Catching a snooze during the “good” times

We were going to leave Thursday night. We really were. We decided on Wednesday that we would probably be too tired (ie, too lazy to pack) and instead we would get up super early Friday and hit the road by 5am or so. That would do it……

We hit the road just after 7am for our approximately 400 mile trip from the beaches of Southern Rhode Island to the beaches of Bethany Beach in Delaware. Lesson number one, it takes a LOT longer to load the car and hit the road than it used to!

We took this trip to attend the wedding of our good friend Katie and her fiance Kevin. We take pride in our wedding attendance. We are blessed with a lot of lifelong friends, and we don’t miss weddings. At least one of us has made it to just about every one that we have been invited to. The birth of our son just 7 weeks ago and our move to Rhode Island wasn’t going to change that. We never even considered not going. But I’d be lying if I told you I still felt that way a couple of hours down I-95.

Our first stop was at a rest stop in Darien, Connecticut. It was probably two hours into our drive and it was time to feed and change Cam, walk Quinn and get some food for the adults. In our pre-baby life this stop would take ten minutes. 15 if we needed gas. On Friday morning, we spent almost 45 minutes trying to figure out how to make all of this happen. I made the mistake of mentioning to Sara that I felt like the stop wasn’t super efficient as we pulled out of the rest area. We started to fight about it until I realized I lacked the data about how long a stop like this SHOULD take. I try not to pick fights I can’t win, so I just turned up the radio as I realized I was probably just being a jerk.

New York City means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For the past year, all that New York City has been to me is a giant concrete obstacle that prevents me from getting to where I need to go in a reasonable amount of time. When we first moved to Rhode Island we even went so far as to literally go (way) out of our way to avoid going through New York City. Since then we’ve rolled the dice, and have rarely come out winners. Too lazy to fully investigate a better route, I just plow towards the George Washington Bridge and that is where the fun really begins.

It is important to note that the best passenger in our car is our dog Quinn. He’s a super chill dog who is just happy to be along for the ride. A stealth passenger. I’m OK, but can have some PTSD in heavy traffic. This is mostly due to the occasional flashback to the many wasted hours during my six year commute from Baltimore to Washington. I’m not above punching the steering wheel or randomly screaming for example. Sara is the optimist. Always. The sign that says it will take two hours to go the six miles over the bridge? That MUST be leftover from rush hour. The MapQuest app on her iPhone is her best friend. When she starts to lose it, we are doomed. More on that later. The wildcard is young Cameron. This trip was his first trip out of Rhode Island, and our first drive that would require feedings or changing along the way. What I learned from this trip is that Cam is a lot like the bus in the movie Speed, if you are going over 50 miles an hour he’s fine. Sound asleep. Once you drop below that, he explodes. So to speak.

Which brings us to our first “issue” of the trip. The slow grind of getting across the GW bridge is bad enough. People merging on top of you from every direction and a max speed around 15 mph for 90 minutes will wear down even the most seasoned traveler. Do all of that to the soundtrack of a screaming baby and you start looking for excuses to just turn around. Sara saved the day (as usual) and essentially jumped over the passenger seat to feed him in his seat long enough for us to slowly make our way across the bridge quietly. It was secret service level protection. Our reward for holding it all together? New Jersey. Terrific.

With apologies to my friends from the Garden State, as far as I am concerned New Jersey has only two things going for it. The first Roy Rogers rest stop on the Turnpike and the second Roy Rogers rest stop on the Turnpike. That’s it. No matter when you drive the New Jersey Turnpike there will be a backup from Exit 8A to Exit 7. That area on the turnpike just ruins whatever pace you thought you were still on after getting through NYC. What’s worse? That area is just five miles from that first Roy Rogers rest stop going south. Making my well-deserved reunion with a Double-R-Bar and a holster of fries elusive. Being late for a wedding weekend is one thing. Withholding Roy’s is just cruel.

Stop number two didn’t go any better than stop number one. As we started doing the math on how long it had been since Cam had pooped and if we should be concerned, it turns out he had pretty much pooped through his entire outfit. Making for a more complicated, and now indoor, change. I let Sara take the reigns (I mean he pooped THROUGH his clothes) and walked Quinn and waited. Cam was clean but now needed to eat. Another inefficient stop I thought to myself. And foolishly repeated it out loud when we were finally back on the road around 2:30pm. I had learned nothing in the last five hours. I still had no supporting data, but 45 minutes at each stop was just killing me! Amazingly, despite a 7am departure, our 6:30p rehearsal dinner plans were now in serious jeopardy.

