peek-a-boo

So, I was just making my way to the washroom at my office when I started thinking about when I might get home today. After an initial pondering over our potential dinner options, my mind immediately wandered over to The Ben’s evening bedtime routine. Some cereal and vegetables, then a bath, then a bottle, then bed. And somewhere in between a whole bunch of fooling around, blowing raspberries and playing peek-a-boo [these are Ben's new tricks this week]. So, it was at the very moment that I was about to finish using the washroom that I belted out an unusually loud and uncontrollable giggle at the thought of my little Ben laughing hysterically during our bedtime routine. You know how a certain funny moment in the past can sneak up on you that way? The toilet got a little messy and a spot of drool, I swear to you now, dribbled down onto my shirt leaving both my shirt and trousers sprinkled with by own bodily fluids. And I don’t even want to know what my officemates thought was going on in there!

Oh that Ben. . . I hope to get a video of him laughing online soon. It’s just great.

fretting forty winks

These past five months of my life [holy crap -it’s been five months?!] have leaned heavily on the learning center of my brain, more so than early childhood, high-school, college or even marriage. I've not only had to learn a bucket-full of new tricks and devices, I’ve also had to re-learn, or un-learn a lifetime of others. And now I have to remember those early childhood years all over again as best possible [those of you who have had experience with my memory know this is a ridiculous challenge for me] so that my son after a lecture from his father doesn’t have to say silently within his head: Make sure you remember what it’s like to be a kid when you’ve grown up, Ben, because it seems dad’s lost all touch with his own childhood. Anna once introduced me to a quote painted on a refrigerator magnet to which I have tried to align my life: You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’d know that one of my most important lessons has involved sleep management. Anna and I have had the fortune lately to sleep in great stretches because a handful of wonderful, beautiful, outstanding, praise-worthy, fabulous, superb, amazing souls reminded us that sometimes you just need to let that poor boy cry himself to sleep. Well, I’ll be darned, but after two or three nights of stressed-out, worried, on-the-verge-of-caving parents at 7:00 pm and two-thirty, our tough little guy now sleeps from 6:00 p.m. until 6:00 a.m. without a peep, thump, grshhhhh, or two-thirty. Whoa! Holy-moly! Yee-hoo! F*** Yeah! Boo-ya! The three of us are so much happier now that sleep has been re-introduced into our wilting lives. Ben is continually in high spirits, Anna has lost something like 32 pounds of stress, and me, well, I’m still fat. But at least now I’m well-rested and fat. Like that other refrigerator magnet says: you gotta take things one at a time.

Anyway, on to the point of this blog: children are a welcome worry. I’m sure that’s been said one way or another, one million times or more, which doesn’t make it any less accurate. I tend to worry about a lot of things, probably more so than my poor arteries would prefer [keep up the good work guys], so it didn’t surprise me that I would spend a lot more of my time on the worry-wagon once Ben was born. I understand this is normal. But it’s a whole new kind of worry for me. I wake up in the middle of the night worrying whether he is suffocating in his sleep, or if his feet are too cold. And, like so many parents before me, I drag my self half-awake into his room and make sure he’s still breathing with my palm on his chest or my finger poking his arm until he stirs, which only risks interrupting his siesta and in turn prolonging my own wakefulness. When Anna and I were letting him cry-it-out one fine two-thirty about a week ago, we would lay awake and listen to him slowly wind down, his cries turning intermittent so that he would sob for a minute, then sleep for a minute, then sob, sleep, sob, etc. Well, for those of you who remember those sleep breaks can be maddeningly worrisome! What if he’s cried himself breathless?! What if he’s suffocating underneath his blanket?! What if he’s rolled over onto his tummy and can’t turn his head to breathe?! What if he’s been kidnapped?! What if he’s turned into a liberal?! AAAAHHHHHH! I have to go check on him! I have to--- I have to--- oh, wait, he’s crying again. Whew! After a bit, I seriously thought that it was better when he was crying!

And I’ll continue to worry about him, I am told, until the day I make it out of this world. And I don’t mind. It’s welcome. If there is anything worth worrying about, it’s family, especially when you have a family of your own. I don’t mind worrying about my son [it’s still so cool to say that I have a son] because it’s my own little way of staying grateful. And I am grateful, of course unless he turns out to be a politician, or a Packers fan, or a soccer player, in which case I’ll just be mildly appreciative.

