guest post: 10 Things I Think I Thought I Thunk

Since I'm spending most of my days 1) throwing up, 2) trying not to throw up, or 3) asleep so I'm not throwing, the husband is blogging for me today. I'm sorry for unleashing him on you yet again. ~Alicia

Hi everybody, the husband here again, blogging again as the wife tries not to throw up (and often fails). Failing having anything interesting to talk about (maybe next time), I thought I would share a few of the random items that bounce within my head.

So, with apologies to my wife, here’s my “10 Things I Think I Thought I Thunk.”

Stop laughing. Thunk is a word. Just like Squozen. After you squeeze something, it is squozen. Just sayin’.

Buckle up people, here we go!

1. – I’m finding it far too amusing that the best shows we’re watching right now are cartoons. I’m not sure what that says about us or the current state of television, but I feel like it’s been this way for a while now.

Transformers Prime, Bob’s Burgers, the new Turtles. All quality. What else are we going to watch - Honey Boo Boo?

Heck, even some of Grayson’s shows beat the pants off of 95% of the drivel on TV right now. I’ll take Phineas and Ferb over just about every network’s prime-time line up any day.

2. – My child falls for the Bugs Bunny argument trick. I’m not sure if I’m proud or sad.

Me: “Come here.”

G: “No.”

Me: “Yes.”

G: “No.”

Me: “Yes.”

G: “No.”

Me: “No.”

G: *pause* *nods enthusiastically* *comes over*

I can’t wait until he’s older and we can have the “Wabbit season / Duck season” debate.

3. – It’s about time that someone else in our household gets an introduction. Meet Teddy:

Teddy is G’s best friend. Teddy joined our family on G’s 2^nd birthday and G loved him instantly, carrying him through the mall after we made the little bear. 

Teddy was G’s first bedtime companion, and still keeps him company every night. He’s never thrown him out and has often used him as a pillow… but who hasn’t used their best friend for a pillow from time to time, right?

Teddy is far from a security blanket, and G tends to largely ignore him (and all his stuffed animals, to be fair) unless he’s actively playing a game with them, but still, he’s the best friend that the boy’s got.

Teddy is also occasionally a projectile. But, again… who hasn’t occasionally chucked their friend at their parents? 

Behold the cuteness!

4. – Toodee stares at me every day. Toodee, from Yo Gabba Gabba. Yup, that Toodee. Every day I open the shower curtain and BAM.

It’s like some sort of weird Hitchcock movie in reverse. Staring children’s stars in giant costumes. Next one is Barney in reverse “Rear Window,” where Barney sings as he slowly crawls back home from a neighbor’s house and gets a cast taken off.

I don’t really know where I was going with that. Pretend it was funny.

END TANGENT

So there Toodee is, in the shower, every day for over a year now. But hey, at least that one’s at eye level. The other Toodee is at a very unfortunate level, as you can tell by her shocked expression.

 

5. – Serious alert. 

I hate the fact that I haven’t really enjoyed us being pregnant since baby 2 (our first loss). I hate that I feel like I’m just waiting for things to go wrong again. I hate that I did that with baby 3, and then we lost it. I wish I could enjoy every minute, every nauseous, vomity, tiring minute. 

I try to enjoy it when I can. When she complains about feeling horrible, I give sympathy while also being extremely happy at the nice strong symptoms. I try to gently remind her (and myself) that all her problems are because BABY, but that only goes so far.

Oop, and I’m being sent out for a McDonald’s double cheeseburger (pickles only) at 11pm. Be right back.

…

6. – I’m back. Ok, so on a less serious note, I write most of this post as I watch a football game. The Tennessee Titans are miserable this year. Amazingly, I don’t really care, and I watch every game to the end. People ask me how I can do that, and I just respond with the fact that I’m also a Cubs fan… so I’m completely used to rooting for losing teams. 

And drinking. Drinking during the games helps quite a lot too. 

