The life and times of an irrational father. One man, multiple personalities.
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I Think the Window was Fogged Up

April 15th, 2009 | Posted by Joe in flat earth | irrational dad | pain | sick Tyler | sleepless nights | surgery - (5 Comments)


After Tyler’s nine month checkup last week, Sarah called me and filled me in on how it went down. I then proceeded to do some research over at Google on otoscopes, otitis media, and ear infections. After reading for around two hours, I wrote a post about the appointment and the concerns that came from it. I usually proofread my posts twice before I unleash them to public scrutiny. Unfortunately, even after that, I’ve still found spelling and grammar mistakes after pressing the deceptively plain "publish" button. I frantically start clicking and editing, praying all the while that I get it fixed before anyone visits and before the readers that many of you use pick it up. Once that is done, I give the post one final reading. The point is, I’ve read that post a minimum of four times – probably closer to six or so – and never saw what most of you did. And I feel horrible for it; like I took you for a ride.

Am I concerned for Tyler? Of course. I’m his parent, his protector; I’ll be concerned for him every day of my life. Am I worried about it? Not really. I know he’ll be just fine. Am I worried that you hate it when people ask themselves questions like this and then answer themselves? Absolutely! It annoys me as well sometimes, so I try to keep it to a minimum.

The post only had a few comments from my readers, but I received quite a few emails about it, along with some comments on Facebook, a couple tweets, and a live conversation or two about it. It appears that many of you finished the post thinking that Tyler couldn’t hear. Maybe it had something to do with the post being titled, "Great, so he can’t hear, then?" Oops.

To clarify, the Doc said that he still has fluid in his ears, and it could create some hearing difficulties. Tyler responds to many sounds, so I’m not worried that he can’t hear. I just don’t know how clearly he is hearing. I compounded that with the fact that he had a double ear infection two months ago and has never stopped tugging on his ears, and took it to extremes. Gee, I wonder why my blog is called Irrational Dad.

After many – MANY – suggestions, I told Sarah that we’d be silly to not at least try taking Tyler to a chiropractor. Sarah made an appointment and took Tyler in yesterday while I was at work (actually, I was driving home from work and only missed the appointment by twenty minutes).

Since I wasn’t there, I won’t be able to do justice to exactly what transpired. Sarah said that Dr. Nagel used a tool that she compared to an air gun. Google has failed me in trying to get a proper name for the instrument, so we’ll just have to call it an adjustment gun. After checking Tyler’s back and neck, Lee (Dr. Nagel) shot him a couple times. This gun does not puncture the skin nor inject weird voodoo medicine into the body. From the little I have been able to gleam from the internet, I believe that the tool is basically a spring loaded actuator that gives a speedy, yet painless adjustment to whichever vertebrae has been targeted. Using an otoscope, Lee saw the fluid in Tyler’s ears, so when he goes back in for his second of three adjustments in a few days, we’ll know if things are improving. Personally, I won’t need a fancy otoscope to know if Tyler’s getting better. I just need to see Sarah wake up in the morning feeling rested because Tyler didn’t wake up crying four times in the night.

Lee is very optimistic that we’re on the right road. He is the husband of a woman that Sarah and I adore (our Bradley Instructor), and we assume that she has a pretty decent taste in men, plus our super-awesome Nurse Midwife takes her children to him as well, and I’d be inclined to believe anything she says, even if she told me that the Earth is flat. And to be perfectly honest, with the alternative being the possibility of putting Tyler under anesthesia to get surgery, this treatment will be worth every penny, whether it ends up being necessary or not.

Tyler is nine months old and has had his first chiropractic adjustment. I’m 31 years old (41.3 times older than Tyler) and have been to the chiropractor fewer times than my own son. Just thinking about that makes my T4 hurt. Seriously. If Lee saw an x-ray of my spine, I think he would drink a bottle of Gatorade (you know, to get his electrolytes up), tell his receptionist to clear his schedule, crack his knuckles (ha), and take me right to the gates of heaven a few times.

Vote for Tyler

March 6th, 2009 | Posted by Joe in adventures in babydom | Bad parenting | Beauty Pageant | irrational dad | photos | Tyler - (2 Comments)


Tyler has been entered in a local photo contest. The winner will have their picture printed in color in our local newspaper, with a chance of being on the cover of a local family magazine.

The photos are all located here:
http://www.kpcnews.net/photocontest

Tyler’s picture is the first picture on page 4:
http://www.kpcnews.net/photocontest/?page=4&max=79&month=March

View just his picture here:
http://www.kpcnews.net/photocontest/viewphoto.php?ID=237&month=March
and click on “VOTE” to the right of the image.

