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[iamsoneurotic]

Enter, Levi: The Final Chapter Part II

8 Months later is better than never I guess.

I had intended to write a second post about Levi’s birth (as I did with both Milo and Noli), but as it turns out, free time isn’t really a thing when you have 3 kids. Go figure. Anyway, where did I leave off… The boy was born.

The C-section left Rachael bedridden for the duration of our stay at the hospital, which is pretty typical. From what I’ve been told, it’s not so bad - the doctors load you up with pain meds and you’re out the door in a couple of days, ready to take on the world with a baby in one hand and a bottle full of pills in the other. Well, due to an allergy to Ibuprofen, Rach was denied the good drugs and had to settle for a less effective Tylenol substitute which may have been less effective than somebody flicking her in the ear to distract her from the pain in her healing wound. To make matters even worse, she was fighting a horrible cough and every hack of the lung made her feel like she was being gutted like a fish.

As sort of an icing on the crap cake, her IV slipped out of her vein at some point during the first night and caused her arm to swell and rash. Her stay was divine to say the least.

Speaking of crap cakes, guess who was on diaper duty by default! Well that’s nothing new, I’m usually on diaper duty just because my lovely wife secretly loathes me (we have a dog now, by the way. Guess who gets the honor of cleaning up his little backyard nuggets). This particular series of diaper changes, however, stands out more than the others because Levi pooped a mountain’s worth over the next few weeks. Not exaggerating. He went through every phase on the newborn poo color wheel in a matter of hours. Something was clearly afoot, I’ve been around this whole breastfeeding business for a while now and I know for a fact he was exporting more than he was taking in. Pretty sure milk doesn’t have corn in it either.

There’s a video of his first changing… I can’t even post it. It’s just that awful. I don’t even know why we would have filmed something like that in the first place.

One last poo item to discuss - there was one nurse who was a complete POS. Her shift consisted of coldly telling Rachael to suck it up and walk so they could discharge us and berating her about everything she did ranging from how she breastfed Levi to, I don’t know, the way she wore her hair that day. She was a real piece of work. Not sure if there’s a polite way to wish Ebola on somebody, but I’m all ears.

There was a bright side to Rachael being confined to her bed, it meant I got more time to hold Levi. Given the stress of his birth, I had no desire to ever put him down - thank goodness he only weighed a little over 6lbs, our lightest one yet!

I noticed while holding him that he bore a striking resemblance to Don Rickles.

Leading up to the birth, I had “joked” that I was looking forward to the time away from the kids while we stayed at the hospital. I was wrong, I missed my babies. Before we had left, Noli was really upset that we were leaving him - that image of him sitting on the steps broken hearted was burned into my brain the whole visit. Milo didn’t seem to care much, he gets away with more when daddy’s not home (Noli was yet to figure this out). So after 2 days of not showering, Rachael approved of my release so I could go home, see the boys, scrub the thin layer of Italian grease off of my flesh, and let her mom see the baby for a while.

It was a nice little visit. The boys and I wrestled, built Legos, and I showed them pictures of the baby. Noli was needier than usual and didn’t like that I had to leave again to go back to the hospital, luckily my mom stopped by to take the boys to her place so I could catch a break for a few… For the record, however, I didn’t take a break for fear that Rachael would sense my relaxation and unleash the hordes of hell upon me.

Advice for any new dads out there: NEVER enjoy yourself while your wife is in pain or holding a child. Don’t close your eyes, don’t smile, don’t sit comfortably in a chair, and if you absolutely HAVE to eat, make sure the food gives you indigestion… But not diarrhea, because woman have figured out that bathrooms are a man’s place of peace. There can be no peace.

…

I’m literally not kidding.

Long story short - she thought I was gone too long and as penance, I bought her Pei Wei and she reluctantly showed mercy.

I screwed a number of things up with this birth. First was posting Levi’s picture to Facebook before Rachael had even seen him, second was having the audacity to take a shower at our house, and the third thing happened after being discharged from the hospital. When we got home, I rushed the baby into the house so he wouldn’t get cold. Inside the house my parents were waiting with cameras to film the boys’ reaction to the new addition. Well, in my haste, I failed to wait for Rachael (who was hobbling up the sidewalk in excruciating c-section pain) - depriving her of the opportunity to see the boys’ reaction live. I’m currently serving a life sentence in the doghouse for my foolish ways.

All screw-ups aside, the evening went well. Noli, who we were most nervous about adjusting to a newborn, held the baby in his lap (with heavy amounts of assistance). It was a giant relief. Milo loved the kid at first sight, 8 months later he’s still in love with the little guy… I’m a proud dad. My parents went home, Rach attempted sleep, and late that evening I wrote  “Enter, Levi: The Final Chapter Part I”. A masterpiece in biographical storytelling.

For the next few days Rachael was stuck sleeping on the couch until her incision healed more; getting out of bed was too painful. So we spent our evenings watching the Winter Olympics while Levi slept on our chests. In the mornings my mother-in-law would treat us to fresh grapefruit & oatmeal breakfasts and I would grab us Starbucks on the way back from dropping the boys off at school. It was a really nice couple of days… I even finally buckled down and got my Texas Driver’s License! Only took me 3 years to make the effort.

We nicknamed Levi “Popeye” because he would always wink his one eye and make scrunchy faces. In retrospect, I should have thought to tape a little pipe to his pacifier. Dangit! During this time, I discovered that the sound of a crying baby isn’t as horrific sounding as it had been in the past. Milo’s cries would send me into a panic, and Noli’s would just irritate me… I find Levi’s cries on the adorable end of the spectrum. It’s probably because this will be our last kid (assuming all goes according to plan). I’m taking in the infancy more, trying to make it last and enjoy every moment. Sure, I still get frustrated - that’s what babies do to you, but I’m enjoying the ride more… I know I’ll miss it. I still wish I could pull baby Milo out of the photos on my phone and hold him.

If I’m not writing a ton about Levi in this post, it’s because the kid was just so darn chill as a newborn. He didn’t give me much more material than “Awww, how cute”... And he was definitely cute (still is - all my babies are).

While both boys were great with Levi, Noli had gotten increasingly needy. I’m not going to lie, it was downright infuriating sometimes to deal with it. I took him out one day to give him some one on one time, the plan was to buy him a ‘gift from Levi’. I told him Levi gave me money to buy him a toy (kids are so gullible!)... I should have specified how much money Levi actually gave me because $60 later we had a brand new Lego Spiderman play set which took me an hour to build and only 10 seconds for Noli to destroy. 10 glorious seconds of him leaving me alone.

The nightmare was only beginning.

Rachael’s mom had stuck around for a few weeks to help out around the house while we got acclimated to all the changes. The hope was that anything that could have gone wrong would have gone wrong while she was here and we’d have the extra hands… But Murphy’s Law is real, kids. Thanks to the joys of school, Noli came down with the flu a day or two before my mother-in-law was leaving. Just the thing you want around a newborn! And there would be no extra hands. Before we even got home from the hospital, Rach began packing her bags to stay with my folks until our house was no longer contaminated with disgusting little boy germs (Milo was beginning to run a fever as well).

Rachael and Levi staying with my parents didn’t ease my worries, however. The boys are constantly sticking their grubby little fingers all over my face (why their fingers are always moist I’ll never understand). The fingers occasionally go in my mouth because kids are weird and have no boundaries. That mouth is incapable of not being on baby Levi’s face… Because those cheeks. All I could think was that I had given my newborn baby boy the flu and it was an awful feeling. I had shown no signs of having the flu, but it takes a few days before symptoms even start, so everything was up in the air… Just like the flu running rampant in my house. It was a waiting game and I hate waiting.

So it was me, the boys and my mother-in-law, and I only had her help for about two days before she had to go back home. Thank God for moms is all I have to say. She made sure we all took everything we needed, when we needed to take it, and I’m pretty sure she kept me flu-free, because (spoiler) I never caught it and luckily neither did Rach or Levi.

Those few days, however, were difficult for an entirely non-flu-related reason… Needy Noli. By this point he had already been driving me nuts with the constant need for attention, but the flu just made it worse. Today I was looking through the texts Rachael and I were sending each other and every other message was me going out of my mind while Noli stalked me around the house. It was like one of those dreams where you’re being chased by some unknown entity and it always finds you no matter where you hide. You’d think the flu would have destroyed his sense of smell, but somehow it was heightened. There was no escape.

All he wanted was to play legos… Legos which by now were CRAWLING with flu germs. Every click those blocks made when I connected them was like the empty click of a revolver in a deadly game of Russian Roulette. Sitting in that pool of Legos (we have a LOT of Legos) was like swimming in a pool of flu-juice. I swear some of them were wet.

Then my mother-in-law flew home… and it was just me and the flu-zombies.

Thank goodness for my Dad. He took one for the team and later that evening risked his good health to save me from the inevitable misery that awaited me with those kids. The man is fearless. My memory of that week is a little hazy, but I’m 80% sure he arrived via horse. When he got to the house, he told me to get out and enjoy myself for a few while he spent time with the little petri dishes. Even Noli let me leave the house! So I grabbed my iPad and booked it to Starbucks where I spent the next 2 hours sipping Lattes, drawing, and watching videos of Levi that Rach would send me.

The week was no doubt hard - dodging sneezes, dealing with neediness and the usual parenting frustrations… But the hardest part was being away from Levi. I spent 9 months waiting for the little stinker and barely got to know him before he left me for a week. There was a constant stream of videos and photos coming from Rach, but it only made it harder. There was one evening when Rach stopped by with some food and I snuck out to see her. She had Levi in the van and I had to just stare at him from the window (as I was still unsure if I was sick or not). It was torture.

Rach on the other hand was living the good life at Hotel De’Marianelli with my mom. Pampering, baby assistance, hot meals… and a Boxer who quickly became a therapy dog. When Rach arrived at the house that first night, she was a nervous wreck. She started crying when she came in the door and Roxy (the Boxer) ran up to her, put her head on Rachael’s chest and just stared at her. She’d lick the baby’s feet constantly and anytime Levi woke up from a nap crying, Roxy would book it into the room to check on him.

Dogs are the best. Not to speak ill of the dead, but our cat would have just pee’d on the crib.

Fast forwarding ahead, the boys started feeling better, I never got sick, and seeing as my dad’s work was finished, he went back home… I seem to remember him riding off on a chariot of fire. The details are hazy.

One last thing remained… The disinfecting of the Legos.

20% of them ended up down the drain. I hope they never return.

Finally my baby came home. I refused to let him go that night… Or the next night. If I could lactate, Rach would have never gotten him back.

I make good babies. ~ M.

[iamsoneurotic]

The Boy is 4.

I intend to write a follow up to Levi’s birth. Whatever, it’s my blog, I’ll write these in any order that I please! ... It’s so hard to write anymore.

My baby boy Noli is 4 years old today. I’ve been in this game for 5 ½ years already. What happened! Today was a weird day. It wasn’t a bad day necessarily, but I wouldn’t really call it a very GOOD day either. I think we stressed Noli out hyping up his birthday. It started out pretty normal, he woke up and the first words out of his mouth were “Am I four?” to which I exclaimed “YOU ARE! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BUDDY!”

He was put off by this… Though in retrospect, me wearing nothing but an old pair of boxers may have contributed to this. Nothing makes you feel dirtier than yelling happy birthday to your 4 year old son while wearing practically nothing. Whatever, this wasn’t part of the plan. I forgot that when kids are excited about something they wake up at weird hours. Today Noli was up at 6:30. You know, I don’t even know if he woke up on his own or not, it’s very possible Milo woke him up. All I know is that I was awakened to the screeching sound of two little boys playing wildly over Milo’s monitor. It’s very hard to tell the difference between outrageous kid laughter and outrageous kid murder. They just scream. There’s not even cackles or pauses for breathing - just one long continuous squeal. It’s awful. I don’t care how many poems romanticize the sound of a child’s laughter, I hate it.

Was romanticize the right word to use? Should the term ‘romantic’ have anything to do with the sound of children? What the heck is wrong with this post…

Well in any case - normally when the kids wake me up with their obnoxious happy noises, my response is to half-nakedly go upstairs and yell at them because my exhausted rage does not provide me the rationale to put on a pair of pants in the morning. However, Rach and I had sworn to be extra nice and forgiving for Noli’s birthday (yeah, I really sound like father of the year right now), so while I may not have had the right mind to put some clothes on, I at least got it together enough to feign some happiness for the little guy’s big day.

He was grumpy all day nonetheless. Grumpiness is one of those things we’ve been dealing with. Terrible 3’s have been in full effect. Tantrums, grumpies, defiance, aggression - we’ve got it all! What’re you gonna do though. We sucked it up, gave him toys, gave him chocolate-chocolate chip muffins, gave him ice cream, and gave him lots of grace. Our resources were exhausted to say the least. The words “Happy Birthday” were a trigger. Presents, however, he had no problem with those. Go figure.

*** Side note, we got a dog a little over a month ago. He’s “licking himself” right now and I’m finding it incredibly distracting. I’ll leave it to your imagination as to why I put “licking himself” in quotes. He licks me with that tongue. Sometimes it goes in my mouth. ***

Noli is such an enigma sometimes. He’s the sweetest little boy. He just wants attention, hugs, kisses, more attention; He loves to talk about superheroes, loves to talk about Legos, loves to just talk in general. Holy moly if you trigger him though. He goes dead silent. Sometimes he’ll run away, sometimes he’ll just hide and make this ticked off grunting noise whenever you ask him what’s wrong. It’s hard to figure out the things that set him off because he refuses to communicate what those things are. Once you’ve reached this point, parenting becomes a very delicate, dangerous dance. You have a choice: either you cater to his needs, give him what he wants, and say you’re sorry (even though you have no idea what you’re apologizing for)… Or you discipline. Truth be told, I don’t want to raise a bratty kid, so 9 times out of 10, I choose discipline. There’s a 99.9% chance of a tantrum at this point and generally everything escalates until we wind up in his room and I’m holding him down like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu while he screams until his face turns blue. And he’s a strong kid, it’s not easy to hold him down.

Anyway, today I took discipline out of the equation. It was his birthday and I had every intention of spoiling him rotten. Just to get him to go in the car with Rachael to get ice cream of all things involved me negotiating how close he could get to the ice cream building before he had to put his shoes on and then bribing him with the prospect of getting stickers when he got home… THIS WAS ALL SO HE COULD GET HIS FAVORITE TREAT IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD: FREAKING ICE CREAM.

Not to brag, but they were stickers that I designed and made myself. Earlier this year I came into possession of 20 sheets of printable vinyl sticker paper, I basically bought the wrong product and was too lazy to return it. Well it turns out it’s a nice ace up my sleeve when dealing with whiny kids, I can create any sticker in the world as a bargaining chip. Noli wanted Superman and Batman stickers… I made it so.

Of course while I was making the stickers, Milo walked into my office, saw what I was doing and then started demanding his own stickers… Because anything one kid has, the other has to have. He doesn’t even like Superheroes, he likes math and grammar.

Milo was pretty dang whiny today as well. I think he was struggling with the amount of attention Noli was getting. I expected as much, but let’s just say it wasn’t Milo’s birthday, so my leniency with the attitude did not extend to him.

I feel bad, there’s days where you just kind of spend your day correcting one of your kids. Don’t do that, knock that off, pay attention, put that down, take it easy, stop running, don’t throw that, say you’re sorry, eat your food, go to bed, goodnight. Only children can make you spend all night feeling guilty for trying to keep them alive all day.

This year instead of throwing a party at our house or at my parents’ house, we all went to McDonalds. Noli had said a while back that he wanted a “Happy Meal Party”... I have no idea what that is, but I’m sure it’s something stupid that he learned from YouTube Kids. We saw an opportunity, however, to not clean the house and had the family meet up at McDonalds. Pure ghetto birthday bliss. We ate crappy food, let the kids sink their teeth into some mystery meat nuggets (we all know those aren’t chicken) and while the fam conversed and had a good time, my mom and I spent our time talking Noli off the edge - because everytime anybody so much as smiled at him he’d immediately start sliding off the bench in an attempt to hide under the table and throw a fit. He perked up a little once he got some food in him and realized there was a pile of presents with his name all over them. Presents make everybody happy. In addition to all of the junk food he had crammed into his face today, Rachael brought cupcakes for us to wreck our health with. We discretely lit a candle without the McD’s staff noticing and prepared to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to the little guy… We got the word “Happy” out before he started throwing a fit and everybody just stopped singing (relieved to not have to sing that stupid song in the middle of a crowded McDonalds). He attempted to blow his candle out, failed and just as he was preparing for a second blow, I blew it out real quick so we wouldn’t get in trouble for having fire in a public place… My timing was awful, but luckily he didn’t seem to notice that the candle went out while he was inhaling and proceeded to eat the cupcake.

We went home, didn’t have to clean up the aftermath of a kids party, put the boys to bed and as far as we were concerned, it was mission accomplished.

Reading through this ramble of a recap, you’d think it was a miserable day… It wasn’t. I choose to write about the more upsetting parts of the day because they’re more interesting to write about, but if you add those ‘rough’ moments up, they were a small portion of what was otherwise a day of celebration. Noli is a treasure. For every tantrum he throws, there’s a million more cuddles, laughs and kisses. I enjoy him a lot. I enjoy all 3 of my boys. I can write about the insanity of today because it’s fresh in my memory, but a year from now this day will boil down to the memory of my family enjoying a deliciously ghetto faux-birthday party at a crowded McDonalds and joking about how wishing Noli a Happy Birthday made him grumpy.

I was looking through some old photos from last year from a trip we took to Maine. I know for a fact I was overtired and stressed out that entire trip from all the traveling we had been doing that month. Rachael was pregnant and miserable and I can guarantee that the boys were driving us insane. Yet every picture made me smile because all I can really remember are the happy moments from that trip. Noli assaulting Rachael’s face with kisses, Milo holding Grampa’s hand at the beach and doing puzzles with Grammy and Great-Gram, Rachael and I getting a night out by ourselves and trying on coats at LL Bean…

I’m not really sure where I’m going with all this, I guess I’m really just glad that good memories tend to weigh out the bad ones in this family. Today was Noli’s day, he chose to be grumpy, but that doesn’t change the fact that today is a good day regardless. 4 years ago God blessed me. Every day since Noli’s birth has been a gift that I don’t deserve. He makes me laugh, he makes me remember how much fun it was to be little and dream about being a superhero. He loves to draw and I can’t wait to share that part of my life with him, he’s already an amazing little artist. His imagination is wild. I love that and I hope he never loses it.

Every parent deals with tantrums, but I’m the only parent who gets to raise Nolan. That makes every hardship worth it.

In a nutshell... Noli, I just love you. You’re absolutely perfect.

~ M.

[iamsoneurotic]

Enter, Levi: The Final Chapter Part I

Just when I thought I had been through it all… Enter Levi.

It’s currently 2 in the morning and I’m sitting in my kitchen with a freshly brewed cup of coffee. I must have a newborn! I feel like this particular post is going to take a long time to write because I’m using an iPad with the tiniest little Bluetooth keyboard ever built. My hands are so close together it’s like trying to type while playing “here’s the church, here’s the steeple”.

Screw it, I’ll just use the stupid virtual keyboard. The struggle is real, people.

