Isla slept better last night than she did on her first night. I am hoping to not repeat Owen’s first year of life, wherein he screamed every night from 8:00 – midnight. He was a good sleeper, though, it was just a matter of getting him to that state of unconsciousness. Last night, I paced the apartment with Isla in my arms, trying to get her to sleep. She was alert – staring at me and looking at the lights from outside the windows – but at least she wasn’t making any noises. This is good, because I don’t mind becoming tired as much as I mind becoming insane.

Saturday, 31 July 2010

Here’s some recent dialogue…

Me: Owen, did you just toot?

Owen: No, that was Isla. It’s always Isla.

Later…

Me (handing Owen a wrapped up dirty diaper): Here, Owen, can you go throw this away for me?

Owen: Eww. No. I’m not gonna do that. Don’t ever ask me to do that again.

Speaking of infants’ bodily functions, I totally forgot this (or maybe it was a mental block), but did you know that newborn babies like nothing more than to get poop on their ankles? Yep, it’s true, their legs are constructed in such a way so that they snap, frog-like, into this tightly balled-up position wherein their ankles are squarely snugged next to their butt hole. Normally, this is a really cut thing – “Aww, look how cute her little legs are, all folded up like that!” But when changing a diaper, it’s not so cute. See, the adult has to use their hands to get the diaper off, so they’re not paying attention when SNAP! Those legs fold up and ankles meet anus. Newborns especially love to do this if they have socks on.

Monday 26 July 2010

First: I must like having several projects going on at once, because it seems like I have had about four or five personal projects going on at any one time in my life during the past, oh, twenty years. By personal projects, I obviously don’t mean anything related to employment or schooling, but I also don’t mean home projects, either – like sheet-rocking a basement or tending to a garden.I mean honest-to-goodness personal projects that have no discernible value. Like this blog.

The annoying thing is setting aside time to work on a project, but then being unable to. Like today, I planned to finish up a video during my lunch break. An hour should’ve been enough time. I needed to find some royalty-free music, and then just use it as appropriate in this (supposedly) simple, short filmlet. But I couldn’t locate this great site, that offers easy downloads of royalty-free music. I’ve used that site before, but I couldn’t find it today. I found another site, but they charged for their music. Add to that the fact that about 75% of the sites I tried visiting were blocked thanks to my job’s Great Wall of Blocked Sites. So, not only did I not finish the filmlet during my lunch break, I made almost no progress at all. Bummer. Once this filmlet is finally wrapped up, I’m gonna dedicate that day’s blog post to telling the story of what should’ve been a quick video to create.

You’ve been warned.

Second: my wife requested that I put the day of the week at the start of each blog post. Her exact request was: “You should out the day at the top of each post.” So I said: “I do.” She said: “No you don’t.” Then I said: “Oh, you mean the day of the week?” And she said: “Yeah.” So that’s that. Behold: it is Monday.

Third: cool story.

Tuesday 27 July2010

And here’s part of the problem with trying to write something about each day: often times, the events of the day aren’t “ready” to talk about or show on that day. Here then, are some photos I took back on Sunday:

Last December, Owen and I went to a holiday pot luck organized by Happy Trails Nature Club. One of the activities there was to take a pine cone, tie some twine to it, smother it in peanut butter, then roll it in bird seed. It’s quite messy! We took our pine cone home and hung it out on our deck. I didn’t think any birds would eat from it but not only did they eat – they picked it totally clean. A couple of times now (when I’m in the mood), we’ve given the ol’ cone a refill.

Tonight we shared the movie The Princess Bride with Owen. He said he really liked it, being especially enraptured with the swordplay and the ‘holocaust cloak’ (that garment Fezzik wears when storming the castle). At one point, we paused the movie for some reason, and Owen summed up his critical analysis thusly: “This movie is a lot like Number Five, only there’s no robot. And they don’t have laser guns.” By ‘Number Five,’ Owen means Short Circuit.

A couple of weeks ago, we all sat and watched The Wizard of Oz. Owen enjoyed that one, too, as was especially evident by his non-stop questioning of everything in the movie.

I’m not sure this kid appreciates the kind of quality film we try to bring into his life. Maybe he will when he’s older. And I’ll be happy to watch those flicks with him again.

23 July 2010

A couple of days ago, I heard a quick snippet on Minnesota Classical Radio about a special production the Minnesota Orchestra was going to present in October. It was real quick, in between music sets, and the DJ only mentioned it to segue into the overture of Don Giovanni. It was an awkward segue; he only mentioned it because he felt it typified ‘scary’ and he felt the Giovanni Overture sounded scary as well.

