The life and times of an irrational father. One man, multiple personalities.
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This feels strange

August 12th, 2008 | Posted by Joe in babysitting | movies | Tyler - (6 Comments)
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Tyler with his Aunt JiJi during “Girl’s Week” at Aunt Karla’s
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Sarah and I went on a date yesterday! I have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Batman: The Dark Knight. Unfortunately, I don’t do very well around large crowds, so I rarely watch movies on opening weekend. I was also told by an online “friend” that if you ever see a movie in IMAX, this would be that movie. There is an IMAX theatre in Lansing, Michigan, which is about a 2 hour drive from our house. It also just-so-happens that we have to drive past Sarah’s families’ houses to get there. Jillian jumped at the chance to watch Tyler.

Sarah was all for a special movie experience. Sarah’s dad (Mike) also wanted to go, along with one of Sarah’s other sisters (Allison), and her boyfriend (Darren). We had no problem with this. The more the merrier.

At movie theatres, popular movies will show either 30 minutes or an hour apart, because they play the movie on 2 or more screens. With IMAX, there’s only one screen, so the movie plays every 3 hours. This limited when we could go. 12:30p, 3:30p, 6:30p, 9:30p.  I couldn’t arrange the 12:30 or 3:30 because I work during the week, and it was always the plan to go on a weekday (not as busy). The 9:30, was too late. The movie wouldn’t get out until 12:15a, so we wouldn’t get home until after 2am, and I would have to work the next day. This left 6:30p.

Well, Mike doesn’t get home from work until 6pm, and it’s still about 90 minutes to the theatre, so he had to cancel. I debated with myself on maybe ditching the IMAX plan and going to the regular theatre there in town so there would be more time selections. When it came down to it, I was way too excited for IMAX to settle for anything less. Darren was still in, but Allison had to work. Darren had to end up bailing as well. This left just Sarah and myself.

While I would have loved to have them all there, I had no problem at all with it just being the two of us. We left our house around 3:30pm and got to Jillian’s (Aunt JiJi) house at 4:15p. We hung out there for about 15 minutes or so before hitting the road up to Lansing.

I work 5 days a week. For me, walking out of the house and saying goodbye to Tyler has become something of a habit. I miss them both very much, but, in a sense, I’m used to it. I hope this makes sense. I’m sure it does to all my readers that are in a similar situation.

Sarah, on the other hand, has not done this. She did go out recently to a Dave Matthews concert, and left Tyler in my care. Maybe it’s a “mom thing”, I dunno. As we were pulling out of Jillian’s driveway Sarah immediately mentioned that it was strange leaving Tyler.

Even stranger to us was the fact that, due to the circumstances, Sarah on I were on a date. This is the first time we’ve been alone since Tyler was born. Previous to Tyler, we had a “thing” where we had a date night every Friday. Failing that, Saturday. That came to a screeching halt with the arrival of Tyler. Being out alone together made things everything much, much nicer.

We even had dinner before the movie. Dinner being a burger from Wendy’s that we ate in the theatre parking lot.

I’m not going to do a movie review here. Personally, I don’t think I’m that great of a writer. In my mind, nothing that I say will do justice to the masterpiece that I was given the honor of viewing last evening. Really, the movie was great. IMAX… just… wow. There was a warning before the movie started that it could make you nauseous, and that if you felt nauseous, you should close your eyes for a couple moments until the feeling went away. I balked at the message. Good luck getting me to even BLINK for the next 2 hours. The only time I looked away from the screen was when I asked Sarah to grab me a box of Hot Tamales that she smuggled in the theatre in her purse. $0.97 at Walmart, or $3.75 at the theatre…. you’d do the same.

We picked Tyler up at 10:30. He was an angel for his Aunt JiJi and Cousin Lexi. He even got a bath over there.

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The Bat Pod… can it be done?
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I’ve now got the task of quickly teaching Tyler how to use AutoCAD and how to turn a wrench. We are immediately going to work on converting my Ninja motorcycle into the Bat Pod. Sarah requested that I not load the guns with live ammo right away.

Night terrors

August 8th, 2008 | Posted by Joe in crying | dropping baby | nightmares | standing | Tyler - (4 Comments)
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He has no idea why I keep putting a flashing box (camera) in his face.
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Tyler likes to learn new tricks. Last night, at around 2am, Tyler woke up, screaming bloody murder. It was a scream that Sarah and I have never heard, and it scared the ever-living crap out of us. Sarah was out of bed and on her feet before my eyes were completely open. I honestly have no idea how she can move so fast.

