Exhausted

I love the Koalid more than anything in the world, but sometimes she can be exhausting.

Actually, it's not fair to say that she is exhausting. Were I otherwise well rested, happy, and healthy, it would probably be cute. But that is rarely the case. So it's not.

She is most exhausting when she needs a nap herself.

I don't think that what she does is different from what other kids her age do. Impulsively asking for things. Not understanding why she can't have what she wants right now. Failing to grasp why she can't have my attention when I'm talking to someone.

She's actually probably better behaved than many kids. She does understand the concept of being out of line, which is pretty good for a four year old. I always make a point to explain what I tell her to do, so I think she has a greater understanding of why she can't watch certain programs or do certain things. By and large, I don't have to worry about her getting into the trouble that many other kids her age do.

So that's good.

The fact remains that people need quiet time, focused time, me time, in order to maintain mental equilibrium, and it is very difficult to achieve this with a child constantly demanding attention.

Of course, one solution would be to inform her, in no uncertain terms, that I am an adult, she must listen to me, and she should leave me alone. "A child should be seen and not heard," I could say.

When she's good, she's quite good, and she
loves to ham it up for the camera.

That is definitely not the right answer. That leaves the Koalid feeling alienated and discouraged. It teaches her not to advocate for herself or even to speak up. Since one of the most important things in her upbringing is to raise a child into an adult who will speak up for herself and know her worth, and one of the most important things in my life is her proper upbringing, that solution would not serve.

Doing nothing, on the other hand, leaves me without mental and spiritual centering and grounding. It leaves me testy, impatient, and irritable. Not traits that serve me well in trying to lead the Koalid into maturity.

So, like most things in life, the answer is probably somewhere delicately in between. Carving out moments of quiet, time to work and write and think, but also allowing the Koalid to interrupt here and there. If I do this well, she will grow into a child who will understand the right times to interrupt and the times to wait quietly. This offers the great dividend that, not only can I find time to center myself, but that I will have a relationship with the Koalid that will allow us to grow together.

That's the goal at least.

Why I Will Not Go Back to Applebees Anytime Soon

This is an example of what happens when decisions are made
at the corporate level without local feedback.

My family had a particularly unpleasant night at Applebees the tonight. Going out to dinner with a three year old is always an interesting experience, but we can generally manage things and keep The Koalid entertained. This particular trip, that was impossible.

We are trying, with limited success, to limit her screen time, and if we are having dinner together at the table, either at home or at a restaurant, there's no screens. We'll bring toys, crayons, books, anything interactive that we can think of. We are both very busy, and she ends up in front of a screen far too often when we have something we need to do. We're not going to let her spend what little time we do have to spend with her in front of a screen.

Think you can just remove the tablet? Think again! They're
everywhere, and they're staring at you.

This seems like a pretty reasonable policy, we think. Normally, it is relatively simple to enforce, but it becomes more difficult when we walk into a restaurant and there is a bright, shiny, idiot box on every table, facing us as we walk in.

We tried to be clever and stash the tablet before she saw it as we were sitting down, but we were thwarted. Every other table has a table as well, including the kids at the table behind us who were playing with it.

So, our dinner of uninspired, generic and overpriced corporate impressions of Latin and Asian inspired food was punctuated with a constant and unremitting litany of "They're playing games. I want to play games. Why can't I play games? It's not fair."

One might argue that, perhaps this is a problem for us, but for many kids, these devices are helpful to keep them busy when otherwise they'd be unmanageable. I disagree there as well. The table behind us has three kids and one tablet. Care to surmise what we heard before we left? That's right. "It's my turn! I want to play! Let me play!" The whining from the table where they were letting the kids play the games were as loud as they were at ours where we forbade it.

I mentioned it to the waitress, and she agreed that the tablets cause more problems than they solve, but corporate mandates it, so they have to do it.

So, to Applebee's Corporate out in Kansas City, Missouri, you have lost a customer for a long as these devices clutter the tables of your restaurants.

In the spirit of good cheer, I'll be eating somewhere else tomorrow.

Inspired to Write Again

Early Koalid

These days, I work for a company called EZBZ. It's a virtual concierge service that connects users to businesses that they need, and we promote the business by partnership with various partners who have an audience that they want to share our service with them. Through this, I have come into contact with a great variety of mom blogs and moms groups. I have, however, encountered very few dad blogs.

Well, this is a dad blog, and I figured it was time to represent again.

