Six Weeks (And One Day)

Wyatt is coming right along these days. He's sleeping a little more through the night. He's becoming a little more readable. We're discovering patterns of what works and what would probably be barking up the wrong tree. He's still very much a newborn, but just as we're getting used to having him around, Wyatt seems to be getting used to his environment and having us as a family.

I'm reluctant to make comparisons through time (especially when it's over a decade), but I think this feels different because I'm not as nervous about whether or not we can pull this off.

It's a little early yet to proclaim Smile-A-Thon 2020, but we're definitely getting more of these gems:

I have to be honest, seeing a little personality is really gratifying. I'm not sure if this theme has shined through on the blog, but this is hard work. It's so fun to see the smiles shining through.

Night Walking

Parents do a lot of tricks to try and get their babies to sleep for the night. Rocking, singing, and even car rides for those feeling desperate. Our go-to method when times are tough is the baby carrier.

Something about being snuggled close to dad's chest while being walked around the house is very soothing for Wyatt. The layout of our house gives Ed a short loop to walk around.. and around.. and around. While I'm sure its monotonous at times, seeing those baby eyelids get heavy makes every step worth it.

Public Service Announcement

This is a public service announcement to all parents of a newborn. Please remember to keep any milk you have in your home stored in a location a newborn would not be able to access.

You may think you can trust your newborn. You could be under the impression that your newborn isn't one of "those" newborns who would even think about getting into the milk. You might even think your newborn lacks every single physical and mental skill required to sneak into the milk supply. 

But a failure to remain diligent on this matter means you may turn the corner one day to find this scene...

and realize just how wrong you were.

Comfort In The Familiar

Wyatt's eyesight is improving each day. He can peg the source of a voice from halfway across the room now. He can also track when something he's looking at moves. One visual quirk we're enjoying is that he loves contrasts. Any time where a light and dark border forms, he will happily stare at it for quite a while.

Wyatt's all-time (5 weeks and counting) favorite contrasting thing to look at would have to be blinds. In both of his feeding locations, there are a set of blinds right behind Carrie with more contrasting lines than he could look at if he had all day.  He loves looking at those blinds. It came as a pleasant surprise then, when we went to the doctor's office and as he was getting poked and prodded he was happily staring off at the blinds next to his bed.

It was a sweet moment joking that Wyatt's best friends right now are blinds.

The Cute Little Comparisons

We love to endearingly compare Wyatt to a few fun animals. One of the terms we lovingly call him is a wiggle worm. The cutest wiggle-worming he does is in his quest to find milk when sleeping next to his mom. It's like an inch worm on its side to watch. It's slow, but determined and you can't help but cheer the little guy along on his way.

Somewhat more tragic wiggle-worming occurs on his quest to find milk when sleeping next to his dad. I guess the messed up part is that we (read: Ed) lets him do it.

Owen loves to call Wyatt a little velociraptor for the occasional screeching cries that he emits. He also bears a faint resemblance to a velociraptor.

Finally, the latest comparison was to a sucker fish. We just introduced Wyatt to a pacifier and had a good laugh when we noticed that we could see into the pacifier and see him sucking. 

Baby Linked To Time Anomaly

In a wholly unexpected event, Carrie and I have discovered an anomaly in the space-time continuum. This anomaly's location appears to be isolated to our own house and the surrounding area.

We don't have extensive data to back up our observations, but what we know is that days have become both significantly longer and shorter - simultaneously.

To support the claim that days are longer, I present the unanimous agreement between Carrie and myself that every day over the last month has gained, at a  minimum, 30% more hours. Reports have been up to 50%. This is both staggering and exhausting.

Paradoxically, to support the claim that days are shorter, the indisputable evidence is thus:





In "no time" Wyatt has gone from being 1 day old to being 1 month old. I repeat: in "no time".

We're not sure the ramifications of these findings, but we'll keep reporting as the situation develops.

Baby Dirty Jokes

Now that Wyatt has hit the ripe old age of 3 weeks, I thought I'd dabble in some risqué humor.

Hey Wyatt, what kind of bees make milk?

Hmm; I don't know, Dad. What kind of bees make milk?