Within 2 seconds of being scooped up, he was silent again, heading back towards sleep. I mumbled something – to myself – about waking me up for nothing, and also started heading back towards sleep. I assume that Sarah did the same.

Then, at 5:55am, Tyler woke up, screaming bloody murder.

I don’t like having to admit this, but Sarah and I have grown accustomed to Tyler’s cries. Sarah, more so than me. We can differentiate between hungry-cries, diaper-cries, and gassy-cries. My displeasure in admitting that is due to the fact that I used to consider it a bunch of hogwash. I’ve heard babies cry and scream before, mostly at Wal-Mart, and they’ve ALL sounded identical to me: annoying. I used to mumble, (again) to myself, “shut that baby up”. I know I’m not the only person who’s ever had that thought, although I may be one of the very few to admit it. Now that I’m a parent, and have had some first-hand experience, I would like to use this blog to offer a public apology to anyone who has been in the care of a crying baby while in public. Truly, I am sorry.

This new scream, coming in the darkest of the night, stopped our hearts, cold. It was very reassuring that he calmed immediately after being held.

The fact that he was awake, and that he calmed down, steers me away from thinking they were night terrors. However, I could easily believe they were nightMARES. Google seems to agree.

But then it begs the question… What the heck can a 41-day-old baby be having nightmares about? He doesn’t know who Frankenstein‘s monster is (who just so happens to have been the subject of my childhood recurring nightmares). He has no knowledge of Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Mike Myers, or Bubba Sawyer (a.k.a. Leatherface ).

Racking my brain, I’ve come up with two possible sources of this nightmare. The first is “tummy-time”. He does not like, at all, being on his belly for more than a few minutes. As a matter of fact, I believe Tyler is going to skip crawling, and go directly to walking. He absolutely LOVES standing up – with me supporting him, of course. When we do this, the expression on his face reads, “zOMG, I don’t know what this is, but I want more of it!!!!” I’ll have Sarah help me get a picture of it. It’s awesome.

My other thought is that he was reliving the experience of his mother nearly dropping him. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BURRRRNNNNNNN!!!!!!

I’m going to pay for that comment later.

Sarah dropped the baby!!!

August 5th, 2008 | Posted by Joe in dropping baby | Sarah | sleep | Tyler - (3 Comments)
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I think this is one of the cutest pictures of Tyler, to date.
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Well, not really, but that certainly got your attention, didn’t it. I know I’m going to catch hell when she sees that I’ve blogged about it, though.

Here’s the scenario. I was sitting on the couch at the foot end, playing on my laptop. I’m sure I was likely checking out the latest headlines on Digg or catching up on celebrity gossip at WWTDD (yes, I’m a sucker for that stuff). More than likely, I was reading all the blogs I’ve got bookmarked. I’ve found that to be a much better way to spend my time than just blankly look at google’s homepage, wondering what topic to search for next.

Sarah was lying on the couch, across 2 of the 3 cushions. I was sitting on the last. Tyler was lying on Sarah’s chest. The two of them were napping sleeping. Seemingly out of nowhere, Tyler decides he wants to reposition himself. He kinda just shifted his head off to one side, but he’s got a big, heavy head. The weight of his head, and his lack of toned core muscles caused his entire body to roll off of Sarah’s chest.

I think Sarah reacted first, but it was only by a single micro-second. Sarah swung over and snatched him before he had any real chance of falling completely off. All I could muster was a complete body-jerk reaction and an involuntary spewing of a colorful phrase that would be a synonym to “HOLY CRAP!”

I said that phrase 2 or 3 more times afterward. Sarah’s eyes were about bugged out of her head. And our little Tyler, well he slept through the entire thing.

I knew, at that moment, what I would be blogging about today. I don’t think Sarah will end my life right away though. She was gone all last week, and has fallen behind on reading my blog. She probably won’t read this until next week, and will, hopefully have a sense of humor about it.

If this blog isn’t updated within the next 3 or 4 days, please call the authorities.

Did you know

August 1st, 2008 | Posted by Joe in learning | scared | teaching | Tyler - (3 Comments)
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The shirtless wonder
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Sarah and I were taking Tyler for a walk last week. We were walking down 7th Street, which is the main drag of our quaint little town. To our left, we could see the water tower.

