Time heals all ... memories???

I have talked to a few people about this and I have read an article on brain function, biology and memory and it seems pretty true that “Time heals all wounds.” I mean I think that it most applies to relationships, you could be in a serious relationship and have some crappy things done to you but years later your mind tends to soften those wounds and you only remember the good stuff. But I think it applies to childbirth and raising children as well.


Now that A Bird is almost six, life is easy. She can pretty much take care of herself, just the other day she got up, got herself dressed, turned on the TV and was getting herself some breakfast when L Bird walked out to see what she was doing. It was a proud moment to see how independent she has become and how her independence has eased our life considerably. That independence was what we had grown accustomed to before we had Nat. So the whole time we were trying to have Nat our minds had only remembered all the sweet times when A Bird was a baby. We remembered all the smiles, coos and her first laughs. We remembered watching her personality develop and her first steps, we remembered worrying about her not speaking then worrying she would never stop talking. Yep, that’s all we remembered and envisioned while L Bird was pregnant with Nat. Sure, we vaguely remembered sleepless nights and crying but time had softened those blows in our memories so they “really weren’t that bad”. From talking to L Bird labor was hard, but she made it through and “it wasn’t so bad”, it was something to be proud of to make it through naturally. Yep, that is what we remembered.

Now Nat is officially here and making her mark on our lives and the realities of raising children have set in and are vividly marked in our minds. Don’t get me wrong, I am so so so thankful to God that he blessed us with Nat and I wouldn’t change a thing. I am truly blessed, but it is tough to go through the screaming, crying, sleepless nights again. All of the things we forgot about during A Bird growing up are right at the forefront of our every waking thought with Nat. All of the bouts of explosive diarrhea, the fun of being peed on as you change a diaper, the inconsolable crying that only L Bird can comfort when I am alone with both girls, and the constant worrying are present. You just get the baby down to sleep, then the random thought of what if she pulled a receiving blanket over her face? Or what if the cat jumped into the Moses basket and is smothering her? creep into your mind, so you sneak into the bedroom as quietly as possible, army crawling if you have to, when you step on a toy or a cat meows and you freeze like you are caught in the spotlight of a prison break movie. You stand stock still and hold your breathe until you’re positive she is still asleep then you sneak to take a peek at her and she is absolutely fine, flat out asleep with her hands above her head like a drunk hobo. All I am saying is you forget about all of these things when you are pregnant and waiting for the baby.

I read an article that said we are biologically programmed this way, to forget the bad and only remember the good. The article said we are programmed this way to ensure the survival of the human race. The point it was trying to make was if we remembered all of the not so good experiences as vividly as we remember the good and great memories not many of us would have brothers and sisters because our parents would have stopped at one child. It makes sense to me, if women could remember with explicit detail the pain of childbirth I’m not so sure they would want to experience it again. I know they remember it and remember it well, but “time heals all wounds” and the memory is softened by the fact that you get a cute ball of joy at the end.

I know that in time all this will pass and I’ll be left with a new set of worries like boyfriends and driving and even those memories will be softened as I grow old, but for now I’ll suffer through the bad because the good stuff far outweighs the bad. We’ll make it through with a lot of help from our friend, COFFEE. On that note, I’m off to pour myself a nice hot cup of black delicious caffeine.

The Best Laid Plans…

Well, you know the quote by Robert Burns, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”. That’s exactly what happened today, L Bird and I had plans and then life happened. Today is L Bird’s last week of maternity leave, she goes back to work on Monday. I had a few things I had to do today, but after those things I had planned on spending the day with L Bird. A Bird was going to school and Nat was going to go to daycare as a trial run, so we pretty much had the day to spend together.

It was going to be a day date, because with a 5 year old and a newborn its tough to try and get a sitter without feeling guilty about leaving both kids  and without feeling guilty for the sitter having to deal with two needy kids. So we figured the only way we can spend some quality time with each other is to take a weekday off from work while both kids are gone. That was the plan for today, we were going to go to the ReStore to scout out a dresser for Nat, then to the jewelry store to have L Bird’s rings repaired, then have some lunch and maybe a little afternoon delight for dessert before we picked up the kids. Yep, sounds like a great date right. That’s what I thought too, but then life hits.