(the Titans went on to win, which only made me all the happier)

7. – Every once in a while I wonder if I’m confusing my child because I tend to do voices and accents when I read to him. Everyone in The Hobbit talks in an English or Scottish accent (Hobbits and wizards = English, Dwarves = Scottish. Really. I shouldn’t even have to explain this to people). Tom O’Malley (the alley cat in Disney’s “Aristocats’) talks in an Irish accent (because: O’Malley). Everyone in Anastasia talks with Russian ones, for some reason Tinker Bell is Swedish… you get the point. 

I can’t help it. I like to do voices. Someday he’ll really appreciate it. Or beg me to stop. Either way.

8. – Every night during my goodnights to G I paraphrase ‘Blazing Saddles.’ Some day he’ll realize this. Someday I hope it will amuse him as much as it amuses me. Some day he’ll properly squeak back at me, and I will die from pride. 

9. – It’s starting to seem like every day G is saying (ok, telling) a new word. Today we were driving to the mall (one of his favorite places because of the play area). As it came into view, G pointed with excitement and yelled, “Mall! Mall!” It’s more than kinda awesome.  

10. – I feel like I haven’t been funny enough in this post. So here’s my absolute favorite joke ever:

A small town in the middle of nowhere is in crisis. It seems that whenever anyone enters a local flower shop, they never come back out. Suspicion is that the pair of monks that run the shop are killing all their customers.

The police chief is frazzled, and is about to quit his job when a man walks into his office.

“Chief,” says the man, “I am here to help.”

“And just who the hell are you?” asks the chief.

“My name is Hugh, and I will put an end to this town’s nightmare.”

“We’ve lost over a dozen police and an entire SWAT team, what makes you think you’ll fare any differently?” asks the chief.

“Chief, you’ll just have to trust me,” replies Hugh, “I can handle these monks.”

For some reason the chief believes the man, and he takes him to the flower shop immediately. Hugh takes a long look and strides purposely towards the shop. The police beg him to stop, but he waves them off, and with a final wink, he pushes open the door and disappears inside.

Minutes pass and the police get worried, but finally the door swings open again and out steps Hugh, carrying the unconscious bodies of the two monks.

Hugh drops them at the chief’s feet, and without a word, he walks away… never to be heard from again.

The moral of this story?

Only Hugh can prevent florist friars.

Yup. Ending it with a pun. A grand pun. A glorious pun.

I’m amazed that my wife let me post it.

guest post: the hubs talks about play

The hubs guest blogs for the last time this NaBloPomo! This time, about play, this month's theme. ~Alicia

The “I Have A Child” Excuse

One of the many perks to having a child (other than that whole “love” and “family” thing that people keep taking about) is that you suddenly have a chance to do all the fun stuff that you did as a kid without all the social derision.

If you’re out in the world, having a child with you is sort of a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card for odd social behavior. You see a grown man pushing around a car or playing with a Thor action figure in the middle of the mall with his son or daughter, and you think “Aww, what a loving father.” Same situation, minus the kid? Everyone avoids him, parents hide their children, security is called, someone gets tazed, mass hysteria.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

The world opens back up for all the men and women who spent their childhood loving cartoons, Legos, and Star Wars action figures. Suddenly things that we have been told we’re “above” or “too old for” are there once again, begging us to play with them, to watch them. 

Sure, right now it’s a lot of stuff that truly is way too young for us. Yo Gabba Gabba is not exactly known for its plotlines, and giant wooden blocks are a far cry from the awesomeness of Legos. But I squeal with delight every time I pass a Transformers toy display in the store, thinking to myself “soon I will buy these… for Grayson… yes, for Grayson.”

It is the same elsewhere as well. Picture yourself on the beach. Go ahead. I can wait. Ok, there? Ok. You’re on the beach, and nearby you see a grown man, shoveling mindlessly in the sand. Maybe he’s building a sandcastle, maybe he’s just digging a trench to watch the water run into it. Weird, right? Creepy. “Hide your wife, hide your kids” kind of weird. Add a child? BOOM, total “awwww” moment. I like to dig in sand. I like to build things. Totally too self-conscious. Now? Hello sand, here I come.

I think all this, and then I pause. Am I attempting to live vicariously through my child? Am I using him for my own enjoyment? Am I a horrible, selfish person?

Meh.

