Look Ma I am a Cartoon Character

When you become a parent you gain the ability to turn into a cartoon character. I should have remembered this change since I was less than an angle growing up. There was more than one occasion when steam came out of my Father’s ears and my Mothers head spun around with anger. It seems though we round file these memories as we grow older and only remember the times when you had to take a spoon full of Cod Liver Oil each morning.
Our baby monitor came with a sensor pad to alert parents when the baby is not moving, in not moving I mean not breathing, if no movement is sensed for fifteen seconds an alarm sounds on both the monitor and crib side unit. Noah enjoys doing the back stroke while he sleeps, it is not uncommon to find him facing ninety degrees from the position we laid him down in.
Erin worked the night shift the other night so I was on my own. I am happy to report that it went much better than the first night. The night itself was fairly uneventful; crying, dirty diapers, warming bottles, feeding and rocking. Around 5AM Noah’s coos came through the monitor, I prayed he would go back to sleep for just a bit longer and I rolled over. Fifteen minutes later the non-movement alarm sounded. I shot straight out of bed, about four feet in the air, managed to get myself vertical by the time my feet hit the ground , my legs like many cartoon characters spun madly for a moment before I took off out of the bed room. I screeched around the corner on one foot ran straight through Noah’s door, leaving a hole the shape of my body, and reached the crib with a thud and the rug bunched up to my knees. There Noah was laying the width of the crib directly under the monitor screaming to the rhythm of the alarm.

Fishnets For Christmas Trees

This past week my wife and I have been preparing for the family to arrive, both sides, from all over the world.   It started by going to the local Home Depot to pick out a tree. Home Depot we discovered three years ago has really good trees at a decent price.  Once we have found a tree it is my job to take it off those foolish spikes they use to stand them up.   Grunting and heaving I wrestle the tree to as open an area as possible and shake it vigorously, then stand as still and as straight as possible while Erin looks it over. 
 I like to think I know what I am doing when it comes to picking out a tree because I worked for a Christmas tree shop for a short time in high school.  I did such things as organize wreaths, paint pine cones and sell trees. That however is a story for another time.   Not satisfied by the first tree Erin wonders off to check out other trees while I stand guard over the tree and Noah who is snoring loudly in his car seat.     Soon Erin finds the perfect tree which I wrestle off the spike and hand off to happiest employee in the world who then stuffs the tree through a contraption that puts a giant fish net stocking over it. Then he ties the tree to the roof of our car and we go merrily home, hoping all the while that the employee knew how to tie a good knot.

 I have to take a moment to say that this current experience of getting a tree is much easier than when I was a child. Back then Dad would load my brother and I into the giant brown station wagon before dawn and drive us deep into the woods of Vermont. We would then walk through snow up to my arm pits for miles until we found just the right tree. Before cutting it down we would pose for pictures looking tough with our bow saw and multi colored winter hats with giant pom poms on top.  After we had cut down the tree we would drag it the several miles back to the car and head for home.  Dad would then spend the next week trying to get the tree to stand straight in the tree stand that looked like a oil pan with fly buttresses welded inside.

 Putting on lights is also my job and a lot harder to do when you are holding a child.  First of all you have to make sure that you do not poke them in the face with a branch.  The other thing you do not want to do is wrap the lights around their leg or arm for this can cause the tree to spin and you never get anywhere.  Placing the child in the tree is also not wise for they get pine pitch all over them and you have to explain to your wife how an 8 week old got pine pitch in their ear.

The tree was not our only adventure this week we also ran errands for six hours and bought one other gift while standing next to each other.   We are still going to wrap some of the gifts and put them under the tree. I may even act surprised when I open it, but that will be because by next week I will have forgotten what I am getting. 
The likely hood of me putting something out before Christmas is slim so I will wish everyone and Happy Christmas or Chanukah or whatever you may celebrate. If you are enjoying the blog please tell others. If you have comments please feel free to post them.

Cheers!

Cruising

A few weeks ago Noah decided he would rather cry than sleep.  So I strapped him into his car seat, rolled down the windows and cranked the lullabies.  The boys were going cruising.

