The Book of Ted, Part 1

And he screamed, but the guards paid no attention to his cries… Sublime, D.R.

 

For our greatest adventure yet, the wife and I decided to stay home and start a family. Our days of globetrotting and fighting are over.  As if.  Our exotic travels may be behind us (at least for the next eighteen years or so), but we’re finding a whole new level of things to fight about.  What kind of diapers?  Is the nursery too bright?  How did I hang those pictures?  You’re going the wrong way!  Wait, that last one is an old fight.  Our car travels have not changed, though with Sai’s heightened hormones, the intensity may or may not have been escalated at any given time.

Our baby TBA, as you may have surmised by now, is to be announced as Theodore Blank Apfelbaum. Not sure what the middle name will be, or if it will begin with B, but it was my suggested middle initial for the sake of the pun.  Sai wants a Thai middle name, TBD based on some silly astrological signs of insanity.  I hope I can pronounce it.  If you were hoping for a surprise on our baby’s gender, sorry I ruined it for you, but that’s what I do.  My father likewise insisted he didn’t want to know early.  After our second ultrasound, I was so excited about the size of my boy’s calf, I bragged to the old man that he’d be a runner.  Silly me, never thought dear old dad would piece together the pronoun so promptly.

 

Rejects

So why Theodore? Why Ted?  Because Sai liked the innocuous lead character on How I Met Your Mother, and I found the name inoffensive compared to most of the other names we disagreed over.  Other names she liked included Benedict (Cumberbatch), Bradley (Cooper), Cooper (Bradley), and by that point I decided not to watch any more movies with her.  If we ever have a daughter, I wonder how receptive she’ll be to Jenna, Chasey, Gauge or Tera?

I almost agreed with her on the Benedict option (similar enough to Benjamin without being a junior); I was willing to overlook the traitorous Mr. Arnold. I thought we’d copy my bra initials, like mine were copied from my poor father.  The R middle could be a nice Thai name like Rak.  Benedict means blessing.  Rak means love.  Blessing of Love!  B. Rak.  Barack!  What better way to praise our former president in this dark time of Donald.  Alas, my baby mama was not on board with my homage to Obama, which is probably for the best.  She ended up dumping the Benedict name when her friends teased her about naming our child after an egg dish.

How about an E name? Middle initial P?  In honor of the former EPA, which again is sadly missed in this time of Trump?  Can I go with a really long chain of letters, such as ITMFA?  (Look it up if you’re not following Dan Savage’s latest effort).  No?  Okay, we’ll stick with Theodore for now.  My suggested B name was Bernard, meaning strong bear (get it?  Teddy Bear?), but we’ll see what creative, goofy Thai name Sai comes up with instead, or if she throws a curve and dumps the first name too (wouldn’t be the first time she changed her mind).  FYI – Theodore is from the Greek for Gift from God.  Not a bad thing at all.  [Teddy Bernard does use two prominent characters from HBO’s West World.  While I enjoyed its first season, can’t say it was great enough to name my son after though.  Tyrion Bronn Apfelbaum would have been a cool homage to G.O.T., and still kept the TBA pun alive, but I don’t want people picking on my destined to be short son’s vertical genetic challenges.]

 

Classes

Who knew that there was so much to learn about babies? Besides the books she and others bought for me, we also had to go to school to learn more.  I thought having kids was one of the most basic human skills, so how hard can it be?  But because I am well disciplined by the mean mommy, I went where I was told.

Two breastfeeding classes?!?! Well I guess there are two breasts, so maybe each class will cover its own mammary, like the independent left and right Twix factories.  Actually, the first class was a very casual affair at the nearby Babies R Us (sorry, TM, don’t know how to reverse the R).  Sai and I joined three other couples to be told by a woman who works for a non-profit organization about the benefits of breastmilk.  She gave us some good basics, and entertainingly demonstrated technique on a nice sock booby (she told us her husband preferred the sock to her sharing her own nipple with strangers).  After an hour, I felt we were ready.

