Thoughts on Friendship

It was a very social weekend, and I’m exhausted today. Tired less from the events themselves and more, I think, from worrying how baby would fit in.

We’re more relaxed when we take him out, because Felix’s usually a calm little guy in a social setting. Often, by the time we meet up with people, he’s asleep, lulled by the stroller or subway ride. And once we’re in a new place there are so many things for him to look at and listen to; he’s distracted to no end. (Sometimes too much so—the only time he ever had trouble latching on was in a loud, crowded pub.)

Having people over is another matter. On home turf, Felix’s moods are difficult to control or even predict. On his sleepy days, our guests find him a quiet presence, a warm bundle of cuteness we all pass around. And on those few and far between days when the nap to waking ratio is just right he does even better with company. He’s quietly alert, looking into people’s eyes, flashing smiles, interacting with coos and burbles—in short, as charming as a seven week old baby can be. It’s the wakeful days that are problematic.

Of course, for our first dinner party—a small gathering, with only six of us total—he was in the middle of a seven hour stretch of activity. Our hopes of getting him down for a nap went out the door when our guests arrived with the usual flurry of greetings, drink making, music and laughter. Still, with new hands to hold him, he stayed calm for the first couple of hours, and his swing chair kept him occupied through dinner. By dessert though, his fussiness couldn’t be contained. He went from person to person to varying degrees of success, quieting for a few moments with this one, wailing when in the arms of that one. As the night wore on the quiet bits became increasingly shorter, and the cries not only more frequent, but louder.

Finally S and I excused ourselves to give him a bath and start the bedtime routine. We had warned our friends that the party, which started earlier than usual, might end before ten. Not only did they get on their way promptly and with no qualms, but they did the dishes and straightened up the kitchen before they left! More importantly, they never made us feel like having a baby around curbed the party, or that it made us any less fun to hang out with.

This was something that I feared, knowing people who lost friends or found relationships strained when baby came along. We’re the first among our immediate circle to have a child, and we have encountered people—acquaintances, really, not friends—who predicted that procreating would end our social life. One person said that we weren’t going to “be normal” for the next eighteen years. Thanks a lot! I don’t think he wanted to make us feel like social pariahs, but that’s certainly what came across, and whether or not we accept his definition of normal (which of course we don’t) it automatically put us on the defensive.

So it’s come as a huge relief to find that we can, with some preparation and a little adjustment, incorporate Felix into our social life. Partly his calm disposition makes this possible, but it’s also the result of friends who love us and go with the punches even when he’s being restless.

It is true what everyone says, that a baby changes your life. I’ve come to see nearly all of the relationships I have in a new light in the past seven weeks, and I’m pretty lucky to say that almost every one of them has deepened and grown.

The First Ever Daddy and Son Night

Yesterday the whole family, cat included, tucked in for an early afternoon nap. It was blissful and lovely and–unfortunately–short lived.

After a couple days of more regular and frequent sleeping spells, the crabby, fussy, nap-resistant Felix of last week struck back. His old tactics were as sharp as ever: the full-lunged wailing in our ears, the headbutts to the chin caused by spastic neck control, the lips that curled down like a sour wedge of lemon, and the face that darkened to the color of a just squeezed zit. Any one of these sent a clear message that our baby was one miserable little creature, to which we, at the mercy of centuries old hormones and parental instincts, felt a mixture of upset, guilt, anger, and concern.

But Felix had been developing new skills at an amazing pace this week. He learned how to track my finger when I moved it in front of his eyes, and grab hold of things for short periods of time, and turn his head to look at things that interested him. So there were some new additions to his arsenal. During one frustrated fit, he grabbed the glasses off my face. During countless others he projectile vomited, because after all, nothing else says “It’s sick how unhappy I am right now” like spurting puke down the neck of the loving parent who happens to be slugging around and trying to placate your baby ass.

He threw up so much we started classifying his vomit. A couple minutes after feeding, the milk mixed with saliva formed an unctuous, creamy substance, that honestly looked a lot like semen. Quickly thereafter it curdled into a cottage cheesy mixture. The little gobs stuck to our clothes like ice cream smears, and when they came out of his nose they formed big white boogers that attached to the edge of his nostril and made him sneeze. This, I thought as the day went on, is the kind of intimate knowledge one gets of their child.

