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.

The Unsung Hero

It has been a wild two weeks around here. Between absurd sleep schedules, an intermittently crying/screaming baby, living the shut-in lifestyle and meals with no theme or regularity, it would be forgiven to adopt a negative attitude from time to time.

Carrie and I have both, at times, succumbed to the intense conditions of caring for a newborn. You know who hasn't?

This guy.

Between hours of exhaustion bouncing from place to place while we were in the hospital:

Transitioning from weary


to done.

Owen has been amazing. He has not shown one bit of negative energy during this entire fiasco.

From insisting that he be the "third" person to hold Wyatt


To being in the best spirits when the unplanned, "Owen we need you to watch the baby" happens at any given hour.

Day


or night.

I frequently make a point to tell Owen that if I could hand-pick a son out of any boy in the world, I would absolutely pick him without hesitation.

It looks like that goes for hand-picking a big brother as well.

The Look

There's a look that people give to a newborn baby. It's a look that replenishes my faith in humanity. It seems to combine the recognition that currently you are infinitely helpless, but you also have infinite possibilities in front of you. I've seen the look quite a few times lately.

Grandpas have the look.



Grandmas sure have the look.




Cousins can have the look.


Dads definitely have the look.


But there is nothing that compares to a mother seeing her baby for the first time.

Oh Yeah, We Had a Baby!

Come to think of it, we did put the cart before the horse here. On the 16th of December we checked in to St. Joe's at 10:00AM for a scheduled C-section at 1:00. Fun fact: right before you have a baby 3 hours actually feels like 15 minutes.

We were on the 14th floor, and we had a view of Mt. Rainier, the Tacoma dome, the E. 21st St. bridge, all that good Tacoma stuff. Our nurse was kind enough to snap our photo right before we went into the operating room.


This was actually a pretty serene moment. The doctors and nurses made a real point to keep the mood light and jovial. When we went to the operating room, the anesthesiologist was cracking jokes and playing music (everything from Ed Sheeran to the Beegees). He even acted as our photographer.

 
After about an hour in the OR, here we have little Wyatt, in the (slightly purple) flesh.


He seemed mixed on the situation at first: rapidly running out of room on the inside vs. what the hell is all this on the outside. I want to say he's come to terms with the outcome.


I think part of that has to do with who was waiting for him on the outside.

Wyatt Archer Wilhelme: 9lbs. 5oz. (exactly the same as Owen) 20.5 inches. Welcome to the world; you are loved.

A Christmas to Remember (Vaguely)

We predicted this Christmas was going to be a sleep deprived, baby-fueled extravaganza and boy did it live up to expectations. It's interesting having people meet the baby as they're celebrating Christmas. I believe it's said that progress is made at the intersection of Holy Crap This is New and These are Our Traditions. We'll see where we end up next year, but so far:

Wyatt had his first Christmas (he slept through most of it):



And Grandparents had their first Christmas with Wyatt:







Even uncle C.J. and Nicole got in on the Christmas baby action:



All told, it has been a wonderful experience. Everyone has been exceptionally supportive and accommodating to those changes in tradition. At the end of the day traditions exist because they are how you express your love for those in your life.  This is a good (if chaotic) start.

We're Back Baby!

In the words of the illustrious Bender R. Rodriguez when Netflix so very improbably revived the Fox series Futurama after years spent in limbo:


Yes; it's been a few years since we've contributed to this blog and truthfully we never really expected to contribute to it again. We have cherished looking back at it periodically. A few times a year we realize we have spent the last two hours scrolling down memory lane and decide we had better get going on something productive.

Owen recently has really begun to appreciate the persona we crafted for him, even quoting the blog every once in a while: Ahh, my brain, the one place I didn't expected an ambush! Additionally, as a father, I'm moved that he can look at the work we put into this blog and appreciate the craft. In an aside, Owen said to Carrie, "Dad's a really good writer." I don't know why this of all things has made the whole endeavor which ended years ago worthwhile.

Which brings us to Bender R. Rodriguez. With perhaps a touch of hubris, I want to give this gift to Wyatt as well. So, we're going to fire this blog up again and see if we can't rekindle some of the fun we had with it the first time around. Let's see how it goes.
 

Fall Break Retreat

We are never on this blog anymore. It's very unfortunate but given the hecticness of our new life and schedules, something had to temporarily go and sadly it was the blog. We are on fall break now though and have a moment to pause and breathe.

We went up to Flagstaff for the weekend to get away. It's pretty cold up there, a brisk 45 degrees, so we rented a small cabin. The cabin had a small, wood burning fireplace inside to keep us warm. In the morning, we had drink coffee and cocoa by a campfire while Roland ran around exploring.

 

Our little cabin that we rented for the night. No one else was around so we had the whole campground to ourselves. 

 Roland especially loved that nobody was around because he was free to run without a leash.

Owen liked being able to explore, play with sticks, chase prairie dogs, and be in a place that felt like winter. 

 We came across a stick tent that some wonderfully creative person had built.

 Overall, it was a much needed break and family time.