A few weeks later, we attended a more formal session with at least fifty other people, in an auditorium with a graphic slideshow, YouTube videos, and our very own practice babies (no socks with nipples to be seen though). Due to some unusually bad (worse than usual) traffic, I was unfashionably late to the event.  Coupled with my cell phone dying along the way, I failed to coordinate backup plan logistics with Sai, so she was ready to squeeze my neck until death, milk, or an apology came out.  I opted for the third choice.   Two plus hours later, I knew what colostrum was (not an old building in Rome), learned a hidden meaning behind Madonna’s Express Yourself (still not sure how the cone-bra helps though), and felt more confident than ever that this would be Sai’s burden (she can apply pressure, but she’s not getting any milk out of me).  The biggest takeaway for me is the “WHOMP” the teacher used to emphasize how when you get the baby to open its mouth wide enough, you quickly pull it to the boob to latch beyond the nipple.  She must’ve WHOMP’ed two dozen times to reinforce this concept.  You steer the infant close, tease the baby’s mouth with the nipple, wait for the opening, then WHOMP!

A general class covering all of the basics also seemed like a good idea. I’d been around a bunch of babies growing up (younger siblings and immature older sibs, plus mom ran an at-home daycare for several years), but it had been many years since I’d been asked to change a diaper.  Sai had never had the pleasure of wiping someone else’s ass.

However, instead of elevating us to the next step of togetherness in a nurturing family environment, the experience nearly ended our relationship. Like most of our best fights, it involved me driving, her navigating, and us getting lost.  I got us to the Georgetown campus with at least ten minutes to spare.  From there, she only needed to get us to the right building.  The damn college kids moving out snarled up traffic through the school grounds, and her GPS took us to a parking garage listed for faculty only.  I followed some signs towards the building we wanted, and parked in the nearest public garage I could find.  From there, Sai led us (walking) back via the same GPS to the same parking garage no closer to our final destination.  Many of the buildings were locked on this Sunday morning, and the few people we asked pointed in general directions but still we struggled to find the classroom.  Once we narrowed it down to the correct building, every point of entry we found was frustratingly locked.  Finally, a doctor followed his Hippocratic oath and prevented the wife from doing bodily harm to me by leading us (and a similarly lost, but differently destined duo) to where we needed to go.  Needless to say, but I just said it anyway, the Georgetown campus is confusing.  Arriving an hour plus later, we went to the building directly across from the garage where I had parked us.  I won’t say “I told you so” because that would be petty.  I’ll just say “I told you Sai” because that is different.

It was not as easy to slip into the class of seven couples as it was to arrive late to the breastfeeding auditorium. We couldn’t just sneak into seats in the back, since everyone was sharing the same conference table.  Sure we missed half the material, but raising a kid is like taking candy from a baby, right?  In an awesome show of support, the instructor Elizabeth stayed late after class to catch us up on the basics we had missed.  But I wish I’d had more opportunity to practice swaddling.

 

Showers

Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but three showers?! Really, that’s too much.  I managed to convince Sai to leave me out of her first shower, as it was to be a girls’ only event.  It was a good excuse for me to play some bad golf.  Then, her coworkers decided to throw her a surprise shower, and I was invited to be part of the surprise, which was a surprise to me as well.  It worked surprisingly well, as Sai couldn’t figure out how they had first contacted me, and second, snuck me into the building.  Trade secrets.  Finally, some of her Maryland-based Thai cohorts who apparently aren’t willing to venture to Virginia (site of the first shower) or had other conflicts hosted a third baby shower in Maryland.  As this one was coed and I had already exploited the golf angle, I ended up going.  So my initial successful plan of avoiding the cheesy baby shower experience was subsequently thwarted by my forced participation in two other cheesy baby showers.  But in fairness, all three were very nice (just not as nice as an ugly round of golf).

 

Nursery

Sai proposed a jungle animal theme for the nursery. Still stoked from our amazing safari experience last year to South Africa, and cognizant of the fact that some things are not worth arguing over (except for directions), I concurred.  She found cool animal themed curtains from eBay, a colorful rug from Etsy with a sun and clouds, cute little animal pictures with supportive sayings (Lion – Be Brave, Elephant – Dream Big, Giraffe – Stand Tall, etc.), Ikea furniture out the yin-yang, and a cloud-shaped light fixture direct from China.  We fought about how to hang the cute animal pictures, such that those creatures are no longer cute but an ugly reminder, making me want to poach them like eggs (benedict).  If I don’t mind saying so myself, I did a phenomenal job of putting everything together myself (including hanging those damn animal pictures, twice!), except for the China light fixture.