Thanks, God. In case I haven’t mentioned it in a while. . .

orange and blue

This weekend is a monumental one for The Ben. Tomorrow afternoon, beneath the clear blue and orange sky above Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, our Ben will witness his first Fighting Illini football game, and we can only hope that there will be a winning atmosphere about the stands before we leave. This week’s foe is the San Jose State Spartans, 14-point underdogs to our overachieving Illini, and with Benjamin P in tow, I think the superstitious needle is pointed fairly square in our favor. You see, last weekend The Ben watched his first Illini football game on TV at The J’s [our friends Jason and Joy Latek – those blessed babysitting souls] and the Illini pulled off what turned out to be the greatest comeback in Urbana history: a 27-7 deficit late in the third quarter reduced to a fourth-quarter tie which was readily decided in overtime by our beloved alma mater. Seeing as though our team was riding a 4-19 record before Ben started watching games, I think we have ourselves a new superstitious tenet to uphold, that is, if The Ben watches every Illini game from now on then we will win the National Championship! Stop laughing - it’s possible. . .

Anyhoo, we will be making our trek downstate through about a 140 miles of dried-up corn fields with The J’s along for companionship and, let’s face it – we’re driving 140 miles with a young fella who has entered into a permanent feud with his car-seat, we’ll need The J’s to maintain our sanity as well. The Ben will experience his first singing of the Alma Mater and the Oskee-Wow-Wow, he’ll shake his keys at kickoff, he’ll make his way “to the left” and “to the right” with his arms around his neighbor’s shoulders, and he’ll catch his first [and maybe only] glimpse of our honored Chief Illiniwek performing his ritual dance at halftime [it seems there are too many 1/64 Indian-Americans out there who find him offensive and hence he appears to be sadly dancing his way out of this politically-retarded world forever]. And if the timing is right, Ben-jamin’ just might get to take part in the most-honored Illini football tradition – tailgating!

GO ILLINI!

bipolar

Sometimes you’re up and sometimes you’re down. Sometimes you’re neither up nor down. And sometimes you sure-as-shit just don’t know whether you’re up or down. Welcome to the Bonick campus, north by northwest.

Our beloved Ben [or as we have recently begun referring to him: Benjamin P] has fallen into a habit of sleeping for like 20 hours a night just so long as his mother is in the room adjacent. But when mother dearest goes to work, and that’s two-to-three nights a week between the hours of sun-friggen-set and sun-fracken-rise, B.P. loses all ability to close his eyes, or for that matter lay down, or sit still, or stay quiet or be generally peaceable. The Ben and I have established a magical moment in our nightly without-mom adventures that I like to call “two-thirty”. It is at this moment that I make an innocent turn in my sleep only to be awakened by that positively awful sound coming from that positively awful baby-monitor on the nightstand next to my ear. It’s not a cry, not a wail - just a giggle. A giggle and a grshhhhh. At any other time of day this would be funny or at least mildly amusing: my child laying awake in his crib, curled on his back attempting to communicate with his feet without any determinable vocabulary, as his toes keep slipping from his drool-handed grasp falling back down to the mattress with a thump. . . thump. . . grshhhhh. . . thump. . .[audible nonsense]. . .grshhhhh. . .thump. . .thump. . . [audible nonsense]. But at two-thirty, that fantastical moment, this is warning of a great terror. I try to roll over and continue my slumber, but I know this thumping will only lead to frustration in my developing son’s disposition which will only lead to that cough/cackle that all new parents know which is inevitably trailed by that ear-splitting howl. All of this I know will happen if I continue to sleep so I totter my way into his bedroom and touch his chest. His biggest grin is my reward, but I know better because his biggest grin can only lead to an hour-and-a-half of trying to get him to stop playing and return to sleep. I try the rocking, the bottle, the shushing, the walking, but still he smiles, laughs, grshhhhhes. Still he tries to stand in my arms and wiggle around to see what’s happening around the house. Still he grabs his toes. Still he is happy. And therein lies my curse, my critical uncertainty of up and down. My son is happy to be awake with me at two-thirty, because apparently daddy is all fun and games, but on the other hand, my son is happy to be awake with me at two-thirty.

So what is the difference here? Tell me, parents, why does my son only sleep when mom is home and never when she leaves? All exaggerating aside, Ben really does wake up at 2:30 a.m. every time she works and stays awake for the majority of the remaining night. But when Anna is home, he sleeps for anywhere between 8 and 11 hours. WTF?! What could I possible be doing wrong, and what could I possibly do to stop this [aside from getting a better-paying job so Anna wouldn’t have to work anymore]? I’m counting on you guys. . .