12 weeks later

Finally, another post (from me)! Let's see if the readership numbers more than my number of league championship game losses (Doh! that number used to be zero, but not anymore).

I've actually spent a decent portion of the past 12 weeks composing blog posts in my head, but, alas, that hasn't actually translated to actual posts. JT stated at one point that post-baby arrival, I'd still get the same amount of stuff done out of greater efficiency and scoff at the ineffectiveness of the pre-baby Keith. So I stand as a rebuttal to JT's thesis. I've accomplished very little outside of child rearing, and even that's giving me to much credit--Joanne's doing practically all the work, mainly because of evolutionary effects that make me less than necessary to Owen's well-being in his current state.

But that doesn't make me completely worthless to the cause. I'm sure it's been stated before, but it was something I don't remember reading/being told, and that is: after birth, of critical importance isn't being a good father, it's being a good husband. The first (almost) 3 months has been less about the travails of parenthood (for me) and more about making sure I'm supporting Joanne to the best of my ability. It's funny how that works, though. At Easter, we had the family over and it came up that Joanne had yet to do any cooking since Owen's arrival--I had taken care of that, most of the cleaning, shopping, etc. I was praised for that. Less than a week later, though, Joanne said she wanted to do some of that because it made her feel more normal. Even if she wasn't going anywhere, or if Owen was no more than 20 feet away, she still got a little separation to refresh herself. So now we've split that up a little more, which means, apparently, I do less "work" around the house, yet that's a positive. Joanne gets non-Owen time, I get Owen time (even if it's not real work, since I get to play with him) and everyone is happy.

You'd think after 10+ weeks of thinking of this post, there'd be more to it. I suppose there was insights I made during my on-the-job training, or realizations of how I need(ed) to change, but that all seems old hat now. I remember the impatience the first couple of weeks when Owen wouldn't go to sleep and not understanding why--I thought that's what babies did. They wake up long enough to eat and they promptly fall back asleep. I suppose some are like that. Not Owen. I don't think he gets that 16+ hours of sleep that is recommended. Not that we don't try to make that happen, but he seems happy to be awake. Or maybe that's just the weekends. I know Joanne's had some rough days and nights in which I wasn't really in a position to help, but I'd say the number of periods Owen has been difficult to deal with for over an hour numbers in the single digits (that number would be higher if the time criteria was say, 30 minutes or more), as he's only had maybe 2 bouts of what might be considered colic, and food pretty much always calms him down.

Joanne previously mentioned that the Hogg's EASY method has helped and could be a contributing factor to Owen's "goodness." But the Hogg also offered/promoted some other ideas that to me seemed questionable, which brought up issues of who/what to believe, ie what approach is best. This issue is exacerbated by these approaches coming off as holistic--you have to do everything or it just won't work. But we seem to be doing OK with what we're doing. I guess we'll find out in 14 year if it didn't work.

One of the Hogg's peeves is/was "accidental parenting", that is, doing something that works for now, even if it will lead to bigger problems in the future, generally centered around sleep (ie the tricks necessary to get the newborn to sleep that will soon become the inconvenient crutch they can't sleep with out). I confess we do one form of this--how we handle Owen's daytime sleep. We have yet to make a habit of bringing him upstairs during the day. We're content with putting him in his rocker downstairs so we can keep an eye on him and letting him sleep in that. However, he tends not sleep in it unless the vibration is on. IF he's asleep and we turn off the vibrate, he tends to wake up within minutes. I suppose it might be a crutch, but, thus far, it has negatively impacted his ability to sleep at night without the same sensation.

His nighttime sleeping, though, has also benefited from us having two stories. Having been in the house for five years now, we draw a pretty clear line between upstairs and downstairs. Unless we're cleaning or need something, we're rarely upstairs during the day. Even though it's only 11 steps, the world up there is very different. This is a positive for Owen, because once we (by that, I mean Joanne) puts him to sleep around 7:30, we don't bring him back downstairs. I commented to some friends that we have yet to watch a movie since Owen was born. We're not in the habit of watching things 20-30 minutes at a time, and we've found pausing movies multiple times negatively affects our enjoyment. We thought about watching one earlier this month, but we didn't have anything short enough that we hadn't watched yet to fit into our time frame--it would be suboptimal to watch the first 1:50 of a movie then take a 30 minute break to feed Owen and then come back for the last 15-20 minutes. So someone commented, "You know, you could just feed him while watching the end of the movie." And that concept of that was.. "shocking" is to strong, but it will have to work. Why would we do that? That would just wake him up more. Once he's upstairs, he's staying there. So the person's rebuttal was "I guess you're a better parant than me". I don't know if he was being facetious or not.

Even more than his vibrating chair, but not quite as much as the feeding apparatus, Owen loves ceiling fans. If you go back and look at the lead picture, and if you're familiar with our house, you'll recognize that yes, he is indeed looking at the fan by the front door. He just loves them. He doesn't show a lot of interest in mobiles (I made some homemade B&W cards for his PnP and there are some attachments for the rocker), but fans? He can't keep his eyes off them. In the past week, I've even taken to holding him up closer to the fan in the TV room. He seems to enjoy it.

This veered way from being my thoughts on fatherhood, but that's to be expected when the system isn't quite set up to have me on completely full active duty. Or at least not as active duty as will soon be forthcoming.