Of sports and men

Back in 1989 I was in… a school. No need to date myself more than that. Anyway, one of my teachers was really into NCAA basketball so he asked us each to pick a team that would win it all. Still in my full on nerd shell I had no idea what teams were even involved with such a sport, so naturally I asked my dad. He suggested Michigan. Actually he suggested a few schools, but Michigan was the first. And they were the ones with the Wolverine mascot. That’s right, a team named for the coolest comic book character (listen, I can retcon that history if I want). So naturally I picked them.

And they won.

Continue reading “Of sports and men”

Thankfulness

Is there really any question what I’m thankful for?

Showing off my little family
Showing off my little family

This photo is a few months old by now, but it’s one of the few “formal” shots we’ve done of our family. It was an impromptu shoot in our bedroom started by The Woman in an attempt to capture Kayleigh spending some real fun time with daddy. The more things change… It’s amazing to realize how much she has grown since that moment, and I’m so thankful to be apart of it.

An attempt to get everybody in one picture
An attempt to get everybody in one picture

Back in September my sister Christine got most of the family together for a slightly more formal photo shoot. This is one of the better ones from my camera. That’s 3 generations of Slatterys – my baby girl being the youngest of the young. Let me just say that I am thankful for each and everyone of them.

Hope you all had a happy turkey day!

I’ll sleep when I’m dead

I used to make fun of bloggers who disappeared once they had a kid. I used to do a lot of things. I don’t anymore.

A couple months after Kayleigh was born, my Mom asked me what caught me off guard the most. When it comes down to it, those questions can be such a paradox. I mean, I totally knew that raising a kid was going to kick my ass even if I wasn’t sure how. But does knowing that you don’t know mean that suddenly you know… Wow, I think I forgot how to write in English… So let’s just cut to the chase.

Sleep.

More specifically, the lack thereof. Whether you have kids of your own or simply experienced what it was like on Mad About You, everybody is familiar with the concept that new parents don’t get to sleep much. I was prepared for that. Hell, you could say that I’ve been preparing for it since junior high when I pretty much stopped sleeping normal hours. The Woman is well familiar with the notion that I would go to sleep after her, wake up before her, and yet still be more alert. So it seemed like I would be able to cover nights with a little less difficulty than most.

Yeah… right. Two things pretty much killed that possibility. First, during the months leading up to Kayleigh taking over our lives, I suddenly became tired – even though I was sleeping more than usual. This probably had something to do with the fact that I was involved with a huge relocation at work, demolishing the kitchen, demolishing and rebuilding what became the nursery, and generally running around like those proverbial headless chickens. Nevertheless, it threw off my body’s natural disinterest in sleep.

Second, once Kayleigh did arrive I found out that sleeplessness due to a baby is completely different from sleeplessness due to work, video games, horror movies, or moderate levels of alcohol. Our “night times” became ridiculously long – heading to bed by 7 PM and getting out of bed around after 7 AM – yet we only got a couple hours of sleep each night. Pretty soon we were scheduling our own naptimes with rather limited success, seeing as how she did not want to cooperate.

Of course nothing is constant with kids – babies that sleep well for months can suddenly start getting up every 2 hours – and as time went by Kayleigh learned to sleep through the night… wait… no. This has been pretty constant. She doesn’t like to sleep. At least not unless she’s in our arms. Otherwise it’s a bit of a struggle. We’ve had her in a bassinet, in a pack ‘n play, on the couch, in her crib, with us in our bed. It’s just not her thing. She wants to be awake and hanging out with the ‘rents. On the one hand I’m flattered, but on the other I’m tired. Actually, both hands are tired.

And so we continue to fiddle with her schedule, musical accompaniment, rocking rhythms, and chloroform dossage to take another step closer to that mythical being known as the child that sleeps through the night. Sigh. Actually, these days we’ve got her back in her crib after taking about a month off from it, and now that she can stretch out without headbutting Daddy the first half of the night is going much more smoothly. And that means that we can now take advantage of the time to get some sleep of our own. Or, you know, watch some TV, read message boards, and take stupid quizzez on Facebook. Yeah, now that Kayleigh is learning more about the wonders of sleep, maybe it’s time we get back to it, too.

I’ve rambled enough with no real point, but at least I’ve broken the seal again. Maybe I can figure out how to get posts in regularly during the 10 minutes that I’m not at work, taking care of Kayleigh, or sleeping. Well, maybe sleep really isn’t that important…

Life of late

Hmm, so, what’s been going on with me lately? I watched a lot of movies… We bought some appliances… I tried to rewire the lights and outlets in our bedroom… I’ve been busy at work getting our new facility ready… Oh, and we found out that the little bump in The Woman’s belly is a little girl. She’s currently about the size of a banana. I’m now picturing a fetus in a banana suit – it’s kind of cute, if not a little creepy. I was ready to share ultrasound to show the proof, but I’m not about to flash my baby girl’s privates all over the Internet.

I also found out that this is the year of the rat. That means I get to call our little bundle of joy a rugrat for real. There will certainly be a bunch of rodent jokes in the coming months.

P.S. We’re starting to think of names. Sloane and Shauna are in the running, but we’re not completely sold on a Ferris Bueller reference…

You could say that Santa Fe was a success

It all starts as a little bump. Nothing more than a lima bean – but even smaller.

The Lima Bean

What is that even supposed to be? There’s a whole lot of stuff going on there – 171 beats per minute – but it really just looks like a blob. How do you even begin to think about it as something real. And then, only a few weeks later, it grows things like a head and feet and whatnot and suddenly you realize that you’re really going to have to name it and wipe its nose and change its diapers and drive it to friends’ houses and pay for college and explain to lots of teachers where its sarcasm came from.

The Little One

Oh, and you’ll also have to stop saying it. For the record I’ve been switching between he and she – mainly he in the old fashioned “gender neutral” sense.

The movement was just crazy. I expected a little wriggling or something – but the big thrusts and sudden jumps were almost unreal. He’s a powerful little guy.

Fetus Power!

I think he’s flashing gang signs or something. We’ll have to work on that.

I guess I should have something more profound to say, but I’m just wondering who in the world could possibly think that I should be in charge of another life? The Woman does – and her opinion matters more than mine.

So, let the countdown begin – one week left of the first trimester. How’s that for pressure?