Home Alone...

Since I was busy trying to get good video of the little guy this week, I failed to take a single picture. Instead, we're going to post this flashback picture of the little guy just a few days old. Amazing how much he has changed in just under 3 months.

This week was eventful to say the least. Antoinette went back to work on Monday for her Orientation for her new job. That meant that for the first week, I would be home alone with the little guy on Daddy duty. Of course, having spent quite a bit of time with Billy, I had little concern other than one major one. Billy has little to no experience taking a bottle at this point, so there lay my primary concern. In the couple times I'd been home alone with him while Momma went to the store, etc., I had found that he not only doesn't want a bottle, he rejects it at the top of his lungs for the better part of...the entire time she's gone. Should be interesting, right?

So on Saturday and Sunday, we practiced giving him a bottle so we could prepare for the week ahead. We worked on getting it just right. Curl him up next to you like a Mother would for warmth and comfort, dab the bottle around his cheeks, lips, and the roof of his mouth to trigger the rooting reflex, and then away we go. Worked like a charm. Baby took the bottle both days without much fuss. Little did I know that baby's have less energy in the evening, so can be less likely to raise hell on such a trivial issue as where their food is coming from. The morning turned out to be a whole other story entirely.

Monday morning, Antoinette is gone to work and its time to eat. Baby's being entertained while the bottle's being warmed. Temperature is checked to make sure its not too hot and not too cold and away we go. Holy crap!!! This kid screams like you cut one of his feet off. I checked the temperature and then figure what the hell, maybe my wrist doesn't work. Let's just stick a finger in there to check the temperature so I don't burn the little guy. Its perfect. Luke warm. So we try again. More screaming like a banshee. Great. This is going to be a phenomenal week.

Five minutes later, we try again, same result. Five minutes later, same thing. What do they say is the mark of insanity? Trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? That was me. Well, at this point his screaming is freaking me out because it was seriously like somebody was sticking daggers in his toenails. I immediately dial my sister, who calms me and tells me to let him be and that crying won't kill him. I go in the other room and she tells me that he'll run out of gas soon and probably fall asleep. My biggest fear is that the little guy hasn't eaten anything and how long can he go like this. Well, she told me that he'd be OK until his Mother got home unless he gets dehydrated, but that she could almost guarantee it wouldn't come to that.

Turns out that what we were dealing with was a genuine battle of wills. I had a bottle for breakfast and Billy was holding out for the real deal. According to my sister, what would most likely happen was that I would keep offering the bottle and he would keep rejecting it for some time, but eventually, he would take it at the risk of not eating at all. She advised that I should also be armed with a binky (pacifier) to swap with the bottle in case he rejected it. I should also develop some thick skin to tolerate another round of hollering. Before I even realized it, the screaming had stopped and when I went into the living room, the baby was sound asleep in his vibrating seat. Out of gas.

So I prepared myself and then when he woke up, the battle commenced. Bottle, screaming, pacifier, rejected, wait 15 minutes. Bottle, screaming, pacifier, rejected, wait 15 minutes. This was going to be a long day. And a hungry one for somebody. Round 3. Bottle...and he took it...while crying... He drank 3/4 of an ounce, but it was enough to alleviate my fears of dehydration if I could just get him to knock down this much each time. Some crying, then a rejected pacifier. 15 minutes later, nothing, but I didn't care. Watching him take 3/4 of an ounce was great and put a big smile on my face.

Day 1's third cycle began and this time, Billy wasn't jacking around. He knocked down the entire 3 ounce bottle without much hesitation and with no fuss. I guess his hungry belly overrode his picky palate. From that point on, Hell turned quickly into Heaven as the little guy was back to his old self. He was smiling and laughing, giggling and cheery (as you can see in the video which is the best snapshot of what a typical day is like for him). He really is a very happy baby. From that point on, we had the best time and the hardest part is that next week, its all over. I'm back to work and my extended Father/Son time is over. I consider myself spoiled for that week I was able to take. It turned into the best vacation I've ever had.

