Teething and the Pre-Menstrual Syndrome Infant (HoL 16)

I woke up this morning to Isaac screaming. A baby can’t fine tune the urgency in their cries very well, so the “I dropped my pacifier cry” is roughly the same intensity as the “Gang of Bikers are Setting Fire to the House” cry.

I assessed the situation. 1) It’s still dark: not time for me to get up yet. 2) Baby is crying: Somebody should probably do something about that. 3) Nancy is not in bed: She is already awake. Situation is normal.

Then I realized 2 + 3 should equal quiet baby. Nancy might already be in the shower, which means she doesn’t hear the baby. It was time to spring into action. I tried to fall back asleep, but the baby kept crying. As a few more neurons woke up, I realized that the shower wasn’t running.

It wasn’t 5:00, Nancy’s normal wake up time…..it was about 1:40. I got into the nursery where Nancy was trying to calm the boy down. Nancy is the nurturer, I’m the fixer. 2:00 in the morning is not time to think, it’s time to act!!!!

I changed the boy, and he calmed down somewhat until I put him back in the crib, when he exploded with wailing again. My mind panicked. I felt like a complete failure. He was supposed to be done with this crying in the middle of the night. He sleeps almost the whole night through, and usually if he wakes up, popping a pacifier into his “cry hole” will put him right back to sleep. I was frantic, I thought this couldn’t be the same little baby who hours before was snuggling peacefully with me while we watched a documentary about a guy who got eaten by a grizzly bear.

I had to just walk away. I needed to calm down. Nancy went back into the room to settle him down, which lasted about ten minutes before another eruption. I fed and rocked him for quite a while until he settled down. I don’t know what time I got back to bed.

As part of Nancy’s normal routine, she puts Isaac into bed with me for the last 45 minutes of my normal sleep time. He usually cuddles up and sleeps the rest of the morning. Not this morning. As soon as she put him down, he started screaming on full blast right in my ear. This is not a good way to wake up.

I finally got him settled back down and sleeping. It seemed that I would get a little peace and quiet this morning. As soon as he fell asleep, I started to drift off as well. Nancy came back into the room, climbed onto the bed, kissed us goodbye, and started the Great American Scream machine back on high.

I had little sleep, had been woken up by a screaming baby twice in one morning, an hour before I normally get up. Today sucked. Not only did it suck because I felt crappy, and the baby felt crappy, but being a liberal, I managed to find a way to feel guilty about feeling miserable as well, thinking of all the other people with real problems.

We think this is all due to teething which is Nature’s way of lulling you into a false sense of security that maybe you have things under control in the parenting department only to pull the rug out from under you and laugh when you fall on your spine.

And another thing. Men, brace yourselves….Nancy is in “Company Mode” as well. Women deny that “Company Mode” exists, but men know exactly what I’m talking about. Things are getting cleaned at my house that haven’t been out of the box since we got them as wedding gifts. Every waking moment is spent doing some chore (i.e. sweeping, vacuuming, running to the grocery store) which will be done three more times between now and the day company arrives on Friday.

I’m tired, got a grumpy baby, and a wife that has vacuumed and Febreezed every seat cushion in the house twice.

We are having all these folks in town on a count of Isaac’s dedication at the church. If you are in the area on Sunday, Feb 5th, please stop by College Park Church across from U.N.C.G. at 11:00 and join the celebration. Stay for lunch and the “Male bake-off” after church as well.

Strength and Honor


Big Matt

Praying For Snow (HoL 15)

In the last three weeks, I’ve fixed a hot dog lunch for my office (It was my turn to “do” the January birthdays.), one of my co-workers was put in the hospital, Nancy and I made biscuits for the entire church from scratch, I’ve worked at Habitat for Humanity and Greensboro Urban Ministries, we’ve hosted a dinner for a church program, I’ve had a deacon’s meeting , I’ve made a sock monkey, and all three of us made a weekend road trip to Virginia Beach to visit great-grandparents. In the next few weeks, I’m going to run youth activities at the church, and we are going to host nine family and friends at our house for Isaac’s dedication weekend (not counting my folks who are staying at a hotel), along with the normal routine of laundry, house cleaning, feeding, washing, and de-worming Isaac, exercise, guitar practice and writing. I’d like to watch a movie or two in there and play some X-box as well.

I’d love to have a day or two to not do anything but play with the boy and his mother…what’s her name, but short of a snowy weekend, I just don’t think it will happen for a while. Whenever I feel overwhelmed, it only takes hold for a second or two, and is pushed out of my mind by gratitude for a healthy happy boy, a supportive, hot funny, heterosexual life partner, and a job that doesn’t involve picking up cigarette butts with a former crackhead named Regis.

Enough of my bitching and moaning. You want to hear about Isaac of course. He is sitting up pretty regularly now. He can roll over periodically. He laughs all the time. He has taken a shine to his Johnny Jump Up. It’s an indoor bungee jump for babies, and when he gets going it’s a stitch.

