Saturday, May 31, 2008

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Magic Picture Box


So this weekend was hot, really friggin hot. When I got in my car the temperature said 108. (Granted my car was sitting in the sun and it is black with black leather-scald your rear interior, I like to pretend that this is the real temperature. For drama purposes.) So there wasn’t a damn thing to do around here especially not outside at 108 degrees. We couldn’t even go to the pool or the beach in this sweltering heat and especially not with Sam in tow. So we did what any self-respecting, fashion conscious family would do, we went to the mall. Acres and acres of air conditioned fashion goodness. We wandered around, grabbed a frosty beverage, dipped in and out of a few shops, fed Sam and did some people watching. When what to our wandering eyes did appear……..a double stroller with a toddler and a baby about the size of Sam on board. This was not an unusual sight for a hot South Florida day, when no normal, sane-thinking person would want to be outside. However, one particular portable DVD player rigged MacGyver style to the tray of said stroller, positioned inches from the babies face, was sure to draw attention. Both Paul and I were astounded that there wasn’t enough happening in the mall on a weekend…… lights, sounds, people, colors, nonsense, that a tiny baby would need the added distraction of a portable DVD player to keep him entertained. So I guess current trends dictate that we have a flat screen monitor installed immediately on the inside flap of Sam’s diaper bag in the event he starts to take too much interest in the outside world.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Fill up on Sam.....he's cheaper than gas!




(and unlike your $60 tank, this cute face will last you through the weekend!)
Happy Friday.
e

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Footnote to the New Normal

2:30 a.m. wake-up calls from a hungry little boy are no easier in the 'new normal'! :)

Monday, May 12, 2008

Mini-Mom

For those of you who have born a small person from your loins, or have been born from the loins, you know that yesterday was a little day called Mother's Day. Paul, being the amazing guy he is, conducted this holiday like many other important holidays in our home (my birthday, my half birthday and flag day) by setting up a tree, the Mother's Day tree which was spilling with gifts and joy on Mother's Day morning. Seriously now, I had a great day and an even better night last night due to the two new super sweet pillows that I received as one of my mother's day gifts. I have a thing for the Hampton Inn beds. I know you are asking yourself, "the Hampton Inn?" And yes you are correct, I also have a thing for Ritz Carlton beds, but until we win the lottery or the Ritz starts selling their bedding online or accepting trade-ins of old, flat, drool-stained pillows, the Hampton Inn pillows will be just splendid. So, these pillows are like sleeping on little clouds and let's face it...I needed a few more pillows on my side of the bed, because 12 was not enough.


I am incredibly grateful for the wonderful day I spent with my tiny, precious family but, I don't feel like I am qualified to celebrate such a day quite yet. Yes, I bore a tiny human from my loins, so what, it was like a walk in the park(a very rough park). But, my Mom, Paul's mom and my Grandmother are truly the ones to be celebrated. These women have raised kids who lived long enough to have kids and for those kids to have kids and did such an incredible job that...well, those kids actually turned out pretty darn well, in my opinion. When Sam is grown-up and is well behaved, polite, kind, smart, etc. I will, only then, truly be able to celebrate a day that is dedicated to such amazing women.....until then however, I will continue to accept lavish gifts. :)




Sunday, May 11, 2008

The New Normal

Elise and I had packed our bags and set them in a neat row by the door to our room. We had brought a lot, but were still leaving with much more than we had when we arrived. Mission accomplished, we were leaving with what we had come to the hospital for in the first place and now that we had him, we were anxious to leave. We had spoken to no one that morning, as I recall. Perhaps, someone--a nurse, doctor or merely the woman who wheeled in our lunch cart--had suggested the day before that today would be the day we could go home. We didn't know where we got the notion we would be allowed to leave, but there we were, ready, nonetheless. We knew. It was time to go home.

Later, we would confide in some our readiness to leave. Their eyebrows levitated off their foreheads at us, perhaps unconsciously, perhaps intentionally. "Why would you want to leave?" some would ask Elise. "Didn't they change his diapers, feed and swaddle him for you?" The answer would be a resounding no. Without going into the thousands of fascinating details of that day, basically they brought Sam into the world, gave him to Elise and I and said, in not-so-many words, "Here you go. He's your's now." And from that second, Elise and I hit the ground running, putting into practice that which we had never practiced, rehearsed or applied in real life.

Faced with any new challenge, it is not only natural, but wise and prudent to prepare. If one were to sign up for a triathlon, one would train for it, run, swim, cycle hours and miles. If you knew you had a big test on the horizon, you would study for it, right? (unless that test was AP Calculus, then you would just doodle super-heroes and dragons over the whole thing in number 2 pencil and wait anxiously for the class trip to Pizza Hut). Elise and I took classes, watched videos and read every book we could get our hands on, but often no matter how much preparation you put into a thing it can never compare to the reality. I imagine that you can float around in a NASA swimming pool in your space suit all day long, but it will never truly steel you for the wonders of space.

And when they drop your 6 lbs. 11 oz. son in your arms, you don't remember--not even for a fraction of a second--that you have never held a baby in your life.

Though we had our hands fuller than we could ever have anticipated them being, anyone who truly knows either of us, can imagine the prospect of staring at the same four walls sans Starbucks or a whiff of fresh air for the 3rd day in a row held no appeal to us whatsoever. We were ready to get back to what we had started calling 'the new normal'.

The 'new normal' would be--at the same time--nothing like the 'old normal' and exactly the same as the 'old normal'.

