It’s been a few weeks since I wrote one of these, not that I had any real intention of making this a regularly scheduled thing by any stretch of the imagination. But for my own sake of remembrance and for those who want to kind of live life as a new dad with me, I still feel like writing these posts every now and then, so I can one day look back and see where my head was at during this time of my life, as well as hers.
Plus I occasionally fantasize of my daughter one day as an adult, reading my life’s blathering, and if she’s anything like me, getting teary-eyed at dad’s own words back from when she was but a mere infant. But that’s completely contingent on the brog still being online 19-22 years from now, as well as her being remotely interested in what _dad_ has to say about things in life and the world. However, in regards to the former, considering I’ve been brogging for quite literally 20 years, I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to think I couldn’t keep it up for another 20.
Anyway, to those new dads out there who feel like their worlds are becoming microscopic in the sense that you have absolutely no time to yourself, I can officially vouch for the notion that things to get easier in time. Believe me, I’d gone through my period of feeling like my world was the size of a lima bean and I’d wonder just how long it would be before I could have 30 minutes to myself.
But over the last few weeks, mythical wife and I have been attempting to do some sleep training with our little infant child, and trying our best to establish a general routine of feeding times and naps, to maximize her growth as well as buy us some bits of time throughout the daytime where she’s sleeping and we can do our own things for 30-50 minutes at a time. And honestly, so far, it’s going fairly satisfactory, but knowing my mentality, we may have just jinxed it by acknowledging it, and next thing I know, she’ll be going through some other sleep regression stage, and then I’ll be back to being frustrated and fried all over again.
Regardless, we’ve been working on a general six-feed + four nap schedule, with her going down for the night by 8 pm, and what it’s been able to do for us, is that not only does it buy us periodic breaks throughout the day time, mythical wife and I are getting nearly 3-4 hours a night where we can actually unwind from parenting and relax for a little bit.
Granted, most of this time is her working on another degree, and as for myself, as mentioned, I’ve been painstakingly and only something I would do, restoring my website’s old content onto the rebirth of totfc.net, because my content means the world to me, and I can’t have my brog if I can’t have the six prior years’ worth of posts along with it.
But it’s what I want to do, and I’m taking great enjoyment out of going through memory lane, looking at the old shit I’ve written in the past, and anticipating the time when I get caught up to where my site was last live, to where I can start retroactively posting nearly five more years of unposted content, and reading through what bullshit I’d written in that window of time.
Anyway, the point of these posts isn’t about my own affairs or the things my wife is doing, they’re supposed to be about my precious little daughter, and what’s going on in her world, and the world of fatherhood for me.
At four, nearly five months old, she’s right at double her birth weight, and the last time I measured her, she’s nearing ten inches longer. Mythical wife and I have some staggering to us comparison photos of her in the Snoo bassinet (above) days after bringing her home compared to four months later, and we’re now wondering if she’ll even make it to the supposed six-month window in which kids graduate out of the Snoo.
Needless to say, she’s long past grown out of newborn diapers and clothing, and we’re actually getting to the point where the size 1’s are becoming suspect at efficiency, and she’s beginning to show some strain to the 0-3 and 3 month clothing we thought she’d have a little more life with, considering she was a premature baby.
And with each outfit we have to “retire,” my heart swells a little bit and I feel melancholy in one hand because my little girl is growing up so freaking rapidly and she still hasn’t been able to meet anyone in my family because fucking coronavirus, but mythical wife reminds me of the wealth of new and fresh adorable outfits that she’s on the cusp of graduating towards, and it’s excitement in the other hand. But still, it’s a little sad knowing she basically wears some of the cutest stuff in the world only a handful of times, and next thing we know all that’s left of them are the iPhone photos and the memories.
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It also appears that teething is coming into play, as we’ve experienced a few instances where our child has been mysteriously fussy, and we know it’s not fatigue because she’s still well in her awake window and we know it’s not food, because she basically eats as soon as she wakes up from a nap, and it can’t always be a growth spurt every single day. But introducing teething toys and seeing her find seconds of reprieve, from jamming icy cold objects into her mouth leads us to believe that it appears we’re entering the window of teething, and my mind is blown yet again at the thought that my little baby is getting ready to start sprouting teeth and becoming closer to being introduced into solid foods.
Still though, it’s always the worst feeling in the world when your kid in pain, and there’s no real way to make it go away. Teething aides work so well only for moments, or we’ve yet to find the magic jesus teething ring or something, and the sounds of her cries and discomfort still leave me feeling helpless and like an incompetent father.
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However, to end on a positive note of being a new dad, my daughter has begun laughing, which is basically the greatest music to my ears on the planet. And because she’s my daughter, she seems to derive a tremendous amount of humor out of poop jokes and for whatever reason, Hulk Hogan.
While preparing her for a bath, we swaddled her in a yellow blanket, which she promptly ripped out, where I remarked she was just like Hulk Hogan, busting out of a yellow shirt, which was immediately met with raucous laughter from our daughter, bringing both surprise and joy to our faces, at her reaching this milestone human capability in her development.
And to prove it was no fluke, I made it happen again several other times, to which simply talking about Hulk Hogan elicits a lot of laughs out of her. I don’t know why Hulk Hogan makes her laugh so much, but then again, dad too finds a lot of humor in just the sheer existence of the Hulkster, so this specific apple most certainly has not fallen far from the tree.
