Today was one of those days. Katherine couldn't settle down and spent much of the day fussing and crying. Her digestive system was really, um, backed up, shall we say, and it cleared out this afternoon and evening, much to my dismay, since I was pretty much the diaper man this evening. I know it's really late, but I've been working on a new layout for the site, and more importantly, figuring out how to use Micrografx. It's going quite well.

I also picked up a new batch of film with the portrait sessions I took last week. There are a few stunning shots in a sea of average ones, but it's worth it for the good ones. Stay tuned, they'll be posted soon in her section. We'll also be trying to figure out who we should send them to, since we have to send out a bunch of prints as well.

So I'm happy that my photography skills are getting a bit better. The few good ones I have are arguably as good as any studio, even though I had to take a lot of shots to get them.

My last and final comment, since I really need to go to sleep, is this. Kara is breast feeding. I would just like to point out that, at least in our case, this is not the simple, clean, natural nursing method you might think. It is actually very messy, painful, and complex. My only experience with this, well, that I can remember, is seeing women nurse their children when visiting, or in public somewhere. At it looks pretty easy, you just life up the shirt, and put the baby on. I have learned just how completely naive this viewpoint is. There are different latches. There is spillage. There is a baby chewing on a body part. I'm just going to leave it at that, because additional details will only serve to further reveal my ignorance, and embarrass my wife.

Hey, I actually got kinda busy, so I haven't written. That's cool, that means I have a life, I guess. Except that I've spent the last two hours redesigning page layouts in TrellixWeb for my web site. I'm kinda over the current look and feel. The problem is that I actually have to learn how to use all that fancy graphics software I own (well, just Micrografx) in order to produce a more appealing web site.

But now I find myself wanted to do a bunch of stuff to the site, and I've just maxed out the layouts I currently have, so I did actually spend some time messing around with Micrografx to learn how to do wiz-bangy looking icons and graphics.

I have this time only because Kara and Katherine are up in bed. Katherine was apparently up for much of the day, and she was up a bit in the evening with me. She got a little cranky, but that was because she wanted to eat. Anyway, they went to bed, and it looked like they were going to sleep. I checked up an hour or so later, and they were both asleep, and so here I am, desparately trying to squeeze in some Dave time on the web site without provoking marital dischord.

One of my problems is that I have just too many damn hobbies. Between the web site, guitar, photography, fishing, scrapbooking, woodworking, home improvement, and god knows what else, I think I could probably keep myself occupied for the rest of my life. If I even win the lottery, I don't think I'll be one of those people who has to work in order to stay sane. Kara is different in that way. She's very social, and she doesn't always know what to do when she gets free time. I, on the other hand, can't get enough free time because I have so many things I want to do.

Anyway, don't expect this flashy web site real soon - it's going to take some time to get things right. But I'm reasonably happy with today's progress. It will also probably carry a very similar navigation strategy - left nav links in text with a header on the top of the page. Hopefully, it'll just look a whole lot better.

Kara is tired. Kara is cranky. Katherine slept much of the day, but Kara did not. She awoke this evening around dinner, and was still up when I came downstairs a short while ago, so here's hoping she's plum tuckered out. Kara probably had some chances to nap, but she didn't take advantage of them. For one, she wanted to visit my grandmother, and spent a couple of hours doing that plus an errand. Then she had a visitor in the afternoon. The other problem is that Kara does not always take care of herself. I tease her about it a bit, but she tends to always be up for social stuff, and she'll forget that she's dog tired and needs to take a nap in case tonight is difficult.

We got a baby catalog today, a rather ridiculous one. If you were to assume you needed everything in this catalog, you could not live in your own house. I mean, they have baby protection devices for everything. Stovetops, brick edges, everything. And the funny thing is that in the same catalog, they sell a trampoline with a big metal handle. Like I'm going to protect every conceivable danger in my house, even the remote ones, and then let my kid get on a trampoline. Sheesh. There's a lot to be said for parents just being around and being good parents, and not worrying about automatic hands-free door gates and so forth.

