My Newest Baby Related Obsession...

Before I get started let me first respond to Austin's previous blog by stating that I think that she definately has the worse situation regarding when it comes to pregnancy. I would never in a million years trade places and teach kindergardeners while constantly feeling while I was going to throw up... so bring on the housework.
(I would have put this as a response within her blog like she does with mine, but only she seems to have that power).

Back to the title of this blog, my newest baby related obsession is... getting in shape. At least I think that it is baby related, could be spring related, or getting beaten by my little sis in a 3 mile jog while visiting her related, or her just finishing a half marathon while I spend most of my days in front of a computer related.

However... I have been thinking lately that some of the things I remember most about my father were going running with him at the local high-school track, the camping trips and hikes that we used to take, and just the general feeling that he was almost invincible in his strength, tirelessness, and health.

Meanwhile, the current computer time at my job, the many distractions around the house, and just the general feeling of inertia at the end of the day have led to a long time without working out. Overall, my sluggishness is at about an 8 on 10 point scale.

So, last night I decided that it is time to get back in shape and headed to the local lap pool. The 1800 yard workout was a stark reminder of just how far I have fallen from the triathlon days. The workout was cut short by a feeling of nausea that I can only assume rivals what Austin has been feeling, and the painful headache and numbingly tired brain led to me walking into the womens locker room to the surprise of a (thankfully fully clothed) woman.

Still it felt good to finally break some of the stagnant blood loose from my veins. I have signed up for a card good for 10 visits and have vowed to use them all up in the next few weeks.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Power Mad with Blogging...

Okay, okay.... I know that I opened this blog by indicating how much more Austin was going to post than me, but now that she is too sick to post I am drunk on the thrill of online publication :-)

So today my thoughts are centered on sheer number of items that are available for babies...

Last weekend, Legacy Park, a very large and somewhat affluent neighborhood near where Austin teaches school held its annual communal yard sale. This event is apparenly known far and wide for its veritable treasure-trove of high quality lightly used baby loot, so we both decided that though we are months away from needing most of the items in question, it would not be wise as cost-consious parents to skip it.

I think that the trip was a successful one... as we picked up a jogging stroller, bouncy, Baby-Bjorn, and Pack-and-Play for veritable peanuts... my only problem is that I have no real idea whether these items are useful or not.

While doing our yard sale rounds I was struck by two things: The first was that there are a whole lot of baby items out there that look like they cost a lot but that don't look like they were ever used. The second was a comment from the woman that we bought our jogging stroller from when we were looking at her car seat. She was an athletic and alert looking woman who struck me as a bit of a friendly type A triathlete. "Eight weeks along!" she said,"Well then I am sure you have read that book on all the baby items that you actually need." Austin and I nodded knowingly while she went on to describe the reasons why car seats that hook in directly to the floor are much better than the "death traps" that just use a regular seat belt around them. In truth, we had no idea what she was talking about.

So my questions to anyone who is reading are these... What is this mythical book she is talking about? How will I know that I have the book that is steering me around the crap that I don't need and not the one that is a marketing ploy to direct me right to it? and In the absence of said miracle book, what are some items aside from those mentioned above that are indespensible to parents to be? On the opposite side...what are some that are completely useless?

Sleepless nights...

I generally fall asleep quite easily and am a very sound sleeper but on occasion I have nights where what in the daytime seems to be an utterly boring idea fascinates me so completely that I refuse to let go of it in order to actually fall asleep.

Last night was one of those nights and I tossed and turned for a couple of hours (much to Austin's chagrin I am sure). This is only relevant to this particular blog because the ideas I couldn't rid myself of were mostly baby related.

I think it all started with how much I enjoyed it when my mother read to me as a child and how that led to my overall interest in books, how their stories shaped my life views on what is good and evil and who I want to be, and how I think that more than anything is what led to my success in school.