What also made yesterday different from last week’s terror of tiredness was that S was heading out for some solo time. In the past, we’ve both been around to share the fuss, passing the crying baby back and forth like a oozing cold sore. I wouldn’t be able to do that once S departed for the evening.

As the afternoon wore on, I hoped that Felix would get as bored with his crying as I was, but nothing seemed to calm him down. Even right after S fed him for the last time before leaving he was one grumpy dude, causing her to doubt whether she should go at all. Hoping to calm him down, I strapped him into his stroller and headed out before she could change her mind. Not only did I think it important for her to have some mommy free time, I also wanted to have a night with Felix alone, so I could get a taste of what I might have to deal with come September when S goes back to work and I take over this gig full time.

To sweeten the stroller ride, I thought we would head someplace fun–the wine store. Felix was a silent, wide-eyed observer the whole walk there, and when I ran into some neighbors he turned on the charm. I was the proud dad out on an evening stroll with his son, and all was well with the world. But unfortunately, Felix didn’t find the racks of Burgundies and Merlots nearly as interesting as I did, and within a minute of entering the store he started bawling.

“He’s really a good little baby, he’s just tired–it’s been a few hours since he slept,” I told the few people who looked at me sadly, shaking their heads as if I were one of those hapless idiotic fathers, unable to care for a child without the more capable leadership of a woman.

I’ve encountered this attitude before. The second time I brought Felix to the pediatrician a nurse, upon seeing me come into the examination room alone, asked where my wife was. I told her she was home recovering from the birth, to which she said incredulously, “You came alone?” I’m sure the new mothers in the waiting room with their two week year olds didn’t encounter such static.

But of course there in the wine store I did feel a bit embarrassed, as well as bad for the little guy, so I grabbed the first bottle that looked halfway decent and went on my way. When I got home about quarter to eight he had fallen asleep, so I decided to draw his bath and put him down early. I’m a So You Think You Can Dance nut, and I hoped to have him in bed by nine so I could watch the results show in peace. Leaving him downstairs sleeping, I crept off to fill the tub and lay out his pjs. Halfway up the steps he woke up in tears. I rushed back and tried to comfort him, but he became more upset when I pulled him out of the carrier, flailing his arms around and screaming in my ear so loud I was sure the neighbors could hear and were probably wondering what the hell I was doing to the poor kid. Or else they’d be shaking their heads sadly with a bemused smirk on their lips, like those people in the wine store. I felt pinned down in a catch-22, unable to get his bath and bottle ready with him in my arms squirming so much, and unable to stop him from squirming without a bath and bottle. Knowing it was a lose-lose, I decided to put him down and get his bedtime stuff ready.

When I came back a few minutes later to retrieve him, the unhappy little guy had worked himself into hysterics, crying so hard he was hiccuping and burping. I shook off my guilt and ineptitude and powerlessness and glued a smile on, and hummed to him, and barreled along like it was a completely normal night, changing him, then bathing him, then feeding him. But while the warm water soothed him, Felix never lost that trembly sniffling “I’m about to lose my shit” edge, and he started a routine of repetitive “LA LA LA” cries as soon as I started toweling him dry. These are his needy cries, the ones he lets out when he’s hungry or looking for a diaper change. The only thing that stopped him was giving him the bottle, and even then, whenever I pulled it away to burp him, he began to cry again.

WTF? I asked myself. We had gone through his bedtime ritual, the same routine that calms him down every night. With one big difference. Instead of the boob, he was getting the bottle.

In that moment, I felt so unable to care for him. If S had been here, she would have fed him right after our walk, calming him before bathing him. I had moved forward with the bath because I had only one bottle of milk and didn’t think I could stretch it over two feedings. Not only that, I selfishly wanted to get in front of the television in time for my damn program. I figured the bedtime routine would hold some magic of its own, quieting him and making him drowsy, when Felix was communicating in the only way he could that he was in need of holding and feeding and comforting. Comforting I couldn’t of provided.

Fortunately, after the bottle and a lot of rocking, he settled down. And by nine o’clock he had managed to get to sleep, while I had managed to whip up a quick omlet for dinner. S was happy with her time out on the town with her friends; it re-energized her to get away for the night. Which is great, because I’m going to need a lot more practice being with him alone–and I mean alone as in there’s not a breast a short distance away to latch him onto when he’s losing it–before I feel more confident and capable caring for him for a long stretch of time on my own.

