Year: 2008

That’s a Winkel, courtesy of neighbors and experienced parenters Beth and Jim.

What did you think I meant?

Won a staring contest…

attacked by wild animals…

grew a new pair of ears…

and met Grampy for the first time. “They say you get your hair from your maternal grandfather.”

Conrad on Tuesday at 22 days, turning himself over:

We turned him back over, and he did it again.

Hastings said, “So what. Big deal.”

We’ve noticed that Conrad is beginning to define his evening fussy period between 6 and 9pm. Last night Dave said that he’d like it if Conrad would get this over with before he got home from work. And today he responded in spades.

Here is a list of the items he either peed or pooped on all between 5 and 11am:

• four outfits
• three changing pad covers
• a boppy cover
• my robe
• the mama
• a comforter cover
• a blanket
• my pajamas

There was one incident that did a great deal of the above damage. Two words: projectile pooping.

I’m sure a lot of this is due to poor diapering, poor diapers “those 7th generation hippie no dye diapers really don’t do the job” or sleep deprivation on the part of the mama. Some of this will work itself out over time. Until then, thank god for the washing machine.

… with their rock ‘n’ roll t-shirts and their baggy pants.

“You want me to wear your logo, talk to my agent.”

… he is not happy and angelic all the time. For the last few days he’s been having a fussy period in the evenings, lasting from about 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. We’ve also had a couple of nights when he won’t go back to sleep after the 3:00 a.m. feeding, and it takes maybe 45 minutes to get him calmed down again. In those 45 minutes, I have employed every single comforting method I have read about, and attempted a few of my own. He likes being bounced and jiggled, he responds well to swaddling and shushing, and he thinks the exhaust fan in the bathroom is God.

I’ve tried singing to him as well. One thing I never anticipated when preparing for fatherhood was the need to memorize song lyrics. At 3:00 a.m., you forget them. For some reason I tried “American Pie” first, which was one of my first favorite songs. The chorus is easy enough, but then you get into the whole “do you believe in rock ‘n’ roll and can music save your mortal soul” part and it’s easy to get lost.

I hit on “Hey, Jude” next, but before I knew it I was in the “na na na na na” part, and that’s not very satisfying. Finally, my addled brain settled on one song that I know cold, without having to think about. That’s how I ended up singing “The Star Spangled Banner” to Conrad over and over again. If he grows up to be president, we’ll know where it all started.