This led to thoughts that I really wanted to read to our LP and questions about if Austin wanted to read to him/her too, and how we would decide who gets to. I wondered whether we would have to alternate... in which case I need to work on my inflection and voices so that I will be the more popular reader :-) This then led to questions about the many diverse genres that mom read to me and how she chose the books that she did and questions about when a child actually starts to enjoy books like the Chronicles of Narnia and Tom Sawyer, and how I can get LP to that point faster. :-)

Somehow this moved on to food preferences and learning and how quickly you can actually teach a kid about his/her physiology and why things are good for them, which degenerated into I was going to teach our child about trigonometry and how to determine the height of our telephone pole outside. I must've been really tired at this point because somehow that morphed into me spending my last 30 minutes of wakefulness trying to figure out how one calculates the force on a spinning object if you know its rpms and the radius of rotation.

Ahh, the thoughts we have when we know we should be asleep...

In any case, I now officially have babies on the brain.

Our child is going to be raised to be a total dork, isn't he? Good thing you're so cute.

Parasites and lameness and Babies..Oh My !

That last post brings disturbing images of Alien to mind...

Regarding the lameness and psychoticness of my description of you... I was going for cute and sweet. Does that mean that what I find cute and sweet is in actuality lame and psychotic?

(Maybe...if so it's good we found each other...)

Interesting questions that I am sure we will all enjoy answering through experimentation with our unborn child's psyche. :-)

Mildly interesting things...

The oddest part about becoming a father to be is that I really don't feel any different. I can conceptualize how huge of a change it is going to be to become a father. I enjoy thinking about what it is going to be like to have a child and have someone who is completely dependent on us for their physical needs, their education, world view, direction in life, and their fundamental health. However, it still seems just as abstract as it did a year ago even though it obviously is not...

I know that the baby is on Austin's mind constantly, even amidst the wild and needy children of her kindergarten class and the everyday directions that she is pulled. Strangely, for me... it is not. I find that I can still get wrapped up in work, meetings, or phone calls. I can even be happily describing it to people in the course of conversation while going hours before the thought "I'm going to be a father" creeps back into my mind. It is still surprising to me every time that it does.

It is funny how even when it is below the surface of my mind it changes my behavior, though. I find that I am suddenly interested in completing all of the projects such as repairing our deteriorating yard, replacing our kitchen linoleum, our leaky windows, and our leaky fireplace flew that have been present for the last 4 years. Cooking balanced meals and the ingredients in them now holds my interest where I had very little in it before.

It seems that my body is programmed to respond to the most exciting events in my life in the boy scout "Be Prepared" mode of operation.

In any case it is an odd combination of being deliriously happy and excited and yet feeling somewhat numb. If the books are to be believed, this will soon be replaced with a feeling of the "realness" of the child.

I'll keep you posted.

-K

Inaugural Post - Baby Blog: The Father's perspective

I am excited about this opportunity to write about the beginnings of parenthood from the father's perspective. I should first qualify by mentioning that I do not possess my wife's or her sister's technical saavy with blogging nor their artistic capabilities and most likely all of the pictures, backgrounds, and cool links that you see on the page will be their doing.

I also don't think that I possess anywhere near the range of emotions that they have to write about. At any given time, when asked how I am feeling, I will answer with one of six things... really happy, loving, excited, sad, angry, or (the far more common) pretty good. (1) My wife on the other hand has a rich boquet of emotions to describe which I often have difficulty processing. Such as... disappointed, frustrated or hurt (they all mean angry near as I can tell)... wanting to unzip you and zip myself inside or gobble you with a spoon (2)(a combination of happy,excited and loving), depressed, lonely, exhausted, or melancholy (all various gradations on sad) (3)
Finally, I am likely to be less prolific... I simply don't possess the cleverness to be an everyday poster. That being said... I do have some mildly interesting things to write about today...

Footnotes by Austin:
(1.) Sometimes you're hungry. There, that's seven
(2.) You've totally made me sound psychotic, which I'm not.
(3.) I am also often happy, why do I sound so lame in my husband's description of me?