Postpartum Visit

We saw the midwives for the last time today. Well, I did anyway. S was happy to find that she can now see them regularly for all her gynecological needs. (Don’t think Felix and I’ll be tagging along for those visits!) Of course, who knows, maybe in a year or so I’ll be back in that little examination room for baby number two—but let’s not even go there right now.

S was excited to show off Felix, who sensed the attention and was bright-eyed cute and full of smiles, both real and gas related (he had just eaten). The last time any of them saw him he was hidden behind monitor wires and hoses in the NICU, and reintroducing him felt like the end of the birth chapter of this story. There were hugs and warm words and S made them cookies, which garnered the usual response of “when do you have time to bake?!” I’m fortunate that for S, baking and cooking make it onto her list of necessities. She finds time. (S says that she’s fortunate I’m around so that she has the time to find.)

The midwives told us that we seemed pretty together and well-rested, which made me feel both proud and also somewhat spoiled—it’s such a luxury having us both home. (Nine years of Catholic school trained me, like one of Pavlov’s dogs, to experience guilt along with every positive emotion.) Despite the daily flare-ups of tension or anxiety, the past six weeks have brought us so much closer together. S and I always worked well together, but now we’re operating like a tight team.

And speaking of, we received a prescription for special birth control pills that won’t leech estrogen into the breast milk and make Felix busty along with the go-ahead to have sex again, when we’re ready. Those last three words being the key ones. S was happily surprised to find that the exam caused her no pain, alleviating some of her fears about fooling around down there. Our biggest roadblocks are probably psychological. We’ve engaged in adolescent amounts of petting, making out, and cuddling, but except for a few wet oases, pregnancy was one long sex-free desert. You’d think we’d jump to it with abandon, but we’re going to ease back into this part of our relationship, literally. S isn’t quite ready, and not only am I out of practice (hello, performance anxiety!), but I’ve heard so many stupid things about sex post-pregnancy (you know, how it’s not good anymore because the equipment’s been all stretched out) that I’ll need some time to get out of my head and into the swing of things.

Hopefully more information than you’d ever want to know will be coming your way sooner rather than later.

The Frustration and the Wonder

I’m pretty damn sure that Felix sometimes cries not just because he wants something but also because he’s annoyed I can’t figure out what that thing is. Just a few minutes ago, for example, we were funning on the bed. Playing peek-a-boo and tickling his belly now makes him smile, while talking in a falsetto and making faces captivates him. If he’s in the right mood, just flashing him a goofy grin is enough to start his excitement going: the quickened, deepened breathing, the crooked half-smile, the big alert eyes, the hands flailing about in the direction of the thing he’s interested in.

The bitch is, some of these are also his pre-meltdown signs, and getting Felix worked up inevitably ends in him crossing the boundary from cool to crying.

Which frustrates me, because I can’t ever figure out what it is he wants. Our games on the bed ended when he seemed to want something on my face. But what was it? He bonked my cheeks a couple times with his hands, but he lacks control of his fingers, and his aim ain’t very good, so I could only wonder. Maybe my glasses? Maybe he just wanted to reach out and make contact? Though I tried walking him around, it was too late—the tears started and fun time was over. S suggested he was bored, so took him for a walk in the garden. (As I’m writing this, I can’t hear whether he’s wailing or not.)

If only Felix and I could more clearly communicate with one another. Dealing with him when he gets fussy like this makes me think of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer’s number gets mixed up with moviephone and he decides to sit in his apartment with the movie listings, waiting for people to call so he can give them the times. At first he tells them to press one for this movie or two for that one, but when he can’t understand the beeps, he tells them, “Why don’t you just tell me the movie you’d like to see?”

Since Felix can’t tells us, S and I’ve become detectives, trying to piece together his likes and dislikes as if we’re constructing a personal ad for a stranger based solely on observation. Likes include staring at string lights, mirrors, and splotches of morning sunlight creeping up the wall, holding onto fingers, listening to high-pitch voices speaking in a put-on foreign accent, smelling fresh mint from the garden, and sucking on binkies. Must have a passion for baths.

Bathing definitely chills Felix out, and over the weekend I got in on the action by hopping in the tub with him. We were visiting Grandma, who doesn’t have a baby bath, and this seemed like the easiest way to bathe the little guy. I held his head and submerged his body in the warm water, and he spread his arms out, letting them float. He had the most contented and chill of all expressions on his face—eyes wide, mouth slightly open, breathing steady and sure—the look of someone in a state of happy relaxation, soaking in life.