L Bird had put A Bird on the bus and dropped Nat off at daycare, and had just gotten back home. I had already showered, was drinking coffee and ready to go do my thing then start our day date. L Bird was just getting out of the shower and the phone rings and it’s the school nurse. Blammo, plans derailed! A Bird threw up on the bus and needed to be picked up from school.

We picked A Bird up and got the details, from the sounds of things she threw up as the bus pulled into its spot at school and it wasn’t too bad. She didn’t throw up on herself or any other kids so it is as good as it can get for throwing up on the bus.

So now we are home with A Bird and her 103.1 F fever. Luckily, our daycare still has Nat so we can concentrate on getting A Bird settled into her bed and feeling a little better before we throw a screaming baby into the mix too.

So here’s to the joys of parenting…

Late Resolution, New Skills & A Game of Tag

So I knew that I wanted to write a post about new year’s resolutions, but with a new baby somehow time just seems to disappear. Lucky for me I am stealing this few minutes as my three “birds” are occupied. One is asleep, one is watching spongebob and one is cleaning.

I normally don’t make new year’s resolutions just because I typically lack the will power to keep them going. But this I thought I would make a small resolution and take small steps to achieve my goals. My resolution is to learn 10 new skills this year. I figure that is achievable. I want to learn 10 new things and be proficient at them. I am on a self sufficient/survivalist kick so I figured most of my skills would focus on those type of skills. So I am currently learning to tie knots, I know it sounds like I am trying to be a boy scout, but I figured learning 5 basic knots would come in handy for everything from camping to tying down the kayaks. I would say that I am proficient at 3 of the 5 I want to learn now so I still have some work to do. After knots, I think I am going to work on fire starting using a variety of methods, then who knows what else maybe some axemanship for felling trees and splitting my firewood more efficiently. I know, I know its pretty boring stuff, but who knows it may come in handy sometime, right?

The other thing that I wanted to blog about was a game of tag I read about in the news. Apparently this group  of friends have been playing a game of tag for the past 23 years. They started off playing in grade school and with a few tweaks have continued playing throughout life. Apparently one of them is a lawyer or something and they drew up a formal tag contract where they would only play one month of the year, in their case February, and they couldn’t tag the person that just tagged them. So throughout the month of February they have flown across the country, staked each other out and enlisted the help of whoever it took to “tag” someone. It was a really interesting story, in you are interested in the particulars you can find them here. But anyway, after reading that article I thought it was a really fun and interesting way to keep in touch. I sat down and thought about if I could pull that off with a few of my friends. I think it would be possible but it would get way out of hand. I was envisioning suggesting this to the Goof Troop and the Trout Derby Brain Trust. I could see instead of “tagging” someone it would most likely be the old fashioned and crude “tap in the grapes” that usually gets played when they are around. But they are all seriously deranged I could see them hiding under my bed until 2 AM then jumping out and rochambeau (see South Park entry) me. So I am little on the fence about bringing it up, but we will see because it would be epic if we started this game.

So that’s about it. How are you doing with your resolutions? Do you have any interesting ways to keep in touch with your friends?

I think I am becoming a “barbie” doll stylist…

I don’t know what the hell happened but I am pretty sure that  I am becoming a stylist to the stars, well at least to the barbie stars. I went from this hard drinking, hard fighting, old school man’s man in my twenties to dressing and undressing dolls in my thirties.

I hate to admit it but I can change Barbie’s outfit faster than most eight year old girls. It seems like it happens all over the house, I will be sound asleep on a Saturday morning when A Bird comes bounding into the bedroom and up onto the bed with a fistful of barbie dolls and odd mismatched clothes. She immediately grabs the remote, flips on Spongebob and shouts directions to me like a practiced diva designer. I don’t even have my eyes open and I am stripping boots and picking out accessories that are ungodly tiny in my giant meat hooks. Once they are dressed to A Bird’s liking she whisks them off to a glorious vacation in the Barbie RV.

