Timeline of a Random Saturday as a Father

6:30 AM - Jackson begins whining in his room.  We hear this through the baby monitor.  I lay in bed hoping against all reason and past performance that he will go back to bed.  6:30 AM is actually not an unreasonable time for him to wake up.  He goes to bed at 8 PM and wakes up between 6 AM and 7 AM.  Still, I am greedy and hope that he will just fall back asleep.

6:31 AM - His whining intensifies and it is clear he is not going back to bed.  I get up and retrieve him from his room. He, of course, is standing in his crib, staring at the door, waiting for me to appear.  I wonder if he thinks I have some sort of super-hearing or baby telepathy.  I bring him into our room, where he unleashes a huge smile upon seeing Kim.  I go and heat up his morning bottle while Kim plays with him for a bit and changes his diaper.

6:45 AM - On the weekends, Kim and I each take one day where that person occupies Jackson in the morning until his first nap.  This enables the other person to catch up on their sleep.  Today is my day.  Kim thinks this arrangement is unfair given that she shoulders more of the morning load during the week, which is true, but it is the way things are.

I get his now-warm bottle, slap on a bib, and sit down on the sofa with him.  I pop the bottle in his mouth and turn on the TV.  Luckily, Married with Children re-runs usually are on FX at this ungodly hour.  This episode is a particularly good one, where Al is replaced on his softball team by a younger guy named Sven Hunkstrom. Marcy, acting as umpire, accidentally punches out Sven in the bottom of the ninth while making an out call, leaving Al to bat with the bases loaded and the New Market Mallers down by 3.  Amazingly, Al hits the grand slam, and declares himself retired from softball.  M . . . . V . . . . P!!!!!

6:50 AM - Jackson pushes away the bottle, which I'm fine with as I know he's going to take his morning dump soon.  He complies and I change a pretty nasty diaper. With that out of the way, I get the bottle back in and he finishes it.

7:00 AM - What to do now?  Today is the first day of the new Premier League season, so I turn on a preview show. I try to avoid putting kids shows on unless absolutely necessary.  Jackson starts playing with his toys, and I alternate between sitting on the sofa and watching him play, to joining him on the ground with the toys.  I also read a couple books to him, which he seems to enjoy.

7:45 AM - I'm getting hungry, so I try to leave Jackson in the living room while I make some oatmeal for myself.  Jackson will not stand for this, so he crawls into the kitchen within one minute of noticing that I am not in the living room.  Him being in the kitchen makes cooking 100% more difficult and dangerous, but still doable, and I finish making the oatmeal.

7:50 AM - As I am eating my oatmeal (with Jackson standing next to the chair I'm sitting in, tugging at me), I realize this is not optimal.  I should let Jackson eat while I'm eating.  So I put him in his eating chair and toss some dry cereal on it for him to go after.  This works reasonably well for the first 10 minutes.  Eventually, however, he grows bored and I have to pay more attention to him.  I feed him the cereal myself, and then when he gets really annoyed, I decide he can have the rest of my oatmeal.  This greatly pleases him.

8:30 AM - I have to go to the bathroom, and its not a number one.  This is a dilemma.  I distract Jackson with a toy and run to the bathroom, leaving the door open so I can hear if anything goes wrong.  Again, after a minute or so, Jackson realizes I'm gone and comes looking for me.  He finds me in a compromising position.  I hold onto him with one hand, do my best to finish my activity with the other, and get out of Dodge.  Jackson is unfazed or potentially scarred for life.  One or the other.

9:15 AM - Jackson is starting to get whiny and tired.  I decide it is nap-nap time.  Jackson disagrees and starts whining once I put him in the crib.  Eventually he relents and goes to sleep.  This is my cue to go back to bed myself.  Kim gets up and starts getting herself going.

11:00 AM - Kim wakes me up and informs me that I need to shower.  I say Jackson is still napping so this is premature.  She says we're leaving for the Central Park Zoo as soon as Jackson wakes up, so I better shower.  Fine I wake up and shower.