Anyway, let’s just start from the beginning - It was Thursday and Rachael was incredibly uncomfortable. She had a checkup on Wednesday following a night of cramping and was found to be at 3cm. Ah Yes, the joys cervix circumferences again! As I’ve lamented many times before, the mention of that word still makes me want to self-lobotomize. It’s like nails on a chalkboard - if that chalkboard was located directly behind my sphincter. You know that feeling you get when you’re listening to somebody talk about losing a limb and you immediately start grabbing your own limbs just to make sure they’re all in tact? This is the same thing, except I have no cervix so I’m forced to improvise. Hence, sphincter.

Why am I telling you this. I’m sorry.

The baby had technically dropped but apparently there was still some room for him to drop more, and sadly 3cm + not fully dropped = no hospital admittance. It sucked, we had hoped she’d be further along. Granted we were still 12 days before the due date, but ever since the baby dropped, Rach had felt a TON of pressure in her backside and a lot of pain in various other areas. She was miserable. Later that evening we were at my parents and she began having actual contractions so we rushed home to get everything ready because as far as we were concerned it was ON. Rach went to bed and I got ready to make a pot of coffee in preparation for an all-night baby-extracting extravaganza! … Then the contractions stopped happening. Luckily Rach informed me of this before I made the coffee because she would have killed me if I had wasted a pot of her precious brown nectar.

Thursday arrived and still nothing, but the pain and pressure had intensified. To our knowledge, she had to be at least 8cm because the contractions from the night before were INTENSE, however the contractions were all but nonexistent now. Everything just seemed odd. At this point I had told Rachael to call her freaking doctor and make sure everything was alright - it all just seemed very concerning: Lots of pain, lots of pressure, then a night of contractions which just stopped happening with no explanation at all… Why is the female body so chaotic?? Rachael almost never listens to me when I tell her to call a doctor or go to the hospital because clearly that’s just too simple a solution - and if there’s one thing pregnant women are consistent in, it’s being irrational. Whatever though, we didn’t call a doctor and she continued to feel like crap for another night.

Can I just say that as a husband, when your wife is 9 months pregnant and miserable, be prepared to stand awkwardly by the bed doing nothing except making sad faces and saying “What can I do?”. That’s all we’re good for. Every time you offer to do something, she says there’s nothing you can do… But if you attempt to walk away (because nobody likes standing next to a bed frowning) she starts to moan uncomfortably as though your awkward presence is the only thing keeping her uterus from imploding. Also - don’t even attempt to rub her head, or her back, or hold her hand, or kiss her cheek, or really show any form of physical affection whatsoever because while your presence is apparently keeping her on life support, your touch is the bearer of pain and suffering. So don’t touch. Don’t talk. Don’t actually look directly at her. Stand there uncomfortably for as long as she requires you to stand there and keep frowning.

Finally, when she lets you leave the room, I would suggest leaving your phone behind, because the moment you sit down, you will be texted immediately about how uncomfortable she is… And your useless presence will again be required.

It’s like a Mexican stand-off except you don’t get the satisfaction of being shot at the end of it.

Per usual, I digress.

Friday morning came and Rachael was basically bedridden. Luckily her mom was in town from Maine and was able to help out a little while I worked from home to keep an eye on things. She decided to go with her mom and the boys to Dunkin Donuts. The girl could barely get in the car, but she sucked it up for the sake of getting out of the house for a little while… and also you don’t say no to Dunkin Donuts. It’s a rare delicacy here in Texas. There’s one that I’m aware of and it’s 20 minutes away. There could be more out there, but I’ve never seen one and ever since we’ve moved down here it’s become my white whale. Dear, Texas - get more Dunkin Donuts. Love, everybody ever. Anyway, my wife, my mother-in-law and the boys left and I got back to work. About 20 minutes later I got a text from my beautiful stubborn wife. “I’m effing miserable. Coming back. At DD now.”

So at this point I had finally had enough and demanded we go to the hospital - this time she obliged.

She got home about 20 minutes later and I ran out to the car to see Rach sitting in the passenger seat praying for the good Lord to put her out of her misery. I helped get the boys out and hurried them into the house so I could tend to Rachael. She was now standing beside the van in agony from all of the pressure and pain, balling her eyes out. I got our bags together and hurried us over to the hospital, fully expecting Rachael to be in full blown, 9cm labor…

4cm. What the serious EFF.

The nurse left the room and we waited for the doctor to return and banish us back to our home where nothing but a miserable existence of phantom labor pain awaited my poor, pregnant wife. It was a rough moment, but oddly enough the nurse walked back in and said she was admitting Rachael and they were going to break her water… BABY TIME!!!!

They started hooking Rachael up to all kinds of IV’s and machines and it was happening so quickly and unexpectedly that for a brief moment I envisioned the Beauty and the Beast “Be Our Guest” scene playing out - but instead of singing dinnerware, it was needles, blood and wires. It’s also possible I was just singing “Be Our Guest” to pass the time. Rachael thinks I sing too much. The IV’s are always a good time because Rachael was apparently born without veins, so whenever she needs to be hooked up at a hospital, they just stick her with needles until something draws blood. I doubt Rach even cared at this point, she was too busy puckering her butt cheeks to keep the baby from head-butting her in the anus... That’s obviously not what he was doing, but that’s what she said it felt like. Or maybe that is what he was doing. I literally do not understand female anatomy. Where do babies come out of again? It’s been a while…

I don’t know if any other dads agree, but I always feel like the nurses and doctors would rather I NOT be in the room. When you’re the father, nobody acknowledges your existence unless you’re in the way. If I stand too close to the bed I’m blocking something the nurse needs to get to. If I stand too far away from the bed, I look like I’m not being attentive to my wife… and also I’m still blocking something the nurse needs to get to. Being a dad in a hospital is the ultimate third-wheel experience.

Let’s skip to water breaking. Everybody loves a good water break.

They gave Rachael the epidural - which was absolutely horrifying because Rachael was fighting through a really bad cough. I don’t know if this was a life-threatening situation or not, but I can’t imagine a worse time to have a needle in your spinal cord than while suffering the sporadic condition of wildly convulsing until the tickle in your throat is gone. I’m happy to report that she didn’t cough and become paralyzed.

Anyway, wifey be all numb, time to break some water! The doctor pulled out that long pointy stick (the kind you kill vampires with) and rammed it on up there… Or maybe she slowly and carefully slid it up. I always close my eyes for this part. If talking about dilation is enough to make me want to die, shoving a sharp stick up there to break a baby balloon is more than my fragile neurosis can deal with. I always think I’m going to hear a pop, but instead all I ever hear Rach going “Ooooohhohoho man.”

So now the fun begins. Once Rachael’s water was broken, we focused on two wavy lines on the monitor. The top one was the baby’s heartbeat - it was blue. The bottom one monitored Rachael’s contractions - it was purple. I never pay attention to these things because I trust the doctors to understand them and relay to me any important information. What concerns me is when the nurse is intently staring at the monitor like she’s watching a murder happen and is constantly having Rachael switch positions on the bed. I get more concerned when I ask “Is everything okay?” and I have to wait 30 seconds to get a dang answer (it’s the same way with my boys, I always know they’re lying when they don’t answer me right away). So we both asked what was going on, and the nurse finally pointed out that with every contraction the baby’s heartbeat would drop. Supposedly this is normal, but the way the nurses were acting made me think something was definitely not normal. But we carried on.

5cm.

I’m real good at reading the monitor now - I’ve stared at it without blinking for at least a half an hour. Like clockwork the contraction goes up and the heart rate goes way down. The heart rate wasn’t even related to how big the contractions were. Small ones caused the heartbeat to drop just as much as the large ones did. At this point I was convinced that if Rachael were to fart the baby would just flatline. Rachael was becoming increasingly nervous, but fortunately she was facing away from the monitor so I could do my best to lie to her about what was going on. I’m a horrible liar. She at one point asked me if everything was okay (we seemed to be asking this a lot that day), and as I was saying “everything is fine” the heartbeat dropped WAY WAY WAY low and I dragged the word “fine” on for about 3 or 4 seconds like I was having a stroke.

So we prayed. There’s not much else you can do in those moments, just pray. The nurses were getting more and more distant, the heart rate wasn’t changing and we were a nervous wreck because we were getting no information and clearly something was wrong despite the fact we were constantly being told everything was normal and fine. Rachael finally made me ask if we should just do a C-Section. Or maybe she asked? I can’t remember. Somebody asked and the nurse replied with a big fat “Not sure yet”, then walked out of the room.

Comforting. But before Rachael and I could even really say anything to each other, the doctor came in with her nurse posse and declared “We have to do a C-Section right now.” They suspected the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck, so without any hesitation, they rolled her off and threw a pair of scrubs at me as the door closed.

This moment is burned in my memory forever. I barely had a chance to tell Rachael that everything was going to be okay before they wheeled her away. I remember the look on her face, I remember the panic of knowing something is wrong with your baby... and then I remember just being alone in the room.

At least I wasn’t in the way anymore.

A few seconds later another nurse walked in and told me to get the scrubs on and if they didn’t have to put Rachael under, they’d bring me in for the procedure, otherwise I’d have to wait it out until it was done. I asked if everything was going to be okay and she replied that everything would be fine… I don’t even know why I asked, they said it was ‘fine’ every time and as it turned out, literally nothing was fine. I threw the scrubs on (luckily they informed me the scrubs go OVER the clothes, crisis averted) and I did what I was told: I waited. In moments of panic, the best solution is to just focus on what you need to do. The only problem was that there was nothing I could do. So I began frantically texting my parents about what was going on.

Word of advice - DON’T DO THIS. The knowledge of what was going on was bad enough, but to actually write it out and read it back to myself was horrifying.

So the tears start building up. I’ve officially been left alone with my thoughts for too long and with no distractions, and now I’m a neurotic mess. I hold it back though, knowing if I get called into that room I’d need to keep it together for Rachael. But then my mom called. If you’re on the verge of crying, don’t answer the phone when your mom calls. Awesome. Mom was crying, now I was crying, it was just a mess. So I hurry her off the phone because good lord, SOMEBODY needs to keep it the eff together and I start doing the routine - pacing, praying and panicing. For real, how long does it take to figure out if you’re going with anesthesia or numbness??

Enter nurse. I’m scrubbed up and ready to go… And then she tells me they put Rach under and I can’t go back. Fan-freaking-tastic. My heart sunk. My baby is being surgically removed from my unconscious wife and I’m standing in this room looking like a douche with a stupid pair of scrubs over my clothes trying not to freak out instead of being present for the birth of my child. As she explained the situation, I just looked down, attempting to pay attention but failing miserably because I was just doing my best to keep anymore tears from smudging my glasses. I don’t even remember what I said to her - I probably just asked if I could take the dang scrubs off now. There was literally no point in asking if anybody involved was okay because the answer was always “Yes, fine” regardless of how truthful that response was.

As the nurse rambled on sympathetically, another nurse walked in and started telling me the same thing - they had to put Rach under because the numbness wasn’t kicking in fast enough… Gee, thanks for the recap, this is just what I needed, a nurse with a hype-man. How thorough. I finally managed to ask how long it was going to take and the nurse replied very matter-of-factly: “Oh, the surgery is already done, he came out screaming. Everyone’s fine.”

…

Hey, here’s a thought, lady - LEAD WITH THAT NEXT TIME!

As I’ve made very clear at this point, I’m a man who cries, but I cry when it hurts. A joyful tear had never left my face until that moment, and the mention of my baby boy being okay was enough to not only shatter the floodgates, but also shatter the record for world’s ugliest cry... I ugly-cried hard. It was disgusting. I don’t even know what the nurse said after that, I didn’t care. At this point all I could think about was ripping my scrubs off like Hulk Hogan and kicking down the surgery doors to get my baby. But I refrained. The nurses left, and I again sat there and waited, trying to text my family through the tears that everything was alright.

As it had turned out, the doctor was right and the cord was indeed wrapped around his neck. They made a good call.

The next 10-15 minutes is a little hazy at this point. I know I called my brother to tell him everything that had just happened, but outside of that it’s all a blur. Right up until a nurse called me out of the room so I could finally see my third son for the first time. I almost knocked the doors over running out into the hallway just in time to see a nurse wheeling the bassinet up to me. I wasn’t even nervous, I knew he’d be beautiful - honestly, for all the trouble he put me through, he could have looked like a slug wrapped in bacon and he still would have been the most beautiful thing I’d ever laid eyes on because he was alive and he was with me.

… I’m happy to report he was the regular kind of beautiful though.

So on Friday, February 2nd, 2018 at 5:58pm, Levi Christopher Marianelli took his first insanely stressful breath into the world.

I asked if I could hold him. They said I couldn’t yet because due to the c-section, he was having some trouble breathing and they wanted to get him to an incubator - I think they saw the panic building up again and quickly told me that it was perfectly normal and he was already getting better, he just needed some help until he figured it out. Or something like that - really I couldn’t focus on anything anybody was telling me because I was so bent out of shape over everything. They gave me all of his measurements and I didn’t remember a single one. It’s not my job to remember these things, it’s Rachael’s job, and she was still unconscious. Crap, I haven’t even asked about her yet. Levi had a weight, he had a length, and luckily he had a name - and it’s a miracle I even remembered that little detail. In retrospect, I had a golden opportunity to name the boy anything I wanted! There was no buzzkill wife telling me I can’t name my own son Leviathan.

Fun Fact: “Leviathan” was actually the nickname we had given him after we decided on the name Levi and he began kicking Rachael’s fragile ribcage into oblivion every night.

Despite the fact I couldn’t remember his actual weight, I do know he’s the lightest baby we’ve had yet, and I’m okay with this. Noli’s a big boy and my arms can take no more.

I followed the nurses as they rolled Levi to the incubators, I just stared at him the whole time, rubbing his little head, taking a million pictures and silently thanking God for keeping him safe. As they prepared the incubator, they finally let me sit down and hold him while they got everything ready for him. Those few moments will always be one of my favorite memories. He was wide awake, but he was quiet as a mouse and so peaceful. I was so infatuated with him that I suddenly realized I hadn’t even asked about Rachael yet! I asked the nurse how Rach was doing. She let me know Rach was okay and asked if I wanted to see her. I didn’t want to put Levi down, but women hold grudges… “Yes. That would be delightful.”

I kid, I kid... Ish.

So I handed my son back over to the nurses, they placed him in the incubator and I followed another nameless nurse to see my wife… Only he didn’t take me to see my wife. He took me to the main desk to pay my stupid hospital bill. I should have been infuriated, but I applauded their tenacity and began to sign a whole mess of stuff without actually reading the fine print. It’s possible I sold Milo into scientific research and experimentation... He’ll be fine, I’m sure.

They brought me back to our room and told me Rach was awake and they’d be bringing her in shortly. Alone again. I sent the 8,000 pictures I took of Levi out to my family and stared at my phone as I received about a hundred “awwww” texts accompanied by a vast assortment of emojis and gifs. Then, like a dummy, I posted Levi’s picture to Facebook and announced him to every busybody I’ve ever known.

… Then I remembered that Rachael hadn’t even seen Levi yet and I had just sent his picture to every human being on the internet. This is why dads should NEVER be the only conscious people after a birth.

Finally, in rolled Rachael - a hot mess from the anesthesia. The poor girl was having a really rough time. She had told me later on that the last thing she remembered while being put under was having trouble breathing. So she went under thinking the baby was in danger and that she was about to suffocate… I’d say that’s a good enough reason to wake up freaking out. She was really upset, I felt horrible for her. She’d just gone through a really rough time and all she could do was beg to find out what happened to her baby. I quickly ran over to her and began telling her Levi was okay and that he was beautiful. She responded to it and sounded relieved, but would just start freaking out again seconds later and I’d have to keep reassuring her everything was okay. She’s always had a hard time coming off of anesthesia, it normally results in crying fits.

Eventually she began to calm down some, and it was just in time for Levi to come into the room. They brought him in and immediately put him in her arms. Rachael broke down crying as she held her baby boy for the first time and I started getting teary-eyed again (I need to watch some Schwarzenegger ASAP to replenish my man-supply… Wow that sounds dirty). I held it back this time though, just doing my best to take in the moment. I know I’ve said it about every birth we’ve had now, but it was one of the most beautiful sights I’d ever seen. Rachael finally had her baby and he was healthy, safe and sound. The girl hardly had any strength in her arms and she was covered in wires and IV’s, but holy crap did she keep a grip on that little boy. Moms are great.

It took 40 minutes in total from the time they rolled her away to the time she was reunited with her little Leviathan. Pretty impressive, though it felt like I had been waiting in that room by myself for a month. We always wanted an afternoon baby (thinking we’d be rested enough to enjoy him without being physically exhausted by a 3am birth), well we finally got our wish and it made zero difference whatsoever thanks to the most stressful 40 minutes of our lives.

Leviathan was an appropriate title after all.

Per usual, there’s a part II coming, but we’ll see how long that takes me to write… I’ve got 3 kids now.

I am but a man.

~ M.

[iamsoneurotic]

A Guide to Kid’s Shows

Parenting is a big deal - this is the understatement of the year, decade, century and of all measurable existence. With parenting there is a lot of knowledge to be gained. Some of that knowledge will come from experience, some will come from our own parental figures and the rest will be gained from the internet. Allow me to be a part of the latter source and impart to you one of the most crucial digital tomes of enlightenment you will ever come across…

A Guide to Kid’s Shows!

You think I’m being silly, but in all my years as a graphic designer, there’s one rule that always rings true and strangely enough, applies to what shows you let your kids watch: If you’re presenting a client with options, never give them an option that you hate - Because that is the one option they will love.

Now excluding all of your dumb friends on Facebook and Instagram who do nothing but brag about how their kids never have screen time and they’re always posting happy family pictures of them in parks and on hikes and eating granola out of troughs in some remote Vermont location, the rest of us know that screens are your only hope of keeping your wound up, bratty kids occupied long enough so you can take a 5 minute dump without having to run out of the bathroom mid-wipe with your pants around your ankles to yell at your little ‘angels’ who can’t agree on what color lego castle they’re going to build without slapping each other around like a couple of town drunks. Run-on sentence? Maybe, but it’s just what I’m used to listening to all day in a house where we’ve been attempting to reduce screen time.

Anyway, like I was saying - screens good, noise bad. But this approach can very quickly backfire on you if you’re not careful. Remember, the purpose of television is to keep your kids quiet, but what’s the point of your kids being quiet when you’ve hastily picked the first colorful show you could find and now you’re listening to 4 grown Australians singing about what it’s like to be a Jack-in-the-Box??

EDUCATE YOURSELF! Sanity is on the line!

Because there’s a million shows out there to get suckered into, I’ll just go over 2 for now, a bad one and a tolerable one. I might make this into a series I do… I’ve got 5 years worth of children’s programming eating away at my brain, I might as well write about it.

DANIEL TIGER’S NEIGHBORHOOD

Remember all those fond memories you had watching Mr. Rogers Neighborhood growing up? The soothing voice and welcoming face of a man everybody wished was their grandfather serenading you while he puts on a colorful sweater and brings you to a magical land of make-believe? … Yeah, he’s dead now and all we’re left with is this oversaturated, poorly animated bastardization of a children’s classic.

