It happened so fast.   I got up from my desk to go to the kitchen,   and had Alana in my left arm.   This is unusual, since I don’t hold her much.   Normally my attitude is if she is clean and warm and fed, the rest is up to her.   But here I was trying to be a good dad and calm her when she was upset.   The irony…

Something spilled on our smooth horribly-chosen kitchen tiles, and my legs slipped out…fast.   Crashing many times has made me discover nascent cat-in-the-air skills, and turn them into finely tuned cat-like reflexes, or at least try to save my shit in the instants during a crash instead of just wasting the time staring in befuddlement. Off-center by 10 lbs of Meatpod and turning left hard had me going down on top of her.   I braced my arm to take the fall and keep her skull from cracking the floor, and counterweighted everything else.   My forearm, elbow, hip, butt, quad and knee all kinda hurt, but none too bad – quite well played actually if I got that much square footage involved. I saw my arm with Alana in it hit the floor first, then my chest start to come down almost on her leg.

I had time to realize the following during the next 5 seconds:

• i did not break my arm
• Alana did not smash her head
• how little weight does it take to tear a baby’s ACL?
• her face is not normally that scrunchy and red

Her face just got redder and redder and smaller and smaller until finally it EXPLODED!!!!!! I got a little scared about the head and the acl, but after about 2 howls she quieted right down.

I’m a little like well that wasn’t such a chores, then I had bad flashbacks to dropping G on her head in Home Depot.   But other than the shock of disorientation, she seemed just fine.

So for the last few days I’ve been overthinking this whole thing trying to figure out what went wrong, how I’ve only fallen in our kitchen twice in like 9 years, and once was during New Years Eve when I was sloppy drunk.   Alana is not as fragile as she seems.   G should not have juice-boxes without lids.   I should wear shoes.   I should be more careful. Blah blah blah.

Take nothing for granted.

especially when they finally start to get interesting

It is very aggravating when I must compete with them for access to Alana’s piehole. Its battling for a piece of a Trans Asian pipeline, the Panama Canal, the Horn of Africa – governments will kill for it, indigenous populations will riot lest they be subject to imperialism.   Alana’s paws grab and flail, a grass-roots protest against development and progress.

Feeding her is hard enough without these challenges. I ain’t saying breast-feeding is easier, but its a far more efficient system. It takes 2 hands and a lap to feed her a bottle, and lot of patience for sitting around doing nothing. Lying in bed and giving her a bottle? No, times-a-wastin’, you woke us both up Pod. Sitting on the couch giving her a bottle? I would not know, as I can’t remember the last time I sat on the couch. So we sit at my desk and I read email, leave the bottle dangling temporarily from her gaping maw while I click on the next item in my inbox, serve her for another minute, repeat. Or I position the boppy on my lap, her on my lap, have sweat pool under my thights, and feed her while I navigate a mouse and type 1-handed.

These are all tedious and time-consuming, and for Meatpod none of these constitute a 5-star service experience. Requests to speak to the Manager abound. She clearly misses all the patient attention she got from MomMom, who otherwise did a fabulous job not spoiling her grandkids.     I can’t, nor want to, compete with that.  

She complains, I let her work out some of her issues.   She is eating a ton, the complaining works up a thirst.   Mixing up days between Beckie and me is probably a good strategy:   Beckie nurtures, and   i teach her about the cold hard world.

She is so close to sucking her thumb, finally she will have some toys of her own to play with.

Jason and I are both the youngest of two siblings, and I have always wondered if there was anything to all the theorizing and pontificating that people spout about birth order.   I couldn’t tell that there was a helluva lotta difference between the way my parents treated my sister and me, so it didn’t really seem like a big deal.

Now that I have a second child, I may be changing my mind.   I absolutely treat Alana differently than I treated G.   It’s not that I am disinterested, per se, just less interested.   It’s more of a ho-hum experience, like, yeah, I remember that she should be doing X about now, I guess everything’s OK.   Compare that to our experience with G, where I knew what the milestones were for everything, and anxiously awaited G’s arrival at each of these important life events:

Some examples:

With G:   “Look!   she can hold hold up her head!   Let’s get a video!

