WE MADE IT! Otto's first month is in the books. Happy birthday, dude. Mom and dad love ya.
Otto Month One from Jeffrey Klassen on Vimeo.
Since I last posted I've gone back to work. I had an amazing four weeks hanging out with Trisha, Otto and Ralph, but I can't avoid the real world any longer.
That means I've essentially stopped getting up at night. Don't be too impressed. My overnight involvement has been tapering off over the course of a couple weeks. It's not for lack of wanting to help, but more for lack of having breasts. Eventually it ended up being me sitting on the floor reading a comic book waiting for my 20 second opportunity to burp the little guy. My wife very kindly started insisting I go to bed. She's the best, by the way, although sitting and reading comics on the floor in front of her at 4 am, I may have been more of an annoyance/disappointment than a help.
It's funny how nighttime changes as you progress through adulthood. When you first get married, nighttime is an incredibly useful resource for either working or having fun. You can go to late concerts or just hang out with friends, occasionally making the sacrifice of being a little tired the next day. As far as the work part, nighttime is always in your back pocket to study for six hours or get a presentation ready and coffee is a completely practical sleep substitute. You're able to do that because (a) you are young and (b) there is always an upcoming buffer time when you can sleep and catch up.
After a few years, though, it's less easy using nighttime usefully. Sleep becomes more and more valuable and, for some ideosyncratic reason, those buffers become fewer and farther in between. Pretty soon you'd rather watch a bad Jackie Chan movie at home than go to a late concert and drinking coffee after 3:30pm seems as risky as sharing needles on Furby Street.
This progression towards sleep dependence continues into your late twenties or early thirties and then, as if by some cruel joke, God gives you children.
For the last month, nighttime has been a looming cloud that is ominously and inevitably approaching. At around 8:00pm we begin frantically trying to predict how this storm cloud may play out, like a weather man with binoculars and a twelve sided die.
"He's eating now so I should cut him off early so he eats again at ten. We won't bundle him so he only gets a light sleep now but we'll double bundle him later. I'm going to close my eyes, but don't let me fall asleep. Turn the heat down one degree now then up three degrees in twenty minutes. And why are you jiggling him in a right obliquely horizontal, 33 beat-per-minute frequency now? That's his 9:45 jiggle routine!"
But it makes no difference. It gets dark outside, and your house turns into a twilight zone of sleep deprivation and disorientation.
How long have I been asleep in this chair? Is it today or yesterday? Did I just change him or did I just think about changing him? I think he just said, "mastodon."
My wife and I stagger through the fog, occasionally having intelligible interactions with each other. In fact, I have apparently had entire conversations at night I can't remember in the morning.Trisha says I've even given some good advice. I've gone to the bathroom, checked on the dog, and taken out trash at 3 in the morning and woken up the next day remembering nothing and wondering why I'm tired.
So in conclusion, let me say thanks again to my wonderful, beautiful wife for taking on "the cloud" on her own. Love you.
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