Teething Appears to Suck

So it seems like getting teeth sucks way more than I will ever remember.  

As in, sucks enough to wake you up at 2:00 in the morning (when you're visiting friends) and keep you awake, tossing and turning for 3 hours or so.  Then, when it looks like you're not going to get any sleep, you go for a ride, just to calm everyone down and let some people try and sleep (the host friends and a parent).

But that ain't gonna work, either.  Instead, you're going to hang out until 7:30 a.m. or so, and then finally crash for an hour and a half.

Then, when you get up, you're going to be super friendly and cheerful, ready to visit and have a great time.  This is the exact opposite of how your parents feel, so while one "looks after you" in a zombie-fied state of being, the other one sleeps for a little while longer, to hopefully eliminate some of the whole waking dead thing that's going on.

So. . .  Yeah.  That's what Saturday nights look like sometimes.  But as much as O getting teeth sucks for me and her mom, I can't be all that upset.  Because it seems like it must suck a lot more for her.  And really, there are only 20 of these bad boys coming, and O has four out already.  That's 20%.  We're almost done.

Cripes.  Poor kid.

Guess How Much This Book Bugs Daddy

I know, it's supposed to be a fantastic children's classic.  Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney.  It gets great reviews.  Seriously. . .  Great reviews.  No one is hard on this book.  I think I may have to look into this, and see if anyone is hard on any children's book.  It's cute.  It's a lovely little board book (the version we have) with charming illustrations.  I openly admit that we even have one of those "My Baby's First Years" books based on, and with illustrations from, this book.

But I don't like this book.  I think it's jerky.

I'm not anti-rabbit or anything like that.  I'm just against this story of one-up-manship by a child's father.  Apparently the book can be read with the adult rabbit -- sorry, hare -- as either the mother or the father, but I am a father, so I read it like that.  Either way, no matter how much this poor little kid rabbit tells his father how much he loves him, the father has to come back and go him one better.

"I love you as high as I can reach," says the little guy.  And the father comes back with "And I love you as high as I can reach,"  which, as a larger, taller adult, is higher.  So the adult loves the kid more and feels he has to tell the kid as much.

I'm just kind of put off by the whole "I love you more than you can love me" sort of thing that's going on here.  That, and the length of the names -- Little Nut Brown Hare and Big Nut Brown Hare.  Sorry, that gets a little tiresome for me.  Which might be selfish, but I'm the one reading this thing to my daughter.

So their names are Paul (the big one) and Frank (the little one).  Either way, I kind of feel like Paul's a bit of a jerk, and this (as far as I'm concerned) comes to a jerky finale when Paul waits until Frank is too tired to speak and has fallen asleep, then whispers that he quantitatively loves his child more.

But I digress.

I love my daughter.  With every part of my being.  It's mushy, it sounds cliche.  But it's true.  And I know that my daughter loves me.  And some day, she'll be able to tell me how much she loves me.  And I may or may not love her more than she is capable of loving me, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let her know that.

If my daughter ever says to me that she loves me to the moon, I'm gonna let that one slide.  She wins, hands down.

A year and a month in. . .

It's a year and a month in. O is an absolute joy. Every minute of every day, she is nothing but wonderful.

Right. Wonderful. Every minute of every. . . Cripes. I almost had myself going there.

This is a blog about my kid, myself, and to some extent, my wife. If you're interested in our lives, you are probably a family member or a close friend. If you're neither and you still feel like peeping in, provided you're not creepy, then read on. Please enjoy.

If you're not interested in some stranger's kid's goofball antics, then this probably isn't the blog for you, and you should just move along. Seriously. There's probably something more interesting for you if you click that "Next Blog" button up at the top.

Tonight, I put O to bed by myself. This doesn't sound like a very exciting thing. But if you're a father of a child who breastfeeds only, who hasn't taken a bottle since her third week in the world, and has -- up until now -- had a final nurse right before bed, then you can probably relate.

This. Is. Epic.

She quite happily humored me, allowed me to wash her hands and face, change her diaper and put on her pajamas (Oooooo, it's Pajama Time!). We read a final Boynton book, then she looked at me, pointed to her crib and started to squirm. I got the idea.

And for the first time that I can remember, she was completely awake when I put her in her crib. I got my goodnight kiss, told her I love her, and left the room.

And that was that. Good night. Sleep tight. Don't let the bed bugs bite.

But this is a year and a month in. And I kind of want to start at the beginning. So I will.

But right now, it's my Pajama Time. (Oooooo yes! It's Pajama Time!)