Alarm Clock

Well, the good news is we don't have to wake up to an annoying alarm clock any more with that horrid buzzer in the morning. The bad news is we are now waking up in time to milk the cows and we don't own any cows. Junior has been consistently providing us with a blissful 5 am wake up call like clockwork every morning. Let me get off subject for a moment...Carrie was working on the baby book getting Quentin's stats/pictures and the like in there yesterday when she came across an inauspicious question - How much weight did daddy gain during the pregnancy? Unfair! I mean I was simply trying to go with the flow to make sure the wife and I were keeping up as a couple. We wouldn't want the relationship to get lopsided, so to speak. There were several weekends in college where we took 3-4 days and held "weight gaining" contests over a weekend to see who could pack on the pounds most efficiently and I thought this pregnancy thing was similar. She goes up, I one pound-her, similar to one upping. Well, next thing you know she goes into the hospital and automatically loses 15 pounds before she leaves. I went into the hospital and only lost some hair (most of it went grey). I repeat, unfair! And this is what leads me back to the 5 am wake up call. Granted work I'm sure would love for me to go into the office but since my commute is taking 17 stairs I'm not so sure I want to work 13 hours a day so I started going to the gym. I figure what else am I going to do at 5am? So be on the look out for a slimmer sleep walking dad out there. I need to live longer anyway to save for Quentin's tuition.

Quentin is getting huge. I came down for lunch today and saw him sitting on Carrie's lap and he looked ginormous, like a legitimate child instead of the 5 week old he actually is. I had to stop and take a picture. Unbelievable. I'm telling you that kid weighs 12+ pounds already. He's like 3 feet long. Three feet! That's already half way to a high school basketball career and 4 feet short of an NBA center. When he goes out for football in the peewee league they are going to have to move him up to the JV squad by sheer size alone (not to mention the talent - oh will he have talent!!). He's going to be a dominate force. I don't think the posted pictures due him justice. My mom came to town expecting a disproportionate head because we keep taking extreme close ups of his face. I actually think she was slightly disappointed when she realized he had a normal size head for his baby body when she saw him in person. So if anyone is wondering his head is a natural size for his body and no, I'm not bias, it's the truth.

Going to work has been different for both Carrie and me. I came home (down stairs) yesterday after work and picked him up and he puked down my back. I moved to the couch and laid down to relax and had him on my chest and he puked on my chest. What's going on here? I've been hanging out with him for about 3 minutes and he ruined both sides of my shirt. That's another key. You don't want to be too quick with changing a diaper or your clothes or his clothes because you might be changing all those things again in another 5 minutes. It's better to give him a good 10 minutes or so to make sure he's done destroying whatever it is he's focused on at the moment. But if you wait too long you get a blow out. It's a science. A lot of trial and error to find the happy medium, which we're hoping we'll eventually find.

Carrie and Quentin just got back from a walk in the sunshine. She used Quentin's carrier that Mr. & Mrs. Sloppy got us - Quentin loves that and it's nice for Carrie's hands to be free so she can scrub the floor and what not. Just kidding. She was walking the dog! She needed a hand for the leash and for the record I already walked him at dawn this morning. I was asking her if there was anything I should add to the blog. She's like, "tell them we went for a walk." Oh, Carrie. See, that's why she's not writing this blog. I tried to explain to her that if I wasn't there I can't describe the walk very well and she said so what it's good stuff. Oh, boy. Obviously, Carrie needs to appreciate the kind of sarcasm that goes into a quality blog. A few more years married to me and hopefully more of it will rub off. If I can't talk about how the dog ran off while the leash was attached to Carrie's wrist dragging her across three blocks while the kid was strapped to her going after one of the many stray cats in the neighborhood then it won't be entertaining. So, I can't help anyone out. Carrie went for a walk.

I did think the whole family got kidnapped for a moment including the dog. I went downstairs to grab a glass of water and it was eerily quiet like our house suddenly turned into a funeral parlor (great recession proof job). Not a single noise. No tail wagging happy to see my downstairs for play time. No son screaming about how he's not getting enough to eat. No wife asking for my help to grab something out of reach. Nada, zip, zilch, nothin'. I locate the car seat, so they didn't drive anywhere. I locate the stroller so they couldn't have rolled anywhere. I went out to the patio and there was no one sunbathing, not even the dog. I actually got concerned. Carrie doesn't carry her cell phone so a quick call to that yielded a ring five feet away. I was already thinking about how I would be the prime suspect in my family's disappearance when I figured I would give her a good 30 minutes to turn up. Sure enough all smiles and tails wagging came through the door not 10 minutes later. As Carrie said, "we went for a walk." That's her story for today and she's sticking to it.

The picture is of Quentin, sitting up, in his new "designer wear" that was donated to the Quentin Foundation of high end fashion.