This is definately going to be another new dad/kiddie blog, so stop reading now if you don't care for that sort of thing.

Today was picture day, and it went badly from the start. We couldn't get our act together until well past noon, what with showers, nursing, diapers, and a baby bath thrown in. It took us about two hours to pull it together. I guess this is something we'll get better at, but it just takes so much longer. Anyway, I had two rooms set up for portaits - the guestroom, which faces NorthEast, and the nursery, which faces NorthWest. I wanted to experiment with the way the light looked in both rooms. But you can probably guess what happened. Katherine spent all her time either sleeping or crying. We had to stop to nurse twice, and by the end of it, Kara and I were both pretty fried. I took some posed pictures with Kara, and we took a few family shots. Then, miracle of miracles, Katherine alternated between crying and not, but she had her eyes open. So I slammed off like 20 pictures one after the other. Then, as I took the film out of the camera, I realized that I had accidentally hit the exposure button on the camera and switched it from aperture to shutter priority, and I have no idea if any of those 20 will come out. They certainly won't be the open aperture, longish exposure portait photo's I was shooting for. Arg. So then we decided that we can get bent out of shape by this. She is only two weeks old, and she's on her own schedule. When she has a good moment, and it's daylight, we'll run upstairs and shoot a few rolls of film.

Anyway, on to the next topic: breast feeding. Kara's doing it, and I don't have any, and I'm increasingly aware of the difference in how we relate to Katherine. For one thing, it means that Kara can almost alway calm Katherine down, even if she is not hungry, because the contact gives Katherine comfort. I am finding that I have to develop a rather wide array of tricks to acheive the same effect. They include creative manipulation of the pacifier to get her to take it, many different positions holding and rocking her, talking, singing, and just about anything else that will either distract her or comfort her. I mean, sometimes kids are just going to cry. You've just changed her, and fed her, and she's not in any pain or running a temperature, but it's the only way she knows how to express herself loudly at this point. There also a more basic fact: Kara must always be near at hand because Katherine relies on her for food. That means that I end up with running the house - laundry, dishes, cooking, errands, and so forth.

Kara believes that she is far less successful at giving Katherine the pacifier than I am, basically because she's got the real thing, and Katherine is aware enough to know this. I've witnessed this in moments, but not the entire progression of events, which is important. I do believe that when Katherine gets agitated, it's more difficult for me to calm her, even if Kara does not use nursing as the technique. So I get frustrated because there's sometimes nothing I can do, and Kara takes her and she calms right down, and sometimes Kara gets frustrated because there's nothing she can do, and I take her, and get her to take the pacifier and fall asleep.

If I sound a little melancholy, it's because I am. These first two weeks have flown by, and I'm surprised to find that I don't feel like I need or want a break. I am going back to work on Monday, and it's going to take a little effort to get my head in the game.

Here's a few more tidbits on taking the newborn out into the world. We just got back from Fabric place, so it's all fresh in my head. As a guy who's actually had some experience pushing people around in a wheelchair, I can tell you that it's a completely frustrating experience that you probably don't think too much about until you encounter it personally. The ADA requires that certain clearances and so forth be in place for exactly that reason, but the enforcement is terrible. I suppose if you put it in perspective, it's much better than the rest of the world, but it still sucks, for the most part. Kara actually studied ADA compliance as part of her graduate work, and so can quickly recognize good verus bad setup, and it's rubbing off on me. OK, so here's the deal, when you're pushing someone in a wheelchair, you kind of expect to be hassled. Is that a sad statement on this country or what? I mean, you expect to have to go out of your way to get where you need to go. I was totally unprepared, however, for the fact that having a newborn in a stroller is damn close to the same experience. Katherine's stroller is not as wide as a wheelchair, but it is longer, unless the chair had leg braces totally horizontal. So we're strolling through the mall, and I can't steer it around anything because it's too big. To make matters worse, when Christmas time comes around, retailers shove tables and other portable selling space anywhere they can. It can get hard even on two feet to get through some of these aisles. In many cases, it's impossible with a stroller. I can't imagine what it must be like to try to actually do any serious shopping during the height of Christmas season with a stroller, people must just drop the kids off somewhere else.