Katherine got a very good checkup this morning. She weighed 8 pounds, 10 ounces, which exceeded our expectations, and grew 1/2 and inch. She's now 21.5 inches. Although I have to say that measuring an infant is a pretty unscientific endeavor. They squirm around quite a bit, and there's lots of room for error.

A newborn loses weight after birth (Katherine lost eight ounces by the time she left the hospital two days after she was born), but are supposed to gain back to their birth weight after two weeks. Well, it's been 2 1/2 weeks, and she's almost a pound over her birth weight, which is great.

We have another checkup in two weeks, and she'll start getting more shots. We also have a referral for a doctor at Childrens Hospital. She has a little skin tab we need to get removed.

I sound all smug and experienced in last night blog about Katherine. We're sooo great. We've got all these sneaky tricks so that we sleep through the night. Yeah. Right. So that explains why she woke up for her 4 AM nursing, and then stayed up until almost 6 when Kara gave up and nursed her again. God bless Kara. I couldn't drag my ass out of bed, although to be fair, for half that time Katherine just wanted to eat. But there were also two diaper changes, one of which I completely missed, and the other Kara let me off the hook. But during the middle period between the two nursings I was up. Katherine was up and half cranky half playful. She made a lot of noise, and Kara tried endlessly to distract her and get her to take the pacifier to no avail.

We have a diaper rating system, by the way, on a scale of one to five for number 2. Number 1 we don't rate. Because she's only eating breast milk, I guess, the poop isn't too bad. It's kind of like a cross between mustard and spackle, and kind of smells like sour milk. Still, a five is a pretty messy situtation.

Hey, I know this is probably more than you want to know, but this is kindof our life now. Tracking the baby poop performance is all part of the routine.

OK, so I get this schedule in the mail from the IRS. You gotta love this, form 1099-G, or, "Certain Government Payments" telling me that I have a refund, credit, or offet of my 2000 state income tax of $148. I think 1099-G is the catch-all form for anything that is sort of like money you get back, but doesn't meet any normal criteria for income or interest, and so forth.

So I only bring this up, because attached to the letter, which came from the state of Massachusetts, is a little optional questionnaire. And I look at this thing, and I can't really believe what I see.

The first question says, "Which method did you use to file your tax return last year?"

Shouldn't they know? I mean they are the department of revenue.

The next two questions deal with their web site. Then, it says, "Note: Be sure to remove the attached Form 1099-G and keep for your records."

Is this the stupidest thing or what? I mean, they attach a questionnaire to a tax form, so you'd better pray that you notice the 1099, or there's a whole other scenario that plays out. Then they ask you questions that they should already have the answers to.

The final icing on the cake. They want you to put a stamp on the questionnaire! If they want the answer (to the question they should already know the answer to) bad enough, shouldn't they pay for the postage? Sheesh.

Katherine had a bath today, her first. We're starting to get a bit crafty. She started getting cranky around 7:30 or so, so I took her from Kara, since it seemed like she probably wanted to eat, and then I managed to get her settled down and sleeping until about 8:15. Then she got really cranky. So we both took turns walking her around, then at 9, we popped her in the bath. She was confused and distracted, and seemed to enjoy herself. Then, when it was all done, Kara nursed her. We did this because we're developing sleep tactics so that she'll be up during the day, and then stay in bed either sleeping or nursing during the night. She is sleeping now, but not deeply, so we'll see how it goes. She's been pretty active today, though. We also visited my father's for brunch, and she was up quite a bit for that.

Tomorrow, she has a checkup, the first one. We expect it to go pretty smoothly. We have a few questions, but I think we're doing pretty well at this point. Certainly, if there were something seriously wrong, we'd know.

Happy New Year!

In this blog of reflection, I will offer my perspective on last year. Last year was a mixed bag. Personally, I experienced all the ups and downs of life, death, and places in between. I changed jobs, and am delighted with the outcome. I had a baby, well, with considerable help from my wife. I went to the Carribean for the first time.

