Margo à la Maude

Things have been pretty calm lately. I guess that I didn’t really know what to expect from parenthood. But for the first 12 days, it’s been about a whole lot of holding the baby while she sleeps, and holding the baby to try to get her to sleep, then Donna feeding the baby between sleeps and us holding her legs by the heels so that she doesn’t complicate diaper changes by doing her best manure spreader impersonation. Yeah. She sleeps a lot. And she gets held a lot. And sometimes you both sleep at the same time: case in point.

(I converted the image to black&white hoping to make it more artistic, rather than the reality that it actually is: some tired guy with 3-days stubble who straps his daughter into a stroller with more harnesses than a roller-coaster, but who falls asleep with her precariously perched on top of Mt. Inactivity. Did somebody say "Pulitzer?")

So, what do you do when you have nine pounds of baby and 12 lbs of blankets on your lap? Society frowns upon using your baby as a book rest when reading newspapers or books, and though she is perfectly positioned to receive extensive tattoo art on her body (I suggest a series of “MOM” or “DAD” tats, each progressively larger depending on who is holding her at the time), again, that pesky society frowns on that. So what do you do? What do you do? What indeed?

TV.

Lots of TV.

Okay, we could be active and put our baby in a stroller and enjoy the dying days of summer, and we do that, but we’re talking marathon hours of holding Margo.

We’ve been spending the days getting re-acquainted with some old friends. Jerry Seinfeld, Homer Simpson, the good people at Law & Order, President Bartlett of the West Wing (thanks M & I for the DVDs), and Quincy, M.E. That last one has rekindled my lifelong dream of performing autopsies and living on a houseboat. I always wondered how Jack Klugman did so well with the ladies. He worked with the dead all day, occasionally interrupted by his assistant, Sam, probably best known as “Sam, the Guy From Quincy.”

Too bad there wasn't more TV on demand, because I would be getting all Canadian Content and catching up with Nick, Jesse and Relic from the Beachcombers, and singing the theme from The Littlest Hobo, which, honestly, was probably the best part of the show.

Before I forget, we shot a 15 second clip of Margo during the 18 seconds that she was awake and not feeding. Or it may have been during the 5 hours that she was awake, exhausted, and didn't know that falling asleep was an option. It's 5 MB large, so careful if you have dial-up. It should be available until October 20th or so.

http://www.savefile.com/files/97700

Bit by bit, we're venturing out more, learning the ins and outs of the stroller, and testing out the sling, modeled by Donna here of the right. It gives a parent who travels by bus the freedom to not take up so much space, keeps your baby close to the warmth of your chest, and most importantly, shows where you stand on the capitalist-hippie spectrum in the cooler months when you can't wear Birkenstock sandals. Groovy.

It's simplicity itself. It's about 3½-4 m of stretchy fabric that you wrap in a specific way. The older your child gets, you start using different ways of tying the wrap. I've worn it twice: once, Margo wasn't really getting into it. The other time, she loved it, curled up and slept for hours. It even made me look and feel pregnant. I had to take it off, because I didn't like the cravings that I was getting.

One last note on the wrap: baby in the wrap makes you look like a cool mom. No baby in the wrap = Afghani warlord.

That's it for now. Tomorrow, we rent a car to teach Margo how to do those cool spin-outs that James Garner used to do in Rockford Files.

Houseboats rock!

- Michel

This entry was posted on Friday, September 22, 2006 at 1:21 a.m.. You can skip to the end and leave a response.