11:15 AM - Jackson apparently woke up while I was showering.  Maybe because of the noise of me showering?  We'll never know.  But we're both ready at the same time so off we go to the park

12:00 PM - As Kim has put it many times, the Central Park Zoo "sucks."  But, it has one thing that we need to test Jackson with - a petting zoo.  We're considering having a petting zoo for his first birthday party, and if he is going to freak out with animals, we obviously can't have it.  We are already 99% sure that he won't freak out - he has already chased a dog around and is generally fearless - but better safe than sorry.

12:15 PM - We get into the petting zoo area, which is extremely crowded.  Animals to pet and feed include a huge black cow, sheep, an alpaca, goats, and pigs (can only feed the pigs).  Jackson isn't quite as aggressive with these larger animals, but he still is trying to touch them, which is good.  Kim buys some of the feed and hands it to me.  Jackson sees the animals eating out of my hand and reaches for the food.  I give him some.  Jackson tries to eat it himself.  Wrong lesson Jackson.  I stop him and, with our mission accomplished, we go to eat lunch in the park.

12:30 PM - We found a line of largely empty benches just outside the zoo.  Kim brought some turkey and brie sandwiches (and some turkey and bread for Jackson).  Jackson spit out the turkey and ate the bread.  Oh well.  A street performer guy started up an act for kids and then asked everyone for a minimum of $5.  We gave zero.  Jackson wasn't even watching it.

1:00 PM - We headed back into the zoo to see the other non-pettable animals.  There was a single polar bear sleeping, and a snow leopard, also sleeping.  Jackson was more amused by seeing some ducks through some glass.  The zoo was incredibly hilly, seemingly uphill the entire way.  Pushing a stroller through that kind of sucked.  We didn't stay too long and started our trip home.

1:45 PM - Kim wanted to stop at Lady M Confections, which is this famous pie / cake place that we've passed by before.  We headed up to 78th street and made our way in.  I got a piece of strawberry cake while Kim got the signature cake that consists of like 20 layers of crepes.  I don't generally go for sweets, and at $7.50 a slice it is super expensive, but it was well worth it.  Very delicious.

1:50 PM - Leaving Lady M Confections, I notice that Jackson appears ready to go to sleep.  The last time this happened (him napping on in the stroller on the way home), he was rested enough to fight off his afternoon nap, making him cranky for the rest of the day. I decided this wasn't going to happen again.  I carried him home, which kept him alert as he was constantly looking around.

2:45 PM - Kim gives Jackson a small afternoon bottle, and I put Jackson down for his nap.  He fights it but can't defeat my cunning strategy of not letting him nap in the stroller.  We win!  I decide to do a little work while he naps.

4:15 PM - Jackson wakes up.  I'm still in the midst of doing some work, so Kim occupies him, and then takes him for a walk to Duane Reade and to the park.

5:45 PM - We go to dinner at Wa Jeal, an Upper East Side Chinese restaurant.  Kim had been here before and thought it was good.  She also was in the mood for peking duck.  We get there and get the ONE highchair they have.  Good luck for us.  Bad luck for the family that came in 15 minutes later.  Too bad!

6:00 PM - Kim orders some steamed pork buns for us, and potentially for Jackson.  Instead, Jackson eats them like he's never eaten anything else in his 10 months on earth, just shoveling pieces of pork bun into his mouth as fast as he can.  It looks like we have never fed him before.  To his credit, he has good taste - I usually don't go for steamed pork buns - but these were the best I've ever had.

6:30 PM - Peking duck arrives.  Jackson decides he likes peking duck.

7:00 PM - We pay the bill, tipping heavily, because of the usual mess on the floor from Jackson.  There is another unheralded cost of having a child - when you go out with him - you tip 10% more because of all the food on the floor.  It adds up.

7:30 PM - I give Jackson his bath, brush his two teeth, and hand him off to Kim for dressing, assorted lotions, and his nighttime bottle.  Kim gets him in bed and our Saturday night begins!

8:15 PM - I make Jackson's bottles for the next day.

