An Unwanted Visitor

Well, I’m back. As some of you know, my wife gave birth to a beautiful baby girl last Saturday, hence my recent absence from posting. Given that life changing event, my first return post was supposed to be about the whole hospital experience. I planned on doing my best to mix together just the right blend of emotion, humor, and hospital observations to make my first post since my daughter’s birth an entry more uplifting and meaningful than the usual petty grievances to which this blog is devoted.

That entry is still in the works, but life intervened last night with events that demanded an immediate recap. The neighborhood in which we live is afflicted, for whatever reason, with a very real propensity for power loss in the event of any kind of storm. Basically, if you hear thunder in the distance, you can count on a candlelit evening and entertainment options on par with those available to your average 19th century farmer once the sun set. That’s bad enough in general, but when you throw a six-day old newborn into the mix, it takes on an entirely different dynamic. For one thing, that newborn is in the market for food every two to three hours, and typically is covered in green runny poo and pee that is a bit more difficult to adequately address by candlelight. In addition, when you already freak out 15-20 times a day that your baby might not be breathing, realizing that she’s now swaddled in a blanket in a room that is 80 degrees and rising is more than a bit unsettling.

Being the crafty people that we are, my wife and I decided on the solution of opening up our bedroom windows. We have plantation shutters that we left closed, but no window screens. So after a few rants about the quality of Georgia Power’s efforts at restoring our power, I decided to try to catch a bit of sleep despite the less than ideal conditions. Not long after I nodded off, my wife frantically woke me to tell me about a sound she had heard outside one of the windows. I hate to say that I discounted the threat level, despite my wife’s sleep-deprived mixture of hysterical laughing and crying as she alerted me to the issue. I assured her that it was most likely a tree scraping against the house, but she persisted, and soon I heard the thumping noise for myself. Trying to keep the courage up I walked over to the window and explained I’d just open the shutters quickly, reach in, and close the window. Problem solved.

Both my wife and I read a number of books prepping us for life with a newborn. They were lengthy and full of information on things to look out for, proper routines for your newborn, and other important factoids. But not a single one of those books offered tips for how to evacuate your bedroom in an orderly fashion with your newborn in hand when a bat comes flying in through the window and right past your head. We could have used such pointers, because general chaos ensued as a black bat entered through the window. I believe my wife was on the brink of passing out on the spot. I responded by jumping over the furniture, running into the dog crate and knocking its door off on the way out of the bedroom.

Is it too late to visit the baby?

The only thing I did that displayed any semblance of intelligence was to shut the bedroom door behind me as the D’Arcy family beat a path of full-out retreat from the master bedroom. Now shut out of the bedroom with a hysterical wife, a six-day old baby, and two dogs, I attempted to plot my next move. No matter how much I tried, I could come up with no solution other than my returning to the bedroom. All phones and connection to the outside world were still in there, as were all of my clothes. I needed some information on the status of the power and how to remove a bat, and my wife needed me to be wearing more than boxers, so I was going back in.

Slowly, cautiously, I reentered the room. Not seeing the bat as I first crept back in, I gained a sense of composure. I grabbed my wife’s phone and iPad, then took the time to grab one of the still-lit candles. Mistake. I turned around to leave only to see the bat doing victory laps around the bedroom ceiling, and I made a run for it. Unfortunately, my hasty exit involved dumping candle wax all over my hand. After getting out of the bedroom and doing some hasty bat research on the iPad, I felt fairly confident that if we could just get the lights on in there the bat would probably hit the road on its own. So I reached in there one final time to turn the light switch on so that they would come on whenever Georgia Power got around to reconnecting us to the 21st century. It was approximately 3:30am when that blessed event occurred. We heard some thumping in the bedroom as the bat made its exit, and then finally we had our house back.

So if anyone out there is putting a book together on life with a newborn, I strongly recommend a passage on the value of window screens. They’re not just for bugs!

The House Is Ready, The Dog Is Not

I know it’s been a couple of weeks since my last post, but I don’t want you to think I’ve been simply lounging around. No sir, it’s been a busy time here as we enter the home stretch of baby preparations. The wife and I spent an entire Saturday plus two additional hours on Sunday in a birth/newborn class. It was really a great way to pass the time, other than the 1980’s footage of uncensored childbirth. They showed four or five women, none of whom showed any interest in any of the following:

1) Pain medication
2) Wearing the hospital issued gown (i.e. they weren’t wearing one)
3) Avoiding sounding like they were in a low budget pornography film

I’ve also spent quite a bit of time assembling things, which is not one of my core competencies. I get derailed by soup cans that don’t come with the top you can pull off and actually require me to utilize the can opener, so it’s no stretch when I tell you that putting the stroller together nearly brought me to my knees. Then there was the bassinet, which required 39 steps to assemble. Granted, some of those were as simple as “insert 4 double-A batteries”, but nonetheless I just stood there staring at the manual with a combination of terror and awe muttering “39 steps…39 steps?!”.

In the end, though, I got it all put together (with some substantial help from my wife). So we were feeling pretty good about having our home just about ready for a newborn. And then an out of town friend came to spend the night with her five week old child. That's when our loveable, though perhaps mentally challenged, dog Reese came unhinged. She appeared to be prepping for a casting call for There's Something About Mary 2.

Replace Ben Stiller with a five week newborn to get the proper visual

Reese in more pleasant times

Now I'm no baby expert. I've skimmed a book or two recently and attended the aforementioned class, but that's about it. Having said that, my initial instinct is that you don't want your dog growling when your little baby coos or makes other cute little baby noises. Also, maniacally lunging at said infant and appearing as though her head might do a 360 degree turn akin to the possessed girl in The Exorcist would seem to me to be undesirable dog behavior.

And so I found myself online a few days ago hunting down a CD with baby sounds for pets and selecting the rush shipment option. In Reese's defense, we are pretty sure she is half crazy. She's also smart, though, and so we're holding out hope she'll get the whole thing figured out...hopefully more quickly than I was able to figure out the stroller.