I meant to look it up online as soon as I got home, but whenever I arrive home, I’m immediately bombarded by a cat and a five year old…so it left my mind.

But today I remembered to look it up: I’d really like to attend this event. Who’s with me?

Also: a great thing about today: A coupon arrived, via email, for Borders Books. I have already mentioned my desire for a certain book, but that I wasn’t about to spend thirty bucks on it. A 15% coupon actually arrived in my inbox last week, but I didn’t feel that was good enough. I held out – and it paid off – today I received a 40% off coupon that’s good until Monday. So I am <72 hours away from being the proud owner of THIS BOOK.

Anyway, I’m incredibly tired today. I’ve been getting up especially early, and staying at work a little late, trying to accumulate a stash of overtime. The way I see it, when I’m on paternity leave, I’ll still be getting a paycheck, but I won’t be getting any overtime on those checks, so they’ll be smaller than usual. Since I’m not sure how many days I’ll be at work this coming week, I figured I’d rack up a whole bunch of overtime during the first half of the pay period. Oh yeah!

24 July 2010

Today we went to the theater to see the film Babies. It’s a documentary my wife had wanted to see for some time now, and to our surprise it was still playing in big screen here in the cinematic wasteland we live in.

The documentary shows the lives of four babies, roughly from birth to their first birthday. Apart from brief shots of their mom’s swollen bellies and a couple of scenes at the births, there’s not too much about how the babies actually came into the world. Instead, the film-makers seemed more interested in showing how the babies fare during their first year.

It was a fun film, and I suppose “cute” would be an appropriate word to throw in here, too. It was somewhat dry, however, offering little in the way of commentary. There was no voice-over, no subtitles the non-English families, and no words on the screen to explain what was going on. In this way, it was closer to Cinéma vérité than just about any other film I’ve ever seen. The only commentary, or ‘angle,’ if you prefer, was in the way the film-makers would cut from one scene to another, such as when we see one baby playing in the mud, then cut to another baby laying around while dad vacuums the play area and uses a lint brush on his daughter.

There were four babies being tracked: a boy from a nomadic family in Mongolia, a girl who lived with her parents in a high-rise in Tokyo, a girl living with her parents in San Fransisco, and a boy from Namibia. In fact, this is really the only complaint I had about the film: the Tokyo and San Fransisco stories were too similar. Both lived in very large, very modern cities, both lived in English-speaking households, and both girls were the only children their parents had (apparently). When going from one family to another, it sometimes took me a minute to determine if we were back in Japan or back in California. Instead of the San Fransisco family, I would’ve preferred, for example, to have seen a baby born into a large family in small-town Alaska, or perhaps somewhere in South America. All in all, though, a pretty good flick – and the perfect film to see so soon before we have another child.

I should comment on the theater, too: we ventured to Riverview Theater in Minneapolis, as it was one of only two theaters within 25 miles that was showing Babies. We’ve been to several of these hole-in-the-wall theaters in the Twin Cities (’cause they’re the only ones that play consistently decent films), but I’m pretty certain this was my first time at Riverview. Thankfully, we were able to get there without having to use a highway or enter the downtown. It’s swanky theater, having been maintained in its original 1950s trendy decor. The lounge area was fun to sit in – amidst retro chairs, couches, tables and decorations, and the prices even harked back to an earlier (if not 1950s) time – $2 per person for a ticket, and a pop-corn and root beer for $5.

In another note, this was Owen’s 7th time at the movie theater – his list includes four Pixars and, after today, two documentaries. Lucky kid.

25 July 2010

After I stepped out of the shower this morning, Owen said he wanted to get in. I tried talking him into taking off his clothes, but he argued that he was going to have to take them off to get dressed later anyways, so he might as well leave them on now.

He thoroughly enjoyed standing in the shower stall. I’m not sure he’s ever been in the shower in my bathroom before – he’s generally prefers baths – but he just couldn’t stop laughing and saying how much he loved it. He used to take showers when he and I would go to the community center’s pool, but we haven’t done that in over two years. Still, he remembered having done that way back when he was two years old. He kept saying: “This is like the pool place, isn’t it?”

After a while, I told him: “Okay, buddy, just five more minutes.” He whined “no,” and continued to go on about how much fun it was in the shower. He gave me a moment-by-moment commentary: “Oohh, it’s getting hot now – I love hot,” and “I could just stand here for like, twenty ten hours!”

He finally did get out of the shower – after I shut off the water, and he let out the most disappointing “awww” in the history of disappointments.