At the best of times, that’s what spending time with the little guy has been like for me too. The logical detective goes on vacation, and, imitating my son, I try to hold my gaze as long as I can without blinking, just taking him all in.

One of Those Days

The kitchen’s a clutter of breakfast and lunch dishes, and jars of ground clove, sugar, and nutmeg left out from S whipping up gingersnap dough which she didn’t have time to bake. Upstairs is half-cleaned, the vacuum still uncoiled in the middle of the bedroom, the shelves in Felix’s nook stripped of bric-a-brac and ready for dusting. But today is one of those days where baby’s on a sleep strike, and as it gets later, he’s become increasingly fussy and needy, and it seems the little guy’s addicted to bouncing.

That’s not to say we’ve been ALL about him all day long. We did manage to get him to settle for an hour long nap in the morning and afternoon, and (fingers crossed) I might actually be able to complete this blog post if the little guy remains asleep for an evening snooze. And he hasn’t been in a pissy mood the whole time either. We had a lovely family sojourn to the park, and shared lots of great moments of both quiet alert and active playfulness. It’s just that when the little guy wakes up at five-thirty in the morning and then refuses to snooze throughout the day, our perceptions becomes warped and twisted. We feel stuck in sleepy mommy-daddy zone, bouncing between chores and baby duty, trying to squeeze in time for a personal email, or journaling, or a moment of grown-up ME time.

These days are always exhausting, but feel more so after a weekend visiting grandma, where a third hand, plenty of sleep inducing car rides, and a dinner out had us spoiled. (As if we don’t already have it good with two of us at home. How do single parents do it??)

Oh man–the little king has awoken. At least my arms are getting toned from carrying him around so much!

Real Development

Exhausted after a social afternoon with no nap, Felix conked out early last night, waking up at five this morning full of energy. Stifling my sleepy grumbles, baby and I retreated downstairs so S could get some sleep. I plugged in the string lights in the living room–a lingering trace of my childhood Christmas fanaticism–and laid him on my lap. He’s now able to swivel his head and focus on the lights. As I held him up closer to them, he arched his back, stretching up, and brought a hand around to touch one of the glowing masses. He broke into one of the biggest, goofiest, most beautifully sincere grins I’ve ever seen.

A nurse told us that baby development happens from the head down. First they develop neck control, then they learn how to grab things, then with trunk strength they sit up, with hip coordination they crawl, and finally they’re on their feet. My non-baby-tested self took this literally, thinking I would check one thing off before seeing signs of the next. In reality, Felix is an active cloud of development.

He can’t quite hold that huge head of his up, and when he does keep it steady a minute or two later it drops back down, usually with some force. He doesn’t seem to mind conking it about. (Daddy, on the other hand, often lets out an “ow” when baby headbutts his chin. It smarts!) Simultaneously, he’s learning that he has hands–touching things and occasionally taking hold of them. And he’s already playing with his legs. One of his favorite activities is being supported in a standing position. His bent knees straighten as he pushes off of my stomach, and when I support his upper body he pumps his thighs up and down in a mock-walk.

So don’t be deceived next time you see an infant. Wiry muscles are hiding under that baby pudge!

Aha!

I couldn’t even reread yesterday’s post—remind me never to blog while grumpy.

So we figured out the root of this week’s napping difficulties: last weekend’s visit to my parents. It hit me earlier today, when Felix fell peacefully asleep in my lap, and then woke up crying when I put him down. While at Nana and Pop-pop’s he was almost always in someone’s arms, and he was almost always a sleepy little angel.

Mystery solved, now we have to figure out how to help him learn to fall asleep on his own. This afternoon, I gave him his pacifier when he started fussing. He then spat it out, but I gave it to him again, and we played this game until he tired of it and drifted off. Maybe a few days of this and he’ll learn I’m not going to just pick him up?

Also—I’ve resolved not to complain so much about him. Really Felix is a wonderful baby, but I think it sounds like I’m bitching about him from some of the past posts. I don’t know. I’m not always the gushing “he’s such a miracle” type. And it was a challenging week with him. But I want to make sure I don’t sound like a sour old man up here, because that’s not how I feel.

Irregular is the New Regular

The weather can’t decide whether it wants to be overcast or sunny, and despite a cool breeze the air’s heavy with humidity. Its uncertainty has put a sharp edge on our already taut moods.