All you need to do is click “VOTE” under his picture. Help me out, my dear blog readers!!!! This could mark the 3rd time Tyler has been in our newspaper!!!

The backstory on the picture is here:
http://joegearhart.blogspot.com/2009/01/oreo.html

The Somnambulistic Son

February 25th, 2009 | Posted by Joe in adventures in babydom | family | irrational dad | joe | pacifier | Sarah | sleep | Tyler - (8 Comments)
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The silence in the room was broken as a cry drifted down the stairs. Joe, an unassuming man who is convinced that Murphy’s Law applies to his everyday life, turned to look at Sarah.

As a stay-at-home mom, Sarah has developed an expertise in all things baby. On more than one occasion, Joe has found himself wondering if Sarah has some type of supernatural connection with the baby. He’s attempted to rationalize these thoughts. He knows that Sarah’s hearing is better than his. But how can she be in the kitchen, chopping up food, with a fan turned on and music playing in the background and STILL know when Tyler wakes up? And let’s be honest, Joe. Doesn’t Tyler always seem to know when Sarah’s nearby, almost like he senses it? It’s a two-way bond, between mother and son, and you aren’t a member of that club, Joe.

Tyler is the seven month old product of the the young marriage between Sarah and Joe. If you were to see his smile, you would see the sproutings of three teeth, with two more, maybe three, on the way. Tyler is also the owner of the cry that has Joe sitting up and looking questioningly to Sarah.

Sarah was gazing upward, head cocked ever so slightly to the right. Joe was certain that she was focusing her auditory senses on the room above, but that small, nagging part of his head thought otherwise. She’s looking through the floor, Joe. She’s watching Tyler THROUGH the twelve inches of plaster, wiring, joists, sub-flooring and carpet. And matting, Joe. She’s also looking through the matting.

In the silence that followed the initial cry, she said, “Maybe he’ll go back to sleep.”

Joe relaxed and let out the breath he didn’t notice he was holding. Yes, maybe he would go back to sleep. It was eleven o’clock POST meridiem, after all.

The answer to that particular thought came down the stairs in a more forceful tone than the cry that first interrupted the quiet evening. With a sigh, Joe stood up, walked to the stairs, and started up the fourteen steps to Tyler’s room, stepping over the three creaky ones. It was a habit he picked up shortly after Tyler was born. In the darkness of the second floor, he turned the doorknob and pushed the door open. They live in an old house that has settled over the years. Joe has combatted the non-levelness of the house by placing shims under one or more corners of the furniture. The door to Tyler’s room also falls victim to this non-level nature and will swing open without any external force. It stops only upon hitting the doorstop with a BANG……. BANg…. BAng… Bang.. bang bangbangbangbang, as it bounces off the stop with decreasing force each time it connects. Only a week ago did Joe have what he considers to be the brainstorm idea of placing one of Tyler’s stuffed toys against the doorstop. Now, the only sound from the door is a quiet “ffff”.

Tyler was in his crib, sitting, crying. Joe could just barely make out the shape of the pacifier in the darkness. It was laying on the floor, about a foot or so from the crib.

“Big surprise”, Joe said under his breath as he bent to pick it up. He mused on whether this small piece of plastic and silicone was the source or the cure for the Tyler storms that have a tendency to materialize seemingly out of nothingness.

“Here you go, buddy. Shh shh shh shhhh. Let’s go back to our night nights.” More times than not, night nights comes out as “nigh nighs”, and this was no exception.

With his eyes now adjusted to the darkness, Joe got a better look at Tyler and saw that, sitting in his crib and crying, his eyes were still closed. He asked in barely a whisper, “Are you still sleeping, TyTy?” In fact, the whisper was so faint that Joe would later wonder if he even said it aloud at all. He picked Tyler up an inch so he could lay him down again. Tyler’s eyes never opened. They never even fluttered. Convinced more than before that Tyler was indeed still asleep, Joe placed the pacifier in Tyler’s mouth. Instantly, Tyler fell still and silent.

Shutting the door and walking down the stairs, a swarm of thoughts flooded Joe’s head. Sarah looked at him, waiting for a status update, and although Joe was certain that she watched the entire scene unfold through the ceiling/floor combo that seperated the two rooms, he said “That boy is going to be a sleepwalker.”

The End

somnambulistic (som-nahm-byoo-lis-tic): a parasomnia or sleep disorder where the sufferer engages in activities that are normally associated with wakefulness while he or she is asleep or in a sleep-like state.

