Now THAT was a long month

On June 1 we were still in the hospital. Exhausted, injured, hypermedicated, and totally flummoxed by these strange new sciences of swaddling and diapering.

29 days, 200 diapers, 40 visitors, 6 doctor appointments, 3 pounds of baby fat, 100 episodes of The West Wing, 30 ballgames, and countless wrecks of both The Old 97 and The Edmund Fitzgerald later: Still exhausted. But salty dogs when it comes to parental origami.

I remember June 1991 was a long month. December 1995, January 1999, October 2003 — all seemed interminable. But June 2007? June 2007 was a whole lifetime.

Already Wyatt is sporting a beer belly and male-pattern baldness. Already he has honed his keen sense of comic timing, as evidenced by his flatulent rimshots (he shares a birthday with both JFK and Bob Hope — and so far, he seems more influenced by the latter).

He still enjoys a good singalong, though, and loves to talk baseball. I've found I can hold his attention by calling out the lineup of the 2001 Mariners, and he lights up, smiling ear to ear, when I get to “At first base, number 5: John Ooooooooooooleruuuuuud!”

He even knows how and when to lie, and who to lie to. I know this because he has a special set of cries that he uses only if his mother is in the room.

It's going to be a long 18 years, isn't it?

It's all I got

Was going to post a tribute to umpires. Or to the solstice in Seattle. Or to The West Wing. Or to La Dolce Vita. I admire all these things and was going to try to do them some justice this week.

But who am I kidding? I only have one arrow in my quiver these days. I don't really want to be one of those you-will-now-look-at-my-baby fathers, but well, there it is.

You will now look at my baby.

Vampire? Cinematographer? Antelope? Peeping Tom?

Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you. Here, between you, me, the tree, the rock... everywhere. Yes. Even between the tray, and the bottle.

Joe Cocker sings the blues. Again and again and again.

Is it just me, or is Wyatt looking rather presidential here?

He's a scandal, honey. He's a little outlaw. He ain't too good.

Thank God for baseball and grandmas

I know, I know. It sounds like a sappy gol-bless-merica platitude. (You forgot motherhood and apple pie...)

Still. If it weren't for those two institutions, the last two weeks would have left me little more than a gelatinous blob.

GrammaMaus is with us and has been a tremendous help — every extra hour of sleep, every hot shower, every load of clean dishes, every afternoon nap, we owe to her. We even got out of the house for a hamburger the other day, which right now is like a weekend in Paris.

And then there's baseball — before fatherhood, I would watch a full game in real time every now and then, but usually just skimmed through games at 4x speed on Tivo, picking out the scoring situations and big plays and getting through a full game in under an hour.

Now, I watch every pitch of every game. Every replay. Every commercial. Pregame and postgame shows. It fits into my day so easily, so perfectly, it almost makes me believe baseball was invented specifically as therapy for sleep-deprived fathers. It's so reassuring, so comfortable — it makes me feel like a grounded human being. Dave Niehaus is my Mister Rogers.

(And and and! The Ms are playing the Cubbies this week — which for me is like the Beatles sharing a bill with Bob Dylan.)

And while I'm at it, thank God also for Johnny Cash. Because it seems nothing soothes our little outlaw like songs about train wrecks, hangings, and hard time.

The 11 PM psychosis

Day 5 of parenthood, and I now have a strong enough dataset to support the following paradigm of the entropic onset of mental exhaustion in a closed postnatal system over a typical 15-hour period:

fig. 1) The happy parents at 8 AM.

fig. 2) The happy parents at 11 PM.

The good news is that by 10 AM the next day, we've completed the cycle back to fig. 1.

Better than Abbey Road

For the first time in six days, Maus is sleeping, Wyatt is sleeping, Linus is sleeping, Shmool is sleeping, and I'm just barely hanging on. Why? I give you God's gift to parents of newborns:
This masterwork has one track, 60 minutes long and more brilliant than a Bonham drum solo. Crank this puppy up to 11, and it will change your life. Seriously. As a good friend once observed, “it has influenced everything that came after or before it.”

Wyatt went zonk only 45 seconds into the crashing overture. Maus soon followed. Then the dog. (To be fair, the cat was already asleep.) I just looked out the front door and the mailman is passed out on our front steps.

Fortunately I am... immune... to its... effects... . . . . . .