Isaac and I played our third practical joke together last Wednesday. We were eating dinner in the crowded fellowship hall at church. Isaac was sleeping in his car seat, balanced on a chair. Three quarters of the way through dinner, when most people were engrossed in their food or conversations, Isaac woke up. I quietly lifted him out of the car seat and sat him on my left side. With my right hand, I flipped the car seat off the chair and it landed perfectly, face down with a loud “Whomp”. Nancy was in on the joke (Hey, I’m no idiot), and although she tried to give me a disapproving look, I could tell she thought it was funny.

I bought him a Carolina Panthers outfit on E-bay, unfortunately, it’s now a “Onesie of Shame”.

Taking care of Isaac is a chore that I really look forward to. I’m the bath man, and do half the feedings and diapers. I really like spending time with him. I actually feel sorry for the generations of men who didn’t take time to be with their babies. When I look at his pictures on my desk at work, I get excited about going home and seeing him.

I have an Andy Warholesque shrine to Isaac on my book shelf at work. I have five photocopies of one picture of Isaac taped up in a pattern on one side of my cube.

Isaac was great for the car ride to and from Virginia Beach. He and I slept and played and sang. One of my conditions for going on the trip was that I wasn’t going to drive in Virginia. Virginia cops’ radar guns aren’t calibrated right and that’s all I have to say about that. We visited Nancy’s grandmother, grandfather and aunt Gail. It was a treat to see Mr. Head, now 98, playing and making funny noises with Isaac. He shared stories with me about traveling the world as a cabin boy on three different freight ships, and winding up in America by accident. Mrs. Head is normally fairly quiet and doesn’t hear very well, but she lit up like a Christmas tree when Isaac came in the room. We stayed at a hotel on the beach, and enjoyed a sunrise over the water from the sixth story balcony. Isaac seemed to really like the seagulls. It was very windy last weekend, and the gulls would seemingly “hover” at eye level next to us and then swoop off . I hope he keeps that sense of wonder about nature and the ocean in particular as he grows up.

Just to remind everyone, Isaac’s dedication is February 5th, Superbowl Sunday. If you are able to, please join us at College Park Baptist Church in Greensboro at 11:00 that morning, and stay for lunch and dessert afterwards.

Strength and Honor,

Big Matt

Great Expectations (HoL 14)

Nancy and I decided that we just aren’t very good parents. A couple of days ago, I confessed to Nancy that despite everyone telling us how wild and wooly the first Christmas with a child is, I thought we had a pretty average one. Now don’t get me wrong, I had a wonderful time down in Florida, the two church services we participated in were meaningful, and it was nice to have time off work to spend with Nancy and Isaac, but it was pretty much like every other day. This is my failure as a parent. Isaac’s first Christmas wasn’t an earth shattering event, but instead a nice subdued day.

Nancy’s failure as a parent presented itself on this, her first week back at work with Isaac at daycare. She had been warned by other mothers to prepare to cry all day the first day back at work, and not accomplish much. Nancy didn’t cry and actually got quite a lot done.
Once again, our expectations and fears have little bearing on events that actually happen. Instead of being overwhelmed with emotion at certain set points, we are on a steady ride interspersed with small bursts of joy and slow patches of longing.

For example, Nancy slept late this morning. She let me know she was running late by yelling “Shit” when she first glanced at the clock upon waking. I decided that this was not a day to pretend to go back to sleep, and got up to make her breakfast. She was tense as you would expect, and I asked her why. A year ago, she would have been tense because she had so much to do to get ready. Today she was tense, because she was going to miss her morning hour of reading with Isaac. I could tell she wasn’t frustrated by her job, but by the fact that Isaac usually falls asleep shortly after getting home, and she wouldn’t get to spend as much time with him today. I reminded her that they get to spend time together each night at three in the morning, but this seemed to be little comfort.

I can understand why she wants more time with him. It’s always a party with this kid. In the mornings, Nancy wakes me up by putting a warm, sleepy Isaac into bed with me to ride out the last few minutes until the alarm clock goes off. When I give him his bath at night, he is fascinated by the water sprayer in the shape of a hippo’s head and insists on holding and examining it whenever I’m not using it to rinse him. He is amazed by the jet of water and will reach out to try and grab it. When it comes to meal time, Isaac has really taken a shine to solid food. I imagine that there is fishing line attached from the bottom of the spoon to his chin, because whenever I lift the spoon out of the bowl of mashed carrots, his mouth pops wide open.

Wednesday night, I went to pick him up at nursery at church, and he and I played with a large Tyrannosaurus Rex. I made it growl and bite at him, and he thought it was hysterical. It’s going to be a lot of fun when he really gets “into” dinosaurs.

Last Sunday, Isaac was my co-conspirator again in another practical joke. We were at a party watching the Panthers game, and Nancy told me that Isaac needed to be changed. I retreated to the back office, and changed him, but on the way back, I stopped by the bathroom, and filled a clean diaper with warm water. For those who don’t have much experience with diapers, a full wet diaper is pretty heavy and spongy. On the way back into the room, I casually dropped the full heavy diaper, into the sweatshirt hood of one of the youth in the room, and said, “Well that was quite a mess!”.

Chaos erupted. That diaper was thrown around the house, and there were screams from the other room.

Isaac and I had quite a chuckle.
Strength and Honor
Big Matt