November 2011
14 posts
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I can't leave my baby to #occupy, so I wrote this →
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Guy's Night
On Friday night, my wife went out for the evening, and so it was the first test of how the boob-less parent could handle the job of sole caregiver (which makes me wonder how on earth single parents do it. They deserve their own…well, anything they want really. Whatever a single parent wants, they should get it immediately).
For the first part of the evening, I was running through lists of...
14 tags
Baby spit = rain
So baby Grace has been doing this thing where she puts her lips to your skin and half-spits half-blows, making a sound like a mouth fart. It’s like blowing a very wet raspberry. Sometimes milk comes out.
We haven’t seen many other babies doing this, so we took it to the streets (by which I mean, my wife asked the other moms at her Korean church.) Rumor is that in Korea, when a baby...
11 tags
Roads with no stop signs and no street lights
I guess some babies like cars. Some babies hate cars. Baby Grace hates that cars stop. This means my wife and I hate that cars stop. Sometimes it seems as if the government or road works or someone is seriously against us. I mean, why even have stop signs or street lights at all? Just to make babies cry?
It makes me wonder what would happen if the world just stopped spinning. I mean, other than...
6 tags
In the Backseat
When I was a kid, I loved the late-night car ride. Coming back from some forgettable dinner at some friend of the family’s place, it was the slow-mo, low-glo haze of the car at night that I remember. I’d dip in and out of consciousness, coming to long enough to realize I was having the best kind of sleep imaginable. I never wanted it to end, and so with my eyes closed, I’d start...
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this is the blog we should have made →
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Sick: An ill Rant
1: People had told me that it's tough when your kid gets his first cold, but I had no idea I'd feel this terrible/helpless. We sit there trying to use that nose-probe thing while he flails, and I swear he creates double the amount of bodily fluid than the inconsequential amount of mucus that is suctioned out.
2: Sneezes, which once were just unbearably cute (he laughs every time he sneezes), are now Blessed Bringers of Snot, and I've wondered if there's a safe way to actually get your baby to sneeze more.
3: The hardest part is that he actually tries to keep having fun, but his wet face keeps contorting after the normally pleasing hoof-in-mouth of Sophie the Giraffe fails to clear up his Walter Matthau-like snorts.
4: Oh, and CVS? Thanks so much for only carrying baby tylenol products that contain fake, chemically-derived fruit flavors. News Flash: Babies haven't eaten Skittles yet. They don't know what a grape tastes like, let alone the Grimace-y purple hue you claim tastes like the same thing wine is made from.
5: As the non-nursing parent, I can't do much more than what I normally do, which is already not much, given the small window of non-work/commuting time I have. My biggest success was, as alfie got more and more upset at his clogged pipes, I bounced him until I unwittingly burped in his face. He was stunned into a state of calm curiosity that lasted at least 10 seconds. Burps, FTW.
6: And to top it off, my wife thinks it best that I stay on the futon tonight, as my rolling around might disturb the sleep that is even harder to come by when you can't breathe through your nose. (She also wants me to get more sleep, so I, you know, don't fall asleep at the wheel on the way to work). This may be the first instance of a husband being couch-sentenced out of loving deference.
-bp
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“Sometimes, what is going through my head is just: babies.”
– ms
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Yup, poop is cute in Korea.
http://koreananimation.blogspot.com/2008/01/poop-is-cute-in-korea.html
Just thought you should know, since we talk about a poop a lot here, that poop can be pretty great, or at least funny.
-ms
2 tags
I had no idea frowns were instinctual.
-bp
7 tags
First Food: a la alfie
Matt gave Grace rice water, and we’ve decided to include bananas in our next shopping trip. This is no small miracle b/c 1. our baby is taking an interest in food and 2. I’ve pretty much had an active banana-banish in order since, well, I was born (they’re gross! you might as well be eating chapstick!).
It all started last week when we noticed that Alfie...
9 tags
First Food
The baby bit my wife’s nose. And then we gave her some rice water.
(Is that what’s supposed to happen? Seriously, how does this food thing work?)
-ms
October 2011
17 posts
10 tags
Strange Love or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying... →
Baby Grace goes to urgent care in my latest Good Men Project column. Here’s an excerpt:
Babies train you. For nine months, you are subject to your baby’s cravings. You learn to respect the belly. You make room for the belly in your lives, see how life revolves around it, allow strangers to approach it as if it somehow belongs to everyone. The belly dictates, leaves marks and itches and...
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It's Not About Me
Really. I could say something funny about my son grabbing a fistful of my lentil dinner tonight, but instead, things should really be about the face-slapping awesomeness of Matt’s book, The Last Repatriate (Nouvella 2011) being released this week. So, really, it should be all about him:
buy
buy
buy
Ma tt’s
b k
oo
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Buy a share of Matt
When I’m not being a father/husband, this is what I’m doing. My novella, The Last Repatriate, has just gone to launch and is available for one week, ending Nov 1. James Franco says of it: “Salesses’ examination of the troubled mind of a Korean War POW returning home is pensive and brooding. A subtly painful psychological journey.” Get it, pretty please? I wrote about the real soldier...
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No Time To Sweep
me: oh no! what's this blood-blister on alfie's foot?!
wife: what?!
me: (mentally already at the ER)
wife: um. that's just popcorn skin.
-bp
Fatherhood: The secret to a longer life? →
drego:
“A new study suggests that dads are less likely to die from heart-related diseases than their childless counterparts.” Read more…
(source: Stanford Medicine, via The Week)
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Golden times
I talk a lot about how hard it is to take care of her, but now that baby Grace is almost four months and sleeping through the night, she’s pretty fun. Everything is new to her, so she’s always looking around, learning, playing. As she discovers things, it’s like we’re discovering them, too. She’s old enough to be aware of the world but still with that cute baby face...
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“She seems a lot less like an alien now.”
– ms 