Ottos acquired skills: Smiling, cooing, eating
Working on: Sleeping
Dad's achievements: 41 chapters read. 161 to go.
Studying for me has become a bit like Otto falling asleep. At first, I will do everything in my power to avoid it. I whine and fuss, I eat to comfort myself, I may even cry a little. As hard as I try to avoid it, though, I know it's inevitable. Eventually my will breaks, and I study.
And just like Otto's sleeping it's been a progressive learning process. At first I could only read an hour or two at a time. Then miraculously I read for four hours straight. Then a few days later, five hours. And pretty soon, it's not that unusual to read 8 or 10 hours at a time (That analogy doesn't quite work, because Otto can't sleep for 8 hours at a time yet).
Otto needs props to sleep. He has his swing and his white noise. For my studying, it's coffee and music. I'm really happy I haven't lost the ability to listen to music while reading. I'm discovering and re-discovering all kinds of great music and it's made me kind of happy about spending most of my day tethered to my computer. Right now I've found that metal and hardcore punk provide the right amount of angst and motivation to get through page-turners like "Peripheral Vascular Disease" and "Fever." As much as I hoped metal would put Otto right to sleep, though, that's not the case (nothing ever works quite as well as it does in sit-coms).
Christmas has seeped into our house, despite all the pre-occupation with studying and parenting. Our tree is up. Otto was awake for a little family decorating time. We've got some new Christmas music circulating this year, which is nice because as much as I love Christmas music I have a pretty low tolerance for only one album over and over again for an entire month.
Unfortunately, Otto's first Nog's Eve came and went pretty uneventfully. What's Nog's Eve, you ask? It's a holiday celebrating the "specialness" of Egg Nog. In order to protect Egg Nog's "specialness" you should only drink it for one month a year (i.e. December). Therefore, a proper Nog's Eve celebration involves getting together with friends on November 30th, counting down to midnight and enjoying your first glass of cool Nog for the year.
If you're really interested, read this: http://chrisramblingon.blogspot.com/2007/12/nogs-eve-brief-history.html.
We didn't celebrate this year. Too busy. I hope we're not so lazy with Otto's first Christmas.
Speaking of Otto, he's turned into a little ball of sunshine. He smiles, and laughs, and coos. He makes eye contact. "Big deal!" you say? You can do all those things, right? Well, let me get sappy for a second. There's something in a baby's smile that just can't be described. If you could put it in a bottle you'd be a millionaire. If you don't believe me, I dare you to watch this video and not feel that something inside.
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