fatherhood
Rock a Bye Baby, Safe in my arms.
Shut your wee eyes, and trust in sleep's charms.
When you awake, then Mommy will see,
just what a good baby, Rosie can be!
A different set of words that are a bit less creepy to sing to your child. Naturally, you'll want to change the name in the last line.
It's not easy to go out with a Baby. This is obvious to the parents out there, who are cheerfully laughing at my naiveté - I can only point out to them that they were in my shoes, once.
But it is hard. For one, there's preparation - you've got to pack the baby into the carseat, make sure you've got enough diapers in the bag and bring that along, and probably a blanket or two, this time of year. You then have to wrestle it all into the car, and take off. Upon arriving at any destination you need to unpack the baby, possibly also the stroller, and set off. Going anywhere costs extra energy just getting in and out of the car, and as you're out and about with the baby she gets tired and cranky. You don't really stop anywhere on a whim, you tend to plan everything you do. I'm sure this will ease up as Rose gets older, but it's hard.
Had a lovely day out today, including some time spent at our friends Mike and Anna's house for some gaming and conversation.
Couldn't stay late, though, as we had a free invite to a 'Just Between Friends' event. I don't remember if I mentioned this before, but it's pretty awesome for a new parent - they're a periodical consignment shop entirely about the new parent. We'd already bought quite a lot of great baby stuff from them, but one of the things they're really wizard with is clothing - outfits for 1-4 dollars apiece blows away the prices in the malls. This time we went through and got:
- A new carseat and base for $15. (I was going to get just the base, but those were $20. Go figure!)
- A box of about 166 size 1 diapers for $20.
- About 15-17 outfits, god knows, really
- A changing table pad to put Rose on so she doesn't roll off downstairs, $4
- And a little plastic cage to wash baby bottle bits in, for a buck.
So, being a Father has continued being fun. And it really is, mostly. Rose is a 'quiet' child, which doesn't mean that she doesn't have those times when she's screaming her lungs out, but does mean that there are nice, long stretches of time when she sleeps.
When we're lucky, she sleeps during the nighttime.
Happily, my wife Tammy is being very generous and mostly lets me sleep through the night unless it's a really bad night and she needs another man on deck to handle the baby while she gets some rest, which happily doesn't happen that often. Otherwise it's feedings - mostly Tammy's responsibility, since we're breastfeeding - diaper changes, and so on. Diaper changing is mostly pretty easy, although occasionally you run into a problem with her deciding to go while you're changing her... whoops!