Daniel Tiger takes place in the infamous Land of Make-Believe and it stars the son of Daniel Stripéd Tiger (also named Daniel) as he learns how to not be such an obnoxious, spoiled twerp. The show takes some liberties with the classic content. Daniel Tiger’s dad, whom the show refers to as “Dad Tiger” is the grown up version of the Mr Rogers’ character Daniel Stripéd Tiger - who if any of us remember, was a shy, softly spoken kitten who lived in a handless clock tower. Evidently he’s gained some confidence, learned to talk like a man and got himself a wife and kid. Now he lives in an actual house and works at the clock tower doing who knows what – the clock has no hands, what could he possibly be doing in there? I can only imagine it involves lipstick and a skin-suit.

The majority of the other characters from Mr Rogers are all grown up now as well and have annoying kids of their own for Daniel to barely get along with… Except for the mailman who evidently never ages and is cursed to live alone for the rest of his immortal days. The only original character who I haven’t seen make an appearance is Lady Elaine Fairchild, and for what it’s worth, excluding her was probably a smart move - her puppet was made of tears and nightmares.

Why you should avoid: 🎶 Would you like to know why you shouldn’t watch?🎶

🎶 Would you like to know why you shouldn’t watch?🎶

🎶 Would you like to know why you shouldn’t watch?🎶

🎶 Would you like to know why you shouldn’t watch?🎶

Do you hate me yet? …

🎶 Do you hate me yet?🎶

🎶 Do you hate me yet?🎶

🎶 Do you hate me yet?🎶

Yeah, this is the number one reason you should NEVER PLAY THIS ON YOUR TV. They pick a crappy jingle about some common sense thing, like brushing your teeth, and then they sing it OVER and OVER and OVER and OVER AGAIN. I still have episodes burned into my brain from overexposure to that show. One song in particular was just a bold-faced lie. “Grown ups come back”... As in if you’re upset about your mom or dad leaving the house, don’t worry, grown ups always come back!

Except when they don’t.

In addition to the repetitiveness of poorly written songs, the main reason this show will get on your nerves is because Daniel Tiger is literally the cartoon equivalent of a real-life toddler. It sounds mean to say, but think about every cringe-worthy, obnoxious thing your kids do, now imagine having to watch an entire television show where your main character does exactly those things. The whole reason you’re letting them watch TV in the first place is to escape the harsh but undeniable reality that toddlers are the worst!

Now, granted, the point of the show is to teach your kids that everything they do is irritating and they should just stop, but would it kill the producers to use a hint of metaphor? Perhaps a whimsical, make-believe anecdote that teaches a similar lesson? This is the land of make-believe isn’t it?? Why is it so freaking real???

Luckily there’s another magical place that your kids can scramble their brains to that gets it right…

SUPER WHY!

I’m not going to pretend that Super Why! is a good show (children’s entertainment is rarely, if ever, capable of reaching that standard), but it is an incredibly harmless show - which is the most any burnt out parent can really hope for.

As I alluded to a moment ago, the show takes place in the magical land of Storybook Village, a place where all of our favorite fairytale characters live together in harmony. It exists behind some tiny door inside of a real-life children’s library on a shelf that I imagine kids can’t reach because you know if they found out about that door they’d burn that library to the ground to get at it. I always knew I’d find a way to write about kids burning books like a bunch of little fascists. Shark jumped.

Similar to Daniel Tiger, some of our main characters are relatives of more popular characters from children’s stories. Our title character, Whyatt Beanstalk (AKA Super Why) is the brother of Jack Beanstalk from Jack and the Beanstalk... who I’m pretty sure never actually had Beanstalk for a name. Our other characters consist of Princess Pea, who is the daughter of the princess from The Princess and the Pea (who must be a queen now?), Alpha Pig, who I think is one of the 3 little pigs, and Little Red Riding Hood.

Clearly somebody was drunk when they came up with this cast. Why have the brother of Jack and the daughter of Princess Pea, but then just throw in the actual characters of Little Red Riding Hood and one of the 3 Little Pigs? Just use Jack and the original Princess! It makes no sense, I don’t like it.

They eventually get a dog named Woofster who joins their little brat Justice League. He offers nothing to the show and his name is dumb. Let’s just get a cat on the show and name him Meowey while we’re at it.

… Come to think of it, if they could get a wisecracking cat named Meowey Mandel that’d be PHENOMENAL on so many levels. I’m writing to PBS after this.

Anyway, they all have special reading powers which they use to solve mysteries. The basic setup of every episode is one of them has a problem, they’re too dumb to figure out how to deal with said problem, so they transform into superheroes and journey into fairytale books where they solve a mystery and then apply what they learned to their insignificant real-life situation.

Super Why has the power to read, Princess Pea has spelling power, Red Hood has word power, Alpha Pig has Alphabet power and Woofster uses a dictionary. Based on those powers, it sounds to me like they all have the power to read. Why waste money animating 5 of these stupid characters? Scrap 4 of them and put that budget into better writers.

Why it’s tolerable Ignoring the fact I’ve done nothing but pick on this show, it actually won’t really bother you. Everything that annoys me is annoying because I’ve made the mistake of paying attention. You should NEVER pay attention to what your kids are watching. I see no flaws in that advice.

It's a cute show. The jingles are catchy enough, the characters don’t act like bratty kids, and from a visual perspective it’s not offensive to the eyes (I’m looking at you, Bo on the Go… I could write 50 blogs about that Canadian abomination). The show is mostly CG, but when they go into the storybooks, all the people and objects are flat like they were made out of paper. It’s actually pretty creative. Well played, Super Why.

It’s made by the people behind Blue’s Clues (Which I had hoped would have died horrible, embarrassing deaths by now, but alas, they’re still at it) and so there’s that element of characters talking to the viewers and asking them if they see items on the screen. I mean whatever, it engages your kids, but the adult in me is just like, “It’s right behind you. Turn around and look, you’ve got 4 other useless characters with the same superpowers wandering around the screen, why are you bothering my kids?” Before you know it my kids are yelling at the TV, I’m yelling at the TV and Super Why still isn’t turning the eff around! But while my boys are having a blast trying to help Super Why, I’m just getting ticked off and want to punch him in his little kid nuts.

I guess TV won’t give you any peace and quiet after all. Take your kids on a hike.

~ M.

[iamsoneurotic]

Hey Milo! You Five! And other stuff...

So we’re weeks out from baby #3 being born… I’ve hardly written a single update about this pregnancy because oddly enough it’s really, really hard to find time to write absurdly long posts when you’ve got two little boys and a pregnant wife.

Oh who am I kidding, I’m just really lazy. But having kids is such a good excuse to not do things that I can’t help but use it every chance I get. Now if only I had a decent excuse to get a minute alone from the boys I’d be in business! I kid… but let’s not pretend that it isn’t the worst thing in the world to wake up to a toddler screaming at you to play legos upstairs. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE playing with Legos and I love playing with my kids, but I love not moving in the morning more. We’ve got a rule in the house: Mommy and Daddy don’t play until after they’ve had their coffee in the morning. Needless to say I sip mine VERY slowly.

Rachael and I are not morning people. Milo and Noli inherited that trait from us, but unfortunately they also inherited my stubbornness - so they just refuse to sleep in. Yeah, I know all kids wake up early and are miserable, but Noli literally wakes up growling and Milo always wakes up yelling “HEY!” like he dreamt about some goblin flicking him in the nose and then woke up too soon to flick him back. That’s what I imagine happens anyway. If they’re so mad about being awake, why not just stop being awake?? It’s not that hard, I do it all the time!

But whatever. They come out of their rooms, they fight over a lego, I pathetically and ineffectively shout at them from my recliner downstairs and then I drink my coffee and secretly daydream about drowning to death in it. Mornings with the Marianelli’s are a good old time. Even the unborn one wakes up cranky, he just awakens when Rachael is going to bed and kicks her in the ribs like a savage. Crap, I just realized I never posted his gender - well if you haven’t figured it out yet, he’s a boy. If anything I’m consistent.

We had the sonogram a week after my last post and boy oh boy the boy wasn’t shy about being a boy. Have I said boy enough yet? I know a sonogram isn’t actually a camera with a lens, but I swear, the moment they turned that device on he practically slapped it against the screen. No subtlety whatsoever.

There’s this awkward moment during a gender reveal where both parents are secretly hoping for different results (by secretly I mean me, Rachael was quite vocal about her hopes) - it’s like when you’re playing a board game with people and it’s maybe 10 rounds in and that competitiveness is starting to rear its ugly head and the laughter is becoming more and more forced with every round - and then you win for like, the 5th time in a row and you’re not quite sure what emotion to express so you just sort of downplay your own victory as dumb luck, but now everybody feels insulted that you’re pitying them… Yeah, that’s what it’s like to find out you’re having a third boy.

But for real, it’s better this way and we all know it.

I can’t tell if the sound of my voice makes the little stinker agitated or happy. He usually starts moving a lot when I talk to him (yeah I know, they can be startled by sound and it’s not technically me specifically that he’s responding to - but let me have this!), I think my proudest moment was when I placed my hand on Rachael’s belly and said “HIGH FIVE!” and he totally kicked my hand. He also likes to kick me in the head when I try listening to his heartbeat… They say you’re supposed to be able to hear the heartbeat without a stethoscope but I’m three kids in and it’s NEVER happened! I do, however, hear a lot of digestive sounds that I wish I could un-hear.

This pregnancy gives me a lot of memories of when Milo was still in the womb and he would stop Rachael dead in her tracks by roundhouse kicking her in the side. This little guy might actually be worse. There were a couple of weeks in the Autumn where we were convinced he was actually kicking Rachael in the spine. It would send shockwaves up her back and every time it happened I thought she either saw a giant spider or suffered an aneurysm. I’m not saying I wished for the latter, but I really hate spiders… Don’t judge me.

We’ve been trying to prepare Noli for the baby’s arrival. He can get pretty jealous. My brother came home one day with puppies and Noli got really sad that we were giving the puppies so much attention. It broke my heart a little. He’s a really sensitive kid - it’s a good quality, but it can be difficult. I have to discipline him almost entirely differently from how I discipline Milo because of it. To be honest I still don’t really know what I’m doing when it comes to that with him. Some days I think I’ve cracked the code, but then the next day it’s an entirely different ball game. He’s been a little grumpy lately and we haven’t really figured out why outside of “Terrible 3’s” (terrible 2′s is a myth, 3′s suck).

I used to think I knew what a tantrum was… I was so wrong. On Christmas Eve Noli threw the most epic tantrum I have ever witnessed in the history parenting. It’s mostly a blur at this point, but it started when I tried making him put on a pair of pants after his bath and it ended with a full-on UFC-style showdown where I was literally grappling him on the floor so that he wouldn’t hurt himself. I ended up tapping out because nothing was working - Rachael finally managed to defuse the entire situation by simply pulling an ice-tray out of the freezer and showing it to him. Yup. Problem solved. All the shouting, bribing, begging, grappling and crying did absolutely nothing - a boring inanimate object from a mini-fridge tamed the beast. How Rachael thought to walk past a playroom full of toys and grab an unused ice-tray will forever be a mystery to me. Since being pregnant the girl can barely remember her own name, yet she knew exactly how to deal with a situation that neither of us had experienced - motherly instinct is truly the 8th wonder of the world.

All tantrums aside, Noli cracks me up. He’s making up his own superheroes now. His latest evil creation is “Play-Doh Butt”. His superpower? He shoots pink legos out of his butt. I’ve also learned a number of other characteristics that I wish I could forget. He’s apparently blue, wears no clothes, has no hair (anywhere) and is little. He’s straight out of a nightmare. There’s another superhero he’s working on that’s less fleshed out, and I truly hope it remains that way because I don’t need nor want any other details. His name is “Tater Tutt” and, in Noli’s own words, “he shoots poo-poo out of his hands at all the happy people”... I think that makes him a villain, but I’m not sure Noli sees the lack of virtue in flinging your poop at happy people. I’m sure there’s somebody out there who would derive joy from that experience, but it’s certainly not anybody I want hanging around my 3 year old.

I can’t bring myself to discourage his progressive line of superheroes, they’re more creative than anything I came up with at that age - my greatest childhood achievement was creating a superhero who controlled fire, and I named him “Flamer”. Just failure all around. One of these days I’ll get around to asking Noli to draw a picture of Play-Doh Butt for me just to see what monstrosity he puts to paper, but until then I’m totally satisfied just watching him draw Spider-Man… with chalk… on our walls. So glad we didn’t give him markers that day. For a 3 year old he’s a really good little artist - I’d say even for somebody older than him. His Spider-Man drawings are really cute and surprisingly stylized. Between the two of them, I think he’s the most handy with a drawing utensil, and it makes sense; Milo is very book smart, Noli is very creative. It makes a lot of sense to me, Milo is a spitting image of Rachael, so naturally he’s just gravitated towards books and math. Noli got my genes, hence, Play-Doh Butt and art.

He really is the sweetest little boy on the planet though. I slipped on the bottom step the other day like a bobo and fell down, Noli immediately ran over to me and kept trying to make sure I was okay… Milo, on the other hand, just yelled at me to get a toy for him that he got stuck under the television. I’ll be remembering that when it’s time to draft up wills. Anyway, the point is, the kid just has a kind, nurturing soul. He wants everyone to be happy...

“Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“Happy?”

“Yes.”

“Ohay!”

He still can’t say his K’s.

What else… Oh, yeah, Milo turned 5! My baby is growing up and I’m both happy and miserably depressed over it. I feel like I’ve said this for other birthday posts, but it’s how I feel every time. I don’t sing Happy Birthday to the boys, I sing “Cats in the Cradle” and my tears put their candles out. Nobody likes growing up in our house.

I think he had a good day. This was the first birthday that he actually seemed aware of leading up to it. He was so excited he woke up at 5:30 in the morning and for the first time ever WASN’T cranky! I wanted to stick my head in a stove, but at least he was happy to be up before the sun. We had a Mario-themed birthday for him - correction, a LUIGI themed birthday for him; He prefers Luigi to Mario. He’s been playing a lot of Mario Run on his iPad… Probably too much, but mommy and daddy are literally the worst parents in the world when we’re feeling defeated so we throw iPads at the boys for distraction while we recharge our broken will. He’s actually really good at that game, he beat it before I did - and I’m awesome. I’m terrified to introduce him to the original Mario games, he hates losing, and that’s basically all you do with the old ones. You lose until you throw a controller at the wall, then you play DOOM for an hour to vent. We’re not there yet with the boys.

One of the reasons I was so excited for him to turn 5 was STAR WARS. It’s a movie I’ve always looked forward to watching with my kids, but wanted to wait until they were old enough to actually get what they’re watching and hopefully not get too scared. We have a media room upstairs that is 100% off limits to the kids, but I told Milo for his 5th birthday we’d get milkshakes and watch a big boy movie in the media room… He was a little bored by it, but he was happy to just be in our home’s ‘Forbidden Kingdom’ with junk food and some one on one time with Dad. I really loved it. When you have more than one kid, it’ hard to just enjoy them for their own uniqueness. They morph together into this wild entity that lives to argue with itself and bring chaos and exhaustion to your once stable, quiet household.

Milo is a brilliant boy. Every day he makes it a point to remind me how much of a genius he is. Whether it’s his ability to perform division in his head or how he reads at a 1st grade level (even more so I think) or the fact that he can build a set of Lincoln Logs exactly as they are on the box when I can barely make any sense of the vague directions they come with. He’s a sponge for knowledge. He also had a piano recital on his birthday and he nailed it. It probably doesn’t sound like much to an adult musician, but for a 5-year-old to play piano and without looking at the sheet music, know when he’s made a mistake and correct it by ear is wildly impressive. Like I said - brilliant.

Milo - I know I’m a month late writing this, but I’m just so amazingly proud of what a big boy you are. I love your face, I love your voice, I love your personality and your sense of humor, I just love everything about you. I can never find the right words to express it, but I’m just so filled with joy watching you grow up. You were the very answer to a prayer I had prayed almost every night since I was little - to be a Dad, to have a family of my own. Now I get to pray every night and thank God for a family I know I’ll never truly be worthy of. So yeah, just in case you ever doubted what you mean to me.

Happy Birthday, baby boy. I love you.

Anyway, this is turning into one of those super long posts that Rachael yells at me for writing, so I guess I’ll wrap it up… My next post will inevitably be another 2-part ‘Birth of Baby’ story (and hopefully my last), so be on the look-out! Or don’t. I don’t even know who’s reading this besides my wife, and she doesn’t much care for the amount of detail I go into regarding the births so I imagine I’ll just be reading the next post to myself. Good lord it’s late.

Auf Weidersehen, goodnight (why yes, I did have to Google that), ~ M.

[iamsoneurotic]

All Kinds of 3′s...

I’m not even providing a witty lead up. It’s happening again.

I mean at this point it’s already Facebook official, so the element of surprise is gone. Actually what would have been a great surprise would be to write an entire post and NOT say anything. Then like, on the baby’s third birthday be like “SURPRISE!”... I may still do that. Nobody reads this.

I wanted to work in something about 3 being a charm, but that kind of implies that you screwed up with the first two and THIS will be the child that saves your family from failure, but I’d like to think we’ve done pretty dang good with our first two kids. The mere fact that I was able to keep them alive (edit - not kill them, let’s be honest, mommy keeps them alive, daddy just tries not to drop them too much) proves that first and second times are a charm. I’m very charming.

We’re going to be finding out the gender next week and I don’t really want to emphasize what Rach is hoping for out of fear the child will read this someday and think it’s the equivalent of being a duplicate Happy Meal toy - but it’s pretty obvious what she wants considering we have 2 of one gender and none of the other… She wants a girl. There I said it.

Really, Rach, I still say if it’s a boy and you're disappointed by that, put it in a dress while I’m at work one day and don’t tell anybody. Get it out of your system. Problem solved.

… That part about not telling anybody is very important though. Please don’t tell me.

Anyway - 2018 was always going to be the year of Baby #3. Not that THIS particular instance was the plan, but it would have been right around now anyway. Rachael’s one demand about this post was that I not make any jokes about or references to the conception of the child. So I won’t reference the conception. Not even a little. Absolutely will not talk about how babies are made and how this pregnancy is no different from how most babies are created.

Look at me doing what I’m told like a good husband.

So we found out in June that we’re essentially not going to have our lives back until 2036. It was a weird couple of months because the prior month we had a pregnancy scare which turned out to be just a weird menstrual cycle from some hormone-related pills Rach was taking… I hate the word menstrual almost as much as the word cervix - oh dear lord I’ve used both terms in the same sentence, I’m going to throw up. Shouldn’t ‘lady’ terms be more feminine?? Why can’t they have nice terms for female-related items… Like Vas Deferens, that’s a male-related and highly inoffensive word to the ears. You know what, ladies? You can have that word. It’s not like anyone ever says it anyway. Name a non-med school conversation that you’ve ever had which included the word Vas Deferens. Seriously, we’re not using it, swap it with cervix and let’s move on from ever having to mentally scar our brains with that word ever again.

