Functionally ReTodded

Or at least that’s what it sounded like at 4 o’clock this morning.

But let me take you back to set the stage…

As you may have read, we’ve recently had some difficulty in the evening (and the very late evening) with our newest angel Urchin 2.0, and we have been seeking various remedies. We have started using something called Gripe Water, which is very popular everywhere else on the planet but here in the U.S. thanks to the FDA.

Here’s some text from a website about Gripe Water:

A traditional European remedy, gripe water contains safe, fast, effective, natural ingredients for relieving colic discomforts. Gripe water has been used by mothers for over a century to provide relief from the discomforts of colic, stomach cramps, hiccups, gas and teething.
The traditional natural remedies Fennel and Ginger are contained in (insert name) Gripe Water. Both have long been shown to be beneficial for easing nausea and pain due to baby stomach gas and other symptoms of colic.

Fennel and Ginger are also effective for the discomforts of infant teething, gas and hiccups.

Relief usually occurs within 5-20 minutes.

Anyway, it’s a product that contains (among other things) fennel and ginger and, if bought from the right place, dillweed oil. That (according to some messageboards) is the key.

So it has been helping as of late, especially since we started giving her the correct dosage, which is about twice what we had been giving her.

So the evenings had been getting progressively better this week, and last night thanks to an effort by the wife to keep Sophia awake in the afternoon, it appeared that we were in for a relatively easy night of newborn parenting. I fed her at 10L30ish after the season premier of Lost and then again at about 1:30am or so. She ate the whole bottle, burped quickly and then was back to sleep in no time.

This, my friends, is middle of the night feeding Nirvana.

So I put her down and jump back into bed and get back to sleep.

Until…

I was subconsciously aware of some presence, and then my wife confirmed said presence by saying in a very sleepy voice “what’s wrong Lauren?”

I opened my eyes to find urchin 1.0 standing very close to me and repeating this sentence:

“Daddy…there’s sumping wrong in my woom.”

And up I was, heading down the hall to see what was wrong. I was guessing a beebee (pacifier), a pillow or maybe even Maisy or Piggy or one of the Piglet quadruplets had fallen on the floor and her highness could not find it within herself to pick it up. (That sounds petty, but it’s happened before).

When we got to her room, she walked right to her dresser and pointed. I was oblivious.

“What is it baby? Is it the fish?”

She replied “No daddy. The light.”

And then I noticed (since it was quite obvious) that the light in her dresser lamp / nightlight was burned out.

If that sounds wierd to you, you should know that we’ve actually been watching her on her monitor and seen the light burn out and she snapped to as though history’s biggest clap of thunder had occurred outside of her window. So this didn’t shock me.

I took the shade off, started unscrewing the soft white 25 watt bulb, and then I knocked it over. And the bulb broke into a million pieces all over the dresser and floor.

Fuck.

Now, instead of being the guy who was going to make the quick bulb change and be back in bed before I was really awake, I was the guy who was going to the laundry room to get the Dyson to vacuum up all of the tiny shards of broken glass I’ve spread in about a 40 square foot area in my daughter’s room slap in the middle of the night.

Sigh.

I got the mess cleaned up, changed the bulb, got urchin 1.0 back to bed and headed myself for the rack at about 4:05am, which is only 70 minutes before I normally get up.

Then, at about 5:05am (30 minutes after I actually fell back asleep) it seems that urchin 2.0 is hungry despite having been fed just 90 minutes prior.

I agree to feed her and she takes half a bottle (of course) but does go back to sleep, which was a huge bonus for the wife.

I then said “Screw it,” got up, checked on the iPod (which now contains over 17,000 songs in iTunes but since they are about 90GB worth of music, they will require some maintenance), then I played a little Tiger Woods 2006 on the X-box and then hit the shower for work.

So you see, even when we get one urchin under control, trouble comes from the other one, even if it’s in the form of something stupid I did.

The good news is that I apparently don’t need near the sleep I did prior to the arrival of urchin 1.0 nearly four years ago, so this was a decent night’s sleep anyway.

One thing I should mention is that, weather permitting, I am going for my second ride-along at the Richard Petty Driving Experience at Atlanta Motor Speedway a week from Saturday. My friend JBud and I will be taking three hot laps in the passenger seat for half price thanks to my friend Ethel and her holiday coupon code.

Oh, and thanks to the RPDE. I called them on the date the coupon was to expire, left a message since I called 22 minutes after they closed (and it was on New Year’s Eve AND a Saturday), asking if they could call me back and possibly honor the coupon.

Not only did someone call me back that Thursday (she spologized for the delay, but stated that she had over 300 voice mails to return from the weekend), but that person also agreed to honor the coupon code not just for me, but for three other rides as well (for my brother in law and his two boys). I’d call that going WAY above and beyond and I plan to send them a letter thanking them for their fine customer service.

Well, that’s about it for now. I’m sure I’ll have more later, including a possible rant about a private school expelling a student for kissing another student off campus at a non-school event, Marion Berry’s most recent cocaine problem, and a fine little cover story at ESPN.com about my alma mater’s Megalomaniacal uber-booster, one Mr. Robert “Bobby” Lowder.

Asalamaleka brothers and sisters.