The Koalid Blog is moving into a new intellectual phase. When I was writing before, it was a lot more speculative. Navel gazing and pontificating on what I thought might happen. I think back to my idea of my office being in the Koalid's room, which seemed like a wonderful and sweet concept in imagination, but was an absolute disaster in the event.

The Koalid gets an early start in the
marketing field.

The Koalid is now a toddler. She talks, more or less. She asks for what she wants. She has will and desires. She is coming into being a person, so it's no longer theory. It's now practice. This is what I was waiting for. So many parents I speak to have this longing for when their children were infants. I was told then that I would miss that time, and I believed I would not. In that one case, I was right. This time is better than that time.

When the Koalid was an infant, it was like keeping a pet. Now, I am helping to raise a person. The things I say, the things I do, have clear impact on her and who she is becoming. I can teach her things and she may remember them a week later (or she may completely forget them five minutes later).

Going forward, I'm going to be making a bit more effort to get this blog out there. I think I have a few things to say that are not in the discourse, so why not. After all, it's not like people have strong opinions on parenting or anything. I can't see anything that could go wrong with this.

The Koalid finds my naivete amusing.

And So Far to Go Before We Sleep

In today's post, I'm going to get real with you. Being the parent of an infant/toddler has not been a fun experience for me. Some people love babies and, given the choice, would always be raising one. Good for them. That's not me.

Latest child care related
injury.

People keep telling me that I should treasure these moments when she is a baby because I will miss them. They are wrong. I look forward to the day when I can talk to the Koalid, when I can walk with the Koalid, when I can play with the Koalid. That time is not now.

What do you mean? you ask. You can play with a baby.

Kind of. Currently she is interested in banging things against other things and climbing around and going where she is not supposed to go. This means a lot of crawling after her and a lot of moving her back where she is supposed to be. That often makes her cry and scream. It also often causes me pain and discomfort because the process of taking care of her has so far caused sciatica which limits my leg strength and flexibility, and, more recently, a hyper-extended left thumb meaning I cannot lift anything with that hand for a month or two.

We usually have to bring the Koalid to most places that we go
which means that one or both of us don't get to really be a part
the event because the Koalid is really needy.

People tell me that as she learns to talk, she'll learn to say "no". Well, that sounds like an improvement over now when she does not know the word "no", and the only way to stop her from playing with a power outlet or crawling off a staircase or putting a rock in her mouth is to physically rush over and stop her. Sure, she'll start telling me "no", but at least she'll understand it when I say it
to her.

So for now, while there are some enjoyable moments, this phase is mostly an exhausting marathon of late night crying, interrupted sleep, increasing fatigue, frustration, exhaustion, and occasional injury.

Part of the problem is that we are far from our support systems. Neither my family nor Amy's family is close enough to help us. We have very few friends in the area who can watch the Koalid for us. This means that we don't get breaks. We don't get time together. We don't get to recover.

It's a fake, rubber knife, before you worry.
OK, sometimes a tiny baby is fun.

Some parents will admit to being tired and drained from raising an infant/toddler, but most will qualify it with some profession of love for their little bundle of joy. No parent wants to be thought of as not being a loving, ever-patient parent. Well, I do love the Koalid, and I look forward to leading her through all the stages that will bring her to a confident, happy, successful adulthood, but I'll tell you right now that this part of it, at least for me, is not a joyous romp of parental happiness with occasional pit stops of challenge. It is an exhausting and miserable marathon stretching many months into the future with occasional oases of joyful moments which I am mostly too tired to appreciate.

It's okay, it's only another year or so, then perhaps I can get some sleep.

Love is 3:00 AM

If you watch romantic movies, you will see a certain kind of love. A kind of love that I knew for many years. It is the joy that is counterpoint to the pain of loss. You know that you love someone because of the pain when they are gone. That is a form of love, but it is also similar to addiction.

Since becoming a father, I have become intimately aware of a new kind of love. Not one based on my need to avoid loss, not one based on attraction, but love that comes of knowing that everything that I will ever do for the rest of my life will be for her.

Amy has been taking care of the Koalid at night for a few weeks now. The Koalid sleeps through the night, if you define the night as 8:30 PM to 3:00 AM. At 3:00 AM, the Koalid has woken up and so has Amy. The Koalid gets back to sleep, Amy does not.

This morning at 3:00, I got up with the Koalid. I changed her, fed her, cuddled with her and watched her fall back asleep. By 4:30, I knew that no more sleep was for me, and I took her to the living room. I fed her a bit more, and then she fell asleep in my arms as I watched Daredevil on Netflix until 6:00 AM as I write this.