See, this is the part about pregnancies that I hate the most. It’s not the hormones, it’s not the bills, it’s not the fear of finances… It’s the freaking awful words you have to hear for 9 months straight. Everything is all about mucus and cervixes and uteruses and fetuses and cramping and contractions and I’m fully aware that I’m supposed to be using commas instead of “ands” but I have mom-brain by proxy so I don’t care. That’s the other thing - I’m getting pregnancy symptoms! I’ve heard that this is a real thing that can happen, and it’s finally happening after 3 of these pregnancies. I’m hormonal, on edge, tired, I get headaches, mom-brain, nausea… It’s freaking ridiculous. Don’t even get me going on my baby bump!

In all fairness, this has been a pretty rough pregnancy for Rach. Probably the worst first trimester ever. She’s been incredibly nauseous, cranky, tired… Basically the usual pregnancy symptoms, only cranked to 11. The poor girl is MISERABLE. I feel bad, but at the same time I don’t really like having to be in charge of watching the boys while she naps and recovers. Nobody feels a father’s pain and struggle.

Oh dear, I was talking about menstrual cycles (*shivers*) wasn’t I… I can’t keep a consistent thought to save my life. The point of that was, because we had a scare the month before which ended up being a 10-day late period, we just figured that this was no different and she’d get her period super late again… well it was kind of true, only instead of being a month late, it’s going to be about a year late. The reason I’m posing with 3 pregnancy tests isn’t because we’re going to have 3 kids or because there’s triplets on the way (God willing), it’s because Rach took 3 separate tests because she couldn’t believe it was even a possibility… I obviously can’t go into any further detail than that because I’ve been banned from discussing certain topics by my modest wife.

We’re due February 13th. I feel like this is necessary information to give when posting about a pregnancy. People like that sort of thing. People also like pictures… So here’s the little munchkin:

I should rephrase - not “munchkin”, we’re referring to this baby as our “ Lil’ Lily Pad”... Milo was very unoriginally “Sweet-Pea”, Noli was “Cupcake”, later appropriately changed to “Beefcake”, now we’ve got a Lily Pad. Not really sure what the obsession with naming unborn babies after foods. I often wonder if we as parents subconsciously entertain the idea of cannibalizing things we love. “You’re so cute I could just eat you up!” or “I just want to nibble on those cheeks!”... We’re lost as a society.

So that’s all I got on Baby #3. Now onto Baby #2! Noli’s a 3 year old!!! Yesterday was my little bug’s birthday. Did I talk about how I call him “bug”? I don’t remember... mom-brain by proxy, remember. He was a cuddle bug, so I started calling him Noli-bug, now he’s just Bug. I don’t know why it’s so appropriate for him. There’s just something about that little stocky, squishy body that just screams “little bug”. I feel like he’s destined to be in a gang someday with that name.

Anyway, he’s 3 and I’m just so proud and in love with the little bugger. The boy is a cuddly ray of sunshine. He loves hugging and kissing and saying “I love you”, and we in-turn soak it up like a sponge. He’ll just walk over and sit on you without any warning and nuzzle right up. He’ll put his arm around you, he’ll stop whatever he’s doing at random to look at you and say he loves you, then he’ll kiss you on the hand or on the head. Sometimes he’ll play with your hair or rub your arm… It’s so much adorableness that you literally feel like you’re going to implode with bliss. Rachael says he’s the best little boyfriend she’s ever had… It’s probably true – I hated PDA when we were dating. Now I just sort of wait around corners and in dark shadows and guerrilla-style attack Rachael with hugs and kisses and retreat before she can tell me to stop… Okay, that came off as a little… assault-y? Sorry, but when your wife is pregnant, it’s very difficult to get so much as a high-five. You’re more likely to get slapped and commanded to turn down the thermostat… Which I gladly accept because at least she’s touching me. Why am I talking about this…

As I mentioned in my last post - Noli is still obsessed with Spider-Man. It’s actually gotten worse. We’re at a point now where you literally can’t give him anything without him demanding a Spider-Man version of it. My dad wants to get a boat: “A SPIDEY-BOAT??”. We take the boys for milkshakes: “CAN I HAVE A SPIDEY MILKSHAKE??” (hence he gets strawberry because it’s red, and anything that isn’t red isn’t spider-man… I don’t even think he likes strawberry shakes, but it’s all he’ll accept).

The worst thing you can do for a kid who’s obsessed with something specific like this is buy them one of those ‘surprise’ toys where you don’t know what you’re going to get… You had better pray to God that there’s a Spider-Man toy in there because if it’s Batman we’re all taking a trip to Meltdown Town. I tried to buy him one of those things at the airport. I bought two, one for Noli and one for Milo. I let Noli open the first one, it was Gamora (from Guardians of the Galaxy). Naturally… he was peeved. So without Milo knowing, I let Noli open the second one… It was Venom. Good lord, we were so close!! So he begins his freakout, and I quickly scramble to salvage the situation and tell him it’s “Black Spider-Man”. He called my bluff immediately. Apparently he, like Milo, is now impervious to my lies and deceptions (which I 100% rely on to maintain peace in my home). So what did he do? He ran to mommy and said “Daddy said this is Black Spider-Man… BUT IT’S NOT!”. Rach tells me to stop lying to the kids, Milo doesn’t get to open a toy, Noli is ticked off and somehow I’m now the bad guy for trying to be nice and buying my kids some freaking toys!

Christmas is so cancelled.

Luckily Milo didn’t seem to care all that much. He’s pretty chill about stuff like that. Not picky about his toys, not obsessed with anything in particular except for Math (because he’s an evil genius – yeah, you laugh, but you’ll all remember this blog in 30 years when he conquers a nation through an impressive combination of quantum physics and basic arithmetic). You should hear that boy talk, he’s practically an adult now. I can actually have conversations with him… granted they’re conversations through the mind of a 4 year old, so they go to some weird places, but when I talk to him, it’s almost as though he’s actually listening to me and understanding… Of course that just makes me even angrier when he pretends to not hear me when I tell him to eat, or go potty, or put his shoes on, or clean up his toys, or go to bed, or answer my questions, or stop bossing his brother around, or don’t touch the tv, or don’t touch the garbage, or don’t touch the toilet, or don’t throw your toys, or where did you get that plutonium, or stop building Lego nuclear warheads with it… Basic 4-year old stuff.

I’m still trying to figure out where that red telephone in his bedroom came from.

Sidetracked again. I joke a lot about Milo being insanely intelligent (which, yes, he is), but Noli’s no dummy either. His vocabulary is incredible now and he really just absorbs knowledge like a sponge (I’ve used ‘like a sponge’ twice now in this post). I overhear Milo actually teaching him words and numbers when they play together in the other room… When I say “other room” I’m referring to our living room on the other side of our house. When we’re home, we spend most of our time in the Family Room (TV room? Is that actually the Living Room and the other room is the Family room? I don’t get house things), but on the other side of the house, there’s the Living Room - which Noli refers to as “The Other Room”, but given that he’s 3 and can’t pronounce things terribly well, he says “Dove Room”... Which is just what we call it now, The Dove Room.

I love how he pronounces stuff, he still can’t say his “G” and “K” sounds, so he just replaces them with H’s… So instead of “Okay” it’s “Ohay”, or instead of Kabob it’s “Hobob”... I like Hobob, I feel like I could make a homeless cartoon character named Hobob and make a fortune off of insensitive people like myself. He could exist in the same universe as “Cider-Man”. I’m totally making the “Faux-Vengers”. Copyright Mark Marianelli 2017.

Anyway, I’ve rambled long enough and Rachael always scolds me for making these posts too long, so I’ll end it here…

Noli, you’re what our family has always needed, you give us endless hours of laughter, and the world just seems a little more hopeful with you in it. I love you, I love that you’re here, I’m proud of you and I can’t think of anything more joyous than watching you grow. I can’t wait to see what a wonderful big brother you’ll be soon. Happy Birthday, Little Bug.

Love, ~ Bat-Dad (Yeah, he thinks I’m Batman)

[iamsoneurotic]

Kids are gross.

I figure I’m long overdue for an update.

I don’t even know where to begin. There’s so much changing about these boys that it’s almost not worth trying to list. Short version: I have a 2 year old, a 4 year old and a world full of stress!

Let’s begin with the little bug, Noli. He’s gone through phases – He loved Curious George, he loved Thomas the Train… But oh me oh my, no love compares to his obsession with Spider-Man! I wish I could pinpoint the moment it happened. I want to say in an effort to silence one of his Cthulhu-level tantrums we shoved an iPad in his face and YouTubed Spider-Man footage from the movies. Love at first site. Honestly, who can know these things though. My memory has always sucked and poor Rachael is reaching record-breaking levels of mom-brain. These dang kids have obliterated her ability to perform simple brain functions like string a series of words together to complete a sentence. Sometimes I hear her mumbling “Abort, Retry, Fail?” in her sleep. I wonder if she can be restored to factory settings…

So as I said, Noli is obsessed with Spider-Man. He wears a Spider-Man cape, he has two Spider-Man stuffed dolls (a large one named Spider-Daddy and a small one named Spider-Baby) and he has a pair of red & blue shoes which are simply called Spider-Shoes. He pretends to shoot webs from his hands as well, something I’m rather proud to have taught him because while it appeared I was teaching him a cool superhero thing, I was secretly just teaching him to throw up the horns and rock n’ roll.

Milo does it too – because, as brothers do, they mimic everything the other does… and they do this to incredibly annoying extremes. They were in the back seat one day and per usual Noli began ‘shooting his webs’ at Milo, so Milo did it back to him. Rach and I thought it was cute until we realized it was an all out war in the backseat and these two were angrily trying to shoot each other TO DEATH with their imaginary webbing! So within a matter of minutes I realized I had reached that point in life where I spend my car rides yelling at children to stop shooting imaginary webs at each other. This is actually a thing I have to enforce now. “If you shoot your brother with webs again, you’re getting a spank!”

Yes, we spank. I had always been iffy about writing anything about it for fear that some obnoxious crunchy parent would start bombarding my email with complaints of child abuse, but then I realized that A.) I don’t care, and B.) Even if I did care, I highly doubt more than 3 people read this. Whatever, I live in Texas now – At any given time I’ve got about 4 or 5 other parents within shouting distance willing to spank my kids for me if my hands are full. God’s country, baby!

One night when I was getting Noli ready for bed, he grabbed the ‘spanking spoon’ which was within his reach, patted himself on the butt and said “Obey daddy?”… It was funny until I thought about how horrible that would look if he ever did that in public. There’s a lot of things you have to worry about when you’re in public. It used to be the thing you feared most was your child crying or making a scene - that’s all but expected now, but eventually your kids start saying things that aren’t fit for public areas. It’s not even things they’re learning from listening to me – and believe me, there’s a plethora of highly inappropriate words and phrases they should have picked up from listening to me empty their training potties, but the things they say they just figured out by putting sounds together randomly on their own. Noli, for instance (actually all of these things are Noli. Milo is a grammatical angel), started saying “Pop-a-tit”. Nobody knows what it means, nobody knows where it came from, nobody even knows if he knows what he’s saying. It just came to be one day.

The worst is when my mother asked him “Pappa what?”, and he just bluntly answered “Tit!”... Sorry, mom.

Luckily he says that one less frequently, but it just got replaced with something of equal socially unacceptable value: “Poop-shoot toot”. Now, I know where he learned poop and I know where he learned toot… But where in God’s green earth did he learn to string together Poop-shoot?? It doesn’t help that I laugh every time he does it. It’s a dad’s job to delight in his child’s potty mouth when mom isn’t looking.

Whatever though, talking about poop is as common as breathing air in my house. Milo’s almost fully potty trained now and I find myself longing for the days of diapers. When I was little, I’d yell “I’m all done!” when it was time for my tooshie to be cleansed of its own aftermath. Milo, being the ever so elegant child he is, just yells “HEY! WIPE MY BUTT!” ... Again, I find myself realizing my life’s situation as I reply without hesitation, “Hey, it’s wipe my butt PLEASE.”

I don’t even know why I bother trying to teach these kids manners - they’re animals. Children are filthy, disgusting animals. They delight in being gross. They love picking their nose, eating their nails and spitting. Here’s the thing, I can handle a poop, I can handle spit up, I can handle vomit… I can handle a lot of things. But when it involves the nose or the mouth, I immediately start dry-heaving. Even as I’m writing this I’m barely keeping it together so I can just get through this wretched paragraph.

Milo’s favorite place to do gross things is during his soccer games. He knows I’m rendered powerless to do anything about it. I can’t run onto the field and scold him, and there’s just something about being that one parent screaming from the sidelines “STOP EATING YOUR BOOGERS AND CHASE THE BALL!” that makes me uneasy… So I just have to sit there and pretend he’s not my kid until the quarter is over and I can chew him out while he’s on the bench. One time, after he finished doing his absolute worst coal-mining to his left nostril, he looked me in the eye and grabbed another kid’s hand with what I could only imagine to be a finger so moist it would make a sponge swoon. I just stood there, helplessly giving him the meanest dad-eye I could conjure up… But it was ineffective. He knew what he was doing and he knew there was nothing I could do about it. I’m pretty sure the other kid got ebola and died that evening.

Needless to say the “Obey Daddy” spoon came out that afternoon.

In all seriousness though, when he wasn’t infesting other kids with his little kid germs, he did an amazing job playing Soccer. He was the smallest kid on his team but he played his little heart out… And looked adorable doing it. I’ve never been much of a sports guy, but I got really into it when he played. I had to refrain from yelling things like “KILL HIM! KILL HIM, MILO!!” and “KICK HER IN THE SHINS!!!” … It was a co-ed league. And there absolutely was this little brat ginger girl on the other team that 100% needed a good kick in the shin from a 4-year-old. Sweep the leg, son.

I kid, I don’t encourage violence from my children… They learn it all on their own. Noli has grown into quite the bruiser, which is awful timing considering he’s right at the peak of his terrible 2’s. Sure he’s still a cuddle-bug, and adorable, and squishy and the sweetest little thing on the planet, but he also happens to be a little ball of pent up Italian rage. My contribution to the family. His favorite phrases as of late are “No”, “I don’t want to”, “Go away” and “AHHHH!!!!”. Oh, and “Spider-Man”. Though he pronounces it “Cider-Man”.

He sadly inherited my clumsiness as well. He trips and falls while laying down. It’s one of those weird parenting evolutions that happens from first kid to second. The first child falls and you run to him and cuddle him and buy him chocolate and weep because you feel his pain. With the second kid, you find yourself resisting the urge to spank him when he trips on his feet for the hundredth time that morning and lands on his face. “Omg, kid, if you’re going to bleed, do it on the tile, not the carpet!”

…

Who am I kidding, our carpet is a lost cause. I don’t even care if they eat food off of it anymore, it’s their own germs they’re eating at this point.

Speaking of germs, I’m glad the school year is over because I’m tired of these little petri dishes bringing home colds from the other kids. What’s worse is they’re probably doing something really gross to get those germs from the other kids. Why are kids so gross! Stop that!

Besides whatever gross activities they’re engaging in with the other children, both Milo and Noli are great at school-related things. Like Math. Noli’s report card had a section for “Counts to 10” and the “10″ was scribbled out and replaced with a “20”... Because my 2 year old is mad smart just like his older brother. Milo likes to routinely count to a hundred by 1’s, 2’s, 5’s and 10’s. For a brief moment I heard him counting by 6’s, but he saw that I took notice and started picking his nose and blowing raspberries. My boys love fart noises. Noli likes to run up to me, turn his butt in my direction and then exclaim “I poop on you!” and proceed to make all kinds of raspberry noises while shaking his chunky little butt all over my leg. It’s adorable in a shameful kind of way. I enable it though because I do the same thing to his mother.

He’s a funny kid. When he’s not running around singing the Spider-Man song (which he sings: “Cider-Man, Cider-Man, I never Cider-can”), he’s picking up fake phones and pretending to call my brother to order milkshakes. Good lord the boy loves vanilla milkshakes - or as he calls it “Amilla Milshaysh”. His head almost exploded one day when we had my brother buy a milkshake and wait outside the door. We had Noli call him on his cell phone and ask him to bring a milkshake, and when he asked, my brother busted open the door like Commando Santa Clause and granted his wish. Now whenever the doorbell rings, he thinks my brother is at the door with sugary beverages. We teach our kids disappointment at an early age.

We have to roll his window up when we’re at the Starbucks Drive-Thru now because he keeps trying to ask for vanilla milkshakes while we’re trying to order.

Anyway, this barely scratched the surface of how much they’ve changed, but you get the gist: Boogers, Spider-Man, Milkshakes.

Animals, ~ Mark

[iamsoneurotic]

Happy 2nd Birthday Noli! (featuring Milo & other updates)

As it turns out, having 2 toddlers in the house is incredibly time consuming. I intended to blog back in January when we moved Milo from a crib to a big boy bed… and then I didn’t. Then I planned on writing a long blog about how much Noli is starting to talk back in March… and then again, I didn’t. Now it’s a week AFTER Noli’s second birthday, and I’m trying with all my might to sit down and write about the last 8 months of these boys’ lives.

Like I said, Noli turned 2 the other day and I just can’t comprehend any of this right now. I’m trying to think of a not-generic way to say that time goes by so much faster when you have kids, but who am I kidding, it’s generic yet true. I live life in a DeLorean since having those boys. I guess I can breeze over a few developments since last December. We moved Milo into a big boy bed – I don’t know why I refer to it as ‘big boy bed’, it’s just a regular bed. Good lord why does everything turn to baby talk in life? Milo sleeps in a REGULAR BED now. There.

I feel like I had stories I wanted to tell from his big move to a new bed and room. See, this is the problem with being a father of two toddlers - not only does the mere existence of children make you dumber, but you also just procrastinate by default because you’re a guy… So there was just no hope for me telling you a good story from 7 months ago about Milo moving into a new bed. I’m sure he said something funny which I in turn would have exaggerated for your amusement. Just picture some toddler shenanigans and pretend they happened on a Queen-sized bed.

I will say that the bedtime routine has become even more convoluted since last I spoke of it. Toddlers are creatures of annoying habits. If you do something they found enjoyable even once, you’re cursed to repeat that event over and over like some baby-themed purgatory for the rest of their adolescence. I used to just read a book to Milo and put him down. Then one day I made the mistake of reading him 3 books because I was in a good mood and I’m sure he was being ridiculously cute. So now he expects exactly 3 books to be read to him before bed. Rachael and I have systematically removed any book longer than 10 pages from his bedroom so that we aren’t forced into reading 3 Dr. Seuss Books and dragging bedtime on for an hour and a half. For any parents of soon-to-be toddlers – pick books with big words, short pages and big, full-page pictures. Anyway, one particular nap time I was in a rush, so I told Milo one book for nap time, 3 books for bedtime. This is now law and he’s cool with it, because routine… Or maybe Rachael came up with that rule? 7 months, people.

Sounds like things are going well for the bedtime habits, right? Well one day I made the mistake of taking my phone out and using my calculator. Milo most likely asked me an impossible math question (or more realistically, a basic addition question that my simple, artistic brain was incapable of calculating) and I took the calculator out to impress Milo with my cheat skillz. I let him use the calculator, and he naturally enjoyed it. The reason being that Milo is a super-genius and for some reason I can’t understand enjoys numbers (seriously, who did Rachael cheat on me with, because there’s no way this blond, intelligent, math-loving super-villain is my child). Guess what? That’s our bedtime routine now. 3 books, calculator time, lights out. Fair enough, but how does one END calculator time? Well I tried a number of things, like saying “Okay, Milo, you can do 20 more numbers and then you’re done”... Well that’s when Milo, being an evil super-genius, discovered not everything on the calculator is a number, so he can push ALL KINDS OF BUTTONS without actually generating a number on the screen!

