Time Gone By

First time father signing back in from my living room arm chair, where I'm currently watching the phenomena of lay down breast feeding, where Lyla sits straight out on her stomach while Katey lays on her back.  Apparently it helps with gas and spitting up.  My guess is that Superman's parents used a similar approach.  I've dubbed this position "diving into home."  We'll be sending out newborn announcements with this as the picture, so stay tuned!  Not really, that'd be creepy if we did that...

I'm two weeks behind my posting ritual and there's lots to catch the two of you who read this up on (thanks for the support, mom and dad).  Wait...side anecdote I have to share...Katey's now burping Lyla and upon successfully picking up her phone with her feet just now and seamlessly transitioning it to her hands, she let out an "oh yes!"  Yeah, we still know how to party.

I'm day 10 into taking the reins of one of the nighttime feedings and gotta say I love it.  I'm not sure which is more fabulous - being woken up in the middle of REM sleep to a starving baby and stumbling down the stairs to get her bottle, or getting thrown up while rocking her for an hour after she finishes because she's wide awake.  Both are miracles in their own right.  She gets all cute and snuggly when she finally falls asleep as if to say "I know you're tired, but I'm really cute, so deal with."  Master manipulator at such a young age...we're going to have our hands full...

In keeping with our "photo shoot every two weeks of life" goal, we have a new batch of newborn photos for everyone to enjoy, courtesy of a couple of Katey's co-workers who came over and put together another album of female squealing awesomeness - check out some of the photos here, Jenna and McKenzie did a really great job -

http://nwnightingale.blogspot.com/2013/08/sweet-lyla-grace-newborn.html

Katey just called me "blogmaster" - how do you like them apples, other bloggers?!

Anyways, Katey and I celebrated 6 wonderful years of marriage last week, and got to do it with my folks, who were visiting for the weekend, La Provence style.  If you've never been there for dinner, I highly recommend it, and not just because they're paying me to say so (but mainly for that reason):  

Here's a picture of Titus, just so he doesn't get a complex for not being part of the blog so far - he claims he hasn't read it yet, but I found him chewing my laptop power cord the other day, so I have my suspicions he's feeling a little snubbed:

Despite all the events of the past couple weeks, time has seemed to stand still, but in warp speed mode.  It's a bit of a weird paradox - though the nights seem long and days are generally somewhat uneventful (although moving a 600 lb hot tub around a house yesterday was a real treat - thanks Derek), I have to remind myself that this time will fly by in an instant, and be mindful of the fact that Lyla will only be a baby once.  She's already a month old now, and time has already done a Keyser Soze disappearing act ("Like that...poof...[it's] gone").  I found myself wondering what it's like to be my parents, watching their kids raise kids, and how much of a surreal blessing that must be to watch (or maybe a cruel nightmare if we suck at it).  As much as I'm excited to see the personality that starts to come out of Lyla in the coming weeks and months, I'm pretty happy just soaking her in as she is for the time being.

Plus, football season starts in two weeks, so she's the perfect excuse for sitting in my underwear on the couch all day...Go Niners!        

Life in the Trenches

"Daddy's going to blog about you - he's got some witty comments to get out." - Katey

Sure do babe - saddle up and get ready for round two of the Pearson blogging extravaganza.  We've grown one pound heavier and aged the equivalent of thirty years this last week (well, Katey and I have at least).

  

It's been an interesting week - I'm not sure if I was fully prepared for how tiring it can be to do close to nothing all day except caring for an infant.  The highlight of the week was baby pictures last Tuesday.  To preface this, I've always thought a lot of poses people use for baby pictures are a little creepy, especially the obviously unnatural poses like propping the baby's head up with her hands so it looks like she's doing a little Shirley Temple pose.  Case in point:

I know moms eat this stuff up, so I begrudgingly agreed to accompany Katey to Lyla's first (certainly not last I've been informed) photo shoot.  Firstly, the photographer did a great job, and much to my satisfaction, fashioned her in some generally 'normal' but creative poses.  As is the case with most family photo outings with kids, however, you generally spend the lions share of time trying to get everything in the perfect position for enough time to capture the one single moment of tranquility hiding below the surface of reality.  I'd say about 5% of the session was spent actually snapping pictures.  In a 4 hour photo shoot - you get the idea...pure father torture.  In the case of newborn photos, the goal is to try and lull an unpredictable, naked, diaperless baby to sleep in a 90+ degree room, then meticulously put her in cute baby poses.  After she inevitably starts peeing, you try your best to catch it before it hits the carpet (silver lining - good thing I was wearing a shirt?).  Each pose takes roughly 45 minutes - 1 hour to capture.  Yippee...I'm sure I'll be happy that we have these photos someday far into the future when I've had sufficient memory loss to forget the actual process of taking them.

