Crib.

When I brought the nugget home from the hospital I was pretty panicked. I asked the nurse if she would at least check to make sure I did the dang carseat right but she just laughed and put her hands in her obnoxious smiley-face scrub pockets and gave a kinda 'you have no idea what the heck you're in for' smile. Who the heck makes those dang scrubs anyway? I'm at a hospital... there isn't anything really to be that smiley about! I can understand that maybe your skin tone doesn't work with the traditional green attire but someone really needs to just burn those scrubs. (And since when do the smiley-faced people wear biker regalia?!?) I really had no idea what I was doing. I think my only saving grace was that babies are kinda hard to ruin when they sleep 22 hours a day (that and my mom flew in two hours after being told we were at the hospital- so she basically kept nugget and us alive). 

I set up her portable crib in the bedroom next to the bed. It's pink hand has a dust ruffle- if the crib was any more girly it would have some sort of makeup/wax station. It's kinda cute. I grew fond of hearing her jostle around against the netting sides as she was settling in for her night's sleep. She really was a great baby when it came time for sleeping: a little fuss then down for the count. At about five weeks she was sleeping anywhere between 6-8 hours a night. Be really jealous (although her sleep patters were erratic and would swing from good to bad on a whim). She was nighttime gold.

Returning home we decided it was time for her to be in her crib which is in her nursery down the hall from our bedroom. It may as well be in another planet because sitting in bed tonight I feel lightyears away from her. It sucks (mostly because I miss my friend, and also because now the cat can sleep int he bedroom and he likes sleeping on the face.) I miss hearing her jostling around trying to get comfy. I miss her little lips making the motions for her pacifier as she was drifting off to sleep.  I don't want to fall asleep because what if the baby monitor doesn't work and she's up crying in the middle of the night feeling alone and scared and there I am, a blob just sleeping away like my baby is visiting Mars for the weekend. 

I hate it. 

I sense a love/hate relationship forming with my little poop-factory-angel growing up.

Call to Arms

Since when did our kid's cries change from the innocent and nice newborn whimpers into a full fledged baby war-call? When she gets upset I'm half expecting an entire barrage of babies to pummel down our door and rescue our kid from the terror of her crib. I'm thinking this change happened when she began burping like a drunken and disorderly sailor (and other gross gases). Either way, our little nugget has got a nice pair of lungs. Should your baby suddenly awake in the middle of the night, open your window and see if you can hear the bellowing boo of our baby, calling your child to arms.  

Halloween 2011

Did I take my daughter trick or treating? No. Why not? Because if I showed up to your door step holding a fussy baby, who only drinks milk, asking you to give her a Butterfinger because it's her favorite... you'd slap me in the face.

With that said... I did score some candy from my CrimLaw professor. That and a nasty story about a guy who bit off the fingers of his girlfriend when he was tripping on LSD. Spooky and delicious (the candy was delicious, not the story...)

Our Halloween night was spent with my parents who were in town for a few days to celebrate my dad's birthday. We grabbed some dinner, then headed back home to hold the last round of the 3rd annual family pumpkin carving contest. I come from a freakishly fairly competitive family. You dangle a prize in front of our beautiful faces and it's on. With almost the entire family being in different states from each other, we each were responsible to carve pumpkins and take photos of them. Then we'll find a completely unbiased judge to pick the winner, hopefully mine.

What did I carve you ask? Oh, just a grotesque witch that I carved out of the pumpkin complete with straw-like hair and a nasty mole on her face that rivals any pumpkin carved on Food Network's Halloween Wars. Do I think it should win? Of course I do. Will it win? Probably not because my dang father carved a pumpkin inside of a larger pumpkin and the crowd went wild. The Mrs.? She carved an Apple apple in the pumpkin and called it iPumpkin. I'm telling you folks, this is some serious business up in here.

When all was said and done, the freakiest thing we saw on All Hallow's Eve was Derek Hough on DWTS. What did he do? Nothing special, that guy just freaks me the heck out. 

Till next year pumpkin carving contest... till next year.

Again?

Again. Again is such an interesting word. Pair it with any corresponding punctuation mark and you enter into vastly different territories: Again! Again? Again. Again; (does anyone really know how to use a semicolon? See my attempts below...) you get the general idea. When I think of the word again I can't prevent the little radio in between my ears from blasting B-Spears' classic "Oops! I did it again." (notice her lyricist- yes, I'm assuming, rather confidently, that she does not write her own music- used a period after again; very declaratory of your Brit Brit). She sings it so enthusiastically that I almost immediately assume trying to do something 'again' is something to sing about while wearing a skin-tight red leotard. Well, I'm not really sure that I'm feeling that way with the start of another blog. I don't typically wear red.

I believe there are two kinds of writers: ones who have to write to get their words off their chest, using their literature as a confidant, hidden from the rest of the world; and the ones who write so others will read, hoping their meager thoughts transcend beyond the glow of the screen. I'm the latter of the two. I worried with other blogs that I would write and write and write and no one would read. I approached each "post" with a mixture of trepidation, anxiety, and excitement hoping I would write the post that would magically yield a bevy of comments. I never wrote that post. I imagine I never will. But I guess this blog is completely worth it if one day, years from now, my daughter will read it (and other future kids- although no mom, this isn't any announcement). 

She's only two months. She's learning that her hands are hers and how to make spit bubbles. She's in a world where almost everything is entirely new. She's got one heck of a mom, who intuitively knows how much lotion to use post-bath, if a diaper is on too tight, the difference between a grunt of conversation and one of devastation (diaper devastation that is), and whether or not a feeding is in order. And she's got a dad who's trying his best. 

I'm calling this blog "Nightlife to Nightlights" as I am journeying into the role of fatherhood. Things in my world are so vastly different than they were 11 months ago. This blog will certainly highlight many of them, although not exclusively. I'm certainly no authority on this transition, and thus won't devote this entire forum for wisdom- instead it will mostly likely be wisecracks.

While with a group of friends tonight, I was explaining how becoming a father doesn't seem to have taken my life in a different direction; but rather, that I became on an entirely different track than I was before; a track that greatly prevents me from remembering what it was like not to be a father. Life, in every way, is better with our little Gooby. It was the right time to have her. We regret none of it. I hope Gooby won't either. So one day Gooby, you'll hopefully read this and laugh as your old man figures out how be come an "old man". 

FYI, Blogger does not limit how many blogs one can start and abandon. So here it goes; again.