If you asked me to get up at 3:00 AM before a full day of work for most other reasons, I would be upset. But for the Koalid, I would get up at 3:00 AM every day if that is what she needed. (Although hopefully Amy and I can switch off.)

Everything I know, everything I have, everything I do, is for this beautiful child so that she may grow to be happy and healthy and successful. If nothing else, the Koalid should never doubt that she is loved very much, not only by her sleepy father, but by many many others who care about her.

Early Connections

As I was approaching becoming a father, I was told that it would change my life, that I would know love as I had never known, that my daughter would be the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. What I saw was a noisy, demanding, smelly thing that interfered with all aspects of life. While I loved the concept of my daughter, in the event, I wasn't a huge fan of the actual baby.

Then, she started to smile, and I started to see that there was the beginnings of a person in there. In the last few weeks, the Koalid has begun to engage. Not in dramatic ways. She still mostly just flails, but now she smiles when she sees someone she recognizes. She makes cooing and adorable gurgling sounds. She makes happy sounds when she gets attention and is clearly experimenting with communication.

You see, I have no experience with children. I have seen them now and then, but I have never watched a child grow up, so when I look at a squalling baby, I just see a squalling baby. Of course, it also did not help that at the same time as I was dealing with said squalling baby, I faced some of the worst financial stress of my life.

But, now, the finances are coming together, the baby is starting to become more of a person, and I'm starting to see a bit of what all the fuss is about.

Words Are Delicious - Changing the Plan

In previous posts, I have alluded to the fact that I was well aware that I was making some presumptions and that I knew I would have to eat some of those words when the rubber hit the road.

I do not understand work. I understand attention.
Pay attention to me. Do it now!

One of the my assertions was that it was a good idea to work from home and take care of the Koalid. This makes sense in an idealized world where a baby needs stuff, then goes back to sleep and a prolonged state of not needing stuff.

This is not how babies are in the real world. First, sometimes they need stuff more often than one might expect. Second, as they age, they discover more stuff that they need. At first, they just need to be fed and changed, but as the Koalid is coming up on three months, she is discovering the desire to be held, looked at, and to otherwise have my attention. Of course, I do not mind giving her my attention, but when that attention comes at the cost of being able to do the work I need to do, she will soon have my attention in a tent in which we live in the woods because we cannot afford to pay rent.

We are also finding that, surprisingly, Amy is more maternal than I. I love the Koalid, but I don't feel the sense of longing when I am away from her that Amy does. I also find that I am highly deficient in the discipline of breast feeding. My man boobs produce no milk. So, a plan that involves me staying home with the Koalid and trying (and mostly failing) to do consulting work while Amy works full time makes less and less sense.

You thought it would be a good idea to watch me and work?
I can't differentiate my hands from my feet, and I can tell
that's a sketchy proposition.

So, we are changing course in our plans to take care of the Koalid. It is not as important to avoid
being wrong as to recognize when one is wrong and to take all immediate steps to correct it. Through a combination of good luck and talent, I have been recruited for a new job which I expect will work out quite well for me. Of course, the Koalid will be in day care, as both Amy and I work, but if all goes well, Amy might be able to go to part time in the future and spend more time with the Koalid.

This all goes into action on Monday, and everyone is quite excited about it.

Late Night Koalid

Every night between midnight and 1 AM or so, I get up. Newborns don't sleep more than 3 hours or so, and when they wake up they need to be changed and fed. When I first envisioned this, I assumed this meant getting up, taking care of things, then going back to sleep.

The Koalid being cute and awake,
which she has been doing much
of tonight.

In fact, the Koalid is never done with her ablutions in less than an hour, and two hours is not unreasonable. So, I quickly gave up the idea of trying to feed her and get back to bed. Instead, I now go to bed earlier so that when it is time to take the night shift, I get up, take the Koalid in the other room, put something on Netflix (for a while it was Voyager, but I'm quite enjoying The West Wing lately) and maybe get some work done on the computer. The trick is that Amy goes to work for 9 AM, so if the Koalid gets back to sleep early enough, then she'll wake up before Amy leaves for work and Amy can take care of her. If I miss that window, which I likely will tonight, then she'll wake up too late for Amy to take care of her, and I'll get the three hours that she sleeps before I have to get up.

As I was looking at her adorable, fussy face tonight it got me thinking. Within the next few months, she'll start sleeping through the night, but I'm sure this won't be the last time she needs me at 4 AM. Maybe she'll have a bad dream and I'll have to reassure her that there are no monsters in her closet. Maybe some night we'll be up late discussing the mysteries of life... or maybe just some topic of geeky interest. And, I'm sure there will be late night talks about boys (or girls) and why they are so stupid.

