The FTF is Back....

The FTF is Back…

Pop quiz time, kids.

The FTF has been missing from the blogosphere because:

1. He was abducted by aliens and suffered a series of physical indignities that cannot be recounted on a family blog.
   
2. He joined the Peace Corps and has been performing emergency appendectomies on the good people of Tuvalu, who, for some reason, have genetically weak appendixes.
   
3. He put his money where his mouth is and moved to Virginia for two months to go door-to-door for Barack Obama.
   
4. He’s a lazy doofus who simply can’t be trusted with the responsibility of a blog.
   

If you guessed anything other than 4, well, then, you’re not too bright. Like all of you, I have been busy the past couple of months, but that’s no excuse. I’ve neglected the sacred blogging duty entrusted to me by me, and for that I am contrite.

So, what’s been going on in the world of the FTF for the last 45 days? Here’s a summary of what you’ve missed:

• The FTM and I took the FTS on his first vacation, to Lake Champlain. He slept in the car all the way up, spent three days being passed around (from one eager aunt to the next) like a joint at a Grateful Dead show, and slept all the way back. All in all, a great trip.
  
  
• The very next day, the FTS started daycare full time. A few minor bumps along the way, but it’s been a mostly positive experience…Except, of course, for this week’s battle with conjunctivitis. (The name of which sounds more like a chronic inability to link words and phrases than a gooey eye condition, which is precisely what it is.)
  
  
• I had my first post-daycare business trip, and the instant I left the FTM took sick – 103 degree fever – while she was the sole caregiver for the FTS. My sister (the FTA) came over to help, but I still felt like a rat for being away.
  
  
• 
  The FTF won a “Post of the Day” Award from Rising Blogger. Hey, thanks, Rising Blogger, and thanks Always Home & Uncool for nominating me! Now I need to pay it forward and nominate one of my favorite blogs….Hmmm…. I have to think on that one for a day or two.
  

Milestones in these 45 days include much stronger neck muscles; an interest in and (almost) ability to hold and use the pacifier on his own; a steady stream of drool and grunting, signifying, we think, early onset teething; rolling over, sometimes…when he feels like it; a bigger, longer body; and even more I just can’t remember right now. (It’s 4 a.m…. The boy often now sleeps better than his dad.)

Of course, all of this has been taking place against the backdrop of an increasingly alarming presidential race (when did John McCain become such a creep? I used to kind of like him, even if I didn’t agree with his policies); an economy in complete free fall; and the most frustrating and heart-wrenching end to a baseball season since…well…last year. (But it ain’t over yet.) With the world seeming like it's imploding, how can I worry about things like Pink Eye?

This is how: Life goes on. It’s still the little things – the Pink Eye, the teething, the FTS’s seemingly ceaseless ability to smile and laugh, the daily visual improvement in motor skills – that make all the difference. The rest of it matters, but not nearly as much. It’s window dressing.

(That said, before I go, here’s a piece of window dressing you might enjoy. A friend and I conceived and wrote this anti-Palin ad, and I slapped it together.)

The System

Until I realized just how boring it is to watch a bunch of horses run around a track, I was a handicapper. A bad handicapper. I couldn’t pick a winner in a one horse race.


(Okay, not all races are boring. This one is amazing.)

Everybody and their brother had a system for picking winners:

• Horses dropping from a route to a sprint
  
• Horses stretching from a sprint to a route
  
• Class drops
  
• Class jumps
  
• Circle back patterns in the speed figures
  
• Pairing speed figures
  
• First time blinkers
  
• Blinkers off
  

And on and on and on. You can’t get through the gate at Saratoga without five different young men hawking their tout. “I had five winners yesterday,” the eager fellow would say, waving his Xeroxed one-sheet in your face, “Two on top!”

But if any one of those systems worked, tracks wouldn’t still be in business.

And so it is with training your baby to sleep. There are myriad programs for getting your little one to sleep through the night by eight weeks, ten weeks, or twelve weeks; each rigid in its approach, each promising a miracle. But if any of these systems really worked, I have to believe that no parent would ever be sleep deprived. But guess what: We are. We really, really are

This is on my mind because the FTM and I just read Twelve Hours Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old. It lays out a plan for weaning your baby off the middle of the night feedings, while setting up a schedule of afternoon maps. Truth is, there’s a lot of good information in the book. Unfortunately, the FTS can’t read.

What do you do when the book says the boy must be kept awake in between his last two feedings of the day, but the munchkin is sacked out like a solider after a weekend furlough? (If you’re a parent, you know the kind of sleep I mean; the “poke-him-in-the-eye-and-he-still-won’t-wake-up” kind of sleep.) Seriously, what do you do?

Dogma is anathema to me, so I’m kind of fighting the implementation of the rigid system. The kid should sleep when the kid wants to sleep, right? No, says the book. The “Twelve Hours by Twelve Weeks” system has worked 100 percent of the time! Uh-huh. The one thing I learned at the track: Never trust a sure thing.

So we’ll pick the parts of the book like best, give it a shot, and probably go on being sleep deprived. It can’t last forever. (Can it?)

Meet the FTS

We're in a period of relative calm, so there isn't much to blog about vis-a-vis the FTS. But a picture is worth a thousand words, so I offer these 4,000 words for your consideration:


Three weeks old in his Books Inc. shirt.



Clearly, my son.



Man hands.



He really is this happy.