… How has he not learned curse words yet?

Fine. Scratch the 20 number idea. How about be more assertive? … Yeah, I chuckled reading that too. “Okay Milo, you can enter one more number, no other buttons, then we’re done.” Well he kind of bought it, but he had to dictate the number. The number he has now chosen as the final calculator number is -0.000000000000000, basically he just likes to fill the screen with zeros. Fine. That can be your stupid number. However, the phone has to be in landscape mode for the calculator to enter all of those zeroes, and Milo wants it to stay that way until it’s in my pocket. I honestly don’t know how this came about, he toys with my head. So. Our bedtime routine is now 3 books, calculator time ending in a whole bunch of zeros followed by daddy putting the phone sideways in his pocket so as to keep the calculator in landscape mode, then lights out.

HA! You think that’s all it is! Milo likes to have me lay down with him for a little while before I leave. I’m all for the cuddle time, so of course I oblige. Oh wait, he doesn’t like me to be anywhere near him when I’m laying down. I have to be on the other side of the bed. However, he’s a child and still wants some kind of physical interaction, so I have to stretch my arm across the bed and put my hand on his back.. and so help him God if I move that hand. So how does one determine how long to lay down with Milo before leaving? He won’t just let you randomly get up and go without throwing a fit, so you have to do something with structure… Ah, set a timer! I tell Siri to set the timer for 1 minute. That works, but guess what? Milo has to set the timer! You can probably guess how well a toddler’s ramblings are interpreted by Siri – not very well at all. But he has to be the one to voice-activate that timer, so we usually spend a good 10 minutes watching Milo tell Siri to do everything EXCEPT set that stupid timer. All kinds of google searches, witty Siri comebacks and a lot of random music plays before Milo is capable of activating a one minute timer. So, 3 books, calculator time ending in a lot of zeros, phone goes sideways in daddy’s pocket, lights out, 10 minutes of Milo arguing with Siri, then one minute of daddy laying down on the opposite end of the bed with his hand on Milo’s back.

Yes, Rachael and I argue a lot over who puts Milo down at night.

Thank heaven for Noli’s bedtime routine. You sit in a rocking chair and let him adorably slobber all over your face for 10 minutes then put him down.

Noli’s a different kid than he was in my last post. You don’t realize how much your kids change until you look back at your old videos and photos; it’s depressing to go through dropbox. He started saying letters a number of months ago, his favorites being “S” and “F”. If you showed him any letter and asked him what it was, he’d just say “F” unless you showed him an “S”.

He says a lot more stuff now (even counts to 10), but I still haven’t adjusted to hearing tangible words come out of that little baby face… Oh who am I kidding, it’s a toddler face now. I can’t cope. My babies are growing up and it genuinely hurts my heart. Fatherhood is bittersweet.

They both enjoy Thomas & Friends. My brothers and I can’t figure out what it is about Thomas that just drives kids crazy. They’re trains with big creepy faces! Everything about Thomas is nightmare-inducing. EVERYTHING. These giant sentient trains with faces and no limbs live to ‘be useful’ to an ungrateful little fat man in a top-hat who constantly screams at them about ‘confusion and delay’, and even though they don’t flat out say it, it’s always implied that if they cease to be useful, they’ll be scrapped by a giant diesel engine with a crane in the most horrific of fashions. IT’S A HORROR SHOW. But darnit if it doesn’t have the catchiest theme song.

Also - can anybody tell the difference between Edward and Thomas without looking at their number? I certainly can’t. They couldn’t just make Edward yellow? Why are there no yellow trains but there’s a hundred blue ones!

As I said, Noli and Milo both love the show. We have about a billion toys that I’m constantly stepping on. You think stepping on legos is bad, try metal trains with wheels. Noli hasn’t quite grasped middle syllables yet, he just yells “TASS!” for Thomas. It’s adorable. He also says “My” for ‘Mommy’ and “Die” for Daddy… not sure how I feel about that. We had a Thomas-themed birthday party for him and he was in his glory. It’s amazing how quickly kids move on from one thing to the next, it was Curious George last year but now he just yells at me when I put George on tv. “TASS! TAAASSS!!!”. He’s a pistol, impatient and short tempered like his dad - Italian to the core! His terrible-twos could be a doozy, we’ll see I guess. He also gives channel surfing a whole new meaning. Basically he’ll let you get through the theme song and then either demand that you play it again or pick a new show. There is no Chill with our Netflix… Wait, is it inappropriate to use that phrase when talking about a toddler? Not the same context I guess…

I’m watching Milo on the dropcam right now, he’s laying in bed singing his ABC’s. He’s making up some words. Is that something all toddlers do? He’s already bored with the English language and now he’s making up his own one. I should learn it for when he takes over the world.

Speaking of a poor grasp of the English language, Milo recently decided ‘don’t’ is a pointless word and now says things like “I can’t want to!” and “I can’t like it!”... There’s nothing else to say about that.

We’re finally potty training Milo! Not that we haven’t tried up till now, but we’re a little more serious about it. He’s doing pretty good, we’re up to 3 poops in the potty this weekend! You know what, there’s nothing to report here that you’re going to feel interested in reading about.

Actually yes there is - Milo has become very aware of his – how do I put this – um… his penis. Some phrases I’ve heard over the past few months include “Whoah! That’s a big pee pee!”, “I put my winky in the toilet!”, “I make it big! (proceeds to violently shake it much to my horror)”... I don’t know if I need to be concerned. On one hand, the boy is quite blessed and I feel that should be applauded… On the other hand, I’m incredibly disturbed and mildly belittled by it all.

Okay, enough updates and uncomfortable stories. This post is about my baby boy turning 2. He changes so much that I sometimes forget his infancy ever happened. Rachael will bring up something silly he used to do and it doesn’t even register to me that it was the same kid. He was once a silent little blob and now he is a hyperactive, strong-willed, hilarious little toddler. He’s got so much personality it blows my mind. He also loves to wrestle. My dream is to have a WWF ring in the backyard that I can wrestle the boys on. When we’re horsing around in the living room, Noli gets right in there and stomps on me. Milo acts like one of those villainous managers who distract you just long enough for Noli to belly flop on your stomach when you’re not looking. They make a good team.

3 and 2 are fun ages. Despite all the temper tantrums and strong wills, there’s a lot of humor and joy to be had. That’s really how I sum up life at this point in time - humor and joy… and temper tantrums. We get stressed out a lot, sure, but for every bad day, there’s a good day that makes you look at life and just want to pause it. I love my boys.

Lately, much to my delight, Noli has become a bit of a daddy’s boy. We had a really good bonding experience about a month ago - Rachael took Milo up to Maine to visit her family, and I got to have a weekend with Noli, just me and him. I was nervous because he’s still so little and I’m incredibly clumsy/forgetful/irresponsible/etc… Our weekend was off to a rough start too – Milo got car sick and threw up on his way to the airport, so we spent a good 10 minutes on the airport curb trying to clean him up while Noli freaked out in the backseat. Once Milo and Rach were finally off to the plane, I had the pleasure of driving a very cranky little boy home for the next 45 minutes.

Luckily, once we go to the house things settled down a little… And we ended up having one of the best father/son weekends ever. I love spending time with that kid. Normally with Milo around Rach and I have to split our time a lot between the two (because I’d like to think we’re good parents like that), so Noli never got to experience having our full attention 24/7 like Milo did. So he was the sole focus of Daddy for a good 4 days and he soaked up every minute of it. We took walks, played with every toy in the house, took drives, got ice cream together and watched way more tv than is acceptable for a child. I even MADE dinner one night, I was pretty dang proud of myself, check this out:

I grilled a MEAN pork chop for my little pork chop… I shouldn’t have put grapes on the plate though, because guess what the only thing he ate was! Ingrate.

Anyway, it was a great time, and I just fell more in love with the kid. As a dad, you kind of have to accept that your wife will always be your children's world, followed by their grandparents, and then finally you. So I really enjoy when my boys want Daddy… Unless I’m tired and just want to nap in my chair. They never let me nap in my chair.

I need to keep writing more, I forget so many little moments because life moves at such a fast pace with these kids, and every moment is beyond precious.

So Noli, I’m sorry I haven’t done a better job of documenting your life, but it’s because I’ve been so busy just taking it in. I can’t take my eyes off of you because you’re such a beautiful, hilarious, adorable, smart and wonderful little boy. I laughed when you came into this world and I’ve been laughing ever since because I just can’t stop feeling joyful when you’re around. I love you, I’m proud of you and I’m just so happy you’re here. Happy Birthday, little munchkin.

I love being a dad.

~ M.

[iamsoneurotic]

Happy 3rd Birthday Milo!

This little guy turned 3 last week.

HE’S THREE YEARS OLD. WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN.

Time is weird when you have kids - everything happens in slow motion, usually because you’re just counting down the hours until you can put the kids to bed and have some peace… Yet somehow you wake up one morning and realize you’ve been a dad for 3 years. I still remember feeling like I had all the time in the world to enjoy Milo’s infancy. Usually those thoughts would cross my mind while I held Milo before putting him in his crib for the night. He’d nuzzle his head into my neck and fall asleep, and I’d listen to him breath those tiny baby breaths and just stand there, soaking up the baby love. My arms would get tired holding him and I’d fight the urge to put him down, trying to warn myself that this stage in his life won’t last forever and I should savor it. I’d ultimately give in and put him down, thinking “He’ll still be a baby tomorrow at least.”

I don’t know when I last put him down as a baby and first woke him up as a toddler. Children don’t really ‘level up’ while they sleep - though that would probably make parenting easier. “Honey! He leveled last night! He’s a toddler now!” to which Rachael replies “Okay! I’ll put the boob away and get rid of the pack-and-play!” … Only in a perfect world.

As I knew I was putting Milo down for the last time as a 2 year old, I tried to hold him like I used to when he was a baby… It was more awkward than sweet. His feet dangled down to the crib, he couldn’t get comfortable, his big ol’ head didn’t fit on my neck and finally I just asked him “Do you want me to put you down?” and he answered, “Ses.” (which is how he says ‘yes’).

The entire bedtime routine evolves as your children grow a lot more frequently than I thought it would. As a baby, Rachael would nurse him and I’d lay there with them on the bed and doze off. Then Rach weaned him and I would hold him for a while and put him down. Then as he got heavier, I’d sit with him in a rocking chair and sing to him. As he got older we’d read books together in that rocking chair. Now he just sort of runs around the room and throws stuff at me while I read Dr Seuss books outloud to myself.

He’s memorizing his books now. While I’m reading, I routinely pause and let him read the words for me. I always thought he was reading them, but the other day I noticed that when I pause, he’s not even looking at the book, he just says the word without thinking about it.

Not that Dr. Seuss books are terribly original in their rhymes. Literally every book I’ve read has used the word house rhymed with mouse at some point. If you ever read “Hop on Pop”, it’s essentially a rhyme cheat sheet for every Dr. Seuss book – like ike the Rosetta Stone of children’s poetry.

Back to Milo though. We royally confused him. Only a few days before his birthday we finally taught him to say his age. We’d say “How old are you, Milo?” and he would reply, “I TWO!” Well now that he’s three, we ask him the same question, get the same response and are then forced to correct him. “No, you’re three now.” He gets mad, insists that he’s two and we just laugh and pretend that we’re not screwing up his fragile toddler mind.

Toddlers are such weird little creatures. They can’t handle their own intelligence. Milo can count to 100 perfectly. But if you count by 2’s or 10’s, he’ll lose his mind. How can such a chaotic little being be so obsessed with order? Like a dog chasing his own tail. I think that analogy works, right? No? I’m a dad, I don’t have to be right so long as my children think I am.

Milo woke up at exactly 3:05am on his Birthday - the exact time he was born. Tell me that isn’t bizarre. Granted we’re in Texas now, so it was more like 4:05am I guess, which makes it less creepy? But there’s a lot of daylight savings and leap years in there so maybe it balances out.

I should talk about the whole Texas thing while I’m on the subject. Why are we Texans now? It’s simple - kids. Last September (or was it October? Doesn’t matter) Rach and I discussed a lot of things. We were having a really hard time with both kids in our Dover, NH condo. Since having Noli, our already small house had gotten smaller. Both boys were confined to a small portion of the house because everything else was either a stairway or just something dangerous to a child’s wellbeing. You could see how bored Milo had become. It was hard to take him outside because we didn’t have much of a yard - and our neighbors had gotten bed-bugs and threw all their bed-bug ridden trash out in the backyard where Milo could easily get at. The neighbors in general made Rachael feel unsafe. It was a mother with two sons, both of which were trouble to say the least.

The school systems in our area kind of sucked unless we wanted to pay a fortune to live in a good school district, but then we’d only be getting a SMALLER house to accommodate this. In addition, we just didn’t have a lot of family or help nearby and Rachael was cooped up in a tiny condo with a baby and bored toddler.

So yeah, we talked about it and decided we should move to Texas where my parents and brothers are. The school systems are excellent, the cost of living is way cheaper and we could get twice the house for the same(ish) price. So I began job searching… and searching… and searching some more. By the time I got an offer, we had just suffered through the most miserable winter we’d ever experienced in New England. It sealed the deal for us.

So we’re Texans now. We have family nearby that helps us with the kids, we’re in a good school district, we have a nice yard with no trashy neighbors and a house that’s big enough to take on even another kid if we wanted to (although I pray to God we don’t come to appreciate that any time soon). I can’t stress enough how important it is to me that Milo and Nolan grow up with family around. Not only will they have grandparents close by, but they’ll also have aunts and uncles to be a part of their lives as they grow. I didn’t have that growing up - all my extended family lived in Pennsylvania, and while they’ve been important people in my life, I only got to see them once, maybe twice a year, and I feel like that’s something I missed out on greatly. It doesn’t hurt that Milo and Nolan not only have two uncles and an aunt - but they happen to be the best Uncles & Aunt anybody could ever ask for. I can’t express how happy it makes me to see my family absolutely delight in my two boys and just smother them with love constantly. Even if I hated Texas, it’d be worth it for that alone.

I also love that within just a couple months of moving down here, Rachael made a pretty awesome friend. I had been really afraid that she’d feel lonely down here having moved so far away from what she’s always known, so to see her click with someone that quickly made me so excited for life here.

So there you have it. Texas. Explained. Because you, the reader, cared so much.

… Pretty sure the only person who reads this is Rachael. Love you, sweety!

Okay, back to my big 3 year old! He’s been so chill since my last post. The tantrums have all but stopped(ish). The only thing that really sets him off now is his clothes. Not in that weird toddler way where they have to be naked all the time (thank god), but in a picky way. He wants to wear very specific clothes, and if you don’t conform to his sense of fashion, he will absolutely lose his humanity and become a soulless shell of rage and destruction whose appetite for pain and suffering can only be quenched by… a blue t-shirt with a cute little moose on it.

He loves that shirt. Do not separate him from his precious.

Rachael has figured out that it’s better to just let him pick his own clothes now (assuming you’re able to pry that blue moose shirt from his sticky little toddler fingers - why are they always covered in honey and syrup??). The boy loves fashion, what can I say. That’s a good thing, maybe he can teach me how to dress myself when he’s older.

He’s a really funny kid. Not just because he’s 3 and everything 3-year-olds do is funny and silly, but because he has a genuine sense of humor. He knows the stuff that makes me laugh, he watches things that I do and knows how to mess with me. He also knows how to use those things to get out of trouble. I suck at discipline. As if it isn’t already impossible to scold this face:

(notice the moose shirt... This was taken 5 minutes before the largest tantrum ever recorded in the state of Texas... I tried to take off his shirt because it was covered in chocolate... Next time I’ll just let him ruin the furniture I think)

What else… I thought my days of assembly were over, but I’m realizing they’ve only just begun. When you have a baby, you spend the majority of the pregnancy putting things together like cribs, jumpers, carriers, rockers. Then once they grow out of it and start walking, etc, you take it all apart and throw it in a closet. You think it ends there. Kids play with blocks, legos and iPads (if they’re spoiled like ours), so there’s nothing left to assemble. You catch your breath for about 6 months and think the worst is behind you - then the children get bored with little play things. They need big gifts. Big gifts that can’t be thrown at their little brothers and can provide some form of physical amusement. Big gifts that require three hours of assembly and about 2 hours worth of curse words and stubbed toes. This year that big thing came in the form of a big bouncy play horse thing. I don’t know what they’re called. Let’s go with ‘bouncy horse’. This thing was the devil to put together. Were I a single dad with no wife to provide 2 extra arms, this thing never would have been built and Milo would be getting another pair of socks for his birthday.

I rushed home after work to try and put this thing together before Milo woke up from his nap. At first, all seemed to be going smoothly. This goes here, you screw this in over there, small potatoes. Then it inevitably got more complicated. Then Milo woke up. Being the confident male that I am (hardly), I decided to put this toy together in the middle of the living room thinking that Milo would sleep until I finished, then come downstairs from his nap and see a brand new toy all for him. Instead, Rach had to run up and distract him in another room while I grunted and kicked things in the living room. She could only contain him for so long before giving up and letting the boy roam the house at his own will. He came downstairs, ran over to me because, hey, I’m an awesome dad, and the element of surprise was ruined. Luckily, toddlers don’t care about surprises. They do, however, care about whatever it is that you’re using and he ran off with the horse head and a couple washers - the pieces I needed to finish his stupid gift up.

What really sucked is that I was powerless to do anything about it because who yells at their little boy on their birthday, right?

That lasted about 10 minutes before I remembered that he’s a toddler and doesn’t even know what a birthday is. So I took the horse head and the washers back, made him play his iPad and I finished that horse like it was a ticking time bomb that could only be defused with the power of handy-ness.

Then we presented Milo with his glorious gift, assembled with love and devotion. He ignored it and watched tv instead.

Kids are just great.

He’s since warmed up to it, but seems more interested in feeding it fake carrots than actually riding it. Glad we spent the money so Milo could put a fake carrot inside a plastic horse head.

I’ve been writing this post over the course of a week or so because I keep either falling asleep from writing so late or I’m distracted with other stuff. I could write more I suppose, but I really just want to post this already. So in conclusion - I love you Milo. Seeing you grow is bittersweet to me because as much as I take such pride and joy in watching you get older, with every year you get one step closer to outgrowing me… That will be a hard day to cope with.

But for now, I’m glad you’ll still be my little boy in the morning. Happy Birthday little MyMy. I’m so proud of you.

[iamsoneurotic]

Toddlers Gon’ Tod...

These kids.

Somewhere in heaven there’s a prankster assigning souls to the wrong babies. Clearly two of the most low-energy, low-functioning human beings are incapable of creating two of the most high-energy, out-of-their-minds little nut-cases this generation of parenting has ever known, right? Either God’s getting bored or I’m not the father.

Toddlers gon’ tod I guess.

