A Year

Every two weeks or so, Photojojo e-mails me a time capsule that basically shows me pictures from my Flickr stream a year earlier. It’s really cool being reminded of where Nolan was at at various points, and how much bigger he’s gotten since. If you’re a sentimental sucker like me, and post to Flickr regularly, I highly recommend signing up.

This week, I was really struck by Nolan’s growth over the last year. Here he was over the weekend:

And here he is a year earlier, on September 13, 2008

I Want My Damn Snuffaluffagus!

Like most children of the 80’s, I grew up on a steady diet of television. Mister Rogers. Voltron. Star Blazers, He-Man, GI Joe, and of course Transformers. To me, this was and will always be the golden era of kids’ television. I know, I know, I’m sure there are plenty of 19-20 year olds out there who will no doubt say the same about Barney, the Power Rangers or Pokemon, and Nolan’ll probably grow up with a similar sentimental attachment to Sid the Science Kid and Martha the Talking Dog.

But through it all, Sesame Street has been a constant.

Or so I thought.

Every morning, Nolan and I take to the couch, him with his waffle, banana, and whatever drink I can scrounge up, and me with life-giving coffee, and we watch TV. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to watch the previous night’s Tonight Show or somesuch other show on the DVR. When I’m not, we turn on Sesame Street.

When Nolan was born, this was exactly the sort of thing I was looking forward to as a parent. Watching Sesame Street with the kiddo. But as I watched, I started noticing things. Changes. This wasn’t the Sesame Street I’d grown up with.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight…

Our biggest challenge with Nolan has always been sleep.

Things started out alright when he was a baby. All we had to do was plop him in his Ambi-baby sleep hammock, and he’d pass out, waking up occasionally, as babies do, but otherwise sleeping soundly.

Then he outgrew the hammock.

We tried the crib, but the challenges of getting him to fall asleep – turning on his little fish aquarium thing, and gently “jackhammering” the mattress to lull him to dreamland – left us exhausted. And all too soon, it stopped working. Then, out of the blue, he began to hate his crib. He would scream, and scream, and scream.

Jamie, of course, read everything she could get her hands on regarding babies and sleep. We tried putting a mattress on the floor, so we could lay with him as he went down, give him comfort and all that.

It worked, kind of. But there was a catch…he couldn’t fall asleep without us there, and the moment he woke up and realized we were gone, he’d be up and searching for us in a panic. That, and, especially at night, we (okay, I) had a tendency of falling asleep with him. Never good for getting to all the housework. And, invariably, he’d wake up around 11-something. Being too lazy and too tired to go through the whole exercise again, we would just let him sleep in the bed with us.

Then, this past week, something snapped.

Guys’ Night Out…

When I was a kid, my dad and I used to have a “Guys’ Night Out” every week or so. Invariably, this would involve dinner (my memories include McNuggets at McDonald’s and appetizers at Friday’s) and then go-karting or miniature golf or something else that strikes you as the coolest thing in the world when you’re seven.

I’m looking very forward to continuing the guys’ night tradition with Nolan, but he’s still a bit young to be out go-karting (or eating McNuggets, for that matter). So instead, we’ve been having guys’ mornings.

Here’s the deal. He’s only four weeks old (or already four weeks old, if you’d rather), and as such is still waking up at all ours of the night demanding to be fed, or changed, or held, or, well, you get the idea. Obviously this has put something of a strain on Jamie, as she’s the one who has to get up to feed him. In a bid to give her a bit more sleep, we’ve worked out an arrangement whereby I handle the morning feeding. I’m accustomed to waking up at 5:30 anyway, so staggering out of bed a half hour earlier isn’t that big a deal.

Once we’re all situated and Nolan is going to town on his bottle, it’s time for our “guys’ morning”, which basically involves me watching those various TV shows and movies I can’t seem to get Jamie interested in. In the last week we’ve watched a few episodes of the Colbert Report, the latest episodes of Battlestar Galactica (wow that last one was dark) and The Office, and Beowulf. This morning it was an episode of the best car show on the planet, BBC’s Top Gear.

Nolan doesn’t really pay attention to them, yet. He mostly eats, burbs, then passes out (until I go to put him down…). But I can’t help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, he’s absorbing some of it…

On Hold…

As the paucity of posts over the last week might indicate, Nolan’s arrival has disrupted quite a few regular activities, such as, oh, work and sleeping. The same is true for pastimes and hobbies, as Jamie and I adapt to this new presence in our lives.

As such, my writing has gone on hold for a short while. Hopefully, once we begin getting ourselves into something a routine, I’ll be able to pick back up where I left off. Speaking of which…

Frequent readers are no doubt aware I’d been racing to get as much done in the way of editing and revisions as I could ahead of Nolan’s birth. As recently as March 4th, I’d been cautiously optimistic about maybe, maybe getting through Chapter VIII before the big day. To my great surprise, I managed to put away not only Chapter VIII, but Chapters IX, X, and XI as well. In fact, I reached the end of Chapter XI on the morning of the day Jamie went into labor.

I can’t help but marvel at Nolan’s timing. The chapter now before me, Chapter XII, is the most bloated and problem-laden of the entire book, and, admittedly, the one that terrifies me the most. Where most of my other chapters are between 10-14,000 works, Chapter XII is closer to 50,000, and my plan is to cut it by at least half, without stripping away any of the details necessary to the story.

Where better to stop and take a breather, than before this behemoth of a chapter?

What a Difference a DSLR Makes…

Don’t get me wrong. My Sony Cyber-shot excels at its intended role. And the iPhone even works in a pinch. But nothing can lend a picture a sense of depth, of gravity and reality (or unreality) better than a DSLR. Point-and-shoots can’t match the better lenses, shorter depth of field, or the larger image sensors.

When Jamie and I went to the hospital, it was with our Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W130. It did the job. It took some good pictures, and adequately recorded Nolan’s first few days in this world.

But now that I’m home and brandishing my trusty Nikon D80, I think the results speak for themselves….

“He Has Your Death Stare…”

I’m not even going to attempt to blog about all that’s gone on in the last four or so days since Nolan was born. I really can’t put it into words. Or I suppose I could, but they wouldn’t be sufficient. Since I took Jamie to the hospital last Saturday, I’ve experienced the most joyous moment of my life, I’ve dealt with (and am dealing with) sleepless nights and 2 AM feeding sessions (and 3 AM, and 4:30 AM, and…), I’ve learned to hold my son. I’ve experienced hope and despair and, in a sleep-deprived stupor, questioned my ability to see this through.

And I’ve changed my first diaper.

It’s been a wild ride, and despite the difficulties along the way, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Little Hot Dog

Today at 1:19 PM, we welcomed little Nolan into the world. Still in shock and awe. But here he is…

More HERE.