Fine, I get it. It’s part of being a father to daughters but there is something I can’t understand when it comes to Barbies and it centers around bath time. Bath time is prime time in the Barbie fashion world. Everyone has to be undressed to take their turn in the tub and there are specific instructions. So tonight A Bird is playing with her new dolls when its time for the bath, she instructs me to take off their clothes and lay them out neatly so they won’t get wet.

Yep, her new dolls apparently are roller derby girls from their helmets to their kicking tiny skates.

A Bird now proceeds to play with them through her whole bath until its time to get out and here is where my questions comes in. If I have to spend all this time carefully undressing them and laying out their clothes neatly so they can put them back on, why do they always end up like THIS?

Yep, they are all still buck naked, jammed into that weird little handle that is supposed to help you up from the tub but you know if you grab it, it will snap and send you crashing back on your ass. That’s where they will reside until A Bird’s next bath, just sitting there staring at anyone who enters the bathroom and dares to look behind the shower curtain with their creepy little eyes. What makes it creepier is if you look closely the pink doll is going all Venus De Milo and missing her arms from the elbow. A Bird told me it was OK, because her arms are on the rail next to her.

Now every morning I shower with five women, and taken out of context if I told that story I would be a LEGEND. But when you are exhausted and trying to wake up and you get goosed by a sharp little probing plastic hand it goes from cute to severely annoying.

So is this just an A Bird thing or do all little girls leave their barbies naked in the bath tub?

One more straw ? I don't know ...

This old camel’s legs are wobbling, his back is sagging and I’m not sure he can take one more straw without collapsing. It really has been a rough month of sickness through our house, coupled with long restless nights of no sleep due to erratic sleep/feeding patterns of Nat Bird. We are all stretched so thin that we might just break if something doesn’t give.


It all started a week and a half before Nat Bird was born. A Bird had this thick, gross cough that just didn’t want to go away, I was sick with a bad cold and cough and was petrified that L Bird would deliver and I would be forced out of the delivery room and not be allowed to hold Nat Bird because I was contaminated with germs. Luckily both A Bird and I recovered long enough for L Bird to have Nat Bird and for us to bring her home. Once we had all been home for a couple of days A Bird’s and my cough returned in full force. With Nat Bird being only a few days old we limited A Bird’s contact with Nat Bird, and I lathered myself with Vick’s Vaporub and pitched in as much as I could, but the bulk of newborn care fell to L Bird. So L Bird was getting little to no rest and stressed out because the ever present threat of germs in the house could get Nat Bird very sick.

That’s when the fever hit. A Bird was not acting like herself and was very sleepy and not eating, so we checked her temperature and sure enough she has spiked a fever of 104 F, so we instantly started our regimen of children’s Tylenol and Motrin while constantly bribing her with Ginger Ale, Gatorade, and popsicles to take the medicine. So there were a few meltdowns and blow ups over medicine and she threw up an entire dose of medicine because she had gotten herself so worked up but then she finally took it. This went on for two days, then we thought her fever had finally broke. She was acting more like her normal self and had no fever throughout the day, it was AWESOME, until 5 pm when the doctor’s office had closed then her temp spiked again to 103 F. So when I got home from work I took her into urgent care where they promptly diagnosed her with strep throat. Because I was in close contact with her and we had a one week old at home the doctor was nice enough to check me too and said that I could possibly have it too. Antibiotics were started, which was about as much fun as the other medicine. For 10 days we tried to coerce, bribe, beg and plead for her to take a “bubble gum” flavored antibiotic and after much, much, much more stress than it should have been she took it all.

Great, no more fever, no more strep throat and A Bird is back to school. Then BANG another straw drops on the camel like a two ton acme weight you see in the cartoons. Guess who has strep throat now, L Bird. She had been running on low energy keeping us all together and trying to get us all healthy and she get its. That was a week ago, she has taken her 5 days of ZPAK and seems to feel better. Things were going good this past week and throughout the weekend until round 3 when we got hit with an entire straw bale.