S woke up grumpy from an up-and-down night’s sleep. Not because Felix needed frequent feeding, but because he’s begun to let out loud sighs and groans and random startled yelps in the middle of the night. These sounds don’t signal any need, they’re just a result of his shifting around or digestion, but they tickle S’s maternal instincts and rouse her awake.

Though it sounds like science fiction, S’s breasts literally ache when the baby cries, so after a particularly vocal display like last night’s she ends up feeling catnapped instead of really rested in the morning. Because my emotional response isn’t tuned as highly as hers I tend to be more adept at interpreting his sounds, separating the priority “I need something” wails from his random verbalizations. It’s when Felix gets worked up into hysterics that I find it impossible not to respond in kind, as a whole range of emotions–sadness, pity, protectiveness, concern, a crushing sense of futility–pass through me. Sometimes I can’t help but laugh, hoping that if I make light of his tears he’ll forget about them. Other times I might even become angry, as if he’s crying to spite me.

The other night, I left S downstairs to entertain a dinner guest while I tried soothing our fussy, gassy son. Twenty minutes later, after a few wet burps and farts, the little guy was still tomato red and screaming his head off in pain. All I could do was keep moving and bouncing, one hand constantly patting or rubbing his back, my lips pursed lips as I exhaled shush upon shush. But nothing worked. He didn’t calm till well after the guest had left and S had cleaned up from our dinner, and then it was mostly on his own, not because of anything special I did. But I was left worn out emotionally.

S and I’ve both found him a bit draining today too, his second day in a row of wakefulness. We’ve been fortunate because most nights he sleeps pretty solidly, and for long stretches, waking up for food once sometime between one and three and again in the early morning. Not bad at all as babies go. The difficult thing is during the day. Despite what most books promise–that newborns sleep off and on around the clock, only staying awake for a few hours at a time–Felix’s been known to go seven or eight hours straight without a nap, long stretches during which he becomes fussier and fussier. He’s the opposite on other days, only alert for a couple hours total. But our tomes of baby wisdom tell us that prior to three months not much that can be done to sleep train him.

And yet we wonder. A neighbor said she instituted a schedule from day one. A friend said by six weeks she had her baby napping every one and a half hours or so, otherwise he became grouchy. We would like to institute some kind of schedule, even if a loose one, less for him and more for our own sanity.

Then again, from Saturday night to Sunday, he was up every hour and a half or so to feed, a spurt that resulted in a half-ounce increase in S’s milk production by Monday. (We know this from her pumping.) Even if we had a routine in place he would’ve blown a hole through it!

Sigh. Like the indecisive weather, the complete lack of routine in our lives has us strained. It’s not like we’re anal schedulemeisters, but an iota of predictability would be nice. The sage authors of our books say that it’s impossible to spoil a newborn by giving in to his every whim. But is it possible to mold him, to guide him, to get him to conform to some schedule?

Echoes in the Unlikeliest Place

Over the weekend we visited my folks, who were more than happy—jubilant was more like it—taking care of Felix while S and I went out for a movie. Of course, minutes before we left the baby woke from his morning nap crying with hunger, sparking worries that the milk S had pumped wasn’t going to be enough to cover our absence. But my parents assured us he would be fine, and the theater wasn’t far from their house, so we decided to trust them and go.

We saw the Pixar film Up. I won’t give away too much of the plot by saying that the old man in the film recently lost his wife, and their life together was depicted through a montage of moments accompanied by piano music but devoid of dialogue, like a silent film. I choked up when the couple found out they couldn’t have children together, and by the time the husband became a widower I was teary. Throughout the movie he talked to his dead wife, and I became more and more affected by his one-sided conversations. Toward the end, when he uncovered a keepsake book she created for him, I finally lost it.

Images from the labor replayed in my memory, along with the smell of the blood, and I remembered the fear of holding S’s hand as the nurse wheeled in the table of scalpels. I realized then—not as an intellectual possibility but as an emotional one—that she might die during childbirth. There was an almost sickening drop in the pit of my stomach, and I felt that if I started crying I wasn’t going to be able to stop. I’ve never been so on the edge of losing control than at that point in the labor. The thought of losing her was so intense.

The love and loss of old man’s story in Up resonated so strongly with those feelings that I ended up silently bawling, tears running out under my 3D glasses.

S leaned over and asked, “What’s wrong with your sinuses?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Why do you keep sniffling?”

“I’m crying.”