Do you remember when Rudolph Guiliani was a wife-cheating sleazy politician whom no-one really liked? Do you remember when Jane Swift's was in trouble for babysitting and helicopter rides? It is easy to be a product of the images our media sends us. Guiliani is now Time's man of the year, and Swift, while troubled, can be protrayed as the embattled hard liner fighting against patronage and for financial responsibility.

The media, in my opinion, continues to abdicate most constructive societal roles (allowing hard liquor ads on TV and so forth) and attempts to protect the American public from images it thinks we should not see. I do not want my news filtered. It is part of the reason we cannot understand the mess we are in today. If they are dragging bodies through the streets in Afghanistan, or Israel, I'd rather see it (or choose not to see it) and know what's going on.

I came to a new understanding of music this past year. I caught on to some jazz, and I began to think in ways where I enjoy music for its intrinsic benefits, and not because of any belief about how I feel it should be. I picked up my guitar again mid-summer, and am pretty sharp again.

We refinished the dining room and the nursery. I got into woodworking, and have built a number of items for the house, including the co-sleeper mentioned below, shelves, and other assorted projects.

I took a fall camping trip to Vermont, experienced winter in October, caught only freshwater fish, took some pictures, and got a wonderful break from the day to day rat race of the city.

I realize more and more every day how much family and friends mean to me.

Oh yeah, I forgot to say also that Katherine's cord fell off yesterday. That may sound rather disgusting to those non-parents out there, but hey, at least you didn't have to swab it with alcohol six times a day.

Well, this is the last blog of my leave. Tomorrow, I return to work. I have to say, I got pretty depressed Friday night, and most of Saturday. I could't figure out why until this morning. I just thought it was being bummed out at having to leave the new parent life and return to work. That was part of it, in retrospect, but the more significant part was that it was the weekend. Weekends and weekdays really had no meaning over the last several weeks. But going into this weekend, I realize now that I was depressed because I was sensing that Friday night was different now that I had a baby, and that the normal stuff we used to do on weekends was both not relevant to my new life, and also not attainable with Katherine in the picture. I felt like I couldn't coast through the weekend on a normal program, but that I somehow had to eke out lost time so that I could get the most of my leave. In reality, this was not true. It didn't matter, ultimately, what I did this weekend, this is my new life, and the joy is in the journey, not in the day.

So I spent a few hours this afternoon finishing up a co-sleeper I'd been working on. There are pretty strong opinions on both side of the issue of whether or not to bring your newborn into bed with you. We chose to, because it made managing the nights so much easier. She didn't take well to the bassinet. We'll get her in there eventually, but for this first period of adjustment, the bed was the way to go. Even with a king size bed, though, it was worrysome. I think I read somewhere that the incidence of "fatal overlay" (rolling onto your child and suffocating it) is lower than SIDS, and studies suggest that the incidence of SIDS is lower if the child is in bed with you. That's as much as an argument as I'll give you. I, however, am a very heavy sleeper, and I was not comfortable with Katherine in between us. That's the only place she could be, until I got the co-sleeper in action.

A co-sleeper is a small bed with three sides that attaches to our bed and provides additional, safe, sleeping surface for Katherine. I built it out in the garage, and we put in on the bed tonight. Even if Katherine stays in bed for awhile, she can now sleep on Kara's side, and not between us, which gives us both peace of mind. Then we can work her into the co-sleeper, and then the bassinet. We thought about purchasing one, but the cheapest are $150 to $250, and they are basically like the Graco Pack 'N Play. They are foldable structures that are not very sturdy. The co-sleeper I built out of poplar, with a spruce bed, and 2x4 legs. It is incredibly sturdy, and with a little fabric and batting over it, a very inviting sleeping space. Labor aside, it cost about $100 in material, which helps at this point too.

One final note - I am finding myself immune to the caffeine I ingest from Coca-Cola. I used to be very careful about not drinking caffeine anywhere close to bed, but on many occassions over the last two weeks, I've gone to sleep even after drinking a soda. Days and nights are continuous when you have an infant, and sleep become a much more opportunistic thing. I guess I'm running a bit deprived, although I feel pretty good.