To Wake or not to Wake

I am in the middle of a marathon stretch of the baby shrieking at the top of her lungs every 20 minutes because her wubbanub has fallen out her mouth.  It is 2:54 AM and I am pondering just ignoring the screaming, or continuing to replace the wubbanub.  After all, I know there is nothing wrong with her, so by continuously replacing the wubbanub, I am, in effect, keeping her awake.  If I let her cry for a few minutes, she should cry herself out and fall asleep... right?  So, in between the random fits of crying, I have decided to rewrite Hamlet's soliloquy to describe this situation.  Shakespeare ain't got nothing on me (except that I stole this from him, but whatever.)

To wake, or not to wake: that is the question:
Whether ’tis within my power to suffer
The slings and arrows of screaming baby,
Or to lie in bed against a sea of shrieking,
And by ignoring end it? To cry: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The screeching and the thousand baby farts
That sleeping is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To cry, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that hour and a half of sleep what dreams may come
When the baby hath shuffled off her swaddle blanket,
Must give us pause: there’s but one reason 
That makes calamity of my sleep schedule;
For who would listen to the yelps and cries for milk,
The wubbanubs out, of her mouth again,
The pangs of spitting up, the parents delay,
The insolence of getting out of bed
That patience merits of the mom and dad,
When she herself might her quietus make
With a clean diaper? who would lie awake,
To grunt and sweat under a Gerber onesie,
But that the dread of something disturbing sleep,
The undiscover’d reason for which she
Randomly cries, puzzles the dad
And makes him rather stay in bed then replace
The wubbanub for the 37th time?
Thus crying baby does make cowards of us all;
And thus the will to get up repeatedly
Is pondered o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard the parents then decide,
And in the voice of Samuel L. Jackson!
The fair Carolyn! Please, in the name of Pete
Would you please go the fuck to sleep.

In the end, I decided to ignore the crying and see if she would cry herself out and fall asleep.  She did.  I win.  Except that I probably scarred her or something and now she will have detachment issues or something since I denied her the wubbanub.  But at least I can get some sleep.

Fourth of July

I thought I would take a break from the exploits of raising my children and tell yinz about some of my experiences when growing up, especially holidays.  Maybe by looking at some of my childhood experiences it might lend some perspective on how I am screwing up my own children.

The Fourth of July is one of those strange holidays for me.  It is absolutely one of my favorites, but it is also one of the hardest for me to really get into celebrating, especially when it is in the middle of the week.  When I am at home, I generally cook out and then take the kid(s) to see fireworks.  No biggie.

However, on the occasion that the fourth is on a weekend, then I pack the family up and head back to my hometown for the Fourth done right.  My family takes the phrase "celebrate the independence of your nation by blowing up a small part of it" not as a clever saying, but as a challenge.  We all go to Grandma's house (I have a VERY large extended family) at the top of the hill at the end of a one way in, one way out, street.  It isn't isolated, but not crowded either.  She has a decent sized yard with a pool and two of her neighbors are relatives, so we pretty much have run of the place.

When I was growing up, my uncles used to have a fireworks "war" with the not related to neighbors.  This wasn't who could put on a better show, but who could come closest to blowing the other one up.  They would chuck crab apples stuffed with M80's (not kidding) over the evergreen trees and into the neighbors yard.  The neighbors would then return fire.  Bottle Rockets and Roman Candles were used as projectile weapons.  It was, in a word, ludicrous.  I think it finally stopped once all of the "adults" had enough small children running around that they thought maybe it wasn't such a good idea.

My favorite year was the year that sanitary sewer was being installed in the street.  My uncle got a brilliant idea to use an 8' section of PVC sewer pipe as a cannon.  He shoved a volleyball in one end and an M80 in the other and the results were spectacular.  That volleyball had to have flown 200 yards.  It was great until they blew a hole in the PVC pipe and thus ended that game.

Nowadays my relatives put on a very good backyard fireworks show, I'm probably not giving them enough credit here for how good it actually is, but none of what they do compares what the crazy bastard did in the video below.  This person flew a drone with a camera into a fireworks display.  And it is amazing, probably illegal and very dangerous, but amazing.

Oh Those Adorable Little Arms...

Dear my sweetest baby girl,

Your little arms are so adorable.  Especially when they fight their way out of swaddles and then flail around like an excited dog wagging its tail uncontrollably knocking over everything in sight.  Once they are free, they conjure images of horrible car dealership advertisements or family restaurant grand openings.

My sister loves these things

My favorite part though, is that your arms must be near your face at all times.  It's absolutely precious the way you try to grasp your wubbanub.

This is a Wubbanub and they are the greatest things ever invented.

The only problem is that you're two weeks old.  You have no motor skills.

Oh great, this child is clearly older than 2 weeks and still has flailing arms....

There is a reason that your mommy and daddy tried to keep your arms confined like a mummy and you looking like a burrito for the majority of the time that you have been alive.  You keep removing the wubbanub, which we know you love, from your mouth, and cannot get it back in.  If you could rip it from your mouth more often, especially between the hours of midnight and 5 AM, that would be fantastic. This way mommy and daddy can get loads of exercise getting up from the bed, putting the wubbanub back in your mouth, and then getting back into bed.  Thanks, sweetie, I know you are just looking out for our best interest because you love us so much, but STOP IT!

Love, 

Your very tired but now in better physical shape Dad