Stay-at-home dad week: Day two. . .

Today we went shopping. Christmas present, office supply, and diaper shopping to be exact. We went to 4 different stores. . . he didn't like that. . . I didn't either. After that we went to see his friend Luke (whose mother is my friend Melissa). They still don't know each other exists (that's them in the above picture looking at something. . . who can tell what with babies?). They got some good team crying going though, it was fun.

Tomorrow, we're going to see Grandma. She'll probably just sit and hold him for a couple hours. She likes holding her grandbabies.


Johnson's Bedtime. We have dubbed this stuff "sleepy soap" and "sleepy lotion." The one things we've learned is to bathe him in it AFTER his final feeding. We did it before and he fell asleep long before he got enough to eat.


Not a product. What I hate is I'm constantly covered with cloth diapers. We have at least 3 in every room it seems, but when the kid spits-up (today he launched it about 3 feet) there is never a diaper around. Is that part of Murphy's Law?

Stay-at-home dad week: Day one: Update. . .

• Baby napping? Check.
• Laundry? Check.
• Dishes? Check.
• New Blog design? . . . obviously Check!

The little guy has been sleeping for over 2 hours now. At this rate I may only need to feed him once more before the lady with the fresh milk returns. And now for a new feature. . . love it/hate it.


Mylicon Gas Drops. I love these for a couple reasons. First they have completely no medical benefit (according to our baby's doctor) and people still swear by them. Second, no medical benefit doesn't stop them from doing something. They taste good to the baby and that quiets him down and makes him forget about the painful gas.


I want to preface this by saying I love the person who gave this to us. The Wee Blocker. Even if it did work, you'd need 8 or so to get through a couple days. They don't absorb liquid very quickly, so the pee hits it and runs down. Cloth diapers work much, much better.

Stay-at-home dad week: Day one: Hour one. . .

Mommy has to go back to work this week, and I have enough vacation time to stay home with the little man (I've been going into work a few days a week for the past month or so). So this week I get to be a stay-at-home dad.

7:30 My wife finishes getting ready and comes in to tell me she's leaving. The little guys been sleeping since about 6:00 and last at at 5:00 so I should still be good for another half hour. My wife kisses me goodbye and goes into the nursery one last time to say goodbye to her daily companion for the past 7 weeks.

7:35 Mommy closes the door to the garage and opens the garage door, beginning her journey back into the outside world.

7:36 My son cries.

7:40 After waiting the customary 5 minutes to try to let my son go back to sleep on his own, I go into the nursery to check on the sobbing 8-week-old. He's broken free of his swaddling. I instantly suspect my wife messed with him before she left—the equivalent of slipping a convict a cake with a file in it.

7:45 I mistakenly heat up a bottle of recently expressed breast milk. Which after testing it would burn my mouth let alone his. I cool it down with a breast milk cube. First crisis averted.

Since then it's been OK. One poopy diaper, 20 minutes in the swing (in which he tried to reach for the mobile for the first time), and about a gallon of spit-up later (the spit-up problem is much more daunting alone, that's for damn sure). Things are going OK so far. I'll be posting again soon.

Pictures. . .

I have finally gotten around to creating a new page to house the baby's many pictures.

Click here for pictures.

Of course these are only some of the hundreds (477 to be exact) that we've taken of him.

Celebrity appearances. . .

We're in the presence of a celebrity. Today we took the little man to my office to show him off. The oohs and aahs were almost too much to take. I should explain that at my office there are 8 men out of about 45 employees, so all the women just fell in love with him. We walked into a meeting that had about 15 women that I work very closely with and there was a loud, collective "awww."

And he was good. He was wide awake and looking around the whole time, and didn't cry or fuss at all. Several peopleheld him and he signed autographs. It was good.

Tonight he has another public appearance with some former coworkers of mine (most of whom are grandmothers). Hopefully he'll be just as calm and awake, they'll just love him.

The above picture is completely unrelated, just cute.

Baby's first rock concert. . .

See those guys up there? Those are three of the band members from Sister Hazel, a rock band from Gainsville, FL. They are best known for their hit song "All For You." That's Andrew holding our son, he asked if he could. . .

Today we took our little rocker to see his first rock concert. The band is playing a show tonight at a local venue and we're spending our first night away from the baby. So they decided to play an acoustic show at Borders. We thought he could handle an acoustic show so we took him. And afterwards we got to meet the band (again for us). They all loved him and Drew asked if he could hold him. I said "sure as long as we can get a picture for baby's first rock concert."

Sure he slept through most of it, but after one song we saw a definite smile. He was fussy between songs, but quiet when they played. We all had a good time.

SOLD!

My wife is breast feeding our son. However, we weren't always sure she would be able to do it. So before she gave birth we went to all the different formula makers and signed up for their mailing lists. . . and in roll the coupons, and better yet coupon checks.

Coupon checks are actual checks. Checks that are only good if you use them for formula, but checks none the less. This means you can use more than one as opposed to a coupon where you can only use one per order. The company can track that you used the check as opposed to a coupon where they don't know if you used it. So if you use it, presumably, they'll send you more.

Why did I just describe all that? Because these elements make for the perfect ebay item. Perfect for the seller because they can sell the checks for almost face value. Perfect for the buyer who just needs to buy them in bulk and use several in one purchase, they're making money. . . slowly admittedly, but making money. AND once the new consumer uses the checks the company sends more.

So far we've sold $31 worth of checks for $28!

Six hours!

Last night we hit a milestone. . . at least I hope. The little monkey went 6 hours between feedings. He ate at 2:20 and was wide awake so I stayed up and read a book with him for an hour and a half. . . he was starting to finally get sleepy so I laid him down to sleep. He slept through 'till 8:30! I woke him up for him to eat before I left for work. Mommy needed him to wake up so she could go to their first play date this morning.

I've never been someone to call people by their name. I couldn't tell you the last time I used my wife's name. Now suddenly I'm calling her mommy when talking about her to my son, and she calls me daddy, as in "you better keeping eating or I'm gonna sic daddy on you." And she does the same for herself. I got an email with a picture of her holding the baby with the caption that read "help mommy's crazy!"

On a side note, I was mentioned on Jumping Monkeys again. Toward the end Megan reads an email I sent about the MOCHIP program.