Tyler sneezed on Tuesday. When I told Sarah about it, her reaction far different than mine. My reaction was one of loud, cackling laughter. Sarah’s was one of sympathy and mild sadness.

Tyler is constantly finding objects to grab onto so that he can stand up. He enjoys using long objects that afford him the ability to walk along them. He’ll grasp the couch cushion and shimmy from one end to the other. He uses the entertainment center quite often as well. I’ve had to push the television back about twelve inches so that he can’t use a hard plastic toy as a hammer against the screen. Side note: Owning a flat-panel LCD television with a newborn baby isn’t a great idea.

I think the action of walking along these objects is referred to as "cruising". If not, I apologize for using it out of context here.

Tyler has most recently taken to cruising along the windows in our living room. He points at everything outside, and I dutifully tell him what he’s looking at.

"That’s a car. Black car."

"That’s our lawn. It’s covered in grass. Green grass."

And so on and so forth. Tyler seems to be absorbing everything, pointing at the sky, trees, birds, squirrels and anything else that catches his attention. Inside the house, he points at the walls, ceilings, lights and picture frames.

While cruising along the windows and pointing at everything in sight, Tyler’s head swayed back and then snapped forward with a forceful sneeze… and cracked his forehead on the window sill. Physical comedy slays me, so this sent me into hysterics. I did manage an, "are you ok, bud?" through my laughter, but he didn’t seem to even notice anything happened. Aside from a bright red line just above his brow, all was normal. And that was good, because it allowed me the time to fully absorb the comedy gold that Tyler provided at his own expense.

Boys are fun.

This picture has nothing to do with today’s post, but I like it and want to show it off

Welcome to the debut of “Useless Items” here on this little blog o’ mine. Who knows how long this will last, but I needed a topic and this is what I’ve come up with.

When Sarah and I finally decided to have a baby, I experienced a wave of excitement (and fear, and nervousness, and anxiety). I tried to not let the excitement get in the way of my rationality. But let’s be honest here, folks – and everyone who knows me in the real world knows this to be true – EVERYTHING gets in the way of my rationality. I immediately went to BabyCenter and read everything in the TTC section (Trying To Conceive), and found a lot of valuable information. Google was my biggest resource for knowledge. Every little thought that popped into my head was typed into the innocuous little textbox that rested oh-so-proudly on the center of the screen. Every phrase I tried brought up nothing less than 10,000 results. I discovered that some of the conventional wisdoms relating to pregnancy and conception are nothing more than myth. Having the woman stand on her head immediately after sex does NOT increase the likelihood having a boy. Are you as shocked as I was?

When Sarah got pregnant (yay me), I kicked it into overdrive. I bought books, borrowed books, watched videos, and moved onto the “expecting” area on BabyCenter. One of the things I came across was a list of things you need when baby comes home. I love lists! They are concise and to the point. None of the filler fluff to filter through. Babies R’ Us, here I come!

The checklist was called “Baby Essentials“. I’ve been doing the fatherhood gig for four months now, which pretty much makes me an expert, and I’m thinking that it should have been called the “Things You Probably Don’t Need, But Since You’re A New Parent, That Makes You A Sucker And You’ll Buy Everything We Tell You To. Our Advertisers Are Going To Make Their Quarterly Profit Goals Because Of You” list. Everything you could ever need (according to the list-maker) was on the list. And this finally brings us to the useless item for today:

Baby Monitors

Our baby monitor has flashing lights on it, essentially making it about $30 more expensive than regular baby monitors, and about $30 less than the ones that have video cameras on them. But they are ALL useless!

The mother of the new baby is the only baby monitor you need. Two things happen when a woman becomes a mom. First, she develops supersonic hearing and can hear changes in the baby’s heart rate from 75 feet away. This may be a slight exaggeration, but I’m trying to make a point here. The downside is that she can and WILL hear EVERYTHING the dad says as well, even when he’s mumbling under his breath about having to clean up the living room. Or take out the garbage. Or put his dirty socks in the hamper. Secondly, they develop some type of psychic bond with the baby. I can’t tell you how many times Sarah has walked into the room, holding her boobs, and said, “Tyler’s awake; my milk just let down.” Within 2 minutes, the first of the 6 lights on the monitor lit up. As Tyler’s cries got louder more of the lights would illuminate. Moms are masters of voodoo.