Lacking any instructions (just some Chinese warranty information, from what I could tell), and lacking any electrical (or mechanical) skills, the installation of the new light was beyond me. The old fixture had three different colored wires tying into the same colors coming out of the ceiling junction box.  The new light had two white wires.  I assume connecting the wrong wires is like disconnecting the wrong ones in the movies, and I didn’t want to blow up the nursery after all the hours of assembling Ikea furniture, so we called in help for this one.  Sai found a local young electrician with the perfect name:  Steve Perry.  Did you know that a basic level electrician is called a journeyman? (Between apprentice and master electrician).  Did you know that the original lead singer from the band Journey was named… Steve Perry?  (Bonus points if you knew the name of the new guy from the Philippines – Arnel Pineda – I had to look that one up).  So a journeyman named Steve Perry!  Okay, so I may be the only one who found that amusing.  I debated pointing it out to our handyman, but figured he’d either heard it too many times before or just as likely never heard of Journey (kids today); either way, I saved the cheese for you instead.

 

Food for Thought

Durian stinks. One of our other prenatal battles was over the health benefits of this smelly Asian fruit.  But it’s good for his embryonic brain development!  Look it up!  I did look it up, and didn’t see anything about durian being good for a baby’s brain.  It’s got to be bad for his developing nose, and is surely no good for my sense of smell.  Joke was on Sai though.  Her baby brain food led to the ultrasound technician informing us that our boy’s head was measuring 99%!  Good luck squeezing that out.  Upon hearing that news, Sai changed her diet and started researching ways to shrink an unborn baby’s head.  Luckily for big head Ted, no witch doctors responded to her requests.  I assured her that based on some of the performances I’ve seen heard about in Bangkok, I believed the little Thai woman could easily squeeze out our little melon headed child (easily said by me at least; these words of encouragement were not so well received by her).  Popping out a baby is just like a really big ping pong ball, right?

 

Due or Die!

Courtesy of one my friends (who will go unnamed for the sake of his or her hopes of ever speaking to my wife again), I received a chilling text at work a few days before our due date. “Sai die yet?” was quickly followed up with “Sai due yet?” and an apology about being unable to recall the first message.  I assure all of you (both of you?  Does anyone actually read these things?) that I am not engaged in a plot to dispatch with my lovely wife, and to the best of my knowledge, neither is an unnamed friend of mine.

 

The Baby

Enough with the usual preambles (or in this case, pre-birth, there will still be plenty to go before he starts ambling). At forty weeks and two days, we were ready to head to the hospital for our scheduled induction.  We were told to be there at 7 p.m., at which time we’d check in, Sai would be administered some medication to get the boy roiling, we’d sleep through the night, and start a fun day of delivery on Tuesday, June 20^th.

I had been hoping he’d come on his own on the 18^th, a day after his due date, which also happened to be Father’s Day.  Wouldn’t that have been a nice gift for new daddy?  Alas, he was not ready to listen to me, an early indicator that my disciplinarian hand will go unheeded.  He already takes after his mother.

From reading several of the baby books, my birth plan for her was not to have a formal plan, because it was my understanding to expect all bets to be off once things got started. Better to be able to roll with it, working with the experts who were being paid by her insurance to take care of us.  But I didn’t expect the non-plan plan to have its first hitch before we even left the house!  Around ten after six, Sai’s phone rang, and we were told that a bunch of other people beat us to the punch of having kids on this day.  We were considered an elective induction, not an emergency labor, so why not keep him in a little longer?  Come in at 11 p.m. instead.  After waiting forty weeks and two days, what’s another four hours?  It’s enough to frazzle a ripe mommy ready to rip.

After confirming at ten that they were still taking new arrivals, we loaded up the car and headed for the hospital. I dropped Sai at the front door and headed for the nearest bar.  No, I dropped her and all of her luggage (even if we were going away for a few days, most of her needs would be taken care of by the hospital.  That didn’t stop her from packing as if we were heading for a desert island.  I thought the sunscreen and beach towel were a bit much), then I went to park the car in the nearby garage.  The last song I heard on the radio before heading into the hospital to have a baby – “Got to Get You Into My Life” by the Beatles.  Sometimes you can’t make this stuff up.  I felt it was time to add another branch onto our family apple tree.

For the gory details, continue reading. For those not interested in the laborious specifics, skip the next four paragraphs and pick up with the baby crying down below.  We checked in at eleven, and at midnight they administered Cervidil, a drug that is supposed to thin the cervix.  It also sometimes triggers contractions, this being one of those times, and Sai spent the next seven hours in labor pains.  The contractions were instantly only minutes apart, which Sai was not ready for.  So much for a quiet night in the hospital, waiting for our Tuesday delivery.  The only foods Sai could eat were Jell-O and freezer pops.  She ate a lot of both.  My job was to massage her back, which didn’t seem to make much difference.  The baby’s job was to overreact when Sai changed position, either moving to lose the heartrate sensors on Sai’s stomach, or letting his heartrate dip momentarily to scare the doctor and nurses briefly, so that they’d make Sai move back to a more comfortable position for the finicky boy.  Sai and I should have been likewise nervous by these interludes, but we usually didn’t realize what was going on until afterwards.  The non-stop beeps were hard to decipher, as neither of us is fluent in R2-D2.