Katherine's hair does not seem to be falling out, as many predicted. In fact, it seems to me to be getting thicker. This would be kind of a bummer, since she sorta has sideburns right now. People are starting to talk about what features came from who. I actually think it's a bit early for that, although a few people swear her face takes after me. The only thing I'm sure of is that she has a widow's peak, and that probably comes from Kara, since I don't have one and she does.

Anyway, Katherine had her first play date today. Kara went over to a friends house with a bunch of other kids and had a pretty good time, except that Katherine's constipation is definately over, and she demonstrated this quite audibly during the event. I got my first break of four or five hours of non-kid time since she was born. Whew. So I quickly got busy building a co-sleeper for the bed. I actually did pretty good. I managed to buy all the wood, get the basic carcass and support built, and I pretty much just have to put legs on it and the attachments for the bed and it will be ready to decorate. We'll need to put some fabric and stuff on it. Having this done will really ease my mind, since she hasn't taken to the bassinet yet, and we'd prefer not to have her in bed between us.

Tomorrow is portrait day, only Katherine doesn't know it yet. I've got my tripod out, and will be taking some real pictures for family and friends, not the sort of snapshots I've been doing, but serious portraits. Wish me luck, I'm a rank amateur, but I am smart enough (I think) to be able to take a few decent shots.

Last night I had a major case of stomach trouble. It really sucked, because I was up from 3:30 or so until after 5 AM, and I had a 9 AM conference call. So I drag my butt out of bed at 8:45, and go downstairs. I've just got breakfast done, and have slugged back some caffeine when I get the call that the call has been postponed. I was dog tired. So I'm standing there in my bathrobe, looking down at my recently frozen, but now piping hot waffles and my soda, dumbfounded. The possibility of a postponement hadn't occurred to me. So then, I am completely confused about what to do. Clearly, I should go back to sleep, but then, I just made breakfast. So I ate, and then went back to sleep, figuring that by the time I got up, I'd probably be happier if I'd had breakfast, which I was.

OK, so there's really nothing that serious to talk about this evening, so I'm going away now.

I got baby duty this evening, which is why I'm still here. I have a conference call tomorrow morning at 9AM that I agreed to do, and I'll probably be pretty tired for it, but at least it's a call, and I can roll out of bed, throw on some jeans and have a little breakfast without worrying about getting to the office all respectable like. Katherine has been a bit agiatated over the last 24 hours or so - she appears to be constipated, which is a bit odd for a breast-fed baby. The funny thing is that the motions are pretty unmistakable - they are exactly what you or I would do if we had no inhibitions, and a nasty case of constipation. She's slowly getting better though, and today was a pretty good day on that front - I think she's mostly over it. Her sleep has been pretty strange. She hasn't settled into any regular pattern. I didn't expect her to be like clockwork, I know that will take some time, but she's had days when she's been awake for 6 hours, and periods when she's slept almost uninterupted for 36 hours.

So we went to the mall today because we've vowed to get out of the house a bit more (we're both a little stir crazy). There's good and bad in that. The good news is that Katherine slept all the way there, and through most of the shopping, which was really a very quick trip to Williams Sonoma. The bad news is twofold. First, we heard the unmistable sound of a large, um bowel movement (hereafter called, BM), and were stuck changing diapers in the mall bathroom, which thankfully Kara did. Second, she had a meltdown just as we were leaving, and cried all the way home. That was OK, though, especially since it began as we were leaving, and so we didn't have to deal with all the people wondering why we abuse our child. (An infant screaming is a truly frightening, blood-curdling sound. I though a crying infant sounded like somewhere between a sob and a good cry, but that's not what happens at all. They wail at the top of their lungs, and the pitch changes, and they get all hoarse, and they scream like you were putting burning splinters under their fingernails. It's really something.) I had to calm down Kara, though, who climbed out of her seat to comfort the baby, and I had to make her sit down and put her seatbelt on. There must be a genetic program somewhere in women that makes them react to a crying baby. I can compartmentalize, rationalize, and separate the crying from the situation, but Kara has a completely different reaction.

At any rate, I also learned another one of those things you don't think about until you have a kid - I now realize that I need to know the location of every ramp, elevator, and other wheel-friendly location in the mall, or anyplace else we plan to bring Katherine in her stroller. They didn't say anything about that in the classes I went to. Come to think of it, they didn't give me a fatherhood membership card either, so I guess this is like cramming for an exam, in a wierd sort of way. You've been up all night, you're tired, you don't know what questions will be asked, and there's bound to be a few that you do not know the answer to, but if you stare at them long enough, you'll come up with something.