With Alana:   “Seems like she has been holding up her head for awhile now…wonder when that started happening?”

With G:   “She smiled at me!   Get the camera!”

With Alana:   “Look!   She’s gassy!   Watch out or she’ll puke on you!”

With G:   “She’s watching her mobile!   Get the camera!”

With Alana:   “She’s watching her mobile!   Maybe that will distract her for awhile so I can shower!”

So maybe oldest kids do grow up to be self absorbed egomaniacs and youngest kids become serial killers cause their parents don’t love them enough.   This absolutely explains why youngest kids never have baby pictures of themselves.

Beckie has gone back to work, so I’ve been home with Alana every other day.   It seems she is starting to recognize me, and not in a good way.   The look she gives me is like this:

or kinda more like this

Up til about 2 weeks ago, Alana thought there were only 2 things in the world: her mouth, and the boobs.   Then came her butt.   Then came the Mommy attached to the boobs.   Then along came this great big giant scary giant who has no boobs and doesn’t hold her much except to put a bottle in her mouth and clean her butt.   So I get the look.

We struggle.

I try to soothe her, but she is demanding.   I work to conform, but she is fussy.   I must go above and beyond, and perhaps she will be satisfied with me.

You can do 90% and mostly satisfy a baby; you can strive for 100% and be tragically disappointed.   How can such a little meatpod hold you to such a high standard?

I crash, I burn, I fail.

• bleeding ears
• pee-soaked hands
• poo-soaked hands
• gross green poo-soaked hands
• barely a decent night of sleep in almost 2 months
• overflowing garbage pail
• overflowing diaper
• cockblocking
• screaming during a conferance call
• screaming during poo-saked hands
• screaming after poo-soaked hands
• missing the first quarter of the Suns game from the luxury suite
• vomit on my shirt
• snot on my shirt
• milk on my shirt
• temperamental other daughter
• no room left in the bed for me

I have progressively developed some distance from Alana since the initial wave of euphoric fatherhood washed over me.   The poop doesn’t bother me, and the crying is aggravating but understandable.   Its her apathy.   She’s just begun to stay awake for more than a few minutes at a stretch, and only about 2 weeks ago did I convince myself she was not blind or dimwitted as her eyes began to focus and follow me.   Most days she just has what Beckie calls the 20-yard stare.

She is boring.

Soon enough she will demand attention, music and sounds from her bouncy chairs, Baby Einsteins and all those puppets.   But for now I’d be quite appreciative if she just smiled a little. Its like trying to get all mushy over a pet hermit crab, they just don’t inspire the heart to sing.

I am kinda looking forward to Beckie going back to work, since I will have Alana all to myself a couple days a week, and maybe we can start to find some connection.

the closest I’ve come to smiling for Daddy

the most exciting thing I’ve done, ever

Alana hasn’t done much in the way of cooing or chirping; its not really her idiom.   My memories of G are so packed in with so little time for reflection, it wouldn’t surprise me if she didn’t do the cute baby things at this stage either and I’m just mixing them up in my head.

Alana’s howling is well-documented, but other silliness comes out of her.   The baby sucks, loudly, hungrily, like a golf ball through a garden hose, the paint off a trailer hitch…someday she will make some man very happy.   Or maybe very frightened, like the guy in the Darwin Awards who tried to use a high-powered shop vac for a Valentine’s Day date.

She breathes a lot too.   A LOT! Pick her up, and you hear very intense very focused respiration, the mere process of being vertical taxing her tinyCapabilities for all they are worth.   Usually about this time is when she ass-pees, and a little squirting gurgling noise seeps out of her little bottom and ripples up through my hand.   Sometimes the noise is so faint i’m not sure if I’m feeling it or hearing it.   Who knew moist poo could be so cute.

Her farts are the funniest by far.   They are shameless, and shake the room.   You always figure big dudes=big farts — NOT SO!   Its more a ratio of gasseous volume to valve diameter.   Still, you just don’t expect them to have such a deep bassline.   I expect to see a plump pair of jammies shooting across the room like a deflating balloon in their wake, and a dessicated little stick figure left lying in the basinette.