I have no idea what time it is

One year in college, for spring break, I decided to stay in my apartment for a whole week and do nothing but play video games and eat pizza. I would stay up as late as I wanted, sleep in as much as I wanted, and pretty much fill my days with recreational video game playing.

It was a lot of fun, I really enjoyed the solitary time, and it was my first time having a PS2 (borrowed) that I could play all the cool new games on. But the sleeping...that was a lot of fun. I stayed up until 2 in the morning the first night, then later and later, until I was staying up until the sun came up, sleeping all day, and going out at night to pick up frozen pizzas. Eventually I ended up succumbing to the standard sleep cycle, but a good time was had by all.

And I’m reminded by this, now, because my sleep schedule has gotten all borked up, but it still a lot of fun. It’s 1:30 in the morning when I’m writing this, and I got a good 6 hours of sleep earlier...yesterday. I went to bed at 4 and slept until 10 thanks to the kind baby-watching skills of Mom.S and Jessie. It was great, but when you wake up from that, at that time of night...what do you do? Am I supposed to have breakfast at midnight? Because I just did. Tuna sandwich. I don’t know...when is cereal an appropriate food in these circumstances?

But really, I’m fully enjoying the wonkiness. Once Tyler gets to sleep, as he so often does, and I’m in charge, and Jessie is out and getting good rest on the couch next to me, and Mom.S is recharging her batteries upstairs, I get the whole house to myself. It’s quiet, is solitary, and as long as I don’t actually have anywhere to be or anything to do tomorrow, I don’t even have to worry about how weird all of this is. It’s fun, in a strange way.

I’ve been peed on twice, now. Not in the more traditional ‘fountain’ style. I’ve been holding him and reading to him, and noticing how cute he is, and how sweet his face is, and how budgy his arms are, and how warm his back is, and how warm...uh...and wet...oh. Time to go change some diapers.

Tyler has been doing some impromptu smiles. I’m not sure he even knows he is doing it, but it just *melts* the heart.

Tyler has been a real sport about getting his day-night cycle in check. He’s eating about every 4 hours at night, now, and while he does wake up pretty periodically, the restful stretches are getting more and more established. Good for him. And us.

Jess went for a walk today with Mom.S. They put Tyler in the stroller (while I was sleeping) and went out to get some exercise. Jess did a few cul-de-sacks and was on the way to the park when her gas tank ran out. So they came back. But that’s a pretty impressive benchmark for a girl who had a hole in her abdomen just a short week ago.

Tyler is 1 week old, officially. Though wednesday was his ‘birthday’, it wasn’t until a few hours ago that we crossed the 1 week mark. We got him some formula to celebrate.

I’m glad jess is sleeping. She’s feeling a lot better than she has in the past, but I can tell the lack of sleep is not good for her. Lucky for both of us, I’ve got the energy to keep the house, and baby Tyler, well cared for in her absence. Sometimes she likes it when I’m big and strong and in charge, and sometimes she likes it when I don’t know what I’m doing. She says it makes her feel better that she can’t always calm him down either. He’s a baby, sometimes he just does stuff.

We’re getting some of our first visitors over the next few days. Local types. First is a lady from roller derby that let us come see her baby when she was just 4 days old. We also got a nice gift from our neighbors: diapers! Can’t go wrong with that.

I’ve signed up for Amazon Mom. I guess we get free Amazon Prime Shipping now? It didn’t cost anything. I figure they have to offset the cost by letting us know about baby stuff we can buy, but that’s a tradeoff I’m willing to make. You can also sign up for a subscription to diapers. They just show up at your door. We might try that later, but I’m hoping to try some G diapers or some cloth diapers soon. We’re going to have this kid for several years, and I’d like to try and keep the landfills at least a little bit clean, if I can. Experimental cloth diapers are on the way (thanks, amazon mom!) We’ll try them out and see what we think. But clearly there’s something to be said for the ease of disposables in the early going when you have no idea what you’re doing.

-N