Excuse me, I’m off to pull my old Star Wars figs out of storage. Because I have a child.

guest blog: the hubs and insomnia

The hubs guest blogs again! This time, about his fight with insomnia. ~Alicia

Oh sleep, thou fragile and oft unobtainable thing.

So Grayson has been having some fun times with his sleep lately. Over the weekend he decided to be awake for 2-3 hours each night in the middle of the night, then suddenly he wanted comfort to fall asleep (but then slept through the night)… so with all of that fun going on, I thought I’d talk about sleep for a little bit here.

I’ve been an insomniac for most of my life. Luckily I’ve had small breaks throughout ( I’ve had as much as almost a year without it at times), though normally I don’t get more than a week’s reprieve before it comes back to visit for a while.

The oddest thing about it was that I thought I was normal (ok, in the sleep department… definitely not in other departments). I would watch TV and scoff at the stupidity of people simply falling asleep as they hit the pillow (I still kind of do, especially in our newest favorite show Awake). I chalked it up to director’s necessity. You can’t really show someone tossing and turning for an hour… not exactly riveting (though perhaps better than Jersey Shore)… It was actually only at the end of my teenage years (when I gained college roommates) that I learned that people actually WERE capable of falling asleep quickly… like in 10 minutes… unlike me.

For my youngest years, until I was 25 or so, it literally took me at least an hour to fall asleep, if not two. I’m sure now that part of it was due to my ADD (which I was diagnosed as a late teen… more on my broken brain in a further guest blog, perhaps). My brain simply would not shut off, and more to the point it could not even settle on one thing for more than a minute or two. My thoughts would bounce around like a caffeinated monkey in a padded room, leaving me largely unable to sleep. I learned to counter this by listening to books on tape at night. It gave me something to focus on, and helped. With that I rarely was up longer than an hour and would usually fall asleep in about 45 minutes. The headphones were uncomfortable, though.

This all means that my body is astoundingly used to functioning on 5-6 hours of sleep.

Amazingly, my first year with Alicia was probably the best I’ve ever had, sleep-wise. During that time I suffered almost no effects, but it has slowly crept back over the years. I’m currently running at about 30 minutes.

So, what are the effects of a baby on an insomniac?

When G was a newborn, it was both extremely tough and amazingly easy. On the bad nights, G would wake up every 2-3 hours to eat… eat for 20 minutes, go back to sleep. Then I’d take another 30-40 minutes to fall asleep, only to be woken up again far too early. On the flip side, a lifetime lacking sleep left me much better off during the days than my poor wife. Five hours of sleep, even broken up, was okay with me most of the time… Lis, not so much.

Then G went through a period of waking up at 3am or so, and simply refusing to go to sleep without mass amounts of rocking. This was given to him in the form of Dad (me) with a foot on a bouncy chair for an hour or so until he was asleep enough to be transferred back into his crib. Sometimes I simply did it until morning. I didn’t mind too much. I was honestly kind of used to just getting up for an hour or two in the middle of the night and doing things. I believe it was during this time that I finally managed my 100% completion of Final Fantasy X. Go me.

It wasn’t all beneficial… if you can call any of that actually beneficial. That’s like being touched with a cattle prod and saying “no, no, that’s fine… I’m used to being electrocuted.” No matter how many times it happens, it’s never a good thing. I think the worst part was the last month or so that G slept in our room. He slept in a little crib in our room until he turned 4 months, and it was during that last month or so that he started to not like little noises in the night. This was problematic to a guy that shifts around a lot while trying to fall asleep. It made me very self-conscious, and made it even harder on me to get back to sleep after his wakeups.

My shifting still annoys the crap out of the wife, but she falls asleep in about 5-10 minutes these days. I can usually hold still enough for that long for her to get to sleep, and then I can go about my horrible nights without bothering her unless I’m going crazy. I change positions about once every 1-5 minutes, I’ve figured out. That can drive a co-sleeper nuts, I’m sure. The wife occasional gets woken up and pokes me or mummers something in a “settle down or I hurt you” kinda way.