At some point they discontinued the Cervidil because our son wasn’t digging it and because the contractions were too fast and furious. Then, at 7 a.m., they gave Sai her long-awaited epidural!  She’d been looking forward to this pain release for nine months.  Suddenly, everything was great.  What contractions?  Around 11 a.m. they gave Sai a giant yellow peanut to put between her legs to help further with dilation and cervical shrinkage, or something.  Don’t worry nutty allergetics, it was not a real peanut.  Just some kind of rubber polygon.  Though I’m sure it was not real rubber, for you rubber-allergic mothers.  Around 12:30 p.m., Sai’s body decided enough with the Jell-O, and she proceeded to vomit all over the place.  I swiftly maneuvered out of her way, though she did manage to catch the comforter she had insisted we bring to the hospital.  We were such gracious guests, only soiling our own linens.  They told her it was normal to project vomit all over the place, so we added it to our non-plan birthing plan.  At 2 p.m. we entered phase 3, Pitocin, which accelerates and intensifies contractions.  Since Sai was high on epi, no problem.  Since Teddy still wasn’t ready, problem.  They backed off the Pitocin.

We were fortunate to have the legendary Dr. Elliot on call on this momentous day. And I mean legen…….dary.  Sai’s primary Ob-Gyn told her how fortunate our scheduled date was because Dr. E would be the attending instead of her.  I found this candor a little off-putting.  Don’t tell us that you’re not the best.  But then I recalled hearing others regale this great doctor.  Then the nurses on shift mentioned how good he was.  Then he walked on water.  Seriously, he may not be the savior of mankind, but dude is legitimately the savior of many a baby and mama-kind.  He exudes confidence and calm and made everything seem manageable (granted my job was only to stand around and dodge upchucked Jell-O).  Elliot quizzed Nurse Sam about some lump in Sai’s stomach, asking what she thought it was (her guess, which I thought sounded reasonable, was a part of a baby perhaps?).  Trick question, as it was a fibroid.  At 2:30, he broke Sai’s water.  Did I mention how grateful I was that this didn’t happen in either of our cars?  Dr. Elliot noted that the water looked fine for swimming.

Shortly thereafter, unready Teddy struck again. He dropped a doody in the kiddie pool, and like the scene from Caddyshack, it was time to evacuate.  Baby’s first poop was in this case a bit premature, and the good doctor said enough’s enough, let’s get him out.  At 4:30 pm, they announced the new plan was a C-section.  We were quickly prepped, me with scrubs and she with drugs.  They upped the epidural to numb the woman from a higher point to cover the cut to her belly.  Sai was led to the operating room, and I was led to a small, windowless room with nothing but a couple of chairs, where I could sit or stand and stare at the white walls wondering what the hell was happening, until I was finally retrieved to sit beside Sai on the head side of the operating curtain (the doctors and attending nurses handled her torso and below).  Sai expressed some feelings of nausea, followed by a more forceful expression when she threw up all over me.  The nurses could not believe that one person could reproduce that much orange Jell-O.  In her defense, Sai did not eat that much orange Jell-O, but she also ate red and yellow, which combined to make it all look the same Trumpian color.  After receiving some hand sanitizer and towels, I cleaned up a bit and sat again beside the wife while the medical experts did their thing on the other side of the curtain.  I tried watching in a reflection off a glass case on an adjacent wall, but couldn’t tell what was happening besides a bunch of people standing in front of my wife.  Probably for the best, though could anything they were doing down there be any messier than me catching my fair share of two liters of orange Jell-O?

At officially 13 minutes after five on the afternoon of June 20^th, the loud wail of our very own Billy Ruben Apfelbaum echoed through the room.  I simultaneously burst into my own uncontrollable tears at our son’s arrival.  Both son and I quickly regained our composure.  We’re not crybabies.  The nurses wiped him off a bit and brought him around to our side of the curtain, allowing me to snap a few quick pictures, before they placed the boy in my arms.  Sai smiled, but was still rather ripped open, so she was in no position to hold him yet.  Eight pounds, two ounces, 20 ½” long, head measuring 15”!  Doctor Elliot said that Sai’s hips would never have handled anything over 14”, so the C-section was the right decision.  I was just relieved that the nurse’s measurements confirmed that he was a keeper and would not need to be thrown back in.