Without turning this blog entry into a novel, let's cover some of the other big events this week, of which there were many (since I was the one home to see them all). We'll start with last weekend's 4th of July fireworks. We chose to watch the fireworks from home this year after watching from the beach two years ago and from a 350 year old St. Augustine Spanish fort last year. This one was far less exciting watching the fireworks from over our little lake in the backyard, but what the fireworks lacked, the excitement on little Billy's face as he registered the close up ones was worth it all. Billy also weighed in at 13.5 lbs. this week which keeps him in the 75th percentile in weight. Seems likely he's going to hover in that general range for awhile since he's held steady after climbing up there from the 25th percentile in weight at birth.

Billy hit up the Jacuzzi tub this week for the first time. Being too hot and too crowded to take him to the subdivision pool at this age, we decided that maybe we should try the tub. Billy had never really gotten into the water before. Usually just his butt and part of his back are underwater in his bath chair, but he does seem to love it, so we figured maybe he would like this, too. Well, he's definitely a water baby. We dipped the little guy into the tub up to his shoulders and he was a bit surprised at first, but quickly adjusted. Before long, he was just relaxing, so we decided to add a little spice (mind you, the water temp was luke warm). We turned on the jets to see what he would do and he loved those, too. After awhile, it was time to get out of the tub and that's when we had a problem. This kid did not want to get out at all. He screamed bloody murder while we dried him in his little hooded towel. Since then, he's been in the Jacuzzi tub two more times and fortunately for everyone, on the last trip to the tub, he was happy and smiling when we took him out to dry him off.

Billy has had three other major developments this week. The first is that we gave him this really soft frog puppet thing. You'll see it in the video. When he gets it on the floor, he started picking his legs up and grabbing onto it with his arms and hands. It was all an attempt to use every limb he had to get this thing to his mouth, but it looked like Mixed Martial Arts grappling. Then, the second event happened. Billy rolled over to his side with it. I had never seen him do that before. Now he is rolling to his side without it quite a bit. He basically grabs the floor with his toes and begins pulling on it while he turns his head and twists his waist. The next thing you know, he's over. Already he's begun taking that top leg and swinging it over and I'm guessing it won't be more than a month at max before he's rolling from back to front after figuring out how to negotiate that arm that's in the way preventing a complete roll. He's also started warning us before he's about to cry by sticking that bottom lip out. Typically, it seems to be the first stage of crying. You have two choices at that point. You can either continue down the path you are on and trigger a full blown fuss or you can change course and make him smile, which isn't that tough to do. Its really funny looking though, so when we see it, we usually start smiling and laughing and that is usually enough to prevent his mood from progressing much farther.

Last story and then I'm done this week. My sister, Christine, had to put down one of her dogs due to an unusual medical condition for his breed. It was truly a very sad and disheartening story, which is why I decided to make the video that I made below. Something to cheer everyone up whenever they are feeling down. But from this very sad story comes a very cute one. I had the little guy in his vibrating seat, which he loves, and was bouncing into my office every now and then to see if my sister had replied to my email about what happened that led to the day's events regarding her dog. When I got her reply, it was quite long and as I started reading it, I was pulled into the story, which again, was very, very sad if you are a dog owner like we are. After I was about 2/3 of the way through it, I realized I couldn't hear the baby anymore. I went into the living room (the next room over) and there he was, sitting in his little chair. Our dog, a 95 lb. blue weimaraner, was laying at the base of his seat sound asleep. We have a really mild mannered dog who absolutely loves the baby. He's constantly getting in there to lick the baby and lay by him (except when he's crying, in which case he leaves the room so nobody accuses him of making the baby cry, I guess). When I walk in, I realize that the dog is getting a massage as the baby is positioned so that he is repeatedly kicking the dog over and over in the back. Little baby + big dog = massagelike kicks. As I got closer to tell the dog he was a good boy for being so good with the baby, I realized there was more going on here. Apparently my son had heard my wife telling me the dog needed to be brushed and was taking it upon himself to address the shedding issue. With each kick, he was grabbing the dog with his toes and pulling gobs of hair out of the dog. My dog is a short haired dog, so they were probably his loose hairs since he was sound asleep and unfazed by all of this, but that didn't stop my kid from having a pile of dog hair at the base of his swing and all over the floor. Quite funny.

Well, Billy's Grandma is in town today to take over the baby sitting duties for Antoinette's final week of orientation. I can't wait until she gets to see him because her last visit was when he was born and he is a completely different baby now. Should be fun to watch.

Enjoy the video this week. Hope it makes you all smile.