Keeping Safety 1st During Late Night Baseball

The text message popped up on my phone just after midnight.

T was trying to fall asleep in our bedroom and I was on the couch in the living room. The Cubs and Rockies had just gone into extra innings in their win-or-go-home playoff game and I didn’t want to disturb my exhausted wife by reacting to key pitches or controversial calls. I was exhausted too, of course; caffeine only works for so long and my energy stores had already been low after a frustrating day at work. Sports fandom being what it is, though, I was determined to see the game through for as long as I could keep my eyes open.

I had been alone for maybe ten minutes when the soft glow of my cell phone caught my eye. I picked it up, expecting to see another message from my friend with whom I’d been texting during the game, but it wasn’t from him. It was from T. Continue reading “Keeping Safety 1st During Late Night Baseball”

Unconventional Lullabyes

I made my way into the dark-ish room and closed the door softly so as not to wake E. It was still easy to see; the late sunsets of summer evenings meant that the light was still poking through the blinds, even though it was close to 8:00 PM. E had fallen asleep almost immediately after T and I had put the kids to bed a half hour earlier. S, though, had begun crying and was standing in her crib when I walked in.

“Mommy?” she asked expectantly, holding out her arms to be picked up.

“No, you’re not getting Mommy,” I answered. Continue reading “Unconventional Lullabyes”

What If…?

E goes to bed fairly consistently at some point between 6:30 and 7:30 each night. He plays hard at school and barely slows down once he gets home, so he’s usually pretty tired by the time he finishes dinner. T bathes him and S, reads E a story, sings to him and then he falls asleep (or, if I’m home, I take care of the bedtime routine).

S is slightly less reliable in that respect. It depends on the day she has had; if she hasn’t had an afternoon nap and it’s been fairly busy (which it often is), she’ll nurse and fall asleep right after E. If she has napped in the afternoon, or if the day has been quieter, she may decide she wants to stay up and play longer. I can’t really blame her; that’s her only real chance to play with both of her parents without her big brother getting in the way.  Continue reading “What If…?”

A Letter to My Unborn Child

Dear… umm… Baby (I guess),

Well, that was an awkward start.

I wasn’t quite sure what to write there, as I’m sure you could tell. We have names picked out for you but we’re saving them for when we actually get to meet you. It also would have been just as awkward for me to write Dear Boy Name/Girl Name. I even considered writing Dear PTBNL, the acronym that Major League Baseball uses for a Player To Be Named Later, but it’s unwieldy and most people probably wouldn’t have recognized it right away anyway.1 In any event, I just went with Baby. That’s what you are, at this point anyway, so that’s what seems to fit the best.  Continue reading “A Letter to My Unborn Child”

No Better Feeling

I got to hold a baby the other day.

I don’t just mean a young child. E is three and a half and still gets referred to as “the baby” sometimes. That’s not what I mean. I mean a baby, barely a week and a half old on the day when I met him. He was a floppy mush of skin and hair with the tiniest little mouth that seemed to open twice as wide when he needed to yawn. His father brought him into the room, holding the baby in his forearm in a perfect football grip, and gently laid him into my arms.

I laughed and said, “Jesus, I forgot how small they are when they’re born.”  Continue reading “No Better Feeling”

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