As they worked to suture her up, Sai suffered some discomfiting shivers. I tried to alternately support and encourage her while watching the baby.  Is this time to celebrate?  Are we out of the woods / womb / wound yet?  Shortly afterward, we were, and they wheeled Sai back to her room with me and Teddy in tow.  Once he was further cleaned up and I was clearer-eyed, I have to say that the funny-looking creature from the black lagoon that they’d shown me in the operating room became (and I say this with perhaps a slight bias) the cutest baby ever.

 

Billy, Billy, Billy (Another Caddyshack reference)

Moments ago, I introduced Billy Ruben Apfelbaum as my son. I warned a while back that Sai could always throw a curve and change the name.  We spent the next few days in the hospital learning all about Bilirubin, to the point where I thought it had a nice ring to it.  It would also share my initials, just as I share my father’s (a third generation BRA!).  Alas, Bilirubin did not become the Nosmo King-like impetus behind naming our progeny, just the bane of Teddy’s poor feet for the rest of our hospital stay.  For those unaware, the Bilirubin test is a simple prick to the little guy’s foot from which they draw blood to test for Jaundice.  Teddy scored medium high on this test, so we grounded him.  We expect top marks from our son!  His score meant that he was not required to go under the lamp, but that they’d retest again the next day.  And the next day.  His heel became a pincushion, which meant that he would have to wait to learn how to walk.  So much for my little running buddy this week.  Sai questioned their judgment in calling our kid yellow, based on her own Asian heritage.  What can I say, I married a self-deprecating racist.

After returning home, we went to our pediatrician’s office where they again clipped Teddy’s heel (no wonder he didn’t want to come out), and prescribed a bili-blanket. This is a plug-in kit that shines a special blue-light pad on which we lay the baby to transform his bilirubins to a better bilirubin, or improve his liver functionality, or something.  I resent transforming my son into a K-Mart blue-light special, but if it turns our yellow boy back into a half-yellow boy and avoids the long term risks of Jaundice, who am I to argue?  Though the thought of little mellow yellow being easier to handle… no, that’s not right.  Plug him back in!

 

Nurses

During our stay at the Virginia Hospital Center, we were taken care of by some amazing nurses (as well as the aforementioned super-doctor). Nurse Kelly started us off for the first seven hours, before passing us off to Nurse Sam (Samantha) for the next twelve, before Kelly came back to greet us along with our newest family member, then shifted us to the post-delivery wing where a new batch of nurses took over our cause.  Nurses Courtney, Carol, Lauren and Mary, as well as awesome lactation consultant Allison alternately shifted through our room to make sure that Sai was recovering, Teddy was eating, and I was not alone in trying to change his diapers.  Sai’s only complaint was when one of the ladies previously mentioned prematurely removed her IV before her last dose of antibiotics, and then roughly re-poked her to get it back in.  The nurse was very apologetic about it, so I told Sai to suck it up.  You didn’t hear Teddy crying every time they had to take blood from his foot (unless you were within a square mile of the hospital).  Sai overheard one of the nearby newby parents request a change in room because it was too noisy in our vicinity; surely they weren’t talking about our little angel though.

 

Night Owl

Teddy may be a milk-sucking vampire. The pediatrician told us that most babies sleep around 20 hours per day at this stage, but why does our son save his four waking hours for the darkest depths of night?  A few theories here.  1. Sai’s early pregnancy bouts with morning sickness usually occurred at night.  Therefore, she was backwards and passed it to Teddy genetically.  2. Most of Teddy’s fetal flailings were felt while Sai was in bed at night.  When she laid down, he woke up.  After birth, he’s just continuing this pattern.  3. On Day 3 of our hospital visit, TNA’s little pee-pee was carefully trimmed because I am a cruel father who opted for his circumcision.  The doctor performed this simple procedure late morning, and afterwards Teddy was either asleep or in a daze for the rest of the day before coming alive to wreak fury on his parents after dark.  If you have a son and want his foreskin removed, I suggest requesting it be done as a primetime affair to set the kid up for a decent night’s sleep.  If timed right, a circumcision may be able to circumvent a short-circuiting of a circadian rhythm, I am certain.

