March 10th, 2004

Landon is slowly starting to settle into a few patterns. His day starts (if it ever really ends) around 8:00am when he wakes up for his first feeding of the day. Most of Landon’s feedings are announced by his cries ringing through the house, with the only permanent cure being a soft breast, filled with warm milk thrust in front of his face. Feeding events usually last close to thirty minutes, and are interspersed with bouts of burping. After being fed, a dirty diaper usually needs to be removed; this has the unintentional effect of reawaking Landon and gears him up for the rest of the morning. The following morning hours are usually spent going for a walk with the family, and often staring at Mom and Dad, flailing appendages wildly, while they attempt to interact with their son through “educational and meaningful” mental and physical exercises. At no time during the morning does Landon appear worn out, and at the mere placement in his bassinet he begins to wail. 11:00am rolls around, and its time to feed the bottomless pit once again. By this point Landon has been awake for several hours and his baby batteries are just about all used up, the problem is he is usually too damn tired at this point to remember where his on/off switch is, so crankiness inevitably ensues. The next hour or so ebbs and flows between Landon staring through the wall in a blank zombie like trance, and uncontrollable, chin quivering cries. Eventually the yawns succeed in their battle against the tears and Landon literally passes out. This hour is one of the most trying of the day. Once silence has finally returned, Landon enters into such a deep slumber that the family usually ventures out into the scary world that exists outside of the safety of our household walls, to take care of a few of the countless errands that get added to the list hanging on the fridge. Between 2:00 and 3:00pm Landon awakes again for another meal, and this feeding is again quickly chased away by continued napping, at times it seems like this feeding is little more than a naptime diversion for the little guy as he often crashes asleep, mouth wide open in a sea of milk and nipple. Dinner time is usually around 5:00pm, followed by a short period of play, and then the favorite, continued slumber. Mom and Dad use this break to scarf down some well needed nourishment of their own and may steal a few minutes on the computer, phone, or other much needed distraction. Sometime around 8:00pm Landon arises again, eats again, and then mirrors his parents adoring stares again. Shortly thereafter he is whisked upstairs where a warm bathtub waits. Landon genuinely seems to enjoy bath time; he appears calm and relaxed in the water, and rarely makes and uncomfortable grimace or voices concern. A dry towel then wraps him up and takes him to his changing where he is massaged, and bundled up in his pajamas for the night. We usually try to read a story to him following his bath, and then cross our fingers and hope he drifts off to sleep. Unfortunately this rarely happens. Landon for some reason unknown to us winds up the crank-wagon again in the evening. He gets fussy and uncomfortable and fights going to sleep for the next hour or so. This hour rivals the mid afternoon for the “most difficult to survive” award. Finally the urge to sleep takes over, and more often than not this takes place in the warm arms of one of his parents, its hard to let him go when he finally gets so peaceful, I hope our excessive holding him isn’t spoiling the guy. Around 11:00pm Landon rolls awake for a late night snack, and again between 2:00 and 3:00am he opens his eyes and lungs for an even later night snack. Rhiannon usually handles most of these feedings herself; while I’m sure she looks over bitterly at her snoring husband sprawled out next to her in bed. One more feeding at 5:00am, this time Landon tends to be a little more resistant to continued sleep and so Dad gets to take over calming him down while Mom tries to catch up on some rest. A quick turn of the head toward the digital alarm clock and (after an excessively long paragraph) its 8:00am all over again. (Please note that several diaper changes and burping sessions were removed for the sake of the reader).

Oh yeah, and have I mentioned lately that I still can’t even start to grasp the fact that I am a father! It is by far the most exciting and at the same time bizarre thing that has ever happened to me. I highly recommend it.

Rhiannon got a call from her Ob/Gyn, Dr. Fiorentino, yesterday, except weird thing is, he was calling to talk to me. Rhiannon handed the phone off to me with a confused expression, and slowly walked away, slow enough to pick up the first few lines of our conversation. It turns out that Dr. Fiorentino is planning on setting up a website for his practice, and when he did an online search for his name, to make sure there weren’t other Dr. Fiorentino’s out there, Streamside was churned out by his search engine. He was calling to let me know how much he enjoyed the journal, and thanks for the “plug”, as he put it. He is a real genuine guy, after talking for a brief while we hung up, and I was left thinking about him more as a person. Sometimes its nice to hear when you brighten someone’s day.