Settling in at home

Baby pictures, and not my creative and witty musings, remain the bread and butter of my 'blog,' and of course more of them have been uploaded.

I was the younger of the two children in our family, and in part because of that, I had no clue what it was like to live with a youngster until last Tuesday, when my wife and daughter Sophia came home from the hospital together for the first time. While since then most of the basic baby-care skills have become second-nature, other aspects of nurturing a very young person are not so automatic.

For example, I don't think you can fully appreciate the ravenousness of a fussy two-week old child until you've seen it yourself, and even then it's somewhat difficult to believe. Such fits of hunger seem to occur only during the most awkward times of the night -- oftentimes a few minutes after papa has finally fallen asleep, having successfully put young daughter to sleep and somehow convinced otherwise perfect and beautiful mama to move into a position that at least muffles the snoring, if not drowns it out entirely.

My first reaction to such a burning desire for sustenance on the part of my tiny angelic child is to perhaps consider what exactly is causing all this fussiness. If mama is still asleep, I hope the issue can be resolved by a little bit of rocking or snuggling, as babies do not like to feel as though they are abandoned. So I take Sophia out of her bassinet and lay her on my chest; we sit in a rocking chair, and I slowly caress her face and hold her tiny hands. Sometimes I sing her a song that she may or may not like (Conny has implied to me that the "Star Spangled Banner" is inappropriate, but honestly it's the only song of reasonable length to which I know all of the words) or I make one up. Or I just say her name to her over and over again. These methods rarely work -- the problem is almost always hunger.

It's kind of funny really, because when friends come by to see her, almost everyone falls in love with her. This is because she's absolutely adorable -- I'm totally in love with my little daughter as well, I'll fully admit that. But if there's a time when I begin to lose my patience, it's at 2 in the morning when she's screaming in my ear and simultaneously ripping the hairs out of my chest with her tiny but amazingly powerful fists, in a animalistic search for breastmilk with which I am unable to provide her.

It hurts the ears and the chest, but I still love her for it.