 

Chipmunk

Alvin was always a brash troublemaker. Simon was just a nerd.  Theodore was definitely the cutest of the famous chipmunks.  When Sai and I agreed on this name, we didn’t even make the connection to the cartoon stars.  Ironically, one of her nicknames is chipmunk, because of the wife’s cute puffy cheeks.  So it was fitting that we named our boy after a chipmunk.  Still, I find it weird when Sai makes weird animal noises at T while he eats to encourage him.  At first, I thought it sounded like squirrel calls, but then remembered the other little critter connection.  Perhaps they are part chipmunk, not just in nickname.  Myself, I’ll usually encourage Teddy’s suckling at the teat with a nom-nom-nom-nom chant (nom is my phonetic spelling of the Thai word for milk).

 

Nirin the end

So Sai ran the astrological calculations through her Thai websites or her mom’s psychic connections or some other mumbo jumbo before coming to me with a list of potential middle names for Theodore (no change to that one). The shortlist included:  Apiwat, Nirin, Parin, Pavee, Therathat, Thitinun, and Thitiwas.  Since I’d struggle to pronounce more than half of these, and both his first and last names were already long ones, I asked to narrow it down to Nirin or Parin as top choices, with Pavee being number three.  Per Sai, Pavee means brave.  Nirin means pure (though looking it up, I read Thai for eternal).  Parin means person of excellence, or something like that.  Now when I looked up Parin, I found an urban dictionary definition of “the absolute most handsome, best, and sexiest guy on the planet.  He’s a buddy to everyone and is constantly trustworthy and dependable.  Any woman would be fortunate to be their gf.” – azdictionary.com.  As always, I don’t make this stuff up.  I was convinced that Parin should have been the boy’s first name!  Sai then nixed this option, so Nirin it is.  Instead of a lady-killer, our boy is abbreviated TNA – how cool is that!?  Theodore Nirin Apfelbaum – Gift from God / Eternal / Apple Tree.  But if the apple was the forbidden fruit on God’s tree of knowledge… are we creating a confusing mythology for the mixed-race angel?

 

Better to be Pissed on than…

Within his first week of life, Teddy has managed to pee on me at least three times, pooed, puked, and bled (from his pricked heel) once each. His most impressive feat was the overhead arcing piss (glancing me on its upswing) before painting the wall as well as wetting his granny.  Quite the firehose on the little guy.  It happened in response to granny’s question of whether or not he peed, which suggested to me that Teddy may be susceptible to suggestions, and causing me to suspect that Dr. Elliot must have mumbled something about getting this shit over with while he was checking Sai, leading to Teddy’s in utero meconium dump that precipitated the C-section.  Can’t be sure, but I keep trying the power of suggestion to get him to sleep at night.

So, having been dumped on with every kind of bodily fluid from the little guy, I should be pissed, right? It’s weird that none of it particularly bothered me, because each time (except for the puke and blood), I was proud of Teddy for demonstrating a healthy digestive system / metabolism / proper hydration / good aim.  Although when he sprayed my hand during a diaper change in which I was holding his pacifier, I had to question his judgment on that one.

 

Second Class Citizen

So I’m no longer the protagonist (or Sai’s antagonist) in life. Selfish as I may be, I feel I’m now just a supporting character, but I’m damn proud of the new role.  Sai made a comment about me treating her like a second class citizen at one point, probably when I told her to shake a boob and feed the boy.  Since then, I’ve tried to temper my perceived demands for Teddy’s attention with words of encouragement for her, but I do feel like both of our needs have taken a backseat to the baby in the backseat.  In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, some twelve hours after he was born, I awoke to his screams and went to check.  He seemed to be struggling with a globule of spit stuck to his tongue, which he could not dislodge.  I hastily handled it with a combination of finger and squeegee nose drainer thing, and he instantly calmed and went back to a peaceful slumber.  The elation I felt at that moment for being his hero was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before!  It is a rewarding feeling to know that you are one of the two most important people in his life.  Sai could replace me in a moment (and she’s surely pondered it many times), but to Theodore, I’m more special!

Anyway, until Teddy takes over his own narrative, I intend to still pen his tales as they amuse me.  Theodore, in the words sung by Elton John (written by Bernie Taupin) “I hope you don’t mind that I put down in words, how wonderful life is while you’re in the world.”

Figure 1 – A Funny Looking Apple From My Tree

 

Figure 2 – A Very Tired New Mommy with her Hungry New Baby

 

Figure 3 – Cutest Baby Ever, with Blue Light Special Glow

 

Figure 4 – Proud Daddy and Teddy