As I was making multiple right hand turns I began recall nights cruising as a youth. I grew up in Vermont, rural Vermont, more cows than people Vermont. A majority of the roads are dirt and most of our cruising was done on these roads.  We were a car full of mischievous youth driving around the countryside with the music blaring, the windows down and the heat on high, as it always seemed to be below freezing.  With no particular destination in mind and schemes that very well could have gotten us arrested we hurtled into the darkness wishing our 12AM curfews were later and hoping there were no cows in the road.

 I am brought back to my right turn monotony by a stop sign. It is 10PM, I am talking to myself and wishing I could just go home and climb into bed.   Noah has stopped screaming but that does not mean I can stop driving.  Tonight I am not creating mischievous plans; I am wondering how long it will take a concern citizen to call the police.  I keep checking my rearview mirror for flashing lights; a prolonged stop could be disastrous.  I decide that if I do see blue lights I will just keep driving.  A police chase with repeated right turns at a slow speed would be funny.  At least until they put down a spike strip. I determine that in the future it would be wise to carry a note that I could toss out the window.

Dear Sir or Madam Police officer,

I am not casing the area businesses for a robbery I am trying to get my son to sleep, kindly turn off your sirens.

I was never stopped by the police, but I did find myself sneaking into the house.  Not because I was trying not to wake my parents but because I was trying not to wake my son.  I found myself closing doors softly and tiptoeing trying to avoid the squeaky spots on the floor. Funny how life mirrors itself when you least expect it.  

The Shorts (1) - Bottle Feeding & Physical Fitness

It is 5am and we are up amusing ourselves. I say we as in Noah and I, Erin and the animals are still asleep. I would like to still be asleep but Noah has other ideas. Normally I have this trick of stuffing the monitor under my pillow so my wife can not hear all the noises Noah is making, and thus get some sleep, and I do not have to get out of bed, this morning he was too vocal for too long even for me. So here we are. I am composing The Shorts, and he is cooing as if dictating.

Bottle Feeding:

My Wife just finished up a five day stretch at the Hospital so I was home alone most of the time last week. I am happy to report that after my first night of ranger training everything seems easy now. Noah does get a bit vocal when he is hungry, and by vocal I mean he screams his head off. The rule is that we do not give him the bottle if he is screaming, so I hold him out in front of me and try to get his attention to calm him down. I do this by calling his name and making the all important "shhh" sound. I am pretty sure I am getting hearing damage being so close to something so loud. The Shhishing worked wonders the other day and he instantly stooped crying. For a split second I was so proud of myself for getting him to calm down so fast, but then I started to explain to him that he had to calm down before he got the bottle. This scared him so much his little arms and legs shot straight out and then he began to scream again.

Physical Fitness:

Being a stay at home dad requires you to be in good mental and physical shape,so I run, and do some exercise video I bought off an infomercial at 3am. This requires some planning, which is usually an exercise in futility because Noah is in charge and a really bad planner. So I run when he is preoccupied with his favorite activity, eating.

Yesterday Erin arrived home from work and I had about forty-five minutes until I needed to leave for a meeting. Perfect, my runs take about thirty minutes, that leaves me plenty of time. I left the dog at home, even though he helps by pulling me along for half the run he does like to stop and sniff a lot. This allowed me to shave three minutes off my time, so I had a little more time before I had to leave. unfortunately I wasted that time trying to keep my lungs from jumping out of my chest. Somehow I was now running behind and I needed to clean up a little, there is no time for a shower, what to do? Baby Wipes! We use them when we camp why not now. BRILLIANT! So here I am standing in the living room half naked still trying to keep my lungs in my chest and wiping myself down with warm baby wipes. Which I must say are much nicer than cold baby wipes.

Note:

Noah fell back asleep shortly after I started to write this.

Ranger Training

Programing Note: Going forward I will be posting one blog a week, hopefully every Sunday.


The following is my account of my first night alone with Noah at the age of one month. Due to the lack of sleep the picture is fuzzy and the details are ill-sorted.


The United States Army has the following opening sentence when describing trianing for the Special Forces (Ranger).

As a member of the Army's Special Forces you will find strength you never knew you had. The road to get there has a number of unique challenges.