Suck On This – Part II

February 17th, 2009 | Posted by Joe in adventures in babydom | crying | irrational dad | poor Sarah | sleepless nights | thumbsucking | tired - (7 Comments)
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When Tyler wakes up in the wee hours between sunset and sunrise (you know the hours. Before parenthood, these would be the hours that you would just be stumbling towards bed, sometimes in a slightly inebriated stupor. These would be the hours that we now cherish as quiet, sleepy time), Sarah takes care of him nine times out of ten. It would be more accurate to say 99 times out of a hundred, but who’s keeping track?

Sometimes, he needs nursies. Other times, he just wakes up and can’t go back to sleep until someone picks his pacifier off the floor and gives it back to him. That cursed (please pronounce it “curs-ed”, not “cursd”, because that’s how I’m saying it as I type it out) pacifier. When Tyler was born, I told EVERYONE that I would rather give Tyler a pacifier than have him be a thumbsucker. My reasoning? Well, because I can take away a pacifier. I can’t take away Tyler’s thumbs. If I could go back and talk to the Joe of seven months ago, I’d slap the white off my own face.

I never considered the flipside of such a scenario. When Tyler falls asleep, his pacifier falls out of his mouth, and ALWAYS drops off his crib to the floor. Upon waking up and realizing his pacifier is not within reach, he will gently call for his parents to come and rectify the situation. If we do not oblige within half a second, he cranks the volume up to 11 until we do so. Many a time have we walked into Tyler’s room to see him reaching through the slats of his crib, looking at us as if to say “What? I tried getting it myself before asking for help.”

Normally, this doesn’t really bother me. Sure, it’s a tad frustrating and a bit of a nuisance, but when I go up there to plug his mouth, it’s usually between 3 or 5 in the afternoon. In the middle of the night, Sarah gets up and tends to him. When a couple sleep in the same bed, the wife will grow accustomed to the husband’s alarm clock going off every morning. Eventually, she won’t even hear it anymore. I can’t exactly say that I don’t hear Tyler yelling, but I hear it in a deep part of my head, and it takes a while to wake me.

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Well, Monday morning, almost simultaneous to my alarm going off, Sarah cried out in pain next to me. We’re both unsure of what exactly happened. She either pulled a muscle in her neck, pinched a nerve, or “something” that would cause severe pain to shoot down her neck and shoulders. Pain so intense that she was sure that she was going to vomit, and actually had to rush – well, as much as a person in that kind of pain can rush – downstairs to the bathroom. After a few moments, it was obvious that she was in no condition to care for Tyler. Feeding him and playing with him would already be quite a chore for her. Picking him up and moving him back to an area where we could keep an eye on him after he crawled into another room and started pounding on Delilah’s crate would be quite another.

We managed to get through the day unscathed, with daddy at the caretaking helm. Sarah and Tyler have their daily routines, and I’m sure I did some things differently, but like I said, all came out fine. He’s still got ten fingers and ten toes, and I’m still breathing, so we won’t talk about the new bruise that is forming next to his right ear.

Tyler was definitely tired when we put him to bed. A few hours later, we heard him crying. I went up to his room to find him sitting upright, just crying. It was a comical sight, and I did laugh. As a matter of fact, I laughed again when I “drew the picture” for Sarah. It wasn’t a big deal, because I hadn’t gone to bed yet. I was simply hanging out, downstairs, watching TV or cruising the information superhighway, I can’t remember which.

Later that night (*cough* one thirty in the morning *cough*), I found my dreams being infiltrated by a strange noise. It almost sounded like…

Screaming? Crying? Is that a baby crying?

“Gimme a break”, I grumbled as I flung the covers off myself. Promptly, I discovered that our house is cold at night! I don’t mean the cold where I need to put on a pair of socks. I’m talking about the cold where I should be wearing a snow suit, over three or four layers of pajamas and shirts, and have all that stuffed with those warm-packs that hunters take with them in sub-zero temperatures. We have one of those smart, energy efficient thermostats. At night, it drops down to 62ºf (17ºc) and I’m here to tell you that the piece of junk is defective. It was cold enough to make a polar bear migrate south. Sarah said that she had just finished breastfeeding Tyler, so he probably just needed his paci. That was fine with me, because I wanted to get under the snuggly covers again as quickly as possible.

“Of course he does”, I thought, as I quickly walked as quietly as I could, or quietly walked as quickly as I could, “Why couldn’t he just be a thumb sucker?”