Before I continue, sorry the ADHD is taking hold, I have to say this. They (they being an unknown entity) painted the water tower recently. I noticed that they put on a primer coat of gray paint. That seemed to take a couple weeks. I remember, one day, they had some type of cloth cover over the whole thing. Well, I was driving home a few days ago and, ALL OF A SUDDEN, I see that the entire thing had gotten it’s final coat. How the heck did they do that so quickly? There isn’t any lettering on the top of the tower yet, and I really don’t know if they will put anything there. I wouldn’t be surprised to see something up there that mentions the ACD Museum. Maybe “Auburn, it’s a Deusey! nyuk nyuk nyuk”

Anyway, we’re going for a walk and I look at the water tower. That’s when it dawned on me that I have to teach Tyler EVERYTHING I know. He’s going to ask me what the stars are, how door locks work, how to tie a knot, how to drive, how plants grow… everything. I got scared.

Tyler was awake at the time, so I started talking. I figured I better start now, because I’ve got a lot of stuff to go over with him over the next 80 years or so.

“Tyler, that’s a water tower. There’s about a million gallons of water in there. See, big pumps push the water up into the tower. Gravity tries pulling the water back down some other pipes in the tower. This creates water pressure. Those pipes go everywhere, including to our house. When we turn a faucet on, the force of gravity pushing on the water in the tower pushes it through all the pipes and out the faucet.”

Tyler didn’t seem to care. I may have to explain that to him again in a few years. I did get a reaction from Sarah though. She said, “Wow, I didn’t even know that”.

Of course, my ego shot up a hundred-fold, so I followed up with, “Yeah, that’s why we can still get water when the power goes out. There’s usually a full day’s worth up there.”

The problem is, there’s a lot… a LOT… that I don’t know. Tyler won’t ask me easy stuff, like “how do you tie a shoe?” or “where is the ground?”. He’s going to ask stuff I have no knowledge of. I don’t mind saying “I don’t know” a few times, but I’m scared that I may be saying it over and over again to some of his questions. I’m going to have to make a list of the things he asks me, get on google when he goes to bed, and get some answers for him for the next day.

I could always just take the easy way out and say “it’s magic” to all his questions. I think I could get away with that for a while, right?

“Dad, how do they get the people inside the TV?”

“It’s magic, son. Magic.”

“How do cars work, daddy?”

“That’s magic also, boy.”

“Where to babies come from?”

“From dark magic, Tyler. Voodoo stuff.”

The fix

July 31st, 2008 | Posted by Joe in pee | poison ivy | Sarah | Tyler - (2 Comments)

I got to see my wife and my baby today!! I went to South Bend, Indiana today to help out another service rep for the day. South Bend is only about a half hour from St. Joe, Michigan – which is where Sarah is. So, I capitalized on the situation and went up there.

Now that I’ve gotten that out, let’s back up just a bit. I don’t call Sarah when she’s doing her “girls week”. I let her call me when she has time. She’s up there to relax and hang with the girls, so I stay out of the way. Sarah calls me once in the morning to say hi, and once in the evening for goodnights. Now, if I end up going to bed before her, I do give her a ring and leave a voicemail saying goodnight.

Everytime we talk, I tell her to give TyTy kisses for me and to tell him I love him. Sarah tells me that she and Tyler miss me. Yesterday, she was holding Tyler when I told her to give him kisses. She did and I heard her say they were from me. She told me that Tyler started smiling. Awwwww…..

Ok, so I get there today and scoop Tyler up from his Aunt Jenny. In the two hours that I was there, Tyler peed through his dipe and onto me, and he spit-up – PAST the burp cloth – onto me… TWO TIMES. I’d love to say that he was happy to see me, but it wasn’t exactly a warm reception.

I got to see a couple really cute pictures also. I can’t wait to get the camera home, so I can check them all out and get them uploaded to show them off.

And I’m sure I’m just being crazy here. I mean, afterall, they’ve only been gone 5 days. I swear that he has doubled in size. He’s a beast. I really wish I could take Tyler from Sarah for a week so she can see the hell I’m going through.

Oh, and I’ve got friggin poison ivy on my upper right arm now. What the heck man? I was wearing a long sleeve shirt. I’ve GOT to get the rest of these bushes down so I can be done with it.