In other news, we ventured to Bridgeport twice this week and the Lake Oswego farmers market today.  This is newsworthy because it's about the only things for which we could muster enough energy.  Not to mention each individual outing takes roughly 2-3 hours of preparation time:

Feed the baby.  Burp the baby.  Change the baby.  Clothe the baby.  Pack for the baby.  Put the baby in the car seat.  Swing the car seat for the baby until she stops crying.  Put stroller in the car for the baby.  Drive to destination.  Unpack the stroller for the baby.  Go to attach car seat to stroller and realize you forgot the adapters for the car seat to attach to the stroller.  Drive back home.  Try again tomorrow.  We've gotten a little bit better each time - we should be ready to take an overnight trip by the time she hits puberty.   

My take away from this week is that parenting is definitely meant to be a team sport.  Katey's already mentally preparing for me going back to work next week as if I'm heading back to war - "I'm going to miss you when you're gone, babe."  The mundane things we do as functioning humans day to day are pretty much forgotten or unnoticed until you have to do them for someone else.  It takes a willingness from both people to take on equal responsibility and maintain any semblance of sanity.  

I thought I had the "I don't have boobs" card (aka the "I have nipples Greg, can you milk me?" card) as my ace-in-the-hole to avoid the early morning wake up calls, but at our last pediatric check-in, the doctor informed us that Katey can start pumping in a few weeks and suggested I take one of the morning feedings over.  We're currently searching for a new pediatrician if anyone knows of a good one...

   

   

Parenthood is like...

10 days into this thing, it dawns on me, "We've got a kid, that means we need a blog!"  I didn't even know where to begin at first, so I just typed blog into Google, and as it turns out, they own Blogspot and I already have blogging capabilities - it's like they know what I want before I even ask.  In their continued efforts for world domination, I wouldn't be surprised if they come out with some kind of e-nanny service soon, where the computer swaddles, feeds, and changes the baby for me.

Hey Google - I'll need my coffee ready by the time I'm done with this post.  Thanks.

So who maintains this thing?  Well, when Katey writes or journals, it more closely imitates a hotel website amenities description than an actual journal.  Here's an excerpt I came across from a journal I found when cleaning out our closet a few weeks back, chronicling our epic trip through Europe:

"This hotel had a big 4 person room with good breakfast.  It was a quiet street with trees...it was kind of far from town...very clean.  Room had 3 beds."

The end.

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Sorry for the pause, baby just pooped.  Gross.  She also cries when I put her down, so I'm typing this with one hand now.

Dang it, Titus just went nuts outside and is covered in dirt.  Be right back again.

................................

Okay, I'm back.  Lyla let me put her down, so I need to bang this sucker out quick.  So as I was saying, the 49ers are looking really good again this year, I think they have a chance to get back to the Super Bo.....wait, shoot, wrong blog.  But seriously, football season is only a month away!

Anyways, what I meant to say is parenting is like having a hundred simultaneous thoughts running through your head that never come to full completion, so they just recycle over and over again like that song you can't stop singing the chorus line of (I'm talking to you, JT, it's like YOU'RE my mirror).

Parenting is also like max interval workouts - you burn and sweat for a high intensity, possibly painful, periods with short spurts of rest in between.  Before you can catch your breath you start again.

There are two things that are good, dare I say great about being a parent:

1.  You get to see the raw dependence of our humanity, and it gives you a little glimpse of yourself through God's eyes.  When she flips a switch from angelic little sleeper to rabid starving animal faster than a Fox News broadcaster reporting on an Obama scandal, I can't help but wonder if my prayers (or worse, actions) sometimes sound and look alike:

"God I want this now!

"Dear God, make this happen or else..."

I'm already learning a lot about myself through her - it's pretty cool and also incredibly frightening to watch.

2. I look at her and think "This is a bonding of two families, created in the form of a literal person."  What a neat design, and perhaps a reminder that we're called to live in community and fellowship.  The amount of family and friends we've had come through the door the past 10 days has been overwhelming to me - in a good way!

Katey's mom spent the past week with us helping us acclimate to parenthood.  I was calling her Megamom by the end of the week - I'd come home from work to dinner ready, laundry finished, dishes washed, and baby quietly nursing in Katey's arms.  She was unbelievably helpful (Thanks again Cheryl!).  Despite being in the middle of chemo treatment, my Mom (and Dad of course!) was able to come up and spend time with us, cook us some meals and join in the celebration of Lyla as well!  Family is a blessing, and I look down the road twenty or thirty years in my mind, and see a glorious design only fathomable by a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness...

So in conclusion, parenting is awesomely painful, gloriously exhausting, and uniquely inspiring.

I hear some stirring...hopefully that coffee is ready...