If that’s not enough to dissuade you from unnecessarily purchasing a baby monitor, let me share another nugget with you. Babies are loud. You WILL hear him or her yell when naptime is over. The notable exception would be if you’re a super over-protective parent and have the baby sleeping in a bomb shelter. Still, if that were the case, the radio frequencies wouldn’t be able to penetrate the steel-backed concrete walls, so the monitor would be useless anyway.

Let’s say, after all this, that you’re still too stubborn to realize that I’m right, and are hellbent on making this unnecessary purchase anyway. Just go to Walmart and buy a set of kid’s Walkie Talkies for $15. Take one of them and wrap tape around it so that the button is permanently depressed. That one will be the transmitter and will be placed next to the baby. The other one will be the receiver and will stay with you.

If baby ever grabs the radio and says, “Breaker breaker, one niner. Babycakes comin’ atcha live from the bedtime jailhouse. Lookin’ for the dad o’ dads. What’s yer twenty, good buddy? Over.”, that’s your signal that baby is too old for a baby monitor.

This is just one man’s opinion, but I’m pretty much the smartest guy I know, so you should listen to me.

Caption (View More Photos)

Just shut up. I really can’t deal with this crap any longer. Tyler seems to enjoy fighting sleep. I mean, why else would he be doing so, if he didn’t enjoy it? When he does end up falling asleep, he sleeps pretty heavily (thank you for passing along that gene, Sarah). That doesn’t stop me, though, from wanting to create an environment that encourages him to continue sleeping.

Aside from force-feeding Sarah a couple handfuls of sleeping pills – and hoping that they get absorbed into her milk supply, and passed on to Tyler – about the most I can do is dim the lighting and keep the house quiet. Problem is, there is some type of silent alarm that goes off the very second Tyler dozes off. Sarah and I can’t hear the alarm, so it would be hard to prove, but the rest of the free world can hear the alarm, and its a signal to make as much noise and disruption as humanly possible.

Tyler fell asleep for a nap this afternoon, so I put him in his bouncy seat and sat him next to Sarah and I. Her and I were playing cribbage, so we were doing our part in staying quiet. Then, the neighbor dog starts barking… INCESSANTLY. So, I got up and dramatically closed the windows in the kitchen (where we all were). I hope the neighbors heard it too, although I know it won’t matter; they can’t control their dogs, and it drives me nuts. Anyway, the little yapper dog finally goes back in the house, leaving us in silence again. That’s when Logan (one of OUR 2 dogs) decided he wanted to – as loudly as possible – start slurping water out of the dish. I’m here to tell ya that it was the loudest slurping I’ve EVER heard. I reached back and tapped Logan on his leg and told him he’d have to wait for his water until later.

Do you know what he did? He walked right next to Tyler – I’m talking, 6 inches away from him – and shook, VIGOROUSLY, back and forth. He sprayed water from his gullet everywhere, including onto Tyler. Of course, his collar was on, so his tags were jingling and ringing nice and loudly. Ugh.

All Sarah and I could do was share an exasperated look with each other. Tyler woke up very shortly afterwards. We were less than pleased with it all.

What a cool friggin kid! (View More Photos)

Or should I title this post as “Hooked on Phonics”?

Tyler will be starting school soon. The context of “soon” should be read as “in about 4 and a half years”. It amazes me, the things that go through a parent’s mind, sometimes. I would like to propose and submit, to the educational body of our country, a “modified” alphabet. The English language and alphabet is too complicated in its current state. Here are the details of my proposal.

The letter known as “C” shall be eliminated. The letters “K” and “S” shall fulfill its phonetic variants. For example, “cat” will become “”kat”, “face” will become “fase”, and “accent” will become (bekome) “aksent”. The variant “ch” will be replaced with either “kh” or “jh”. I suggest “jh” since it’s close to the same sound, so “chalk” would become “jhalk”.

