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Wednesday, November 23, 2005
 
On The Joy of Parenthood
Tomorrow our son will be exactly 16 weeks old. Parenthetically I always wonder when we are supposed to make the transition between referring to his age in weeks to his age in months and then of course to his age in years. Any help would be appreciated!

He has brought us great joy, as I have alluded to here. He's growing at a good pace, he's sleeping better (a little), and he's more interactive. We are having more and more "parental moments" where we witness him hitting some new developmental milestone.

This morning at 4:15 AM Bella (this blog's namesake who's mug graces the upper right hand corner of the page) decided that her dinner had completed its fantastic journey through her digestive tract and needed to be eliminated. In her characteristic way, she got up from her comfy pet bed, shook the sleep off (LOUDLY), and let it be known that she wished to be escorted to the loo (the yard).

Of course she woke yours truly up, and Bella's mom woke up too, but she also woke up the boy! Uh-oh. Now mind you that Bella's mom, who is breast feeding the boy, gets only limited sleep, so any time the boy is woken up, she is not happy as he inevitably searches for the boob, and her sleep therefore ends. The night before Bella woke us all up at 3 AM with a reverse sneezing fit and the boy had a hard time going back to sleep (we very much recommend the Miracle Blanket by the way). We were not happy with Bella then and were not happy with her again on this night.

So I took Bella out, she did her thing, and I came back to bed. The boy (I need a good blog name for him, something like Psycho Toddler) was busily enjoying the bounty only his mother could provide, and was no longer interested in sleep. We made multiple attempts at putting him back to sleep. He was fed to the point of spit-up, his diaper was changed (Pampers are better than Huggies), he was reswaddled with the Miracle Blanket, he was placed back in his bassinet, but no go. I got up, tried my time-honored (almost 16 weeks and still going strong) position over my shoulder and still, the boy was done with sleep.

At first our anger was directed at Bella for waking us all up again, but then as the boy insisted on not sleeping, and verbalized his disgust with the very idea of sleep with particularly high-pitched shreaks, we became increasingly exasperated. And then we did what all good parents eventually must do:

We Gave In.

We unswaddled the boy and brought him into bed with us. I bent my knees and positioned him so he would be comfortable leaning on them and set him down. At first, he just kind of sat there looking at us, not sure how to proceed. And then, you know what he did?

He Smiled.

And it wasn't just any smile (he's done that many times already), it had to have been the BIGGEST smile I have ever seen. Complete with a sparkle in the eyes that could only come from someone who only knows pure joy and love. And it completely melted our hearts. It was now 5:30 AM, and we were all wide awake (except Bella, who was now snoring) and the boy was so happy, and we were so happy, and it was all just wonderful. I carried that smile with me for the rest of the day, and the rest of the day just sailed on by til I got home to see him smiling for me again. I can't wait til Bella wakes him up again tonight.

We really do have so much to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving!
- posted by wanderer @ 11:11 PM
Comments:
Welcome to the rest of your life! The amazing thing is that it gets even better. Then worse. Then better again. Then worse.

A suggestion for an online name for the baby: Dale. Or not.
# posted by Blogger Doctor Bean : 11/27/2005 3:05 PM
 
I catch your drift with Dale...

It just doesn't have the ring of Psychotoddler though... I'll have to think of something else.
# posted by Blogger wanderer : 11/27/2005 5:15 PM
 
There is nothing better than being a father.
# posted by Blogger Jack Steiner : 11/27/2005 10:15 PM
 
Thanks for stopping by Jack! I'm rapidly finding that to be true!
# posted by Blogger wanderer : 11/27/2005 11:14 PM
 
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