We had a pretty good day after that, too, by the way – we biked to Trader Joe’s, then to Mississippi Market. We paged through my new book that I purchased for 60% of the retail cost, we played Mrs. Pac-man, and, in the evening, we even managed to get 39+ week pregnant Jennifer to join us on a walk to the park.

21 July 2010

Today I mentioned to my wife that I was thinking about the ratio of boys to girls in our families. I know this has little bearing on the gender of our baby-to-be, but it’s a fun exercise in thought.

So, first we have our siblings. Jennifer’s brother has a daughter, and Jennifer’s sister has a daughter, too. My sister has no kids, so that’s 2 out of 2. Of course, Jennifer’s sister is pregnant with a boy, so I guess I should say 2 out of 3.

Jennifer comes from a family of 3 girls and 1 boy, and I come from a family of one of each. So that’s 4 out of 6.

My mom comes from a family of 2 boys and 2 girls. My Dad comes from a family of 4 boys and 1 girl. My wife’s mom comes from a family of 3 boys and 1 girl, and her dad comes from a family of one of each.

What does all of this prove? Absolutely nothing.

On the other hand, the baby will be born under the astrological sign Leo, so I’m sure that counts for something!

22 July 2010

Did I ever tell you about the strange case of my silly filmlet vs. horrorcore hip-hop fans? Well, I’m gonna tell you know.

Back in, like, 1994, I had this great idea for a video: find a pregnant woman – a very pregnant woman – and show her taking a pregnancy test. Then, just for fun, have the test turn out negative. Ha! See? Isn’t that hilarious? The problem was, I was just a single teenage boy at the time, and I didn’t have too many pregnant women in my circle of friends. Sure, as the years went on, I knew a few pregnant ladies, but I never felt like saying: “Hey, know what? We could use that big belly to hilarious effect.”

But then, one day, I was living with a pregnant woman. So I talked her in to making this filmlet with me:

We decided to name this video “The ICP Pregnancy Test.” We chose that acronym for two reasons: first, it sounded ‘medical,’ and second, it’s a homophone for the phrase ‘I see pee.’ Get it?

This was the very first video I posted on YouTube and, by a wide margin, it’s the most watched video I’ve uploaded there.

One day, I received a friendly email from YouTube telling me a comment had been posted. It turns out, the comment was from a self-proclaimed Juggalo expressing his disdain for my choice in video titles. If you’re like most people, that last sentence made no sense to you, so let me explain: a Juggalo is a fan of the music act Insane Clown Posse, kind of like how Dead Heads are fans of The Grateful Dead.

Within a few days, my video had received a dozen comments, all from Juggalos in varying states of agitation at having found my video. At first, I wasn’t sure why they had even come across my video, but then I realized that ‘ICP’ is not just the name of my fictitious pregnancy test, it’s also the abbreviation for ‘Insane Clown Posse.’ So, essentially, these Juggalos were visiting YouTube, typing “ICP” in the search box, and finding my video.

I can understand that this is annoying. My wife tried repeatedly to find Muppets videos on YouTube for Owen to watch, only to discover videos of Kermit wherein the audio has been replaced with vulgar language. But what I don’t understand is why these Juggalos took the time to comment on the video. Why not just click to a different video?

Nearly every comment was abusive in its language – and most assumed that I was, in some way, trying to ‘diss’ their sacred music act. So, one day, I blocked all comments to the video (the comments are still blocked). Finally, one person, who was both an Insane Clown Posse connoisseur and able to construct a polite, intelligent comment, informed me – via private message – that I might be able to save myself the angry comments if I would just alter the name of my video. I responded thanking him, and immediately changed the title to “The I See Pee Pregnancy Test.”

For several months now, I’ve not heard a word from any Juggalo. But then, today, this comment showed up in my YouTube inbox:

Hey get this…. FUCK YOU ICP RULES….GO SUCK A DEAD MANS DICK BITCH

This is typical of the comments I used to get, but I was surprised to receive such a comment after altering the title of the video.

How do I respond to someone like this? My gut reaction is to reply with a similarly caustic message, but that’s just dumb. I could respond calmly, but sarcastically (my usual way of responding to any conversation), saying something like: “Hey, thanks for your comment. You certainly aren’t shattering any stereotypes I have of Insane Clown Posse aficionados.” Or maybe I should tell him that a caps lock key can be his friend, and that the apostrophe is located east of the semi-colon key, and that there are only three periods in an ellipsis, or that a corpse’s penis decomposes faster than nearly any other body part. But I think such nuanced sarcasm might be wasted on him – and I’m not sure it’s a ‘him,’ but I’m just determining the gender based on the violence implied.