“G” will no longer hold the soft-g sound. “J” will be used instead. So, “giant” would become “jiant”. “G” will retain the hard-g sound, so words like “get” or “gain” would not change.

“Q” will be eliminated. Words like “quick” would become “kwik”.

“X” will be eliminated. Words like “exit” would become “eksit”, and “xylophone” would become “zylophone” or “zylofone”.

The “PH” sound will be used by the letter “F”, as in “phone becoming “fone”.

“GH” will no longer be used. “Laugh” will become “laf”, and “high” would become “hie”.

Silent letters shall be eliminated. “Pneumonia” will become “neumonia”, “ballet” would be “ballay”, and “know” would be “noe”.

So, alltho there would be a learning kurve to the hole proposal from those uv us that grew up on the kurrent, arkiac system, give it a jhanse, and you’ll kome to embrase it. If we make these jhanjes kwikly and effishently, we’ll be mujh better off as a nayshun. I’m sure you will agree with my lojik, if you were to look at it objekshunably and fairly. This is an urjent matter, and I jenuinely appreshiate your time.

Also, Brett Favre is an idiot. His last name should be pronounced either “Fahv-reh” or “Fahv-er”. Pronouncing it as “Farv” makes no sense. Also, and this REALLY gets me, we need to come to a consensus on the proper way to pronounce “comfortable” (and “comfortably”). “Comfort” is sounded out as “kum-fort”, yet “comfortable” is said as “kum-fter-bul” the “r” is before the “t” but we pronounce it the other way. That would be like “fort” being said as “fter”. “Comfortable” should be “kum-fort-abl”, or we should modify its spelling to “comfterble”. I obsess about that every time I listen to Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb”.

We need to work on some numbers as well. 11 through 19 break the consistency of our system. 21 is “twenty-one”. 45 is “forty-five”. 11 should be “ten-one”. 18 should be “ten-eight”.

Feel free to take most of this post with a grain of salt. Say to yourself, “That Joe, he’s so craaaaazy”, but I honestly do believe there are inconsistencies in our language that make no sense to me. Take the words “scene” and “scone”. Why is the “c” silent in the first word, and a “kuh” sound in the second word? “High” and “laugh” come to mind as well. Silent and “f”, respectively. Sure, we all learned it, our kids will learn all that, and our kids’ kids will learn all that, but it’s still confusing.

And I do stand by my thoughts on numbering, “Favre”, and “comfortable”.

I love his eyes (View More Photos)

Last Wednesday, I had to drive up to Kalamazoo, Michigan. There was some training taking place Thursday morning that I needed, so I got a hotel. I kissed Tyler goodbye and begged him to be good to his mom, because she needed some good sleep. The previous night, he was up every 60 to 90 minutes. He’d take one boob and fall back asleep. I told Sarah to put him in HIS room (he’s been sleeping in a crib in our room), shut HIS door, shut OUR bedroom door, and set the alarm for two and a half hours, and go to sleep.

What’s that, you say? Just wake him up and give him Boob B? Get it, boob b? Boobie, hahaha. Thank you for that one, Adam. Let me be very clear here when I say that when Tyler falls asleep at the boob, the boy goes COMATOSE. Sarah calls it a milk coma, and she is very right in calling it so. Waking him up is simply not an option.

With that being said, one of the fundamental differences between Sarah and I, and, I assume, most moms and dads, lies in how crying affects us. I may have blogged about this before, so forgive me (and feel free to skim the rest of this paragraph) if this sounds familiar. When I’ve got Ty, and he starts crying, I go through a mental checklist. If he’s clean, dry, fed, and burped, I tell him he’s going to have to just cry it out. I’m certainly not that brash, but you see my point (hopefully). With Sarah, logic takes a backseat to emotion. And let me just say that emotion shouldn’t have a driver’s license. When Sarah hears Tyler cry, she says that it makes her heart hurt.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I understand where she’s coming from, just as she understands where I’m coming from. But it’s like a Catholic telling a Baptist that the Baptist’s beliefs are crazy. The Baptist is just going to yell back at the Catholic, “NO U!!”