A Bird came down with another fever on Monday. She was burning up, lethargic, and hadn’t really eaten much of anything all day yesterday before we could get her to the doctor. She asked for a few goldfish crackers for the ride to the doctor’s office, so I thought that was a good sign. She munched on goldfish and stared glassy eyed out the window as we made it to the hospital. We had just gotten out of the car when she threw up all of the crackers she ate in the parking lot. I felt so bad for her and it must have looked horrible. There we are standing out in the freezing weather as she is bent over puking while I am rubbing her little back and holding her hair. I get her cleaned up when she is finished and we got right into to see the doctor. After he checked her all over, he is leaning towards strep throat AGAIN, with a cold or a “something viral” on top of it. He took a throat culture and said we would know by today if she had strep. He sent us on our way with antibiotics to get us started last night, and he would call in a prescription today if she needed it. We are patiently waiting with fingers, toes, legs, eyes and whatever else will cross that she doesn’t strep again so we don’t have 10 days of medicine fighting coming, because honestly I don’t think I have it in me.

So that’s where we are, so I apologize to anyone that has called the house to see how we are doing. I know L Bird and I haven’t been the friendliest on the phone. We are physically and emotionally spent. I know in the big picture all this sickness is small potatoes and it will pass. I know things could be a lot worse as far as sickness and disease, it is just strep throat not something worse or life changing. I am eternally grateful that these are small things and we will get through them, but right now all I see is a giant pile of straw around me.

Here’s to a getting it out of the way now and hopefully a healthier 2013.

Man, I really hate politics....

Man, I really hate politics. I try to stay away from getting into discussions about politics and religion because those two topics can turn the best of friends into enemies. People feel so strongly in their views that they tend to get blinded by anger and things just get out of hand. Everyone that really knows me knows that 95% of the time I am more than content in just listening to a conversation than actually participating in it. But it seems that anywhere you turn these days you just can’t get away from the gun control discussion. This discussion is being had all over social media, the radio, the television and all over the internet, and believe me folks it is getting intense, so with that in mind I am just going to voice a few of my views here. Please remember that these thoughts are just my personal opinions and I am not trying to force them down your throats, I am just saying what is on my mind. So here goes…


I am a responsible gun owner who has obtained guns through the legal process. I don’t believe the issue is with the type of gun, I believe it is with the person holding the gun. I think that we SHOULD have stronger background checks and we should close the loopholes in gun laws that require background checks for sales of guns at gun shows. If background checks have weeded out roughly 1.5 million people in the last 14 years that shouldn’t have had guns, then maybe more thorough background checks can continue to weed out more people that shouldn’t have guns. I am not pro-big brother for checking our medical records, but when it comes to mental illness I think mental health providers should be held to task when it comes to notifying authorities if there is any risk of violent behavior. I think that some, NOT ALL, mental health practitioners can fall in to the trap of complacency or greed, that can happen with many other professions. Either they get so comfortable in their job that they miss subtle clues and misdiagnose them or they are so happy that they are collecting a weekly paycheck from the client that they keep stringing them along week to week with a “if I try this or this or this treatment I can fix them, I know I can” approach. All I am saying is we need stronger mental health checks and reporting.

I have heard the arguments for the ban on assault weapons, I get it. If you label a gun as an “assault weapon” it sounds scary, but the truth is these “assault weapons” are shooting the same ammo as regular hunting rifles. Almost all of the AR-15’s that people can buy are shooting .223/5.56 ammo which is the same ammo that feeds your Grandpa’s Remington bolt action rifle. So can you use an “assault weapon” for hunting? Of course you could. It’s the exact same thing as firing a traditional rifle. I think that the issue is not the AR-15, it is the magazine capacity and the fact that it is semi-automatic. In NY you can only have a 10 round magazine, unless you purchase larger magazines that were manufactured before the first assault weapon ban. So instead of banning the AR-15, reduce the magazine count to 7 rounds and make any magazine larger than that illegal. This would close the pre-ban magazine loophole and limit the amount of shots in the gun. The “assault” rifle would still be able to fire 7 rounds in a rapid succession but not that much faster than a traditional rifle where you are racking the bolt or lever. Finally, there is already an “Assault Weapon” ban in place for the general public. The general public cannot purchase Class III weapons that are used by the police and military. These are the much, much more powerful weapons like M-16’s, M-4’s etc. The AR-15 is simply a dressed up hunting rifle that is made up to look scary like an AK-47.