My wife went back to work this past Friday night. With-in her medical group the partners switch shifts around as if they were trading deserts at lunch, only backwards. That is to say Erin took a partners night shift and he took a handful of her day shifts. So I prepared myself for a night with Noah, just the boys hanging out. How hard could it be? For the last month he had been sleeping at least a few hours in a row and falling right back to sleep when he was done eating. No problem.

Erin's Pager went off at 1800 (6PM) and off she went to the Hospital. Noah was snoring away so I perched myself in front of the TV for some fantastic Friday night TV. It was sheer relaxation for a couple of hours and then all hell broke loose.

2030 (8:30) - Noah finishes feeding and starts screaming, after about twenty minutes he settles down and I put him back in his crib.

2230 (10:30) - Noah lets me know he is awake by screaming at the top of his lungs. I try to comfort him while getting the bottle ready. He stops screaming only when the bottle is in his mouth.

2330( 11:30) - Asleep at last, I place him in his crib.

2345 - I climb into bed

045 (12:45) - Screams reach through the baby monitor and rocket me awake. I change the diaper, and prepare the milk. Noah screams. I yell, it does no good. The bottle helps for a moment then back to screaming. Eventually he falls asleep.

0145 - Will the screaming every stop? This is not normal for him. Will I run out of milk? There is no comforting him as I prepare the bottle.

0150 - Screaming commences I put him in his crib and go lay back in bed. The cat is hiding under the couch and the dog is looking at me as if to ask. "How do you expect me to sleep with that racket going on?" I yell some more.

0152 - Walking around the house bouncing and try to comfort. Singing silly songs, cursing, yelling, trying to burp (Noah not me).

0155 - I really could run out of milk, and I do not have the plumbing to make more? I need to hold off feeding a bit longer. About four hours until Erin gets home.

0230 - Quiet. Only because the bottle is in his mouth.
0231 - Screaming while burping
0232 - Quiet
0233 - Screaming

0300 - Asleep and in the crib

0315 - Screaming
0316 - Comforting
0317 - Quiet
0330 - Asleep in the crib

0345 - Screaming
0346 - Repeat the last forty-five minutes until 0530.

0545 - The last bottle and the realization that my God this really is like Ranger training my brother was right.


Epilogue:

Erin arrived home shortly after 0600, I did not run out of milk and the cat came our from under the couch. The dog and Noah spent Saturday sleeping. I am now better prepared for a night alone and think the description of Army Ranger training was written by a father. Also I am pretty sure even some Rangers would have washed out after this ordeal. I am only stronger because of it.

What is That Smell?

Being a stay at home dad I have started taking long walks each day, this is for multiple reasons but mostly it is so I do not pull out my hair, which seems to be falling out fine on it own anyway. One sunny fall afternoon I am out walking with Leunig and Noah and Leunig stops to do his busienss. I, like a good dog owner, pick it up. I loath to carry filled bags while on our walks and there are no trash cans out on the street; I cleverly place the bag of poo in the bottom cargo net of the stroller and we continue on.

Two Days Later
I am sitting in the living room and I catch a slight wiff of an unpleasant odor. It smells like a rodent has crawled into the wall and died, those who live or have lived int he country know this smell. Then the smell goes away and I forget about it.

Three Days Later
While passing through the living room I smell it again. My wife who had a magnificent sense of smell during her pregnancy says she can not smell anything. I guess you do not need a good sense of smell when you can hear your child fill his pants from a block away. I begin to wonder if I am loosing my mind. But a short time later I smell it again and so I begin to sniff everything. I sniff myself first, better to rule yourself out first. then I sniffed the chair and it's cushion, I pull out the cushion and smell the inside of the chair. I remove my slippers and smell them. Now I am on my hands and knees looking and sniffing under the furniture, and in the plants. Onto the stroller, still on my hands and knees I am sniffing the wheels. Did we roll through something? I sniff the front wheels and as i am making my way to the back wheels I have a great view into the the cargo net on the bottom of the stroller. There staring back at me is the bag of poo I so cleverly placed there three days before so I would not have to carry it.