As I stated, I’m at about 30 minutes these days… which is pretty good. Usually an hour tops, with rare nights that go on so long that I’ll get up and go do something else, for both our sakes. I don’t know what to credit with the decent time span (YES, 30-60 minutes is a decent time span, ye gods yes). I feel like my ADD is worse right now than it’s ever been, but I feel like my mental outlook is at its best. I love my life right now (even with all the recent horribleness included), and it makes being at peace and serene quite easy most days. I go to bed most nights happy and madly in love with both wife and child, and that seems to be enough. After all, what more is there in life?

Okay, okay, I don’t have any of my world-famous badly photoshopped G pics here. Last time I blogged, I mentioned my fear of G tripped while running at the zoo and smashing his face into the concrete so badly he would resemble a Batman villain. So here you go: the new Batman villain:

Zoo Face!

guest post: my husband is on crack

The husband blogs! Again! I claim no responsibility for this. Truly. - Alicia


While the wife is drowning in tests to grade (seriously, she’s in the bathtub covered in tests, gasping for air – she’s weird like that), I thought I’d throw my thoughts around and see if they bounce.
I have no clue what that means either.

So the theme this month is "play"… hmmm… play…

Webster’s dictionary defines “play” as “amorous flirtation.” That can’t be right. Seems an odd theme for a blog month. Could be interesting, I suppose… How YOU doin'?

Oh wait… that’s just one given definition. Ok. “Play.” So my favorite play is probably Macbeth. I can just see Grayson up on stage, giving the famous soliloquy, “Is this a dagger I see before me?”

Cue badly photoshopped picture!

Wait… no… that can’t be it either.

Ok, next definition: “The spontaneous activity of children.” Yeah, that sounds about right. Spontaneous is a much nicer word than “bat-shit crazy.”

Grayson is full of energy. Many mornings I take G to the zoo, and I tend to see only the back of his head for a vast majority of our time there… he speeds off like he’s training for the 100-yard dash.

I used to be able to keep up with him just walking at a good pace, but now I actually have to jog. It’s pretty great, but he leaves knots in my stomach bolting around at such break-neck speeds. They don’t call it “break-neck speed” for nothin’… Going to fall and end up with asphalt in his face, that one. Maybe after that he’ll become some kind of Batman villain… “Zoo-Face” or something.

Totally need a badly shopped Batman picture here, but it’s getting late. Next time.

Anyway, I considered going into G’s favorite playtime activities… but not only would that make this one heck of a a long post, but I certainly don’t want to use up all the interesting stuff while my poor wife still has to fill a month with super-happy-play posts.

I concede that I said absolutely nothing in this blog post… So I will simply conclude with this:
My son hates ice cream, bacon, and peanut butter. I’m raising a monster.

And now a random picture just for the hell of it:

Goodnight, Cleveland!

it's guest-blogging time

I'm guest-blogging over at Letters to Mo today! Annie is so funny, and her son Cash who just turned one is seriously cute. I'm blogging about my miscarriage and what I've learned about grief. It's heavy stuff, but if you've been here for a while, you kinda know what to expect from me, right?

Go check it out!

Guest Blog: letter from Daddy

The hubs wanted to write to the baby, so here it is. I so love this man of mine.


I have tried to write this a half dozen ways at this point. For three days I wrote bits here, parts there, all the while being generally at a loss for words. Nothing worked, nothing fit, nothing felt right… then I realized my problem. I don’t want to write a blog. I don’t want to write my feelings, or my thoughts about this. All I’ve ever really wanted to do was talk to my child, the little lost one.

My precious little Baby,

I miss you. I never even had a chance to know you, but I miss you terribly.

Please forgive me if I ramble. Your Dad does that sometimes.

I only saw you the once, when you were 9 weeks old. You waved your little foot at me as if to say ‘hi,’ and commenced wiggling away for a solid five minutes, the whole time we watched you. I like to think that you never suffered or knew that anything was wrong. In my mind you never knew anything but that happy wiggling.

I cannot tell you how much I want to apologize for all the things we’ll never do. I was days away from starting The Hobbit, reading to you while you dozed within Mama. I wanted to do all the things that would come with life… I wanted to sing you to sleep, dance with you, read with you, laugh with you.