I’m sure you’ve all been in a situation where you and your mate were at odds with each other. Try to put yourself back in that situation for a moment. Are you there yet? Ok. Now, imagine my surprise the next morning, when I talk to Sarah and she tells me that she took my advice.

Allow me to say that again.

*clears throat*

The next morning, I was talking to Sarah from my hotel room. She told me that she took my advice. A woman took a man’s advice. A woman took a man’s advice. A woman. A woman. A woman. A woman took a man’s advice.

She put Tyler in his crib, shut the door, went into our bedroom, shut the door, set her alarm for 2 hours, and fell asleep. As a testament to how tired she was, at some point she turned her alarm off and woke up 3 hours later. IN A PANIC! Tyler was fine though. He had apparently awakened just a couple minutes earlier. When Sarah went to check on him, he was wide-eyed and ready for food.

He took both boobs.

Now that the foghorns, train whistles, and braying alarm sirens have died down, I must say again that Sarah took my advice.

MY thought is that she took my advice because I’m pretty stinkin’ smart and it was a good idea. Sarah would say it was because she was exhausted and not in her right mind at the time. In short, she’d plead temporary insanity.

*pause*

Looking back over this post, I’ve gotta tell ya, my intention today was to blog about something entirely different. I, more or less, start typing and just let my fingers take me where they must. It is as if I am Gan’s facilitator (Stephen King reference. Don’t worry if you don’t get it). Either way, I now must decide whether to make this one long blog, or turn it into a two-parter. Hrm…. let’s keep going… one long post.

I was in Kalamazoo on Thursday for some training. Sarah had a dentist appointment that morning. Tyler did great while she was in there getting her teeth cleaned. Afterward, she took Logan to the kennel and went home. She loaded up the car with luggage and supplies, Delilah, and Tyler, then hit the road to Kalamazoo. We were invited to hang out with our friends (Mel and Adam) at their cottage by the lake, for the weekend. I met Sarah around 4 or 5p at Mel and Ad’s new house. We got the tour and hung out there for a couple hours. While their house was very nice, and while I was very impressed, nothing – NOTHING – could top what happened very shortly after the tour. No, it wasn’t the fact that I fixed their doorbell (which I believe they don’t even know about). And it wasn’t even that either Luci (their lab/hound pup) or Delilah made a mess on their new carpet. This is, after all, a daddy-blog, right? “Off-Topic Tuesday” does have a nice ring to it, though. It’s my idea and you can’t have it!

What I am taking forever to get at is this: Tyler smiled at me last Thursday. And it wasn’t one of those ehh-it-could-be-gas smiles. It was, without a doubt, a “Hey, there’s my daddy!” smile. A gummy, mouth wide open smile. He does this every time I see him now. Needless to say, I was on cloud nine. It is easily the highlite of my day now, getting to see my son smile AT ME! Much like Joanna, he puts his smiling face away as soon as the camera points at him. I was pretty quick on the trigger a couple times and managed to capture a few half-smiles before he put on his professor-face.

I caught a smile (View More Photos)

So, there I am, full to the brim and overflowing with glee, when Sarah strolls into the room.

“Sarah! Tyler smiled at me when he saw me! A genuine, legitimate smile!”

Sarah, not to be outdone, grabbed my bucket o’ glee and tossed it out the patio door with this gem:

“Yeah, he’s been doing that with me for about a week.”

Sarah, if you’re reading this, you can stop now. The rest of this post is nothing but highly-technical computer talk.

The array variable wasn’t populated properly. Storing a floating point number in a boolean field will result in a false…

Is she gone?

After mentally shooting daggers at her, I said, with my don’t-you-dare-say-it-out-loud (also known as the for-the-love-of-god-don’t-let-this-get-past-your-lips) voice, “Yeah, well he smiles bigger for me.”

So, in conclusion, Scriptaculous uses prototyped arrays, and the for/each statement doesn’t work as intended any longer.