Having a Dog is Nothing Like Having a Child

My wife and I adopted a dog, Leunig, from the local animal shelter two years ago. It was a major change for us, no longer could we work late without worry, take off for the weekend to go camping on a whim or spend the entire day out of the house, we had a dog to think about. One day after we had sent Leunig to the local pet store for a much needed bath I remarked to my father that it was a nice respite and that having a dog was good training for having children. His response was rather blunt. "Having a dog is nothing like having a child." I know now what I feared then. He was right.

With a dog you can put them outside or in a kennel if you are leaving the house. When they bark all day , you can buy a bark collar so that they no longer make a racket. Putting the child in a kennel is not allowed even if you stay in the house and turn on the baby monitor. Likewise they do not make cry collars for children. Leunig eats twice a day in the morning and at night. Noah eats ever two hours, day and night. When he is hungry he lets you know by screaming, if the dog is hungry he nuzzles you with his cold wet nose. With a dog you take them outside to do their business, sure if you live in an urban area you need to pick up their business with a bag but at least you know you will not get peed on while you are doing it. A baby boy fires off his howitzer (see previous post) and before you know it he has engaged his water cannon as you frantically try to cover him with anything in arms reach. When you are trying to get something done and the dog wants your attention you can tell him to go lay down. Have you ever tried getting a baby to lay down when they do not want to? Try herding cats, you will have better luck.

Boys Come Equipped With a Water Cannon and A Howitzer

Our son is young enough that I did not have to jump into the deep end of this stay at home dad adventure alone, as my wife is still home on maternity leave. We had a plan all worked out for when she went back to work but not for me staying home all the time. I am certain that if the plan had changed this abruptly when she was already back at work I would have completely lost what little sanity I have left. I am a planner, so I like to have at least a skeleton of an idea as to what I plan on doing. Right now our skeleton plan consist of maybe a leg, which can hardly stand on its own. I also like to be organized, everything should have a place, if that place happens to be in a box neatly labeled on a shelf all the better. This is not the case in the our office/studio right now. Nor in several rooms of our house or the garage. This is because one of the great perks of my last job was we could store personal items in one of the buildings that occupied the 400 plus acres. We had everything from high school year books to Christmas ornaments and old floppy disks from college boxed away in one of the buildings. I think we may have a issue of holding onto things for a bit too long, but both of us will steadfastly argue that each and everyone one of those things is important. Including the 5 or 6 frames that I have lugged to at least 5 different residences and two states and have yet to use. But I digress, you did not come here to read about my slightly necrotic nature, and when I started typing all this I did have a point. If you happen to find it let me know.

I really wanted to talk about how boys come equipped with a water cannon in the front and a howitzer int he rear. The water cannon, something of an urban legend that is more truth than legend. It does not matter if you have children or not, everyone knows that little boys pee on their parents with the accuracy of an Army sharp shooter. Having been peed on with in the first two days of Noah being home we have taken to covering him with a washcloth, knowing that this is of course a futile attempt to protect ourselves. For Noah can shoot pee a distance up to three feet and I dare say could hit the bulls eye with out a problem. I am waiting for the day when the washcloth is shot into the air as if it were part of a water show at Disneyland.
The howitzer is an entirely differnt matter, there is a scientific explanation for all the noise that comes out from back there. Something to do with bacteria or lack of in the intestines. But the force that accompanies it, there is no explanation for that. Noah is a little under ten pounds and is 22" long, our cat weighs more than he does and yet just last weekend he showed a display of force that may be considered super human. There he was on the changing table and we were trying as quickly as possible to get on his third diaper in as many minutes when all of the sudden he pooed again. This time however the poo shot through the air past my wife and hit the wall a few feet away. Noah waved his arms with glee while we stared in disbelief at what had just happened. No one ever told us that we needed to watch our for flying poo! This is something you think they would at least mention in the prenatal class or perhaps some of the nice parents who warned us of pee could have warned us of this. Could it be that our son has super natural pooing powers?
Because of all this I have been pondering over the last week as to where i might be able to pick up one of those clear boxes with the arm holes. You know the ones that scientist use when dealing with radio active material. it would be perfect for the changing table, just put the baby inside and go to work. There is no need to worry about being peed on or pooed on and if it does get dirty in there you can just take it outside and hose it off. better yet it could come apart and you could stick it in the dishwasher. Perhaps if I have time between changing diapers and dodging pee I will look into this.