Perhaps she will need me in other ways in the wee hours of the morning. Maybe one day I'll get a call at 4 AM saying she needs me to pick her up. Maybe she's at a party she doesn't want to be at, or her ride is drunk. Then, as now, Dad will be on duty and will rush to the aid of my Koalid, because no matter how big she gets, her father will always be ready to get up in the wee hours to help her... just hopefully less often as time goes on.

Can't Wait to Meet Her

During the last few weeks of pregnancy, Amy would say that she could not wait to meet the Koalid. She looked forward to seeing what she looked like and getting to hold her. Naturally, I felt this same excitement.

The Koalid next to our smallest cat.

However, as we have gone through our first month of parenthood, I feel that I am still saying "I can't wait to meet her." What do I mean by this? Of course, I have met her. She's right here, all the time. But I do not feel I have met my daughter. I have met the newborn which will grow to become my daughter. The first month of life of a newborn could be thought of as the 10th month of gestation. She does not respond to external stimuli. She does not interact. She simply gives cues of hunger and other needs so that we may fulfill them in order for her to continue her growth and development. It is like incubating a particularly demanding egg.

Of course, most people would never say such a thing. First, to say anything about ones child other than "she's perfect" and the like is considered uncouth. Additionally, most people are quite taken with the cuteness of the baby and don't notice the complete lack of interaction. Since the part of my brain that is overcome by baby cuteness appear not to function properly, I notice that this process is like getting a computer loaded with installation files but no functioning software... if the computer required a few months to get everything loaded... and occasionally pooped on you.

I know that she will be an amazing, beautiful, funny, kind, lovely girl and woman. She's not there yet, but she will be soon, and I can't wait to meet her.

The Seige

As I prepared for the arrival of the Koalid, I was ready for many things. I learned the basics of diapering, feeding, burping, and as individual challenges I was quite up to them. However, like many things we do in life, the difficulty is not in the individual elements once or twice. Running a marathon is just putting one foot in front of another. What makes it hard is doing so 34,000 times.

Being up all night once, watching Star Trek: Voyager, and periodically feeding and changing a baby is exciting and not overly taxing. But then there is the second night, the third, the tenth. After two weeks of sleeping no more than 4 hours at a time, being awakened by screaming baby, it starts to wear.

This is what the Koalid looked like
for about 12 seconds last night.

Eventually, one gets to learn the rhythm of the baby. She is sleeping less and less each night, but sleeps quite a bit in the morning. The challenge is not that it's difficult to figure out the rhythm, it's that it's difficult to solve simple problems when running on little sleep, with a baby crying, and all the rest. It gets to be like juggling while tightrope walking in a windstorm.

I am also learning a bit about sleep and the lack thereof. Staying up all night is not nearly as hard as trying to sleep four times and being woken within 15 minutes each time. Each time you start to sleep and are awoken, you wake up a little groggier until simple tasks become complicated and difficult. So, the solution appears to be not to try to sleep until the baby is securely asleep and will be sleeping for a while. It's a very challenging game of endurance and fortitude.

As I write this, I have gotten a good chunk of sleep in the morning and the Koalid is asleep, so I'm feeling pretty solid, which is good because there are other things I have to do besides watch a baby, like create a non-profit book store.

Two Parents, One Baby: Sharing Work With Love

My wife is amazing. If I let her, she would do everything herself: feeding and caring for the baby, cleaning the
house, cooking, working, and probably fighting crime in her spare time. Her outsized sense of duty would likely make her run herself to exhaustion, then to feel bad in her hospital bed because she couldn't do more. This is why it is my job to make sure that she doesn't do as much as she thinks she should.

This post was typed one handed because the Koalid would
only sleep while in my arms.

I am writing this around 6 AM, which is not a time that I get up when left to my own devices. However, around 1:30, a certain Koalid woke up hungry. I handed the hungry baby to the parent with the functioning, milk-producing breasts and returned to sleep. At 5:30, I woke up again to find that Amy had been running a marathon of feeding and changing for the past four hours. The Koalid was crying and wailing. I did not know when I woke up that Amy had been at it for four hours, but I could tell she was fatigued, so I took the Koalid and had Amy get me a bottle so I could feed her. She took the bottle and calmed down somewhat.

Now, here is the amazing part. Amy, who went to sleep at 12:30 and got up at 1:30 when the Koalid started crying, felt bad that she had, in her words, "dumped the baby" on me at 5:30 because I, who also went to sleep at 12:30, hadn't gotten much sleep either.

