babies are awesome

alternate title: babies are exhausting.

He's beautiful, and perfect, and he has already shat and peed his way through what we thought would be two week's worth of diapers, clothes, and bedding.

People ask: "How's he sleeping?"

To which, the honest answer is: "He sleeps like a champ!"

Seriously, maybe 20 or so hours a day this little guy is completely zonked out, and he's adorable.  You just want to sit and watch him sleep.  These little twitches in his face, the way he waves his arm around when he wiggles it out of the swaddling, the slight baby-bird chirps he makes...it's movie worthy (if you are riding the swell of female, birth induced hormonal waves, it's apparently the BEST MOVIE YOU HAVE EVER SEEN).  For Dad, it's pretty sweet.

It's those other 4 hours of the day that sneak up on you, pants you, spin you around, give you that "8 whiskey + 2 Jaeger shot" feeling without the fun parts...when Baby Boy deploys 15 minutes of his awake time when Mom and Dad are about to enter REM* sleep themselves you get disoriented and cranky parents.


One wonders (I=One in this case, for sure) how other cultures manage the first days/weeks with a baby.  I think about the "it takes a village" idea, and suspect that some less "sophisticated" cultures benefit from the proximity of extended family and other experienced moms...


Last thought for now, and advice for new parents:  if people offer you their hand-me-downs, and you have room to store them, take them all!  We had so many offers of "family" bassinets that we turned down; now I wish I had somewhere relatively safe to lay him in every room...


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*is there U2 sleep?  INXS sleep? UB40?  and why do bands not use these sorts of names now?  See what sleep deprivation can do to your brain?