She tightened her grip on my arm and snuggled closer and I let out a sigh. She was ok, Felix was ok, we were visiting family and everyone was reveling in his presence. It all worked out. But this cartoon reminded me of what might have been.

This is the second time in a row I’ve gotten emotional at a movie. We saw Star Trek about a week or so before the labor and the opening sequence—where a father sacrifices himself to save his wife and son—also had me crying. Perhaps it feels safer, in the darkness and anonymity of the theater, to shed a tear or two. Or maybe, because it’s someone else’s story instead of my own and the stakes are low, I feel comfortable unstoppering my emotions. Whatever the reason, this has always been the case. (Maybe I mistitled this post.) My Dad took me to see ET when I was a kid and I became so upset when the alien died that he almost took me out. Last summer, Wall-E had me heart strung and weepy.

When we came home from Up, I felt hollowed out and tender. I was grateful that my mom made the bottle last for two feedings so S and I could have that experience together. And of course I was happy to find Felix sleeping comfortably in his great-grandmother’s arms. All was well.

Finding Time

Before having a baby, I thought the saying “it takes a village” meant that new parents have to turn to their elders for child rearing advice. Since Felix came on the scene, I’ve come to think it’s literal.

Once upon an evolutionary time, humans lived in close-knit communities. Many hands were available to carry the baby or fetch things that the mother needed. People could help the babies that needed a lot of support, which is why those digestively challenged big headed babies survived. These fetuses had developed noggins of such girth they were ejected out from their momma’s narrow pelvises (which narrowed when humans went up on two legs) before systems such as digestion and respiration had matured. Despite being gassy, cranky infants, their large craniums meant they had big brains, which helped them live long enough to pass on their intellect. In this way, our intelligence wouldn’t have developed without a society to support it, the glue of which are emotions like love and compassion, particularly that felt for our children.

Now that many of us live in isolated little families, there are fewer people around to care for baby—typically it all falls to the mother. No wonder moms feel overwhelmed and depressed after childbirth! The baby needs so much, there’s little bandwidth for anything else. The mom becomes a baby feeding, changing, and comforting machine.

We’re fortunate to have a pretty chillaxed baby. But sometimes, inexplicably, Felix wants to be carried around and jiggled to no end. Putting him down for even thirty seconds causes his jowls to drop (this is his puss face) and starts a chorus of the “la la la” cries that signify he wants something. Maybe the motion aids his digestion, or maybe he’s emotionally needy, or bored, or on a power trip. There are times when dancing around the house with him is fun—he makes eye contact, lets out short gasping breaths of excitement, and recently has started smiling (oh, the small rewards). Other times Daddy’s arms become leaden and I need to pee or grab a drink or maybe I just want to detach and act like a grownup for five minutes, at which point I pass him to S.

Over the past month we’ve learned that Felix’s needs can magically expand like a ShamWow, sucking both of us in. We passed several afternoons shuttling him back and forth between us every twenty or thirty minutes, one of us pacifying him while other cooked, cleaned, shopped, tried to keep up with correspondence, exercised, or caught up on sleep. At the end of those afternoons, Felix seemed like just another chore, one that wouldn’t end for eighteen years.

S in particular, as Felix’s food supply, found herself chained by his side, her day broken into two hour chunks between feeds. She only made it out for one hour of solo time during his entire first month. People would ask her, “What’s new besides baby?” Or, to me, “How’s the writing going?” Polite gestures that twisted the knife, making it seem like one of my pre-babies fears was coming true: our whole lives had collapsed into a nine pound ball of baby boy joy.

So, a month post-birth, we’ve gotten smarter (we think). We’re setting boundaries. During the morning hours, between breakfast and lunch, S takes baby while I have time to do what I want. In the afternoon, I have him, along with a bottle of breast milk so S doesn’t have to be disturbed for feeding. We’re hoping a few hours of grown-up time every day prevents baby fatigue and increases the quality of the time we spend with him. Our plan also severs our dependency on one another, sundering the dual-headed parental unit into two slightly more crazed yet still functioning individuals.

I can hear him downstairs as I write this, upset with S, who’s putting him in his stroller for a morning walk. But I’m not going down to help. Now’s my time, and I need to be selfish in order to be fully engaged with him later. Though it’s hard ignoring those wails.

Today’s day two of putting our plan into action. Hopefully I’ll have more time in the coming weeks to keep you posted on how it goes.

The cuteness excuses a lot.