If you don’t do it this year

In the words of Warren Miller; “If you don’t do it this year you will only be one year older when you do.”

6:00am and I am down in my studio, the floor is littered with boxes and random artsy stuff I lugged home after getting laid off this past Monday. The hum of the baby monitor and the snoring dog are keeping me company. Amazing the sudden turn life can take and how what seems like something so awful can really be something wonderful.

The abrupt halt of creative work has left me over flowing with ideas and projects I would like to do, This is one of those projects. It is a chance to take the scratches of ink from my notebook and give them a little more structure, to write about our adventures, miss-adventures or the complete lack of adventure. I hope you enjoy this look at life and fatherhood from an artist point of view.

The Ultimate Rush (October 2009)

My last will and testament for my senior high school bio was to find the ultimate rush. When I wrote that I assumed that it would involve ripping down some gnarly single track on my mountain bike, or taking the steepest deepest line I could find on my skis. Then I met my wife and discovered that the ultimate rush had nothing to do with extreme adventure and everything to do with finding true love.

Our lives will soon be forever changed and it will be amazing. I am not holding any illusions that this change will be nothing but wonderful, I know it will also be very painful. My brother, a father of two girls and a career soldier, describes parenthood to be like "ranger training". Which pretty much puts any thoughts of rainbows and sunshine out of your mind immediately. Regardless of the struggles we are sure to endure I can not wait to hold that little body in my arms, It is certain to be the ultimate rush.

You can always make more money, but the time missed with family can never be found again (May 2009)

Time passes all to quickly these days. I was rudely reminded of the long distance between my folks and I a few weeks ago. So I booked a flight and climbed onto a plane before dawn to journey East.

Since stepping off the plane I have been in awe of the green. like a warm blanket on a cold winter day there is a comfort in the towering maples that obscure the sky and turn country roads into tunnels. The rolling mountains just past the fields bring back memories of adventuress and dreams that saved me during dark times. Life in general in this sleepy town has not changed much, if any, in the last thirty years. There is a comfort in that fact. The store I went to as a child still has the same people working behind the counter, the Volunteer Fire Department is holding its annual spaghetti dinner. Their four fire trucks parked along the road to make room for the tables and chairs in the tiny fire house.
My parent's yard, looking larger than ever compared to those in the city where we live, and more beautiful than my childhood memories allow me to believe. We spend the day working in the yard, digging in the dirt on our hands and knees close to the ground so we could feel the heart beat of rural New England. The sound of lawn equipment mixing easily with the chorus of birds and the gentle breeze. Side by side three generations knowing that though the work means a great deal the time spent together is what matters the most.

A Fleeting Moment in Time (January 2009)

I open the blinds and discover a blue bird day. I am fiddling around on the computer, passing the time until yoga class. But this changes everything! After 50 degree temperatures yesterday the rain came and shortly there after the snow. The valley trees are covered in a mixture of ice and snow, glistening in the morning sun. Yoga can wait; this is no time to be inside. I need to pack, charge the camera battery, boil water for tea, get food for the dog. A trail of gear stretches across living room floor. My plan is to race the sun into Neff’s Canyon and photograph the beauty of the day.

I drive the few miles to the canyon, watching the sun creep slowly down it's side. Once on the trial I quickly find my subject with the Scrub Oak’s gangly branches piled with pristine powder, and the blank canvas that is the rolling terrain. This is the first time I have taken my camera out in months. Shooting in black and white I hope to obtain a classic feel, but I am struggling to just remember how to get the right exposure for snow. For the next few hours I move among the trees, capturing the scene from various angles and view points.


Arriving home I discover that the best pictures of the day are not of 3 inches of snow delicately balancing on the bare branches of a sleeping forest. Rather they are the quick shots of Leunig, who dutifully followed behind me as I slid down banks and lay in the snow in an attempt to capture a fleeting moment in time.