Howdy gang,
Yet
again, I apologize for the slow-down in posting. I had started this whole
project with such high aspirations, but life tends to get in the way of great
ideas. Anyways, enough with the pity party, let’s get down to the fun stuff.
I just
can’t believe how big Elizabeth is getting! Last week, due to my work schedule,
I was unable to actually see or hold Elizabeth for a full 3 days. When I picked
her up from daycare she was about to fall asleep in one of their swings, but
when she saw me her eyes opened up big as saucers and she got so excited that
she started waving her arms around. I picked her up out of the swing and I
swear she gained 20 pounds and grew 6 inches! Looking through the pictures we
have from the first day we brought her home to the ones we took this morning
and I just can’t believe how much and how fast she can change in 5 months! She
has enough muscle control now that she is starting to sit-up with limited
assistance. She can hold her own bottle, again with limited assistance. She can’t
quite figure out crawling yet though. What she does right now is she lifts her
butt up in the air and pushes her big ol’ melon across the carpet using her
feet/legs. She just can’t seem to figure out the part that her arms play in
this deal.
She
loves playing games now. She had been terrified by peak-a-boo at first, but now
giggles very hard when either my wife or I play with her. She really likes when
I do this dumb little dance and sing Take On Me by A-ha and then move closer to
her until I get so close that I “boop” her nose with mine. She loses her shit.
She is still fascinated by T.V., which my wife is upset about. I really don’t
have many hobbies anymore, but I do consider myself a cinephile, and as a nerd,
I am involved in many different fandoms. So when I get home, I like to catch up
on Walking Dead, rewatch Star Trek or Firefly, etc. And Elizabeth is just enthralled
by the colors and the sounds. I never use it as a babysitter, I don’t plunk her
down in front of the T.V. so that I can get stuff done, we watch it together.
And usually I attempt to get her to play instead and I half watch it in the
background. She still loves Supernatural, we are currently watching Walking
Dead, and it turns out that she hates Star Trek: The Next Generation. To be
fair, TNG is my least favorite as well, so she obviously is my kid.
I have
been finding with increasing ease, that my mission of staying unhealthy is
doomed. I know you, dear reader, are currently lifting an eyebrow and thinking
to yourself “But in your last post you said you drank for 22 hours straight and
stayed up late every night for a week while eating terrible foods” and you’re
not wrong. The difference is that if my 25 year old self had been put in the
same situation, I would have been drinking Jack and Cokes instead of beer, I
would have been doing shots, I probably would have been smoking Marb Red 100’s
(the cowboy killers) instead of my cigars. Basically as crazy as I got, it
would have been a whole lot crazier if I didn’t have a child waiting for me in
my hotel room. I don’t like getting so crazy that I will have a 2 day hangover
anymore. I’ve spent the better part of my 20’s either drunk, hungover or
transitioning between the 2, so I thought that I had experienced the worst that
booze had to offer. I was sooooooo wrong. You haven’t had a true hangover until
you wake up to a screaming teething baby at 4 am and you went to bed at 3:50 am.
After you have experienced that, you won’t want to do any of that shit any
more.
I also
try to get more sleep, which in itself is a useless cause. Elizabeth had been
doing very well with her night-time routine, but due to all of the weddings and
visitors we have had, we have completely thrown her off. She now usually wakes
up at least twice a night and is convinced that she needs to eat before she can
go back to bed. I would help more when she wakes up, but as I posted about
before, I am now associated with play-time. If I go in to try to get her back
to sleep and she sees my face, then she is up and ready to rock. Most nights it
takes my wife 15-20 minutes to feed her, change her and get her back to sleep.
If I do it, then it turns in to a 1-2 hour adventure that usually requires me
waking my wife up anyways to give her a boob.
I’ve
said it a thousand times by now that this is not a parenting advice blog. I
smoke (never ever around the baby), I drink (usually around the baby), I swear
(usually because of the baby), I don’t eat right, I don’t sleep right, I work
too much, and it is safe to say that I have an ever decreasing state of mental
health. But the difference now is that I have a true reason to turn it around.
It started off innocently enough, but I realized that I started to drink less,
smoke fewer cigars, eat more salads, sneak in more naps, say no to work, etc. I
am starting to generally feel better and it is almost all due to my daughter. I
still like to cut loose every now and again and I have my bad days where I slip
back in to bad habits, but I am making “forward progress” which is weird for
me. Having this blog has been super cathartic for me and just having a child in
general has kept me in line way more than I had ever thought that it would.
Anyways,
I’ve started to ramble yet again. I will try to get another post up by the end
of the week, so in the meantime you can catch up on the older posts, you can
like Fatterhood on Facebook and get some awesome daily pictures and musings,
and don’t forget to check back soon. I thank you for reading as usual, and
PROST!
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