I walked into his room to see him standing up in his crib, pacifier in mouth, crying. I kept thinking, “I have to be awake in four hours. I have to give a two hour presentation today. And he’s crying just because he doesn’t want to sleep?” *sigh*

I put him back to bed and tucked him in. After listening to him cry for another fifteen minutes, I went back in there to give him his paci that somehow managed to drop to the floor. I swear he must be pulling it out of his mouth and throwing it, just to get a rise out of us. He went to sleep for the rest of the night shortly after that.

Why is it that I get exactly what I wish for when it turns out to be exactly what I don’t want. He shows no interest at all in his thumbs. I’ve changed my mind! I want him to give up the paci and discover his thumbs. I wonder if it would be acceptable to fashion a rubber band on the pacifier, so I could wrap it around his head to keep it in his mouth. Like a doctor’s facemask.

Nothing personal, pal. It’s just business

September 4th, 2008 | Posted by Joe in crying | irrational dad | sleep | Tyler - (2 Comments)
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He should do this more often
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I fully admit, sometimes I can be rather irrational. I even toyed with naming my blog “Irrational Dad”, and I may still do that. “Who’s Your Daddy”… I may as well be named “John Smith” for the amount of originality in that title. I didn’t come here today to discuss titles with you, though.

Sarah was gone all day yesterday. Her sister is ill, blah blah blah. Read yesterday’s post if you don’t know the background. Well, Sarah called me around, I don’t know, 6ish to tel me that they were heading to the hospital because her sis wasn’t doing so well.

Oh hey, look, a tangent. Mind if I jump on it? I love all of Sarah’s sisters (3 of them) as if they are my own sisters. Heck, I consider them my own sisters. It breaks my heart that she’s hurting, and I sincerely wish her the best. I’ll be giving her a giant hug tomorrow.

*jumps off the tangent*

So, Sarah’s at the hospital and will be on her way home soon. Fine by me, no problem, take your time.

She got home around 8p or so. After giving Sarah her X’s and O’s, I scooped Tyler up to give him some lovins too. He responded by screaming.

After a bit, I read him “The Alphabet Book”, by Dr. Seuss, and “I Know an Old Lady”. Tyler still had wide eyes, so I sang the alphabet song to him, forwards and backwards (yes, I am that good. Sarah asked how the heck I did that, the first time she heard me. I don’t care if you can say the alphabet backwards, you have to sing it to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”), and then read him some farm book. I dressed him in his jammies, and carried him upstairs.

I put Tyler in his crib and told him that I love him forever and ever… And he screamed. I gave him his paci and he calmed down and closed his eyes. Upon crossing my left foot over the threshold between his room and freedom… errr… I mean the hallway, he spit the paci out and screamed.

He continued to scream at me while I held him, quietly shushing him and telling him it’s time to make his night-nights come. He continued to scream while I walked with him, swayed him, and rocked him. That’s about the time where I became “irrational dad”. I started wondering why Tyler doesn’t like me, if he’ll ever learn to love me, and what I did to make him feel that way towards me. I can’t be the only person to have ever felt that. At least, I hope I’m not the only one.

The logical part of me (94%, according to some bloodwork I got back in March) tells me that I’m being, well, irrational. I know that he’s used to being put to bed by Sarah. I know that he prefers to fall asleep at the boob, although we *try* to discourage that. BUT… Irrational dad is screaming at me, telling me I’m a horrible father, and he’s quite convincing.

Tyler finally fell asleep, so I put him in his crib. I headed downstairs so that Sarah and I could watch a couple episodes of Dexter (awesome, albeit a little dark, show. We’re halfway thru season 1). About 10 minutes in, something caught my eye. I looked over towards the coffee table to see what moved. Nothing. Must’ve been my imagination. But, wait, I see it again! The arch of lights on the baby monitor flickered. Just the first light. I watched the monitor with suspenseful anticipation, as if it was going to sprout legs and start dancing any moment now.

“Please Lord, let it just be a fart.”

As if on cue, all 6 lights sprang to life. The flickering lights, a perfect visual compliment to the cries that seemed to be originating from the upper level. Watson, my dear friend, I do believe that our guest has awakened. The word that formed across my lips starts with an “s” and rhymes with “hit”. On I trudged my way up the stairs, I mumbled something about my son hating me.

I put my hand on Tyler’s chest. After telling him he was safe and that his mommy and daddy were still here, he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

About 10 minutes later, something caught my eye. A glimmer of red light. Do you see where this is going? Sarah said she’d go up. A few minutes later, she brought him downstairs and put him to the boob. He ate very lazily, then fell asleep.

FOR 7 HOURS. Is it considered bad form to call one’s own son a jerk? I’m pretty sure he did that on purpose, just to spite me.