Little Treasures (HoL 5)

Well life just keeps on zipping by here. The nurse came out and weighed Isaac a couple of days ago and he is up to eleven pounds five ounces. We are hoping to instill an early sense of shame on him for gaining weight, but it doesn’t seem to be taking.

I do have a funny story from a few weeks ago, that I kept forgetting to tell. I have a friend named Matt Williams who lives In Auburn, Alabama. Matt and I have known each other for most of our lives. My birthday is October 6, his is October 7. Both of our parents have the same anniversary date. Oddly enough, we are both named “Matt” as well. Anyway, Little Matt and I have a peculiar habit of giving each other odd birthday gifts. It started many years ago, when little Matt gave me five dollars for my birthday, and on the next day, I gave him five dollars back.

The next year, a carrot was given in addition to the five dollars, and the next year a potato, and so on. Let me just say, never get in a weird present contest with someone who’s dad is a scientist. You are going to lose. A few years ago, I got the original carrot back for my birthday. For years, Matt and I have been passing back and forth a large wooden statue named Shaheera that I pulled out of a garbage pile. She is probably four feet tall and weighs 30 lbs. The idea is to get it to the other person’s house without them knowing or having a chance to refuse it.

Little Matt had arranged an anonymous “Drive by” dumping of the statue one time while he was three states away. I was out innocently mowing the yard, when a car drove up to my house, someone yelled “Hey!”, and I saw Shaheera dumped in my front yard. The card sped away with me yelling and cussing in it’s exhaust.

The last time he got her, she managed to find her way into his lab about a month after I visited. I managed to hide her at one of his friend’s houses in Alabama. One day, an undergrad grabbed Little Matt and told him that some woman had found a bird that she couldn’t identify, and she needed his help. This “woman” was waiting at his workstation in the lab. She is still at his house today.

So anyway……..Isaac’s umbilical cord fell off a couple of weeks ago…………

I wanted to put it in the shadow box my mother-in-law had made, but Nancy pretty much ruled that out. I hid it in a box of baby pictures, and she told me that she was going to throw away the gnarled stump of dried black flesh, unless I did something with it. Then it hit me.

I wrapped it up tissue paper and sent it to Little Matt in the mail. This is probably a federal crime.

It took Little Matt a few minutes to figure out what it was, but he laughed heartily. When he called, I asked how the stem cell research was going.

Who came up with the simile, “I’m going to sleep like a baby”? I always thought that meant that you were going to sleep soundly and peacefully. It evidently means you are going to sleep for a maximum of four hours and then wake up screaming at the top of your lungs and covered in human waste.

I’ve had many folks tell me that to get the baby to sleep better at night, you have to keep them up during the day. This of course is total bullshit. People say this assuming that a baby is a rational creature. I explain to Isaac that at this stage in his life, he is supposed to sleep “X” number of hours, and since he has been up for “X minus 24” hours, that he should sleep for “X” hours.

Not so much.

His newest trick is that he can find his pacifier if you let it touch his cheek. It’s not exactly sawing a woman in half, but dammit man he’s working on it.

Nancy has grown concerned that we aren’t doing enough to stimulate his mind. I assured her that he is one month old, and there is not a whole lot we can do. We both read to him regularly, play music for him (They Might Be Giants mostly, because I want him to be a huge geek like his old man.), dance with him, and he listens to National Public Radio for about eight damned hours a day. What else can we do for him?

We tried to get him into some online classes at F.S.U., but they said he was over qualified.

Oh, by the way, Little Matt says that Isaac will be getting his umbilical cord back. Probably on his eighteenth birthday.

One final note. We are probably going to do Isaac’s dedication at the church on Martin Luther King weekend in January (That’s Robert E. Lee’s birthday to all you North Carolina folks). Everyone is welcome to the celebration at the church.

Big Matt