So Noli is walking. For months I’ve been trying to get this kid to somehow muster up the leg-strength to carry around that chubby little body of his. See, to my knowledge I witnessed Milo’s first real steps (I say ‘to my knowledge’ because there’s a good chance he did it while I was at work and Rach just didn’t want to hurt my feelings). I’m proud of that because being the one who goes to work all day, I miss out on about 99.9% of our children’s firsts; First words, first laughs, first crawls, first farts, first everythings. So I worked extra hard with Nolan to make sure I could be the one who got him movin’ on those squishy little tootsies.

I leave the boy alone for ONE NIGHT with my mother and what does the little stinker do? HE FREAKING WALKS. We have a dropcam in the living room and I bet if I rewind far enough, he looks at the camera and gives it the finger before picking himself up and waddling over to dear old mum.

My mom said she couldn’t prevent it from happening and that he was too determined to do it that night, to which I say: We’re adults! We’re bigger, better, smarter(ish) and stronger - ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS PUSH HIM OVER AND NOT LET HIM UP UNTIL I GOT HOME!

Ugh. In any case, he does this now:

Who am I kidding, nothing can knock that kid over. He weighs 100 pounds and it’s all solid muscle under that baby fat. I think Milo is realizing how big Nolan is getting and in an effort to assert his dominance before it’s too late, he’s decided to start pushing Noli over every chance he gets. As you can imagine, Thanksgiving was a blast this year. Remember how in my last post I talked about how I refrained from blogging anything about last Christmas until I cooled off so my kids wouldn’t read it someday and think I couldn’t stand them? Well, too bad this time - they were little monsters this trip and they need to know! Now as a disclaimer - I love them. They melt my heart and my soul… But unfortunately they also melt my brain, youth and good looks as well.

I said toddlers gon’ tod - I’m not kidding. We spent Thanksgiving with my in-laws and Milo todded his boney little butt off the entire trip to Maine. From the moment we left until about 2 hours ago when I put him to bed.

Needless to say, it was a hard trip. For the most part, Milo did okay on the flight there - we had only one real freak-out because I had the nerve to switch seats with him. Instead of simply saying “Father, I’d prefer to sit here if it’s alright with you”, he just screamed. At the top of his lungs. For 5 minutes. Now, I’m a simple man. I expect my child to be a simple boy as well because when it comes to overall intellect, children are simple-minded beings. They poop their pants, they grab their junk because why not, it’s something to grab, and they walk around with their mouths open and a finger in their nose. They’re simple creatures. You’d think that in the midst of a freak out, all you’d have to do is give them what they want and they’d go right back to blissfully peeing their pants and picking their noses. But the problem is that kids are so simple that they FORGET what they were freaking out about in the first place! So by the time you change their situation to what they originally wanted, they’ve already forgotten what actually makes them happy anyway and just freak out more!

So I did what every simple-minded dad does - I put my hand over his mouth to muffle the screams and pretended everything was fine. Sound = problem, hence, remove sound = problem solved and we’ll just deal with the repressed trauma when he’s 15.

While we’re discussing the plane ride, I’d like to call out how annoying flight attendants can be sometimes. Like I said, Milo just wasn’t having it and in the end, the only thing that made him happy was sitting on my lap. So I buckled up and held on to him tight while we waited for takeoff. Then the flight attendant walks by and just HAS to say something. She asks me if he’s a lap infant. Obviously this 10 foot tall lanky kid sitting on my lap is no infant, so I know I’m about to get a lecture. I answer, “No, but he won’t settle down for the flight unless he’s in my lap”. So she gives me the schpeal about how they’re not liable if something happens to him during take-off, blah, blah, blah… So I say thanks and proceed to sit there with Milo in my lap. Then as she walks away she mutters “You wouldn’t hold your kid in your lap in a car, just saying…”

First of all - screw you, lady. Second of all, as I relayed what she said to Rachael, Rachael made a brilliant observation: You especially wouldn’t hold an infant in your lap while in a car either. Yet somehow THAT’S acceptable for the flight.

I guess the flight attendant is simple too.

Whatever. Plane goes up, all is well for  the time being.

Milo was fine during the flight after that. I placed him back in his seat that originally triggered his toddler rage and he seemed to have forgotten how much it offended him. One kid calm, now it was time to silence the other child for the flight. We gave Nolan some Benadryl because supposedly that works wonders for babies on planes. It didn’t work with Milo in 2013, but Nolan’s a new breed of child, maybe we’d get lucky this time around… Nope.

Sorry, sidetracking here - Is Nolan a toddler now? A baby? WHAT IS HE. He weighs just as much as Milo, if not more, and he walks. But he’s one year old. So what the heck is he??

Back to Benadryl. It sucked. I mean it did what it was supposed to do and made him drowsy as all get out, but we forgot one little detail before going down this road… Nolan doesn’t know how to put himself to sleep yet. So he did what cranky, tired babies do best and wigged the EFF out. Wow, was he mad. We, once again, were those people on the plane. What sucks about a typical Nolan freak-out is that he doesn’t just lay there and cry, he contorts his body like the little girl from the exorcist in an effort to remove himself from your arms and fall to the floor. Maybe his line of thinking is that if he lands on his head, he’ll finally go to sleep. Honestly, it’s a pretty solid theory, I give him props. But as a father, I’m not allowed to let that happen. So I just end up wrestling him while he screams. He is so strong. I don’t mean strong in a cute baby way, I mean strong as in a full grown man being unable to hold his one year old in his arms without breaking a sweat and being sore in the morning kind of way. Have you ever watched old WWF fights and the two wrestlers do that test of power thing where they lock hands and try to bring the other guy to his knees using nothing but raw hand strength and intense facial expressions? That’s what it looks like when I try to rock Noli to sleep while he’s flipping out.

Time slows down in those moments. Supposedly it was only about 10, maybe 15 minutes of pure Nolan ferocity, but in my memory it was a good hour and a half. Our method of getting him to settle down was I would wrestle with him in the back of the plane, let him exhaust himself fighting me, and then I would hand him back to Rachael to nurse. He’d freak out, not accept the boob because he was too mad to eat, and Rach would hand him back to me for another round of wrastlin’. Rinse and repeat.

After about the third or fourth round of battle, he finally submitted to the almighty breast and gave in to his benadryl coma. From there it was a good flight. Well, it was a good flight for me, Rach was incredibly uncomfortable because Nolan picked a very awkward position to fall asleep in… He just had to have the last laugh I guess. Rach just had to suck it up and not move for the remainder of the flight. She's a trooper.

There’s not even much to tell about the rest of the trip. The kids were just out of control. Nolan was determined to get into everything (because he can now) and Milo apparently snorted half a pound of cocaine before we landed and just wreaked havoc all over my mother-in-law’s house for the next 9 days. I honestly don’t know what got into him - it might as well have been cocaine because nothing else explains it. He just flipped the toddler switch and decided it was terrible two’s time… and he’s almost 3. In addition to basic toddler disobedience and unruliness, poor Nolan became his punching bag all week. He’d grab him, knock him over, take his toys, try to bite him and for all I know, steal his lunch money for good measure. Which was odd because he’s always so sweet with him. When he wasn’t taking his frustrations out on Nolan he was scratching my arm and screaming. Everything set this kid off. The main source of frustration was that he apparently was possessed by Cookie Monster himself and would not rest until he was stuffing his face full of Great Grandma’s chocolate chip cookies.

There’s stories to tell about the week I'm sure, but really it’s all just a blur.

Now that we’re back home, the boys have settled down some. Milo’s mellowing out more, but the tantrums still occur. This is why parents become bipolar. One minute your sweet little boy is giving kisses and saying funny things and getting into tickle fights, then the next minute he’s biting you and screaming because you don’t taste as good as grandma’s cookies. But then moments later he’s ‘downward dog’ and spelling MISSISSIPPI to be silly. Yes. He can actually spell Mississippi. He also counts to 100 now and learned the passcode to the iPad. I can’t be sure, but I think he’s also stealing the car at night and cooking meth in a superlab.

All tantrums and toddler rage aside (it comes with the territory), Milo has changed a lot (in a good way) since we moved to Texas. He talks SO MUCH now and his brain is just in full sponge-mode. He’s always learning. He spells, he writes, he reads, and my favorite thing? He keeps track of his own flatulence now:

Nolan has gotten hungrier. To be honest, I don’t even think food satisfies him anymore. He eats it, but he eats it with a look on his face that clearly says “There must be something more…” I watch him grab food off of Milo’s perpetually full plate and shove it into his own mouth in what looks like an attempt to feel something.

Nolan. He’s getting so much personality now. He might be the squishiest little thing to ever walk the earth. You literally cannot be within 5 feet of the boy and not feel this innate gravitational pull towards him, calling you to hug, kiss and/or tickle that little squishy bundle of joy. It’s not humanly possible to avoid. And heaven forbid he look at you and say “Hi!” - because if he does that, it’s over, he’s getting squeezed.

He gives kisses now. For a while, he did this thing that we called the “Prince Noli” where he would hold his hand out and demand that you kiss it. Now he just goes for the gold. He looks at you with those big adorable eyes and just goes “Mmmmmmmmmmm” until somebody kisses him. Well, anybody but daddy. He refuses to kiss me. In fact, he just likes to tease me. He looks at me, makes the “Mmmm” noise, and the moment I get close to kiss him, he grabs my face and pushes me away like an ugly groupie.

His favorite person to kiss? Milo. And yes, it is as cute as you’re thinking.

I’m in danger of writing one of those ridiculously long posts Rachael yells at me for because nobody wants to sit down and read 20 pages of me complaining about parenthood… I should stop here. So let’s sum up. Thanksgiving was a nightmare of toddler-fueled rage, Milo cooks meth and counts farts, Nolan is the future devourer of worlds and likes to kiss his brother. Please don’t skip to this paragraph because when you sum up my posts without reading them, child services gets called and everybody loses.

Being a dad is weird, ~ M.

[iamsoneurotic]

Happy First Birthday, Noli!

It’s been a really, really long time since I’ve updated this blog… I feel pretty bad about it. The purpose of this site was to keep a record of the lives of my children so that some day they could go back and read about their childhood. I always kept telling myself I’d update it tomorrow, next week, next month under the assumption that Nolan would still be a baby, Milo would still be a toddler, and not much would change…

Nolan turned a year old today. I think it’s safe to say a lot has changed.

I attempted to sit down and write a post over Christmas about the boys’ first Christmas together - the problem was that as I wrote it, I was still de-stressing from the events of the day, and it wasn’t the cheeriest of posts. I won’t get into too many specifics, but the following image sums that day up quite nicely…

If you’re wondering where Milo is in that picture, he’s the uncontrollable blur at the bottom on his way to break somebody’s Christmas spirit with toddler rage.

I think trying to write that post is what disenchanted me from blogging for so long; it just came off so negatively that I didn’t want the boys’ first Christmas together to be anything but a fond memory. Until I re-read that post just now, I couldn’t even remember why I was so agitated. I’ll sum up what I intended to write about: Milo couldn’t be contained and Nolan was in the middle of a 4-month sleep regression. Let your imagination run wild.

Screw it, here’s a little excerpt from what I originally wrote:

“Growing up, my memories of Christmas were all about waking up, running to the tree and opening presents while my dad shouted at his cameras (which always magically ran out of film, battery power or basic functionality the morning of Christmas). We’d eat, we’d play with our gifts and we’d sit quietly in either a food coma or the captivating glow of a television screen. That to me is what Christmas is all about - Silent immobility. So when I wake up Christmas day to the sounds of a crying infant followed by a 10 hour stretch of chasing a tired, cranky and unusually hyperactive little boy around a house, I tend to lose my holiday cheer. Luckily for me, Rachael was in the same boat and I had a partner to share my misery with.”

Boom. Christmas 2014.

Enough about that though, it’s August and we’re celebrating a much more joyous occasion - Noli’s first birthday!

Honestly, I’m at a loss for words. I’m excited, happy and filled with pride, yet I feel incredibly sad. My little Nolibug - who I swear just popped out of the womb yesterday - is no longer identified by months...

(I’m sorry, but if after a year you’re still using months to identify your child’s age, you’re just being a pretentious a-hole. Knock it off. Your kid is ONE. Not 13 months.)

The problem with raising children is that there’s never any warning that they’re on the verge of losing their infancy. You just wake up one day and realize they’ve been a toddler for over 6 months and you can’t even remember what they were like as babies.

I look back at Nolan’s pictures from Christmas and that’s not even my child anymore. There’s some little fat kid crawling around the house now and I’m pretty sure he ate whatever baby we were raising over the holidays. Yeah, he crawls now… Another reason I need to keep up with this blog more; I’ve missed documenting some pretty important developments.

As of June 5th, 2015:

Well, I should clarify. He was bringing himself to a “crawl” position on June 5th, but rather than performing an actual crawl, he sort of did what we came to call a “sea lion flop”. He’d get on all fours and then lunge his body forward, landing on his belly in the most violent of fashions. Like a sea lion.

He only started crawling properly a few weeks ago, but being the dummy that I am, I didn’t document which day exactly it was. But whatever, I didn’t document Milo’s properly crawling either… But that’s because he never actually crawled like a normal human being. He did that weird one-legged shuffle, then one day he walked.

The whole flopping around on his belly business would have made me worried about his poor little stomach except that the boy’s belly is pretty well cushioned. He’s such a little fatty. I guess we can chalk that up to January’s development...

January, 13th, 2015:

Not to say he doesn’t still enjoy a good boob, but that’s more or less to cleanse his palette these days. While Milo is going through that oh-so-wonderful picky eating phase, Nolan’s like a dog waiting under the table for scraps. And I have a hunch he won’t be outgrowing that mentality any time soon. I remember when Milo took his first spoonfuls of baby food, he tasted it, savored it, smiled - Like a mush connoisseur. Nolan on the other hand didn’t have time to waste on petty things like taste and enjoyment. He just shoved the spoon into his face repeatedly as fast as he could without so much as a giggle. The only time he showed any emotion was when the jar ran out of sustenance, and the emotion was not a happy one.

While Milo eats for pleasure, Nolan eats out of necessity, almost as though God gave him visions of famine and his belly is mankind’s last hope of food preservation. I can recall maybe two or three times that he actually spit up because it just hardly ever happened. Nolan would never be so wasteful with his meals as to spit them up.

On March 21st, 2015, once the baby mush could no longer sustain him, his body adapted to the scarce food conditions and now…

Now nothing can keep him from the food he so desires… Hotdogs. I’m not sure if we’re horrible parents for shoving those awful fatty treats down his throat or awesome parents for keeping our baby fat and happy. I mean, I think they’re organic hotdogs… So that’s something.

I have to laugh because he’s such a chubby baby. He’s a year younger than Milo and they share the same clothes and the same diaper size. I love how squishy he is. Nobody can be within a 10 foot radius of the boy and not submit to the urge to just pick him up and squeeze him like a teddy bear.

I may not have been writing about him much over the past few months, but I’ve been taking in every moment with him because if Milo taught me anything, it’s that they don’t stay babies for long. Just look at how much he’s already changed…

He’s going to be very manly, I can already tell. The kid is tough. I’ve watched him man-handle Milo and take his toys, sippy cups, food, pride…

Not to say that Milo doesn’t plot his revenge in more diabolical ways, though. Nolan has had eczema since he was a newborn and we’ve been fairly convinced that it has something to do with dairy products. Well, Milo usually puts up a bit of a fight when Nolan tries to take his stuff, but he almost never resists Nolan taking his milk; he gives that up willingly. If not milk, than something Nolan would most likely choke on. It’s a never-ending battle of brains vs brawn.

Nah, the truth is that Milo’s actually wonderful with Nolan. I never thought in a million years he’d love a little brother so much. No jealousy issues (that we can see) and he’s incredibly gentle with him. It’s really sweet to see Milo just follow Nolan around the living room trying to hug and squeeze him (like I said, NOBODY can avoid squeezing that little bugger). We’ve been struggling with getting Milo to talk more, but clear as day he shouts “BABY” over and over whenever Nolan’s in the room.

Good lord I just love these kids. I could write a million blog posts about them and still never scratch the surface of just how much I love them.

That being said, it hurts my heart to see Nolan turn a year old. It’s a reminder that he won’t be my baby forever. You spend so much time as a parent waiting on the next development, pushing your kids to grow and impatiently waiting for them to hit that next landmark. Smiling, laughing,  teething, eating, crawling, walking, talking, potty training - there’s just always something that you’re waiting for to happen and sometimes you just forget to enjoy where they’re at right now developmentally. Milo’s going to be 3 years old in a few months and it’s all been one big blur up to this point. I see pictures of him as a baby and I don’t even recognize him. It’s good to write these posts because it lets me pause for a moment and take in this phase in life. Milo’s still my little buddy, Noli’s still my little baby. Right now they’re asleep upstairs and in the morning I’ll see two little boys that I can still pick up and smother with love without embarrassing them… These are the good times. I need to take that in more.

I’ll end with one more development before I call it a post and sign off… As of June 12th, 2015:

I’ll have to write a whole other post for this next, but we moved to Fort Worth, TX in June - No longer New Englanders! I can only hope and pray that Milo and Nolan will grow up with southern accents. PLEASE GOD GIVE THEM A SOUTHERN DRAWL!

Anyway, that’s all for now…

To my sweet little Nolibug, one year ago God gave me the sweetest surprise I’ve ever been blessed with, and every moment from the first time I laid eyes on you has filled my heart with a joy I’ll never be worthy of. From now until forever, you’ll never have to wonder if you’re loved, because until my dying breath, I will love, adore and treasure you for the blessing that you are. I’m proud of you, son.

Happy Birthday.

[iamsoneurotic]

Magic Noli!

[iamsoneurotic]

Two Years of Milo

In a few hours Milo is going to turn 2 years old. I’m at a loss for words as to how I feel about that.

I know that Milo is going to be the same little boy tomorrow that he was today. He’ll wake up, one of us will go into his room and find him standing in his crib smiling, eager to be gotten. Like any other day, there will most likely be a massive poop waiting for us. He’ll fuss as we try to change him until he sees the hanging “Happy Birthday” banner over the fireplace and begins spouting out letters that may or may not actually be in those words. He’ll eat his breakfast, drink his milk, proceed to the living room to watch PBS Kids and throw his toys around, occasionally running over to the gate to yell at me while I’m in the shower getting ready. I’ll give him a big sloppy kiss and go to work, then come home in the evening and enjoy the greatest welcoming you could ask for as he drops whatever he’s doing, runs over to the door yelling “Gay-Gah” (my name apparently) and throws a block at me. Then I’ll play with him, we’ll feed him, and I’ll brush his teeth and put him down to bed… Like every other day.

...

But tonight was the last night I’d put my 1 year old boy to bed. I don’t like to brag or make a big deal out of my emotions or sensitivity to the matter, but it’s impossible to deny how hard it was to hold back the tears as I sat with Milo in the rocking chair before putting him down. It’s not even to rock him to sleep anymore, it’s just to spend some down time with him before saying goodnight, and that time is getting shorter and shorter by the evening. He’s too fidgety - he actually WANTS to be put down for bed. Who’s kid is this??

