As mentioned in my previous post, I’m generally loving life. I really like my classes, my work, and my wife and my baby. But I could easily paint a little too rosy a picture. While Wake Forest, North Carolina beats Norman, Oklahoma for scenery 7 out of 7 days in a week, and while I’m incredibly glad to be here, life is still life.

One of the things I’ve been learning recently is that, while I love Ellie, I don’t particularly love taking care of babies. Jaimie does. She spent 8 months or so working as a nanny just because she enjoys working with babies. (There are plenty of other things she’s qualified to do; she wanted to do that.) And at the end of a long day, when Ellie loses it being incredibly fussy—as she has done repeatedly the last few days—even Jaimie doesn’t love taking care of her anymore. Unsurprisingly, neither do I.

This is not, to be very clear, a complaint. Rather, it’s an observation on my own sinfulness. Read on, intrepid explorer →

Last night we had over our dear friends Cody and Laura Piersall to watch The Avengers. Of course, Elayne’s bedtime came somewhere in the middle, so Jaimie and I traded off trying to put her down.

It was an interesting task, to say the very least. She was clearly not interested in going to sleep – too many interesting noises, not to mention those other people out there in the living room! – and she also decided to be doubly difficult in her approach to eating.

Read on, intrepid explorer →

Elayne has apparently made it one of her early life goals to spit up on my nicer shirts. Whenever I’m holding her, patting her back, post feeding, she strains toward the edge of the burp cloth, tugs on it to pull the sides together, and generally makes every possible effort to guarantee that when she does finally get out a big burp (and some spit-up with it), my polo will be the recipient rather than the wonderful tie-dyed cloth.

This, of course, isn’t quite accurate: she’s not doing it on purpose. Indeed, at 8 weeks old, Ellie really isn’t doing much “on purpose” yet; her mental capacities have not developed to the point of complex intentions. She is, at three days shy of two months old, showing more and more signs of active engagement and interactivity with the world and with us. It’s remarkable and fun to see her intelligence flowering, her emotional palette broadening, and her physical capabilities increasing – from interacting with objects to making a wider variety of noises.

I’d be lying if I said it was all fun and games, though. Read on, intrepid explorer →

Ellie will be 7 weeks old on Sunday. To put it mildly, that just seems crazy. It’s not going too fast, but I sure don’t want to blink.

Read on, intrepid explorer →

I just felt baby girl kicking and moving around for the first time!

It is one of the coolest, strangest, most awesome, most mind-boggling things I have ever felt. There is a little person in there, growing – now big enough that when she moves and pushes or kicks against the womb, I can feel it. Read on, intrepid explorer →