Bethany Beach is about 100 miles from the Delaware Memorial Bridge at the end of NJ Turnpike. That is the good news. The end was within a manageable distance. The bad news is it is a slow 100 miles. Lots of lights, and the lower speeds were beginning to wake the Cam monster. The last two hours of our trip were by far the worst. We couldn’t go 10 minutes without Cam losing his marbles. Around 3:30pm, we pretty much had gone off the rails as a family. This required extra stops at various Royal Farms and Wawa’s for snacks, feedings, diaper changes and general marriage counseling (caffeine for her, Wawa soft pretzels for me). Sara was broken with about half an hour to go. She was starting to feel ill from riding backwards in the car half the time and was frustrated by the results. Morale in the car was at an all-time low. It seemed impossible that we had been on the road for 10 hours, but we had. We pulled into the driveway of my house at about 5:10pm, exhausted, and with about an hour to get ready and give my father-in-law (Cam’s weekend babysitter) instructions on how to survive for about 5 hours. We had made it, but it wasn’t pretty.

As we expected, the weekend was well worth the travel. We got to see so many great friends that we’ve missed so much this year. The wedding was beautiful and the weather was awesome all weekend. A reward for that terribly long winter. We had so much fun that our 10 hour drive was now a distant memory. Unfortunately we had to make the same drive back on Sunday. I won’t bore you with those details, but lets just say it went better. We even made some progress on the way back, as it only took us 9 hours and 15 minutes to get home!

Because we hate ourselves, we will barely unpack before we trade in our 19.5 hour car journey for a cross country flight to Vegas on Wednesday. Changing planes in Chicago, the whole nine yards. I’ve never been so afraid to go spend four days in Las Vegas!

Cam and his pals

My favorite part of any new job is the honeymoon phase. It is really hard to screw up in your first two weeks on just about any job. In my experience, it takes at least a month or so before you are even trusted to do much of anything. Not this job! It has been an eventful, but fulfilling, first week. Things have settled down a bit since that hectic first hour, but I could really use that honeymoon phase!

I don’t know much about blogs, but one thing I have noticed is that when you don’t have a lot of great material for a post, you make lists. So here is a list of ten thoughts from my first solo week with Cam:

1. I’d like to have words with the good folks at Carters baby clothes about the engineering of the buttons on most of their onesies. I mean really? How did they test this before going to market? Why use buttons at all? Zippers all day! I haven’t kept track, but my guess is I am about a 60% shooter when it comes to getting these things on in one try.

2. Remember that truly awful 1998 song called Lullaby by Shawn Mullins? Well, that thing pops into my head EVERY time I try to put Cam down for a nap. EVERY time. Join me in my misery: http://youtu.be/hG9C0VwruXE

3. Poop isn’t as scary as I thought it would be. I think getting a dog first has made all things poop easier. So thanks Quinn!

4. It may be a little while before I have lunch at the normal lunch time again. I am convinced Cam can hear me making myself food and turns on the water works immediately.

5. I am starting to learn the difference between the hungry cry, the messy diaper cry and the tired cry. I’m not a big fan of any of these.

6. I probably get a little too excited when I have just enough free time to do the dishes or finish up laundry.

7. I never thought I would ever write a sentence like the one above. Ever.

8. I’m pretty sure I still have no idea what I’m doing.

9. There is nothing cuter in the world than an infant sneezing. The full body action is outstanding.

10. Cam is the man. He really is. So far, so good….

Some exciting blog fodder coming up to end the month. We are taking a full family road trip to Bethany Beach for the wedding of our great friend Katie Stouffs this weekend. We are excited for Cam to meet all his “aunts” and “uncles” and return to one of our favorite places on earth. Sara and I got married in Bethany, almost exactly seven years ago.

The Bethany trip (about a 7 hour drive) will probably look pretty easy compared to our trip just a few days after we get back. We go to Vegas on April 30th. A quick 4 day trip for a conference that Sara is a part of at the Bellagio. Cam will get to meet his Aunt Kate and three of his cousins who live in Arizona. This promises to be a different Vegas than the one I usually see! Stay tuned…..

My first day on the job started at around 5:45am. That is when Sara left for work, and I pretended to be awake enough to understand her final instructions on where things stood with Cam. He was nice enough to let me know where he stood about an hour later.

Six weeks in is a small sample size. We are still figuring out bedtime routines, and how much he needs to eat a day. But in the six weeks Sara was home, he seemed to fall into a routine that was at least predictable. This morning, he was nice enough to mix things up for dad’s first day.

I actually thought I was getting Punk’d at first. Like the baby camera was recording me and Sara would jump out of the next room with Ashton Kutcher laughing and high-fiving everyone.

