A Dash of Dash a Day: June 10

Very shortly after Dash was born, while Ann was still shaking it out on the hospital bed and Dash was getting weighed and measured, they told us how long he was and we were surprised: I tend to resemble a tree stump when dressed properly, and Ann, while slightly taller than me, is far from a giant. But Dash was in the upper percentiles for length/height, and so Ann and I immediately started making "I guess he really does look like the mailman" jokes. Our midwife (sense a pattern yet?) was not amused.

There's a common conception that the baby, upon birth, looks like the father for evolutionary reasons - in a situation where the father cannot be certain if the offspring is his, biology steps in. Science isn't as clear on this as I thought, I learned, but I still love the concept. Regardless, one of our biggest debates is who Dash looks like. I look at Dash, and see nothing but Ann except in the nose and his super-expressive eyebrows, which is a key skill of mine. She sees nothing but me in him, which she cites toward his actual eyeballs (not his eyes, which we both agree are all Ann) and face shape.

Regardless, Ann, I think, inadvertently put this debate to rest with the picture she put together above. Not only does Dash have her smile as a baby, but apparently Dash's little derpface is hereditary. When I saw this, it really blew my mind, because it's pretty crazy how close they look at similar ages.

If anything, it's confirmation of one thing: we can't rule out the mailman.

A Dash of Dash a Day: June 9

To jump upon the name discussion from earlier, we have also been surprised by some of the...interesting pronunciations and spellings of Dash's name. Well, Ann is more surprised than I am, since my first thought for the pronunciation was "Dash-eele" as opposed to the more appropriate "Dash-uhll." I have that problem where I read things before hearing them and the voice in my head gains prominence, so I tend to be very forgiving of the odd pronunciations.

This post is more just to highlight one of the first cute spellings we got, though. We get a lot of "Dash-a-lee," and an example is what we came home to when Dash was born from my father above, which was both very cute and deserved a "You Tried" medal.

A Dash of Dash a Day: June 8

Ann sent this picture to me the other night with the single caption "You're invited...to the gun show." It immediately reminded me of this picture:


I swear, if Dash becomes a Jersey Shore gym rat...

A Dash of Dash a Day: June 7

I often feel guilty about one aspect of how we're handling Dash, even thought I shouldn't.

Ann's been exclusively breast feeding this whole time. Not a drop of formula, it's been great on our wallet and great for Dash. This means, though, that Ann's more or less the exclusive feeder of the family. I get bottles from time to time, but her giving me bottles means she has to pump more, and the more that she pumps means the more she makes, and so on and so forth.

Also, Ann's done with work. We're taking the dive in on the whole one person working, one person with the baby thing, and it's working well for us. Since I made more money, I got to keep working (it would have gone the other way if Ann was the primary breadwinner). We plan to homeschool in the future, if it will work for Dash, and so this is kind of the beginning of "let's see how this goes." So I work during the day, and Ann's got the baby.

When we put it all together, it comes down to getting up at night that's the big thing. Since Ann is the prime food giver, and since I can't do much, she pretty much is the one who gets up at night, leaving me to sleep so I can be more alert during the day. On one hand, I can't complain too much, since I get off the hook. It's her viewpoint that if I can't do much for him at night if he's hungry, and one of us can get a decent night's sleep, then that's how we should do it, especially since I'm working. On the other, that's exhausting for her, and I can tell. She never complains, and she's a saint for doing it, but I definitely feel some guilt.

Compounding it is the line of questioning from people. Everyone's first question is "how's the sleeping going," which is cute and fun but puts us in an awkward spot since pretty much everyone else we know shares the nighttime duties. Then again, nearly everyone we know has a two income household, and nearly everyone we know went to formula pretty quickly. And nearly no one we know is planning to homeschool. So we're not doing much of anything like anyone else, so why feel insecure about it?

This is not meant to make anyone feel guilty about perhaps asking us that. It's a natural question. Just know that if we're a little apprehensive or do the nervous laughter thing, it's because we're just still trying to get comfortable with the roles we've set up for ourselves.

A Dash of Dash a Day: June 6

For those who might not have followed just yet or are coming to the blog late, about a year and a half ago we moved back into my childhood home with my parents to help take care of my mother. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2007, and living with her could really be an entire blog in and of itself. It is a scary, sad, bizarre disease that ultimately seems to hurt everyone except the person who's stricken with it, and it does not make life easy.