Boo-bees

Scandalous!

The kid's gonna be all right.

We've All Been There

You know when you're just sittin' around waiting for the rave to start?



Yup.

Life is a Wheel

I read a lot of Stephen King. I enjoy his work more because of the detailed worlds he creates than the gore, which can be graphic and merciless, but is applied with far more reservation that most people associate with his work.

King's opus is his Gunslinger series, written over the course of nearly 40 years. In it, the protagonist Roland (yes the namesake of our dog), subscribes to a philosophy called "ka". It's kind of a fate/destiny mixed with a chi/the force thing.

Throughout the Gunslinger saga, Roland frequently refers to ka as a wheel. This tends to be used when King reintroduces a character or theme from earlier in the series. I don't personally believe in any predestined or somehow guided existence, but it's used effectively as a plot tool by arguably the most talented author of our time.

This idea that ka, or life, is a wheel occurred to me when I was reading "What Floats" to Wyatt the other day and Owen jumped in bed to listen:



While I don't believe in fate or destiny, I do believe that life has patterns and refrains of those patterns have a way of revisiting you at unexpected times. It could be that's what King was trying to get through in his numerous repetitions that life is a wheel.

What Time is It?

It's tummy time, baby!*

When life's got you stuck on your tummy...


take a moment to collect yourself...


and get that melon off the floor.


Once the work is done, how can you relax and enjoy the fruits of your labor? By staring at simple black and white objects 8 - 14 inches away, of course!



*If you thought it was time to get ill, we appreciate your enthusiasm.

The Littlest Blobfish

When we moved back to Washington, I was given an amazing opportunity to teach 4th and 5th graders at a Montessori school. I was thrilled; it was exactly the outcome we had hoped for as we transitioned back. Owen went to a Montessori school in Arizona and it changed our (two teachers) view of what education should look like.

I taught at the same school Owen attended (Owen was even a student of mine for a Math block one year). It was pretty perfect.

One hiccup: I had only taught middle school and middle school strategies were not going to cut it with 4th and 5th graders. I found this out about 20 minutes into my first day of teaching. I needed something and I needed something quick.

Enter the class mascot. We held a vote. Would we be the Grey Wolves? How about the Tigers? The Eagles had a majestic ring.

No. No we would not. We would not be any of those. We would be the...



Blobfish.

I learned an important lesson about democracy that day. Well, when life hands you lemons. I cultivated the hell out of that ugly little mascot and since my students loop (I have them for 2 years), the effects of my efforts grew stronger with each year until We Were The Blobfish!



My panicked mascot idea eventually yielded gems such as:
"Once a blobfish, always a blobfish"
"Blobfish always help blobfish"
Former blobfish (any former student of mine)
Founding blobfish (any student who participated in the original vote)
and Honorary blobfish (any guest to the classroom).

It even became my call and response:

Me: Blob!

Class: Fish!

I really loved my blobfish. I was deeply saddened when we were told we needed to collapse a classroom. There were a few convoluted ways we could have done this. You go and teach this grade level, that person will move to this position, the other person could do this other thing, et. cetera. But the most direct and cleanest solution with the fewest impacted students was to have my class collapse and for me to become a math interventionist who visits classrooms throughout the day and teaches small groups of students math skills.

I enjoy my new position, but it doesn't compare to what I had. Former students (blobfish) will see me and quickly sketch out a blobby on a scrap of paper and give it to me. It's basically a flat bottomed cloud shape with a frowny face. It has the feel of a form of protest/resistance at the decision to collapse our class and I kind of love it.

As a gift for Carrie's baby shower, one of my former blobfish gave us a stuffed blobfish for Wyatt. We used to place a monkey next to Owen to gauge his growth over his first couple of years. With that in mind, we packed that little blobfish in our hospital bag and are using it to gauge Wyatt's growth.



Because I taught Owen, he's a full fledged blobfish and now becasue of the love and pride we cultivated in my classroom, Carrie and I now have two blobfish.

Never, after that initial vote, would I have ever dreamed that this ugly little pink fish would mean this much to me. Come to think of it, I guess that was the point of the mascot all along.