The 'old normal' was characterized by all things Elise and I enjoyed doing together: sharing coffee at Buckys, going for runs, bike rides and swims, grocery shopping and making dinner together, trips out west and going out for HH on Tiggy Fridays. The 'new normal' would consist of all these activities and more, only now we would have some extra company.

Imagine you are standing on one side of a disembodied doorway, and on one side of the doorway is the 'new normal' and on the other side of the doorway is the 'old normal'. To the untrained eye, the differences between these two universes would seem profound. To the uninitiated, peering through this doorway would be like Superman peering into Bizarro world, a reality where everything was upside-down, where chaos reigned and order was on permanent sabbatical. But to the experienced observer, to one who knew the difference between the 'old normal' and the 'new normal', the world on either side of that doorway would appear exactly the same. If anything, the grass was greener once we walked through that doorway, once we loaded our bags onto the cart and were wheeled through the automatic sliding glass doors into the steamy South Florida afternoon, December 27th, 2007...





And went straight home.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Things I'll never do (part onesie):

Join a "Mommy Boot Camp." For those of you that don't know what this little gem is, it is a gathering of Mommies who come together via homemade, computer-generated signs with little tear-off tags to do a little "stroller workout." This entails the mommy to put on something that is most likely too tight for her post partum bod(unless she ordered the ever popular tummy tuck as a side dish for her childbirth experience)and throw the ole kiddo in the stroller right about nap time to head out in the sweltering mid afternoon heat and humidity. Meandering all throughout cookie-cutter master planned neighborhoods of sunny south Florida, Mommy walks the stroller around stopping every here and there to do a few squats in the middle of the road or a few stroller spins on the lawn. This gives the mommies time to gossip about Mrs. So-and-So's Lily Pulitzer fashion faux pax at little Emma's 1st birthday spectacular, complain about the rising gas prices and brag about the the family's new super XXXXXL SUV that will surely finally give their 2 toddlers enough room to ride comfortably. You may be asking yourself what is so boot camp about all this? Are the mommies in fact wearing boots? Doing military style push ups? Crawling on their recently shrunken bellies under camouflage netting? Me thinks not. When I reach for a real butt-kicking workout I do not reach for my stroller. While I love a nice long walk with my little Punksy I do not consider this, coupled with a few toe-touches and a pirouette a baby fat buster. God knows I've got a few lb's to go and we all(well except for the lucky "insta-skinny" moms that I hate) have different weight loss styles, I will rebel against this mommylicious stroller regimen till the day I die, even if I am 400lbs by then. This is where I shout out to my Crossfit homies and pledge my undying love. When the stroller mamas want to stroll on in and do a WOD with us at Sonz I will gladly pirouette in a pool of my own hard earned sweat at the end.


e

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!


To my best friend, my partner in crime, my live in comedian, my trainer, and the best dad ever.
I love you.
e

Monday, May 5, 2008

our weekend in photos

Hanging out at the beach with the Dadz.


Saving lives people... that's all.


Mom put me in another small container and photographed me.


Did some swingin'....keep it clean people


Ate some rice gak for the first time and actually managed to swallow some!

One of many jam sessions.


Story time at Momz & Noble.

Started my Monday morning off right with a sip of Dads quad venti latte.



Happy Cinco De Mayo to all!

Friday, May 2, 2008

Future Denver Nugget

Sam went to the doctor on Monday. Elise and I are proud to report that Sam weighed in at a not too immodest 14 lbs. 3 oz. and I forget how many inches tall he was, but he has shot up to the 90th percentile in height! I'm not kidding. I'm ready to retire and start living off his future NBA salary!


The visit was capped off with Sam's second round of vaccinations. As though the first weren't bad enough...at least, he was young enough that it didn't seem as though he really knew what was going on. Not the case this time around. Not that anyone could really ignore being pinned down by the knees and jabbed in the thigh four times with an 8 inch needle. But Sam was imminently more aware of what is going on around him now then he was then, which made for one frightened little boy.


For the next fifteen minutes, Elise successfully defragged his scrambled mainframe and brought him back from the brink of hysteria. Most of the rest of the afternoon was spent in a terror-induced, semi-comatose stupor, eyes glazed, nostrils running, low-decibel moaning, etc. (okay, maybe it wasn't that bad...) But by the end of the day, the Sam we have grown to know and love returned, no worse for wear save for a low-grade fever. We had our boy back again. And if he recalled the morning's trauma, he didn't let on, and if he held either of us responsible for the torture we had not-so-willingly subjected him to, he had, by then, forgiven us whole-heartedly.


Neither Elise nor I are deign to flatter ourselves and presume that Sam's disposition is somehow a learned response to our interactions with him over course of the past four months. I have to dig through the deep, deep recesses of my gray matter and exhume 9th grade literary arts from my brain, but I recall William Golding exploring the true, base nature of man in his novel "The Lord of the Flies", posing the question: Is man fundamentally good or evil? When stripped of the extrinsic influences which mold and govern man, i.e. laws, customs, tradition, etc. will he reveal himself to be a fundamentally good and righteous person or will he de-evolve into a savage beast driven by instinct?


I can't look at Sam and not know the answer to this question. Especially when he forgives Elise and I for handing him over to that nurse (even if he doesn't know it's for his own good) so easily. One may posit that he is only a baby, but if I had done that to Kitty, he wouldn't have spoken to me for 3 weeks....and that's a cat.


I guess William Golding didn't have any children.


Fact check: He had two, Judy and David (they must have been monsters!)