I had a lot of early apprehension about having a baby with Mom in the house. When it's Ann and I, it's a full time job with her as is, and adding a baby to the mix seemed to be crazy. Plus, without knowing how Mom would react to having a baby in the house? How we would be able to handle it, both as a couple and as parents? I had a lot of concerns. What I do have to keep reminding myself constantly, and what I needed to be reminded of when we started talking baby, is that my mother wouldn't have wanted me to change my entire life around her. She even said so herself early on when we had nearly moved into our condo in New Hampshire and I was starting to immediately have regrets about being so far away. Would she have wanted us to wait on having a baby on her account?

Obviously, we dove in and had the baby. What I'm not surprised about is how well Ann and I have handled it. Having a new focus, having a little meatball who is 80% joy, 15% frustration, 5% bodily fluids, it ain't bad. What I am surprised about is how Mom has handled it. Sometimes, when the baby is crying, she soothes him from the other room, talking to Dash as if she's right there (a common thing with Mom is to talk to people she perceives nearby, regardless of where they are). Sometimes, she comes and sees the baby and just babbles to it. Sometimes just lets him hold her finger. Always, always, always, however, storms into the room regardless of the situation with the exclamation "Here's the Nanny!" (She decided she'd be Nanny long, long before Ann was even in the picture, which is interesting that it stuck with her). Mom has really only tried to outright hold the baby once or twice, and has mostly been afraid of that sort of physical interaction otherwise, which we're frankly okay with. On a whole, though? Mom loves the baby. Absolutely adores Dash even if the name isn't really doing the trick for her. Instead of a horror show, it's been better than the best case scenario.

What's become very interesting, however, is the last few weeks. I don't remember exactly when Dash started smiling at familiar faces, but it's always nice to be the first one to run over to his swing after a nap, and see that huge smile come onto his face when he recognizes you. Ann and I get smiles constantly, and who else does? My mother. HUGE, laughing smiles, which just eggs my mother on that much more, which then causes more smiles and laughter from Dash. They're like old friends getting together, neither really understanding the other or making any coherent statements to each other, but it's just crazy how well Dash has taken to my mother as well as my mother has taken to Dash. It's to the point where Ann can put Dash on the kitchen table, strapped into a bouncy seat, and leave Dash and Mom to chat while she makes dinner. It's crazy.

I get pretty upset from time to time knowing that Dash will never know my mother the way I did. It's hard enough that Ann only got a bit of what made her great, but Dash deserves more than that. It's worse to think that Dash might grow up early on with Mom being at her worst, and will only know my mother as an angry, incoherent mess. But when I see the two of them together right now? I wonder if Dash will get lucky in the lottery of life and end up being a good thing for my mother, and my mother a good thing for him. Even if the best case scenario now is the best we get later, at least we have this and we can tell him about how he made my mother's life a little brighter without even trying.

My father sometimes says to his family that this house needed something good in it for once. I hope Dash someday understands that, when we talk about something going our way, that we meant him on so many levels.

A Dash of Dash a Day: June 5

We interrupt our general standard feature for a baby who is probably too young for a Jumparoo absolutely loving his Jumparoo.

A Dash of Dash a Day: June 4

Raymonds of a certain age have traditionally gone through a childhood hazing ritual of sorts. It came from my Aunt Jane, an Aunt I was always close to growing up and loved quite a bit. She'd call on the phone and just say the dirtiest things to you (well, dirty-appropriate for the age). Potty humor, some light cursing, always just to get you a little angry and perhaps give it right back to you. I went through it, my brother went through it, my cousins went through it. Talking to my cousin Meghan the other night, I also learned that her son would get it as well.

Aunt Jane had been sick for some time, and largely because we've largely had our hands full on our own (along with other issues, for certain), we hadn't gotten around to see her in some time. With the baby, I made it a point to go and say hi, and it was like things had never changed, which was great. My Aunt and I caught up a bit, had a bunch of great laughs, and then she held the baby for a bit, and immediately laid into the little guy just like she did to everyone else. He was only a month old, so it's not like he'll really remember it, but I will, and it'll be a good story. Even in some of her most painful times, she was like she was 20 years earlier, putting whatever pain she was going through aside to put a smile on someone else's face.

My Aunt Jane passed away on Friday. I'll miss her terribly, and I'll be sad that, like a lot of other family traditions that slide away with the people who pass on, Dash won't ever get the full Aunt Jane experience. While there are a lot of people in my life that Dash won't really know, that he'll never know my Memere and that he'll never know my mother as she once was are hard. That he'll have to hear the crazy stories about Aunt Jane second hand hurts as well, because she was really special, and really something else.

Thanks, Aunt Jane.