That will be one of the hardest things to let go of, that time with him. It’s my favorite time of day, there’s no distractions, there’s no discipline or teaching, no activities or chaos - just quiet time with my son that’s exclusively for him. I always sit down with him, he cuddles up into my neck and I’ll say a quick prayer for him, then I’ll sing him a song or two. The songs vary, I’ve sang everything from Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to Semi-Charmed Life… And yes, that second verse is incredibly uncomfortable to sing to a child, but I only know all the lyrics to like, 4 songs and it’s either that or The Real Slim Shady… I’m really dating myself here, aren’t I?

Whatever the song, I’m going to miss that time with him when he grows out of it. I really enjoy him. I don’t think I could have ever fathomed the love I feel for Milo 3 or even 2 years ago. I always knew I’d love my kids, but love is such a diluted word that to just say “Yeah, I’ll love my kids when I have them someday” is about as meaningful as making a New Years resolution. In the two years I’ve gotten to know my son, to say I love him is an understatement. There’s no word powerful enough to express the fact that the mere thought of ever losing him makes my body literally shut down like pulling the battery out of a remote.

We all joke about longing for the day when our children move out and we can all be free and wild again - but the truth of the matter is that it will likely be the single most difficult event in my life. And today he’s one year closer to it.

Seriously, this is getting depressing, on to happier subjects!

We threw Milo a birthday party on Sunday - it was a humble party at best. We scheduled it during his prime nap hours, so needless to say he was feeling exceptionally crazy that afternoon. By the time we got to presenting him with a cake, he had no interest. We attempted to put a party hat on him and he cried, he was also offended by seeing a party hat on MY head, and proceeded to pull it off with extreme prejudice. We sang to him… Music makes him crazy too. If you ever watch him while he watches the singing segments on Sesame Street, he squirms around like a slug with salt on its back. Drives him absolutely insane. So as we sang, he almost kicked the table over. Then we lit the candle - he had no interest in the candle. I held him up to blow it out and he proceeded to kick all of the items on the table within a 2 foot radius. So I blew the candle out for him as Rachael scurried to cut the cake up.

Guess how much he wanted the cake.

Nope! No interest in cake. He wanted the cookie numbers and letters which decorated it - and he would not be at peace until he had them all. Not to eat them, but to have them in a pile for his counting convenience. Before things got messier - we hurried to prepare his presents in the other room. By now it was getting close to 2, and we decided to just have him open his presents and get his crazy butt to bed. Judging by his obvious love for cake, singing and candles - guess how interested he was in presents? … Yeah. Not interested.

We suck at parties. I basically sat in the middle of a circle of friends and family and opened Milo’s presents while he cried and threw wrapping paper around the room. It was a good old time. I’m not really sure what we were expecting, honestly I thought he’d just be shy around everyone and cower into my neck per usual, but he was feeling almost no shame that day. "I’m 2! Listen to the sounds of my misery!!!”

Ah, toddlers.

At the end of the day, cake, presents and song are really just about tradition and formality. Toddlers don’t care about things like that, we just do it because that’s just what you do. We’ll look back at pictures in 20 years and not think about if he liked the cake or not, we’ll just remember the people that were there and that there was a day that we celebrated his second year in our lives. That’s really important to me, that he knows he’s appreciated and cared for. My biggest fear is that he’ll grow up feeling unloved, disliked or unwanted. So throwing parties that he hates, or giving him kisses and hugging him when he doesn’t want to be distracted from piling his blocks up are important whether or not he likes it at the time.

Oh, and his little brother got all dressed up for his big day too:

They're great kids, I hope they know how precious they are.

Happy Birthday, MyMy - Your first breath in this world was the day I came to life. I guess we’re both 2 today.

I love you, buddy. ~ Gay-Gah

[iamsoneurotic]

Enter, Nolan: The Sequel Part II

So Nolan's out the womb and into the world! The shift in hospital demeanor from child one to child two is very strange. I remember with Milo feeling tired, nervous, frantic and confused to the point that there was no concept of day or night. He was born, we got an hour nap and then we were both a tired delusional mess for about a year. With Nolan, it was a completely different experience; we were like old pros, a parenting All-Star team.

Okay, so maybe we weren't that awesome, but it was kind of like riding a bike. We knew what kinds of noises to expect, we were prepared for the routine feedings all night, we knew how to change a diaper, we knew how to hold him, how to burp him and most importantly, how to just enjoy him. The truth is, I feel like I missed Milo’s newborn days because I spent so much time being stressed out. I would always worry about what that noise was that he made, why is he spitting up so much, he’s been sleeping too long, should I wake him? Am I doing this wrong? Am I doing anything RIGHT? Before I knew it, he was too independent to be held anymore, he just wanted to roll over, explore, grow up… I really missed having a newborn to just hold and stare at because that’s really as precious as it gets. The way they smell, the way they breath, how warm they are on your chest, the faces they make when they're falling asleep. It’s innocence at its most innocent.

And that’s really what our next couple nights at the hospital were like. We stared, we relaxed, we enjoyed… Most importantly though, we SLEPT. I can sit here and complain about how the nurses had the worst timing and would come in to check Nolan’s heart rate every time we had just gotten him down to sleep, but I’d just be making a mountain out of a molehill for the sake of that obligatory “Lack of sleep” talk everybody has when they have a kid. It’s like saying “I’m good, thanks” when somebody asks you how you’re doing regardless of how bad a day you might be having. “New baby? How ya sleeping?”, “Who said I’m sleeping??” Everybody laughs and proceeds to talk about the weather.

Okay, the nurses were getting rather obnoxious with all the checkups, I won’t lie. We’d put Nolan down to sleep, get comfortable in our sleeping areas, close our eyes and then sure enough some loud-mouthed nurse would kick the door down and throw a cold stethoscope on our sleeping baby’s chest. He’d wake up, want to be fed and they’d throw him back to us like a hot potato and book it out of the room. I think nurses secretly enjoy doing that to patients.

Speaking of things that wake you up, there was a clipboard holder outside of our room that would just echo through the walls every time they changed the clipboard. It sounded like our door being opened, so we would jump every time we heard it. If that wasn’t noisy enough, there were about 3 or 4 moms giving birth in the rooms next to us each day - and they were LOUD. I’m not one to judge another person’s method of birth, but when you’re making the noises we were listening to, it’s time for an epidural. You could literally murder somebody in the most horrific way imaginable in that building and nobody would bat an eye because it all sounds like labor. TAKE THE DRUGS, LADY.

I was talking about how we slept, wasn’t I… Okay, like I said, we slept. We got a solid 4 hours the night he was born because this kid just loved to sleep, and nothing woke him up! We would talk loudly, watch TV, crumble our plastic bags of chips, sneeze and laugh - It didn’t matter. Nolan would maybe flinch once in a great while, but then just go right back to sleep. It could be because he was 9 days early and was still in that comatose womb-mode, or maybe in our second run as parents we've just learned which noises to ignore. Whatever the case, it's been nice being somewhat alert and semi-rested.

Actually, I should maybe clarify something - I was getting a ton of sleep. Rachael on the other hand didn't sleep all that well during her stay. Apparently with each pregnancy the post-labor cramps get worse. I think it’s nature's way of telling you it still hates you. The assumption for most is that when the baby is born, the belly goes away and everything goes back to normal. Well it's much more awful. Not all that belly is chalked up to baby, there's a uterus in there that still needs to get back to it's normal size and whenever it starts to shrink, it causes some major cramping. I believe it’s usually a gradual over-a-few-weeks sort of thing, but Rachael's uterus apparently had somewhere important to be and just continuously shrunk during the next couple of days; this meant the poor girl had a pretty steady case of cramps during the majority of our time at the hospital. That being said, she wasn't sleeping all that well. Another problem is that nursing can cause those cramps as well, and ironically the only way to get the baby to go to sleep is to nurse him, so it was just a lose/lose for Rachael all around. The baby’s awake, she needs to nurse him. The baby finally goes to sleep, but now Rachael is cramping from all the nursing. By the time that would go away, baby was up and ready for food again.

Such a hungry kid too. Being birthed takes a lot out of a baby, he’s got the scars to prove it! I never knew this, but newborns can get a thing called an “Angel Kiss” - I don’t know enough about them, but it’s something to do with their heads being squished as they’re born. It’s a reddish area on the forehead that literally looks like a kiss mark. We’re told they fade away over a year or two, but it’s still a little shocking to see on your baby’s head. Milo had a similar thing called a “Stork Bite” on the back of his neck, it’s still kind of there… I don’t understand why they give cutesy names to these things. Awww, stork bite. No. It’s a squish mark. My children’s heads were violently crushed during their epic escape from their watery confinements in Rachael’s belly and they carry with them physical reminders of their struggle.

The poor kid. Along with the Angel Kiss, he had a pretty rough newborn rash to boot; the little guy couldn’t catch a break. I mean he was covered head to toe, and it looked painful. They don’t really notice the rash at their age, but it breaks your heart as a parent to see your baby covered in painful looking red bumps. I’m not really sure what the cause of it is. I’ve heard it’s something to do with his hormones balancing out or Rachael’s increase in hormones while he was still in the womb. I’ve also heard it has something to do with their skin adjusting to the air after having been submerged in their own amniotic fluids for so long. This is why you don’t swim in pee, people! As though that’s something I need to warn the kids about... Kids are dumb though.

I shouldn’t focus on the rashes and the birth traumas, it gives the impression that my child isn’t anything but gorgeous. Trust me, this kid is pretty freaking cute. My wife makes good looking kids, she’s got the formula down to a science. I’ve had a hard time pinning who this little guy looks like. I thought he looked just like Milo when he was born, then his face changed to a little Italian man, then it changed to what my mom thinks looks just like me when I was a newborn… He definitely has my genes. The dark hair and long limbs are Mark Marianelli trademarks. He also has a penis, and I’m pretty sure he got that appendage from me too. Having one of those is pretty great, but sucks when you’re a newborn because that means there’s a good chance you’re going to get a circumcision.

It’s a hard thing to put your baby through, obviously not hard enough to not do it, but hard nonetheless. When the pediatrician came in to look at Nolan and prep him for the procedure, Rachael asked if she should feed him beforehand. The pediatrician said we shouldn’t feed him because he’ll need to eat when he’s finished and nursing will be really good for him when it’s done. What he didn’t know is that at this point, it had already been about 2 hours since the poor kid had eaten, so when they took him away, he had gone without eating for almost 3 or 4 hours. They brought him back about 20 minutes later, maybe less. I thought they had just circumcised him really quickly, but they said his blood sugar was incredibly low and he was too shaky for them to do anything.

While I panicked when they said his sugar was low, Rachael put 2 and 2 together and pointed out that the kid needed to eat and that it had been almost 4 hours - The genius doctor then realized he made a really stupid call by telling us not to feed the kid because he didn’t realize it had been that long since he ate. So Rachael threw the boob in the kid’s mouth so fast I swear I heard a whip crack and the little guy chowed down like a pie eating contest. It took a long time to get his blood sugar back to where it needed to be. Mom always knows best.

It wasn’t the first incompetent thing that Rach had to correct the hospital on. When Milo was born, they did a heel prick to run a bunch of tests on the little guy’s blood. As it turned out, they didn’t wait 24 hours before doing the prick like they were supposed to and we had to bring him back two weeks later for them to take his blood all over again. He hated every minute of it. Well yet again, within 12 hours the nurse came in to perform the heel prick on Nolan, and Rachael had to ask her if it was too early for her to be doing that because we went through this exact situation a year and a half prior. The nurse paused, thought about it, and the realized “Oh yeah, I guess it is too early!” … SERIOUSLY?? Don’t these people do this for a living?? So they waited the full 24 hours and performed the heel prick, no problems.

But it didn’t matter. In order for the hospital to know how Nolan’s blood sugar was doing, they had to keep pricking his freaking heel. By the end of the day both his feet were covered in bandaids from all the needles they kept sticking into him to check his blood. Just can’t win.

Rashes, an Angel Kiss, a billion heel pricks - This kid was having a physically enduring couple of days. Maybe that’s why he slept so much. I should be grateful he was so traumatized because it’s probably what kept him asleep while his brother visited for the first time.

This was the part I had feared the most about having another baby so soon - Milo’s reaction. You hear so much about kids not taking well to new babies. They can get jealous, bitter and downright malicious when a baby is introduced to the family. So we had a plan and it was really simple: Make sure nobody is holding the baby when Milo comes in the room, and have a toy ready to give him that we can say was from baby Nolan. Sounds solid, and maybe it would have been if it all went according to plan… Murphy, your laws are maniacal!

Rachael’s mom had been staying with Milo at the house while we stayed at the hospital, so she drove over with Milo so they could both meet baby Nolan. Rachael was nursing Nolan when they arrived, so I went downstairs to meet them and entertain Milo while we waited for Nolan to finish eating… The only thing worse than your child seeing the new baby in his mother’s arms is to see that new baby nursing in those arms. If Milo had a flag, he’d have staked it into Rachael’s ‘milk supply’ and claimed them both like a moon landing.

My heart sank when I saw Milo get out of the car, it had only been a little over a day since leaving him, but already I felt the pain of being away from my boy. I missed him so much I wanted to cry. He seemed a little stand-offish when I got him out of the car, but he quickly snapped out of it and gave me a big smile and I bear hugged him all the way to the hospital door, covering his face in kisses. Italians love to kiss!

Rachael let me know she was done nursing Nolan and we walked in the room. I held Milo and Nolan was in his bassinet. All was going according to plan… Except I completely forgot to grab the toy we got him before I left the house! Scrap that part of the plan, but at least nobody was holding Nolan… That is until he started to gag. Well, the natural reaction to a gagging baby is to pick him up and begin slapping his back. So we didn’t have our toy for Milo, and Rachael was now holding the baby right as we brought Milo in the room to see him. Our entire plan failed.

Luckily it wasn't all bad. While Milo was visibly put off by the matter, he didn't freak out and before long Rachael's mom was holding Nolan and Milo was back in his mother's arms perfectly content… As content as a curious, active toddler can be - He quickly broke free of Rachael's embrace and was running all over the room making all kinds of ungodly noise. Nolan slept right through it though - I think he might actually be Milo-proof! The real test, however, was to see what Milo actually thought of the baby. We placed Nolan in his bassinet and brought Milo over to see him… It was surprisingly a very sweet moment:

Milo came to see Nolan the next day at the hospital as well, and it pretty much played out the same. The difference this time is that the nurses decided that as I was downstairs getting Milo that they would go ahead and have Rachael nurse Nolan while they checked him up. How convenient. Fortunately, the hospital has a play room for just such an occasion, so that's exactly where me and my mother-in-law took him. The rules of the playroom are as follows: Whatever your kid touches, you put in the hamper by the doorway so that the hospital can clean it. It's a concept that sounds very clean and responsible of the hospital, I just wish they would be a little clearer on what constitutes as a "touch". Does a touch include your kid brushing his hand on a toy as he walks by it, or does the toy need to be halfway into my child's mouth? Before I could even guess the right answer, I looked down and saw Milo reaching into the hamper where the dirty toys go and pulling out all kinds of disease-infested play things. We shoo'd him away in the direction of the "clean" toys and as I again began to think about what constitutes as a touch, I saw Milo basically grabbing everything in sight and pulling every toy he could get his hands on to the ground. The hamper, mind you, was already filled to the brim, so I had no idea where all this crap was going to go. I decided I'd treat it like I treat my bathroom hamper - I'll fill it up and when it's full, I'll make a pile next to it and hope somebody thinks to clean it!

Finally Milo settled on a couple of toys and sat and played… Then I smelled it. Milo pooped. I've always been the parent to sort of let his kid play in a poopy diaper if it'll keep him happy (and deal with the diaper rash later), but there was no "later" that I could foresee where changing him would be an easy task. The hospital room didn't really have a changing table, you just changed your newborn in the bassinet. He wouldn't be home for at least another 45 minutes, and then my poor mother-in-law would be forced to change a stale, poopy diaper right before nap time when Milo is at his crankiest. The room was empty, there was a ton of room to change Milo on the floor, so we both figured "Let's do this!"… Bad idea. You know what's worse than dragging a toddler away from new toys? Dragging a toddler away from new toys to change his diaper in a strange room. He was quite resistant. I think if anybody had walked by the room and looked in the window, they would have thought me and my mother-in-law were up to nothing good with this kid. She was holding his feet, I was trying to get his diaper off, he was screaming, wiggling and flailing his arms this way and that… It looked three kinds of shifty, but we pressed on! I was able to get the diaper off, but at that moment, Milo managed to grab a nearby toy, raise it in the air and slam it directly into the pile of poop resting in his diaper on the floor.

…

Well, like I mentioned, the hamper was overflowing at this point, so even if I could get this poop-covered toy to the dirty pile, who's to say it wouldn't just fall out and land in some unsuspecting kid's hands? So I did what any responsible parent would do - I rinsed it off and left it in the sink. Hopefully other parents are smart enough to not grab the one toy that's suspiciously in the sink and give it to their kid... Who am I kidding, some unsuspecting kid is playing with Milo's poop right now.

Back to Nolan! He's so quiet that there aren't many stories to tell about him.

I'll put it this way - When we first found out Rach was pregnant again, we were both a little iffy on the matter. We didn't feel ready, we thought it was too soon, we were terrified (well, I was at least). As the pregnancy went on, we warmed up a little more to the idea of having another newborn in the house. Then we began listening to heartbeats and looking at 2D & 3D Ultrasounds, and he began to kick and move around and get hiccups. Before long, I found myself missing him all the time. Silly, because I had never actually met him, but I felt like I kind of knew him after listening to him and seeing him on the monitors. There was no other way to describe it, I just missed him. I wanted him out of the belly and into my arms like nobody's business. I'd talk to him every night when Rachael would go to bed, I'd tap on her belly and try to get him to react. I just wanted to get my son.

He's here now, and that's all I could think about at the hospital, "He's finally here". I wasn't looking at him through technology or talking through a belly button, I was holding him, looking at his face, smelling his breath, rubbing his fuzzy head. For months I thought about what I'd say to him, and the only thing I could really get myself to say was "I'm so happy you're here." A simple sentence, but a sentence I want to make sure he hears all his life, something I hope neither of my kids ever forget - Their existence brings me joy.

I love my boys to no end and every day they make me proud.

Needless to say, I couldn't wait to get this little guy home with us, and that day had finally arrived! I got showered as fast as I could that day and–

Okay, I need to take a pause here and explain something about the bathroom in our room. It's set up for mothers who have just pushed something very large out from between their legs, so there's certain elements to how the bathroom is arranged that you otherwise wouldn't see in a normal restroom. For instance, there was a chair in the shower. Obviously moms coming out of labor aren't the best at things like standing and walking, so it makes sense to provide a means of relaxing their legs while they shower. As I mentioned in my last post, I was very unclear on what the Dads were allowed to do in these rooms. We couldn't eat the food, I'm still not sure the nurses liked us using the bathrooms, so removing a chair from the shower for my own selfish needs sounded like it could send up a red flag with the hospital staff… So I was forced to take a shower while maneuvering around a very large chair.

To put that into a visual for you, it was like giving the invisible man a very revealing lap dance. I had very little room to walk around in their, so I was forced to resort to a number of stripper poses while I attempted to bath myself. I've never felt so dirty coming out of a shower…

It was not sexy.