The crying started just before 7am. He lasted less than an hour from when Sara put him back to sleep before she left. Seemed like a setup to me! It got worse. I gave him one of the emergency 2 oz formula bottles in the nursery to calm him down and then took a look at the diaper. Yikes. Cleaned up and having finished the bottle we were on our way to an extended bedtime for both of us, when a familiar sound and smell came from Cam.

In real time time we’re talking less than five minutes from one poopy diaper to the next. And in the excitement, I didn’t burp him enough so he spit up on me. Big time. Right on my bare shoulder, and all over his onesie. New diaper, and now a new outfit. Sweet. We get back to bed for what seemed like 10 minutes, and guess what? Poopy diaper number three! Small potatoes compared to the earlier offerings, but it counts. So much for sleep. All of this in the first hour. Baptism by fire for sure!

Things settled down from there. He ate everything that we had prepared for the day before 3pm and he has fit in a couple of short naps. We even managed to get Quinn outside for a walk around the neighborhood. Sara should be home soon.

Day one in the books and I think I cleared the low bar I set for myself. No poop on the walls, only one text message to Sara that could be described as frantic and I didn’t have to use duct tape for any reason. Yeah, that’s a win.

Wow. That happened fast. Cam is six weeks old today. That is the good news. The bad news is Sara goes back to work tomorrow. In the world of surgical fellowships, six weeks was the best we could hope for. So for the next ten weeks or so its just me and Cam for about twelve hours a day.

Am I ready? Hmm. This reminds me a little bit of a college exam. Where I didn’t pay attention for a good part of the semester, and then crammed for the exam. It worked out OK most of the time. But there were those horrifying moments when you get to an exam and realize you studied the wrong chapters and you know from the first question that you are completely screwed. My worry going into tomorrow is that I studied the wrong chapters. Or, more likely, this test will include chapters that were never covered in class.  I can throw a bottle in his mouth and change a diaper. But beyond that? It’s touch and go!

I am optimistic however. My optimism mostly stems from the fact that in the past six weeks I have discovered that Cam and I have a few things in common already. I hope that this common ground will make us a good team in the weeks, months and years ahead. Here are a few examples of what I am talking about.

Hiccups: My little guy must get the hiccups three times a day.Why? Same reason his old man does. We eat WAY too fast. So I can feel his pain as he tries to figure out a solution. I’ll be 36 later this month, and I still must waste half an hour a week trying to get rid of my hiccups!

Drinking too much=Spit/Throw-up: In fairness I have gotten better in this regard. While I could claim a new level of maturity now that I’m a father and blah blah blah…..the reality is I just moved to a state where I know like four people, so my social life has slowed a bit recently. With a wedding and a quick Vegas trip on the horizon, things could always change!

Hunger makes us fussy: And who can blame us? Cam eats like a moose. I should have bought Similac stock a long time ago! When he’s hungry, he isn’t shy about letting us know. I will also loudly communicate my desire to eat when hungry. What separates us at this point is that I don’t furiously kick my legs to nail home my point. Not anymore anyway!

One more thing I know we will soon have in common? We can’t wait for mommy to come home from work every night! Wish me luck and thanks for reading!

I never planned to be a stay at home dad. I suppose nobody does. Having married a doctor, I often “joke” about my life as a kept man. Early retirement, lots of golf, video games into my 40s. Those goals are still attainable I suppose, but what I didn’t factor in was being the main caretaker of another human being along the way.

My wife Sara and I found out she was pregnant the day before we moved from Maryland to Rhode Island for her to finish her training to be a breast surgeon. I had quit my job as a television producer with The Associated Press just a couple weeks earlier. While she spent the year pregnant and working, I halfheartedly looked for a job, bonded with my dog Quinn, and prepared for the hardest job I’ll ever have.

My son Cameron was born early in the morning of March 5th. We’ve spent the last month or so doing what I imagine most new parents do: being scared to death of doing anything wrong! I’ve learned a lot in five weeks, but I had plenty to learn. As an uncle to five nieces and nephews, I’ve avoided the heavy lifting up until now. Nowhere to hide anymore!

Sara goes back to work next week, and that is where the “fun” should begin. The idea behind this blog is to share some of my experiences as a first time, stay at home, dad. With any luck, some people will read and help me navigate all of this a little bit better. I’ll mix in some non baby related posts for the sake of my sanity.

I’ve spent my entire professional life “communicating.” First as a radio producer, then in local TV, and most recently for almost at decade at the AP. I’m used to lots of newsroom noise, lots of people running looking for stuff to do. Pretty soon the only “people” in my “newsroom” will a two month old and a golden retriever. So thanks in advance for reading and allowing me to communicate with adults again!

Stay tuned…..