Howdy gang,
We’ve
been out of print for some time now. Dear Lord. It has been almost a full year
since I posted a damn blog. So much has changed in that time. If you follow my
family on the Fatterhood Facebook page, then I’m sure you’ve seen how much has
changed. Elizabeth is now a real little person. She is walking, running,
jumping, and constantly talking. She has a pretty well-formed personality
already too. She loves to make my wife and I laugh, which is kind of a curse.
If she does something naughty, but we laugh…she latches on to that and will
keep doing it to get a laugh out of us. I’ll put up with it though. Her big
belly laugh totally makes it worth it. Let’s see if I can bring us up to speed
a little better though.
Like I
said, Ewok is growing like a damn weed. The past year was kind of a rough one,
hence me not posting. My work has made things challenging and we had another round
of never ending sickness in our home. Ewok had some chronic ear infections for
a few months. Those are a wonderful genetic gift from me. We ended up having
ear tubes put it and her adenoids removed, which seemed to help a lot. Right
about the time we finally got her ears under control, she started popping teeth
left and right. This kid might be a damn shark with the amount of teething she
did! There were quite a few months were pretty much NOBODY slept in our house.
In
December, my wife officially cut Elizabeth off of the boob. Elizabeth had
pretty much only been breastfeeding one time a day, which was at bedtime. Both of
my ladies did so well with it. When my wife had told me that she was dead-set
on breastfeeding, I really didn’t know much about it or what all it entailed,
so I was ignorantly supportive. It didn’t take me long to figure out how much
was actually involved with such an endeavor. There were sleepless nights, some
awkward social interactions in public, and despite popular opinion…it isn’t necessarily
cheaper to breastfeed. Since my wife works, she had to clock out to pump, then
there were bottles, storage bags, filters, coolers, freezing and re-heating
milk, etc. It is a rather costly endeavor, but I feel like it was worth it.
Either way, I’m pretty proud at the commitment of my wife and how well Ewok did
with the weening.
Ewok
has been picking up words left and right. It started slow at first. She
basically just was saying the words that she knew the sign language for since
we reinforced those words when we did the sign. So she was saying “please”, “thank
you”, “more”, etc. all of the time. Then she started putting words and concepts
together. “Daddy go work?” was heard a bunch. But the last month or so, the
chatter is none stop and she has started with legitimate sentences. Just this
last weekend she said, “No Daddy. You read the book to me!” I was blown away!
We understand about 90% of what she is saying now, which has made things far
easier on me. I would get very frustrated, and so did she, when I couldn’t
figure out what she wanted. I would do a lot of trial and error guessing and it
would get us both pretty flustered. Now though, she can tell me what she wants
or needs. I can even rationalize with her a little bit. It really has been fun
to learn together on this one.
We also
got some pretty big news since the last blog post. We found out this fall that
we are expecting a new baby! My wife and I had been kicking around the idea of
trying again last spring/summer. Well, one evening I got wine drunk and watched
the episode of The Office when Jim and Pam found out that they were pregnant. I
cried like a big dumb baby. Becoming a dad was one of the greatest (if not THE
greatest) moments in my entire life. My wife got up to use the bathroom that
night and I told her that we should start trying for a second baby. The
adventure started again. We assumed that we would have issues conceiving like
we did with Elizabeth, but we really didn’t. With Elizabeth, it took almost 2
years before my wife got pregnant, this time it was less than 6 months. I guess
our bodies just knew what to do this time.
We
found out this winter that we would be having a boy. My wife didn’t want to
find out the sex, but she had promised me that we could after I acquiesced with
Elizabeth. I can’t explain why I wanted to know so badly, but I really did. My
wife did the blood test to determine the sex and we had to wait a few weeks to
get the results. I was able to make it to that doctor’s visit this time and was
very excited to hear. My wife’s doc is a really nice and quirky dude, but I must
admit that I think that is unwillingness to use basic anatomy terms is a bit unsettling.
For instance, e almost never says “penis” or “vagina”. Instead he uses “peep”
or “hoo-ha”. My wife likes him, so I deal with it. Anyway, when it came time to
reveal the sex it presented it in a pretty unprofessional but hilarious way. He
looked at us and said, “Well, your husband might be a little jealous. There’s
another penis (he actually said penis this time!) inside of you. You’re having a
boy.” I didn’t really care if it was a boy or a girl, but there is something
appealing as a man about having a baby boy. More on that later.
In
short, this year has been interesting and challenging. We’ve had some setbacks,
but we’ve also had some amazing triumphs. I’m excited and terrified to become a
father again. It seems like I just found my groove when I comes to raising a
kid and now I’m throwing a whole new factor in. I’m sure I’ll learn along the
way though. I mean…I learned a lot with Elizabeth, so how much harder can
another kid be on top of it? Those sound like famous last words to me…
Thank
you all for reading. I have a few more posts coming in the very near future, so
check back soon. Don’t forget to check out Fatterhood on Facebook. Don’t forget
to check out and support my (TOTALLY UNOFFICAL) sponsors Winking Owl Wine, Aldi
Liquor Department, and Pabst Blue Ribbon, New Glarus Brewing, and Leinenkugel's
Brewing. More shenanigans to come! As always…Prost!
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