But as I was saying, it was time to bring Nolan home. So we quickly got ready, signed some papers, and off we went! I ran out to my Jeep and cooled it off as best I could before pulling up to the main entrance to retrieve my family (it was HOT out). As they got into the car, I had Classic Rewind on Sirus XM playing. I can't remember very well, but I believe Meatloaf was playing. As I began to get into the song, Rachael reached over the seat and turned my radio off. She didn't feel it appropriate to be playing rock with a newborn in the car. It was in that moment I understood that my days as a freedom-loving Jeep owner had come to an end. Black Betty had officially become a mom-mobile; no more classic rock, no more roomy backseat for all my coworkers as we drive to Buffalo Wild Wings for lunch - just car-seats and kids music. Very tragic.

The drive home was a little nerve-wracking. You can have all the experience in the world driving babies around in your car, but driving around a newborn fresh out the hospital is still terrifying. Every light is yellow and every driver is out to play bumper-cars with you. BUT WE MADE IT HOME!

My mom and Rachael's mom were waiting for us at the house with Milo and waited by the door with him while we walked up the sidewalk with Nolan. I think this picture sums up Milo's reaction to the baby coming home…

Thank god his aim sucks.

About an hour later my Dad got to the house from work and we all sat down and had a big steak dinner - Our first family meal with Nolan. He didn't make a peep.

I'll end this incredibly long story here because it's getting late and I've told all I can tell about Nolan's journey to our family... We couldn't be happier to have him home with us where he belongs.

Welcome home buddy, ~ M.

[iamsoneurotic]

Good lord why haven't I posted this video of Milo yet! Created April 3rd, 2014.

[iamsoneurotic]

Baby Bigfoot Sightings

It’s debatable that my child even really exists. Just a result of insomnia and stress. If it weren’t for my wife reminding me that he is in fact a real child, there’d really be no other evidence because taking a picture of the kid is literally like snapping a shot of Big Foot. He is in constant motion. Even when he's still, it’s only long enough for you to actually get your phone out and open the camera app. Once the camera actually loads, he’s already on the move again. You kind of just have to keep your phone on camera mode all the time on the off-chance he might stop running around to catch his breath. Which is rare.

So much movement. I’ve figured out the best way to play with him is to lay down and wait for him to run by you, then grab him, tickle him and release him back into the wild before he bites you. Have I mentioned he’s biting now? I used to think that if there was a zombie apocalypse, I’d take shelter in a nursery. I figure the zombie babies aren't a threat and it’d be easy to fight off a couple undead toddlers without getting bitten. But now I’ve decided a nursing home would be a smarter choice - at least they don’t have teeth anymore and they’re too slow to get you. My precious little Milo, however… He’s quick, and stealthy, and surprisingly strong. It’s impossible to avoid his teeth! If he wants to bite you, he’s going to bite you. I’ve tried countless times to hold his head back when he starts chomping down, he presses on - and he’s 1 year old, so you can’t exactly push back very hard, instead you end up with this awful horror flick moment where his teeth get closer and closer to you until they slowly sink into your fragile human skin. He bites like a pit bull, he doesn’t let up. You’d think with all those rubbery baby bones his teeth wouldn’t do much damage, but he’ll draw blood if you’re not careful… I fear he’s gotten a taste for it.

If it’s not his teeth, its his nails. When he failed to bite me yesterday, I barely had a moment to celebrate my victory before I saw his giant toddler hand reach for my face, grab my bottom lip and rip a chunk out. It’s like living with a feral cat! I think I’ve called him both a toddler and a baby in the same post. I just don’t understand what exactly he is. He’s like a baby/toddler hybrid. Why the heck does everything sound like a horror flick when I write? I think technically he’s a toddler, but he’s still my baby boy. Maybe if he was saying more than “Mama” and “Dada” I could accept his age a little easier, but alas… No real tangible words. I keep wondering if maybe we’re doing something wrong, like there must be some technique we’re missing that will magically make him start speaking English. I guess kids develop at different paces. Which I hate.

I don’t know if any other parents can relate, but don't you just get mad at other parents sometimes? Specifically the ones who’s kids are walking at 6 months, feeding themselves with a fork and knife at 10 months and are fluent in 3 different languages by 1 year? Then you look across the room and realize your son just picked a cheerio off the bottom of his foot and ate it... and there hasn’t been a box of cheerios in the house since New Years. It doesn’t help that all of my friends have girls and supposedly they develop faster. Still though, it doesn’t mean you don’t want their babies to bump their heads and experience a 5 or 6 month developmental set back to even up the score. Just saying.

At least my kid is cute. Look at this face!

So maybe he says more than “dada”; he actually refers to me as “Gay Dada” now. I think his mother had something to do with that…

Side note. I’m at a Barnes & Noble right now and I’m glancing over at a shelf of Teen Fantasy books (two words that will probably get your blog flagged instantaneously) and I’ve never noticed how many books have a cover with half a person’s face on it. That must make it more epic. I should start posting pictures of half of Milo’s face and start labeling them angsty stuff like TODDERLISM or JUVENILITY.

That's a surefire way to get your Facebook feed blocked by everyone you know.

Speaking of Facebook, only other parents seem to care about stuff you post after having a kid. I make 100 posts a day with illustrations I've made and I get maybe one pity "like" from a friend halfway across the country, but I post one video of Milo standing in the grass and I get like, 20 likes within 10 minutes… Yes I'm exaggerating. It was more like 17 over the course of a day and a half. Facebook is dumb anyway.

I'm lucky to have such a cute kid. I could post a video of him eating a booger and people would still love it because he makes EVERYTHING adorable. I've grown more and more infatuated with the little guy as time has gone on. Probably because he acknowledges me as a human being more often now. I come home from work and he runs over to me at the door. Then he usually throws something at me. He's been a thousand times more cuddly as well, which I'm just soaking up like a sponge every second I can get. I can't remember if I've written about this or not, but getting Milo to cuddle up with you has always been a battle of wits - you'd have to trick him into it by distracting him with TV or a sippy-cup and hold him as long as you could before he realized his love was being given away for free and he'd slap you in the face. A few months ago, however, the poor little guy got his first fever - and as it turns out, baby boys with fevers LOVE their dads. I couldn't pry him off my lap to save my life while he was sick, and it was awesome.

Well, it was kind of awesome. The fact still remained that he was sick, and it was heart-breaking. Just look at this sad little sick face:

Just crushes your soul, right? And guess when that fever struck the little bugger - While I was alone watching him. Naturally.

As it would seem, every time Rachael goes to get her hair done, Milo gets sick. It happened in Texas when he projectile vomited in the back of my Dad's car (as you can read about somewhere in this novel) and it happened again while Rachael was getting her hair lightened! I was alone with a sick baby for almost 3 hours. And let's set the record straight, I'm a Dad. I'm clueless. At least when it happened in Texas we had the combined intelligence of TWO clueless Dads, this time it was just me… So I stripped him down to his diaper and put on Spongebob. The great thing about Nickelodeon is that you can watch Spongebob pretty much 24/7. They've got about 3 shows that they just play on repeat all day long and sometimes I think they just skip the other two so they can show more Spongebob. The only downside is that they play the same 10 episodes over and over. Not that it matters to Milo, he just enjoys the loud noises and flashy colors. I on the other hand have Mr Crab stealing quarters in an Arcade with a magnetic snail BURNED into my retina… And does anyone else notice that he laughs like Popeye? Is that intentional?

I'm trying desperately to recap the last 2 or 3 months as quickly as possible. Which I'm sure isn't doing Milo's developmental story much justice. He teethed more, that sucked. He got a couple molars in, that's cool. He likes to have his teeth brushed, so awesome. Aaaaand I don't want him to grow up. Like ever. I have too much fun with him at this age. Okay, on to the other baby!

It's funny how much you can forget about pregnancy. More specifically, I forgot how much fun it is to watch my lovely pregnant wife waddle around the house with a big ol' beach ball belly. I have a feeling this next one is going to be a little porker. Rachael's belly is HUGE and there's still 2 1/2 months to go! August 18th, is that 2 1/2 months? 2 months and a quarter? I don't do math. I've pretty much lost track of how far along she is. My coworkers keep asking me and I kind of just stutter random numbers and hope something sticks. I stopped counting at around 10 weeks. It's not that I'm less excited than the last time and I don't care to keep count, it's just that I'm too preoccupied with Milo to really focus on things like numbers. That and I think Milo's sleepless infancy wiped out the brain cells associated with counting.

In addition to that gloriously round belly, Rachael is pretty much all around miserable. Don't get me wrong, she still has that mom-glow, but it's accompanied by major sciatica and a bladder ready to burst under the constant pounding of tiny little baby feet. Milo kicked Rachael in the ribs, this one stomps on her bladder. They're like an 80's WWF tag team… That analogy was a stretch, I just really feel like watching some old school wrestling. May the Ultimate Warrior rest in peace.

OH! The Linea Nigra is back! (fact: I spelled it wrong originally) I feel like maybe God meant to put a zipper there once for easy, painless access, but after Adam & Eve sinned He just decided to make an ugly black line instead. Okay, "ugly" is insensitive, but it fit the story I was making up, so I'm leaving it in… I swear I think it's adorable, Rach!

Screw it. You wanna see him?

He smiled for the camera! Or as the midwife said, "He's thirsty!" … I prefer my version; the thought of some baby floating in a sack full of his own urine and gulping it down is just unsettling. Amniotic Fluid. Just call it what it is, a pee sack.

Every time we do an ultrasound, the little beefcake does something awesome for the camera. This time he smiled, last time he flashed the peace sign:

The time before THAT… well, he showed us his penis. Not an action we look to encourage when he's born, but still very informative at the time.

It's amazing how much happens over the course of a couple months, it already feels like my last post was a lifetime ago. That Milo was a completely different child than the one we have now. The baby in Rach's belly was just a blob of lumpy baby-goo then, now he's opening his mouth and drinking his own pee. It's been busy in our home to say the least. Which is why I must now end this post… I'm beat. Night, ~ M.

[iamsoneurotic]

Step by Step, Post by Post

SO MUCH GOING ON IN BABY TOWN! Well, there's stuff going on in baby town, let's not get too crazy now.

There's been a few days over this past month where I've really wanted to make a post before I forgot what awesome thing Milo did, then I just didn't, and now I'm feeling slightly forgetful now that I'm buckling down and writing it all out. I'll just sort of get my thoughts together as I write and maybe some of it will come back to me.

I'll start with Milo's toys. At this stage in life, he'll play with whatever garbage you throw on the floor; it's a very financially sound stage in life. Yet for some reason, we keep spending money on toys! Correction - our parents keep spending money on toys. The other reason this age is very cost-efficient is because your'e not really the one buying all the stuff for your kid, your family is. Grandparents LOVE getting stuff for their grandbabies. And why shouldn't they? Babies light up whenever something new and shiny is presented to them, and that's what grandparents want to see. So the toys keep on comin'!

Baby toys in general are pretty boring to somebody of my age. They consist of plastic colorful shapes, sometimes they light up, sometimes they make noise, but they're all just different variations of the same thing. I arrange Milo's toys into 3 categories when I'm organizing and cleaning up the living room (which has effectively become the play area… nothing is sacred anymore): Plastic, Fluffy and Vehicle. Plastic, like I said, consists of all the random hunks of shapes and color. Plastic donuts, plastic blocks, teething rings and whatever garbage he likes to play with (water jugs, etc). The Fluffies consist of stuffed animals, squishy sports paraphernalia and pretty much anything you can throw at him full force without knocking him out and getting him dragged away by child services. Vehicles are anything with wheels. Toy trucks, walkers, mini bikes and anything that's large and taking up more room than you have in your living quarters.

Each of these categories have a level of stress associated with them. The fluffies have zero stress. I love when he plays with soft, non-threatening things. He can bite it without breaking a tooth, he can fall on it without getting impaled, he can throw it at my computer without giving me a heart attack and most importantly - they're QUIET. I LOVE the soft toys. But naturally, he doesn't much care for those because he knows the best way to get my attention is to shorten my lifespan by inducing stress and anxiety. So he usually plays with the plastics. Since learning to crawl, he's loved carrying two of the same plastic items and using them like shoes for his hands as he crawls around the house. We have hardwood floors, so naturally there's a lot of banging and racket going on at any given time of day. I've learned to adjust to the noise. The problem is when the noise stops. Typically if he's not making noise he's doing one of two things: Making a poop, or winding up to throw something hard at my face. So when I don't hear noise, I'm either going to smell something awful or feel something awful. Noise is my safety net now. Welcome to parenthood.

The stuff with wheels causes the most stress. It always makes him the happiest, but it will most likely bring pain to either himself or me. If the pain is going to be directed at myself, it means I'm bent over pushing him on some kind of toy motorcycle - Sometimes I swear I can hear the sounds of my spine slowly deforming and begging for the sweet release of death. I'm a web designer, so I spend 70% of my day hunched over in the worst of ways; my neck and back are already in bad condition. So imagine what it does to my alignment when I spend the other 30% of my day bent at a 30 degree angle pushing a small child across a small living room floor back and forth. If I'm not pushing him around the floor, he's pushing something on wheels that will inevitably go faster than anticipated and leave him face-planted on the floor.

Wheels = hurt.

But there is hope! Over Christmas I was introduced (or rather, Milo was introduced) to the greatest kids toys ever produced in a Fisher-Price factory…

The Little People® Super Friends™ Figure Pack! I wanted to weep when I laid eyes upon these mini works of art (although I'm confused as to how Joker is considered one of the Super Friends… He's more like that one friend that tags along uninvited and makes off-colored jokes and unwarranted advances at the women in the group… Oh no. I'm the Joker). At last I could introduce Milo to the joys of superheros!!! … Although I'm clearly having more fun than he is.

He'll appreciate it when he's older.

On a more serious note, however, one of the reasons I didn't get around to writing much this past month has been because we had to get rid of one of Milo's favorite things…

And I don't mean thing as in an object, more like a family member to us. Ever since we had Milo, our cat, Baxter, had been gradually getting out of sorts. He became more needy, more stand-offish and clearly very stressed out from all the racket the baby was making in what had up until then been a pretty quiet home. It escalated to a point where he began to urinate around the house… If you don't know much about cat pee, it's just about the most horrible bodily fluid imaginable. With Milo becoming more mobile and another baby on the way, we simply couldn't run the risk of one of the kids finding a puddle of pee that we overlooked or the cat peeing on something they play with.

This was a very hard truth to come to terms with - Rachael had had Baxter for 10 years and he was the sole reason I learned to warm up to cats in the first place. He was a good pet who brought us a lot of joy over the years. Unfortunately, he conflicted with our number one priority - Milo's safety. It starts with territorial urinating (which is already unsanitary) but if it could get that bad, there's no telling how far it could go - And so help me God if that cat ever attacked Milo or the newborn.

We decided it'd be best to give him away. We looked up shelters and found what looked like a very nice home for Baxter. We planned to call them the next day and make arrangements to give up the little fella'... But there was a waiting list, and the odds of them taking in a 10 year old cat that pees all over the place was slim to nonexistent. So we called numerous other shelters similar to that one with no luck which left us with two very painful options: Either give him up to a state shelter where he'd be put in a tiny cage for 3 months and most likely put to sleep afterward, or do the humane thing and put him down ourselves. It was a very horrible day, and one I hope I can just get off my chest now and move on from.

On February 21st, we said our goodbyes, made the longest 10 minute drive of our lives and gave him up to the vet to be put down. 10 years of companionship w/ Rachael and 5 years for myself gone in a heartbeat. Appropriately, it was dark, gloomy and raining that evening.

Aside from the obvious misery of putting your pet down, Milo had grown to be quite fond of the little guy. He'd light up whenever the cat was in the room, and even today we still catch him looking at the floor from his highchair for him. Rachael had always loved the idea of Milo growing up with Baxter, playing with him and loving him and it hurt very much to have to shelve that possibility. Honestly, the thought of getting a new pet crossed our minds, but we have to embrace the positive side of no longer having an animal to care for. The house is hair-free, the bathroom doesn't smell like litter box, and we have more freedom to leave town for as long as we want without having to get a cat sitter. It's all "bright-side" denial but in the end I know we made the right choice - It just hurts very badly. I really did love that cat… I'm gonna' miss you buddy.

But like I said, Milo is getting more mobile… A LOT more mobile.

Last Thursday (March 20th), I had gotten home late from work and could do little more than lay down on the floor while Milo threw things at my face. As I lied there, defenseless and defeated, I glanced up to see Milo standing against the wall with his arms out like he was acting out a scene from Mission Impossible. In my mind there was a struggle; I knew when he stands, there's a good chance he's going to fall over, so I debated whether or not I should get up to grab his hands and help him walk around or just stay where I was and let it play out. Rachael's back was turned to him. I chose to let it play out. He looked me dead in the eye and took a step towards me. Now, to clarify, he's taken little steps here and there, so it's nothing out of the ordinary for him to put one foot forward. But this time, one foot went forward and the other followed… then another step, then another. He was walking towards me! I said to Rach, who's back was still turned, "Hey Rach? He's walking." She turned around very quickly to see Milo booking it full speed across the room right towards me, giggling his little face off.

Then he fell on top of me where I proceeded to lift him in the air like Simba as we cheered for the little guy's maiden voyage. It was the best thing that could have happened during what was an otherwise down month. Now this is what Rach gets to watch all day long:

My kid walks like a Chimpanzee.

He crawls like a hunchback and walks like a monkey. The boy does nothing normal.

I mentioned how the toys cause varying degrees of stress? Well the boy's developments also cause stress! Now whenever he's on the move my butt puckers up waiting for him to lose his footing and face-plant on the hardwood, which he does quite often. Thank God babies are like rubber… Can I even call him a baby anymore? Is he officially a toddler now that he's over a year old and walking? I have a feeling I'm going to see him as a baby right up until he's in his 30s with kids of his own. We've found that the best way to stop his crying from landing on his face is to rush him to the front door and let him look outside. If that's not distracting enough for him, we open the door and let the cold New Hampshire air hit his face like an icepack. Within a minute he's back on the floor and ready to fall face first allover again… At least he's persistent.

I've been talking a lot about Milo, I almost forget there's another baby brewin' in the ol' gut sack! Yeah, that was an ugly term… Let's just say belly for now, hmm?

Per usual pregnancy standards, Rach is feeling pretty beat. At least the hormones have subsided (THANK YOU JESUS!) and the nausea is done as far as I can gather. We're into MY favorite part of pregnancy… THE BABY BUMP!!! I love the baby belly. LOVE IT. If I could just have a stick to poke that belly with all day… I'd maybe get one poke in before Rachael broke the stick in half and kicked me out of the house (probably to go buy her ice cream). Sadly, I don't have any baby bump pictures to show like the last pregnancy. Future 2nd time dads be warned - Women don't like to show off their belly after they've already had a kid, you're going to have to work for your belly photos. And by work I mean hidden cameras.

Here's an artists rendition of what my wife currently looks like in her knocked up state:

HA! Did you think I'd actually be stupid enough to draw my wife with a big belly?? You cray cray. I value my well being.

And with that, I'm going to call it quits on the writing for the evening. There's more to talk about for sure, but I think I've crammed in quite a bit for one night.

Crammed I say! ~ M.