Bookpusher

Last night was incredibly entertaining – you had Kansas winning a fun-to-watch game over Virginia Tech, Obama and Edwards going one-two in Iowa, and a police standoff going on at Britney Spears’ house, all at the same time.

We’re living in good times, people.

The good news is that being a dad is still a lot of fun; the problem is that my entire life now exists is some absurd phantom dimension where time does not run like it should. It takes triple the time to do anything normal, like going to the store or paying bills or even watch watching tv. The kiddo must be taken into account - is he dressed properly? If going out, do we need to restock the diaper bag? Even if staying home, is he fed/changed/burped/clean? How did poop get in his ear, anyway? - and just when you think you’re ready to go and do whatever it is that you want to do, you’ve found that three hours have passed. Welcome to the Phantom Dimension, where you’re armed with a full diaper bag but without wipes and with mysterious stains on your shirt.

(Before being a dad, anything with stains on it would go immediately to the hamper. Now the laundry hamper is piled so high it looks like a task out of ESPN2’s World’s Strongest Man competition, right next to the Pillars of Hercules and the one where they carry around the rock that looks like the continent of Africa; a stain on a shirt isn’t all that big a deal anymore. Only if it smells. Smells still go to the hamper, and if we don’t get a handle on that pile soon I’m going to have to get Magnus ver Magnusson to come over and clean with me.)

Today is my son’s 1st month birthday. (And even to celebrate a date like that is absurd, like those middle-school girlfriends who celebrated three-week anniversaries of Going Out, even when no one knew what Going Out meant exactly.) His muddy eyes have now solidified into an amazing shade of deep blue; whenever I dangle a toy in front of him that rattles, those eyes widen and his lips pucker into a tiny “o” of surprise. He still grunts like a old man getting out of bed. He saves up his poops for once a day and they are hellacious in size and scope. He’s still not letting us sleep properly - we haven’t weighed him recently but we think he’s solidly over eight pounds and has more of a classic Gerber baby look to him. We know his stomach can hold enough formula to let us sleep for more than three and a half hours straight, but he has yet to give any indication of it. He reacts to our voices and has an adorable way of sighing and snuggling into our arms to signal when he’s content.