At its core, taking care of a baby as not terribly difficult. You feed. You burp. You change. You make sure she doesn't fall into couch cushions. The complexity is that you must do this 24 hours a day with no break longer than 135 minutes. This is why parenting is ideally a two or more person job.

There are two basic ways that you can share duties. You can do it by each person worrying about themselves and their own needs or you can do it by each person worrying about the other's needs. In both cases, the work ends up being split somewhat equally, but in the latter, it is much less contentious and more loving.

Looking for a good cute baby image to indicate you
approve? Why not this adorable thumbs up baby?

If we were each worrying about ourselves this morning, Amy would have woken me up saying "it's your turn." And I might have grudgingly taken her, objecting that I had already done thus and such. In time bitterness develops, both towards the partner who may or may not be pulling their weight and towards the baby who causes all this work.

The much more pleasant alternative which Amy and I have chosen, is to each worry about the other. I woke up because I heard the Koalid's cries, and, once awake, I sensed Amy's frustration. I forced blood into my brain and offered to take the baby, not because it was my turn or because Amy expected me to, but because I knew Amy was out of steam and needed to be relieved. I can do this because I know that she feels a similar duty to take over for me when I am spent. Further, taking on her burdens feels like an act of love rather than an act of duty or capitulation.

Our division of labor is equitable, but we do not waste energy on resentment at doing work which is not "our job". Instead, we feel love for each other and the Koalid as we work together, growing closer and doing what must be done as a family.

Everything Will Be Different?

One of the things that I have heard again and again is that everything will be different now that I have a daughter. The long version is something like "You won't be able to do what you like to do, you won't be able to sleep, you won't get to eat well, you will not get good time with your wife. Oh, and it's worth it or something for some reason."

The great advantage of having a first child at an older age such as mine is that I have done more. When one has a child at 22, they still have all manner of things they wish to do in life. Perhaps education is still in progress. They are trying to develop a career. They want to hang out with friends and go out.

People claim to read the Koalid Blog for the articles, but I
know that in reality, they do it for the pictures of babes.

At 34, I've been there and done that. My degree is well and completed. I've owned a business. I've done many things to be proud of and plenty of things not to be proud of. When the Koalid was announced, I realized that I had already done most of the things I really wanted to do. Having a child was the next great adventure. It wasn't a distraction from what I wanted to do. It was what I wanted to do.

In December, I parted ways with the Volkswagen dealership I was working for, and after a brief stint in January with another company, I realized that any job I might be qualified for would be the kind of job with long, night and weekend hours. If the Koalid was truly to be my priority, then I could not be working nights and weekends. I considered my resources and decided to make a go at building my own business that I could work from home so I could take care of the baby and work at the same time.

I've been working from home since February, so, in some ways, the transition was not dramatic except for the fact that rather than being at home alone most of the time, I am now home with my daughter and recovering wife. Indeed, for the past few days, I have gotten a lot less done than before the Koalid was here, but, since the business exists to accommodate the Koalid, one cannot really be upset about that.

Those yellow trucks in the background are tree trimmers with
chainsaws. LOUD chainsaws. In the foreground, is the
Koalid blissfully sleeping next to the chainsaws.

I have enjoyed life more since we have come home from the Hospital than the previous few months. This is not because of some vague fatherly euphoria. (As I mentioned in my last post, I don't really have that sense of fatherly awe.) It is because these last few days have just been nice. The baby has given me a focus for my activity and attention. Far from having less time with Amy, she has been much more attentive, and the time we have spent together these last few days has been wonderful. We are really bonding as a family in a way that was very difficult while she was still pregnant, grumpy, exhausted, working and uncomfortable all the time.

We have had time to sit on the couch, she and I and the baby often sleep on one of us. We have talked. We have worked side by side, teaming up and watching out for each other. Both Amy and I are making sure that the other is sleeping and eating enough, as much as possible. I'm keeping an eye on her to make sure that she doesn't overexert herself as she recovers from her C-section, and she wants to make sure that I am adjusting well to my new daddy role.

As for social life? I haven't gone out much in quite a while. Much of that changed when I moved to Connecticut. I am, however, a very social person. Thanks to the Koalid, everyone wants to hear about her, see pictures of her, talk about her. As someone who loves to talk to people, I'm more than happy to field that attention.

Are things dramatically different than they were two weeks ago? Yes and no, but all the differences are better.

Besides, I was ready for this. I practiced with cats.