I’m sorry that I barely had a chance to say goodbye. When Mommy went into surgery, they took you both away far too quickly. I was hoping for a moment of privacy, a minute, a second… something to have a chance to say goodbye to you. But sooner than I was ready (I could have ever been ready?) they just started moving. My goodbye was too quick, but I hope you heard it, and I hope it was enough.

I hate to say that I’m almost a little mad at you (though I never truly could be). I’m mad at you for breaking your mother’s heart so irreparably. There you were, so much of her life, and then you just went away. I know it’s not your fault, but you’ve left me playing the role of the healer instead of the healing… trying to act as if I’m not hurting so that maybe, just maybe, your Mama wouldn’t be sad either… You would be proud of your brother, though. He’s been a great help to your Mama, filled with hugs and giggles. I’m so glad he’s here to help her, because Mama would be lost right now without him to focus on.

My Baby. You were supposed to be the final piece of the family puzzle, now you’ll always be the missing piece. No matter what we do, how much we try, how many children we have… we’ll always be missing you. I want you to know that. No matter if we have another child, it will always, in my heart, be child number three. You are a part of this family, forever.

Because of you there’s been a song stuck in my head for nearly a week now. Even while I’m singing to your brother this song is in my head. It’s just the chorus I hear, over and over again.

I miss you. I miss you. I miss you, I wanted you to know.
I miss you. I miss you. I miss you, and I still love you so.

Good night, Baby. Daddy loves you.

guest post: future geek

The hubs guest-blogged for me again since I had class. Enjoy! - Alicia

It’s the hubs again, here to talk about all of our hopes and dreams for the future. Nothing important, right?

I have very few true hopes for my child. In general, I’ll be happy if he’s happy. Well… happy and productive. None of this “but I’m happy living in your basement and playing video games!” stuff. Other than that: doctor, dancer, weatherman, athlete, poet, actor, garbage man, factory worker… whatever. All good. Sure, we’d like him to avoid the more injury-prone pursuits, like football or car racing..

One thing I truly hope about my child (all my children, however many there may end up being) is that he is a geek.

Hello, my name is Dave, and I’m a geek.

Sure, these days being a “geek” is some new kind of cool. Like “hipsterism” and “emo” or something. I might be a little out of touch. You find them all over the TV with Big Bang Theory, Chuck, or Professional Wrestling. Though really, that’s all not really geek to me. Geekiness has nothing to do with intelligence (just ask my friends), but rather is defined by a great love of something(s) that seems silly or unsocial to others. Trekkies, Star Warsians, Harry Potterites (those are the right terms, right?)… all geeks.

To clarify, I’m a D&D geek. I would have accepted being called a Star Wars geek as well, before Lucas went and DESTROYED MY CHILDHOOD WITH THOSE GOD-AWFUL PREQUELS AND… AND JAR-JAR… AND…

…breathe… 

I’m ok now.

I hope that Grayson grows up with a love of a good story, whether that be through books, anime, movies, TV shows… wherever he can get it. To me, though, the best stories are those you get to be a part of. That’s what kept me playing for the last… 28 years. Great. Now I feel old. Thanks, blog.

I love to tell stories for my friends, and let them live them, change them, inject their own stories into them. It’s a true interaction that you can’t get from a movie or video game (though they try).

I bought Grayson his first set of dice last Christmas. I love the idea that he’ll always have a set of dice as old as he is. The first time Grayson left the house without us was when we started playing again nearly a year ago. It’s a big thing for me, and I love the fact that the wife was keen enough on it to try it out way back in the day, and we’ve played together ever since.

I spend time thinking about the kid-friendly adventures I can take him on. How to simplify the system so that he can learn it when he’s 7. I’m sure I’ll tear up the first time he asks me to run a session for him. I like to think that in 15 years he’ll sit at the adult table with us, and in 20 years he’ll come over a few times a month to play.

Is it wrong that my dream for him is that he share my hobby? Is that selfish? Sometimes I ask myself that, but in the long run it’s me wanting to share something with my child, something that has given me a lifetime of enjoyment and some of my best friends.

(And yes, blogging is just an excuse to paste my kid's head on random other pictures.)

-Dave