Friday, November 21, 2008

The next two weeks..

...were as good if not better than the first week. I felt more confident and was able to make Rohan happy most of the time. Although I still can't differentiate his cries. Chandreyee claims he has a tired cry, a hungry cry, and an I'm wet or stinky cry. To me they all sound like "Whaaaaah!", but I just go through my checklist: check diapers, stick a bottle in his mouth, carry him around in the baby bjorn until he gets in a better mood. But most of the time he is a real joy: laughing at daddy's funny faces or noises, looking with rapt attention at the latest book from the library, or just licking his fist. That is one developmental area that I was worried about. He never really sucked fingers or his thumb except for a few times after he was first born. What he does for comfort is ball up his fist (usually his right, right-handed?) and then lick it like it was an ice cream cone. I guess he is unique in at least one respect. I also discovered that he absolutely loves Sesame Street. While we were playing on the ground, and after I was done watching our daily 30 minutes of Sports Center which Rohan also likes and decided to switch to PBS. His eyes were glued to the set as Elmo and Robert De Niro were talking about imagination. He was kicking his legs furiously and waving his arms as he laughed and giggled. He slept through today's episode, so he'll have to wait until next week to see another one. Next week is my last week alone with him and I will miss our time together. But I am happy that his nana will be up here after Thanksgiving weekend to take care of him until Christmas break.

Thanks for listening...

Mike

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Dad's first week home alone with Rohan


I was a bit nervous, truth be told, to have the responsibility of watching Rohan by myself. I think he either knew this or wanted to make sure that I had a good 1st week. He treated me with smiles, laughs, and coos even if I really didn't do anything to deserve them. He only cried when he needed something and slept for several hours each day so I could do some little projects around the house. He even laughed as I was cooking. Not an entirely unexpected reaction, but I would have thought that for someone on such a limited diet as his, he would have been more forgiving.

I think that I am slowing improving in my ability to read aloud to him, especially the hard books like Dr. Seuss. I never really appreciated as a child, how hard it is to read with expression while holding the book so someone else can look at the pictures. Fortunately, he seems to have a good attention span while we are reading books and we get through the long ones and he is still thirsty for more, as long as he isn't thirsty for milk. I guess at this point though, he really has no choice and can't go anywhere, but he is smiling and cooing and focuses on the weird pictures of elephant-cats and the other denizens of Dr. Seuss' imagination.

I can only hope that all of his days are so happy. I'll keep doing my best to make him happy while I'm home. I hope the weather for this next week is a bit better so we can go outside. The window guys are finishing up this week and they have done an excellent job. Sometimes Rohan likes to watch them work, but when he is sleeping, Rohan doesn't like all the hammering and sawing.

My only regret this weekend was that I didn't watch the Penn State game with my good luck charm. He was sleeping and so couldn't help them beat Iowa.

I'll update you on my progress learning how to be a good parent at the end of next week. I had a short, but good week this week as the changer of diapers, feeder of bottles, and reader of stories.