Well a wonderful Christmas was had by all here in New England. The weather didn't cooperate. We got rain on Christmas Eve, and Christmas day was a balmy 50 degrees. But that didn't damper the wonderful feeling of family and community that permeated the Owczarek Christmas. An old family friend dropped with a pre-made lasagne and a bunch of baby gifts. It was well received, both because the gifts were great and also because food gifts are truly awesome. We are now in the position of not needing to cook (other than throwing things in either the oven or microwave) for the rest of my leave, which ends uncerimoniously on New Years Eve. On Christmas Eve, Kara and I went to annual Christmas Eve party at Doc's house, and showed off the baby and caught up with many friends. After we got home, I slipped out and went back and even had a few drinks. Wow. That won't be happening too often. Then, on Christmas, we exchanged gifts with friends, and Gram, and then came home and spent almost seven hours on gifts, food, and generally good company with my father. We had a fire going, and music on, and it was a wonderful Christmas. Here's to you and yours, and hoping that you have most happy holidays.

Here's what it's like to be a new dad. A friend of mine asked when I would be at a Christmas party yesterday evening, so they could see the baby. I answered, "8... or 7... or 9."

This blog is about sheets. Kinda of a wierd topic, but I think you can tell a lot about where a person is in life by the way they fold their sheets. For example, I actually know how to fold a fitted sheets correctly. In fact, I actually know two methods, but have a preference. That's pretty sick, right? But I found myself doing the laundry week in and week out, and I got really tired of dealing with the fitted sheets, so I went and looked it up. One method involves laying the sheet out, and just folding over the pockets so that you get a squarish shape, then folding that normally. The other method involves pulling the corners into each other, then squaring the result as you fold it smaller. I prefer the latter method, because my bed is two floors up from my laundry room, and because I could use this technique sitting down if I had to.

Sitting down, you say? How about this - I learned how to fold a sheet from my grandmother quite accidentally a few years back. I mean, I had folded sheets before, but was not very good at it. My grandmother is very, very good at it. I mean, she comes from a generation where you ironed the sheets. So anyway, I'm hanging out in my parent's living room, pre-occupied with something, and my grandmother is folding a big pile of laundry, and I'm not really paying much attention to it. I become hazily aware that she is taking large lumpy piles of fabric and making small neatly folded squares out of them. Soon, I come to realize that the large, lumpy piles of fabric are sheets. Sheets! Now I'm paying attention. My previous experience with folding sheets involved flapping them out, having them brush all over the floor, getting someone to help, etc. But she calmly folded the corners together, then each pair of corners togethers, and some fussing and spreading later, she had a folded sheet on her knee. Brilliant. I have never folded any large item the same way since.

This seems like a classic ridiculous and irrelevant blog about sheets, but there really is a message in there somewhere...

Well the last two days have been almost a blur. Katherine put together an unprecedented amount of sleep last night - 2AM through 11, with only a few breaks here and there for nursing and so forth. So Kara woke up really fresh. I didn't, because I stayed up with Katherine until 3AM to make sure the night would go OK. Kara was really exhausted last night, and I had to kindof take matters into my own hands. She was so tired, I forced her to go to sleep, and took the baby down into the basement for a few hours.

Dad stopped by today, and brought dinner, which was very cool. We've managed to cook a bit, and we've got a lot of leftovers, so food hasn't been too big a deal. Still, there is a very limited window to do anything. There is a cycle with a newborn that you get used to, which is basically sleep and nurse with diaper changes and the occassional meltdown thrown in. The deal is, though, that nursing occurs every two to three hours, on average, and can take up to 45 minutes or an hour. So you can see that in a short cycle, you might only have thirty minutes or an hour to get anything done. We are starting to learn now how to move the cycle around a bit. We might decide to feed her a little early, or try to engage her to keep her awake. Not to shake the cycle loose, but to bend it around other things we need to do. It's still pretty rare, for example, for us to actually eat together, although we did have dinner together today, but not breakfast or lunch.

All in all, this kid stuff is very hard.