Finally, I just want to say that the world is getting to be a scary place. If the government sets the precedent of making one set of guns illegal they could keep going and make all guns illegal in the name of making the country a safer place. I know that this will sound crazy to people but through history a lot has been done to make a country “safer” and “better” for its people then turned into a dictatorship or military regime. I know that there would be a huge outcry against taking our guns and how it affects our 2nd amendment rights, but it could happen and if that does happen it could throw our country into a civil war thus breaking down our infrastructure. We have all seen how even a temporary breakdown in infrastructure (Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, etc) has led to violence and looting. When future disasters occur wouldn't you want to be able to defend yourself, your family and your home? By banning types of guns the government makes it easier to ban more guns, then they might start to ban things like what you can eat (Michael Bloomberg and sugary drinks) or what you can watch. Sure these things sound small but when put together it puts us one step closer to becoming a police state.

I guess that is all I really want to say. I know that some people will think I am some sort of crazy gun nut, but just think about these things before you rush to judgment. Take care.

Similarities and Differences

I know I haven’t posted in a long time and I have had my reasons but I am not going to ramble on about that. It has been a wild couple of months, after making some “foot wine” with T Dizzle which by the way turned out very well, L Bird and I got wrapped up in A Bird starting Kindergarten and L Bird’s pregnancy. So before we even knew it, it was December and the waiting game started for L Bird to have the baby. With A Bird, she was born exactly one week before her due date which was nice. This time around everyone was telling L Bird how “the second baby always comes early”, well that’s not exactly true. L Bird and I went to the hospital twice before her due date only to be sent home for “false labor”, then L Bird’s official due date came and went and still nothing. L Bird had a follow up appointment for the day after Christmas which was a week and a half after her due date. Christmas came and went with L Bird being pretty uncomfortable and us impatiently waiting for the 26th. We were very hopeful that the doctor would induce L Bird so we set up a spend over for A Bird with my mother just in case. As it would happen, L Bird starting feeling some stronger contractions that morning, so I rushed A Bird up to my mother’s and got L Bird to her appointment but by the time we got to the doctor’s office her contractions weren’t as strong. We finally get to see L Bird’s doctor and L Bird’s exact words were “I’m not leaving this hospital today without a baby!” So the doctor decided to keep L Bird for monitoring AGAIN. We sat in the hospital hooked up to a fetal monitor for four hours before the doctor final made the decision to induce L Bird. Eight hours later we welcomed Nat Bird.

She was born happy and healthy at almost midnight on Dec. 26th. One of the first similarities I noticed was how much she looked like her sister A Bird. What do you think?

  Nat Bird December 2012 A Bird May 2007

I think that they have the same nose and mouth.

As we were sitting in the delivery room after we had Nat Bird, I was holding her and thinking about how the days they were born on were so different. When A Bird was born it was a bright, warm beautiful day in May. I had just been at my new job for about a month when Lauren called me and said she was going to the hospital. It was 7:30 in the morning and I flew from work to make the 45 minute drive to the hospital. I can still remember how vibrant the colors of the trees and fields were in the early morning sunlight as I flew by them. When I think of the day A Bird was born those colors are one of the memories that flood my memory first. Then you have Nat Bird who was born a week and a half late, at night and in the middle of Snowstorm Euclid (When did they starting naming winter storms?). When I think about that day I think about sitting in the hospital all day and looking out the window and watching the snow pile up as we impatiently waited for Nat Bird to be born. I can’t wait until they are both a little older and I can tell them about the days they were born.

So that’s what has been going on, now we are all home and getting used to having a newborn again. Everyone is trying to get set into a routine to  make life easier. Well, that’s all I got for now. Happy New Year to you all.