8:45 PM - We pop in a movie that Kim rented from the Redbox.  The movie?  Olympus Has Fallen.  We've gone through pretty much every other movie worth seeing (and some not worth seeing) in that Redbox.  Result?  Met expectations.  Gerard Butler kills all the bad guys.  There were some unexpectedly graphic deaths in the movie too. No glaring plot holes.   It wasn't a terrible movie.

10:30 PM - I finish the last of the Bud Light Platinums that I inexplicably bought on Friday.  Result?  Met expectations.  Ten bucks for a six pack of Bud Light, however many times it is filtered, is a lot of money.  But it tasted pretty decent.  I don't think I'll buy it again though.

11:45 PM - After putzing around on the internet, time to sleep.  I used to go to bed after 1 on a weekday!  This is what we've come to.  Jackson will be up early, as usual.  At least the next morning wasn't my responsibility.

I don't understand why Ruben Amaro (Phillies GM) just fired Charlie Manuel.

The Phillies have sure sucked this year.  But why put it on the manager?  Its not his fault that the team committed 1/8 of its payroll ($20 million a year) to Ryan Howard, a guy who anyone with any baseball sense could have predicted would not be worth paying at 1/8 of his salary.  Its not his fault that Halladay's arm fell off.  Nor is it his fault that the bullpen acquisitions have failed miserably.  Or that Michael Young sucks.  In fact, all of these issues (except Halladay I guess) are on the Phillies GM, not Uncle Charlie.

Manuel looked old and folksy, and sure talked like it, but his appearance and demeanor betrayed a solid understanding of the current state of the game.  He didn't call for many intentional walks or sacrifice bunts.  The Phillies stolen base rate was over 80%.  He exploited platoon advantages when he could (see Mayberry, John).  He didn't make any glaringly dumb decisions that would become fodder for baseball analysts.  In short, he was everything I wanted in a manager (other than someone gutsy enough to pinch hit for Ryan Howard in meaningful late-inning situations).

In 2008 he managed the Phillies to what is likely the only world championship I'll see out of a Philadelphia area team.  I don't think he was necessarily responsible for it - obviously Utley, that version of Howard, Werth and the rest of the players were the driving forces.  But Manuel didn't get in their way, and presumably he put them in position to succeed.  The night the Phillies won game 5 of the World Series - Wednesday, October 29, 2008 - is one of the happiest I've had in my life.

I'll miss him in the dugout.

Kim rented a random movie last week. "Mud." She said she just picked anything because Jackson was going crazy.

But the truth came out when I read a description of the movie. One of the characters in the movie is named "Neckbone." Neckbone! What a great name!

The movie itself was okay - but not sure about the 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Kim and I were trying to decide on a movie for Saturday night. I was in the mood for a comedy. Either 2 Guns (who doesn't like Denzel?) or This is the End (heard this was surprisingly funny). Kim was not on board and suggested Fruitvale Station. She said she heard good things about it. I had only seen some posters for it in the subway and had no idea of the underlying story. I did a quick check on Rotten Tomatoes and it was like 94%. Geez that's a high number. Kim declared the debate over and that we were going to see Fruitvale Station.

Turns out, Fruitvale Station is not a comedy. Quite the opposite. Its the saddest movie I've seen in a few years.

The movie is about Oscar Grant, a guy who was in jail for dealing drugs, but then gets out and tries to get his life together. He tries to be a good father to his daughter, and a good boyfriend to his daugther's mother. But he gets fired from his job in a supermarket. He's short on cash, and considers selling drugs to cover some expenses, but ultimately dumps the drugs in the ocean and decides he will figure out some other way to make ends meet.

One thing I did like about the movie's portrayal of Grant is that he is not some purely angelic individual. While he is trying to turn his life around, he's not flawless. He threatens the manager with bodily harm after being canned for being late; he lies to his mom about his drinking; he lies to his girlfriend; he is maybe a bit too friendly to other women, despite already being caught cheating once. Its not necessary anyway, given what goes down.

And what goes down is this: after a night of partying in SF with some friends on New Year's Eve, they take the BART (train) back to wherever they live. But a series of unfortunate coincidences happen on the train, and a fight breaks out. They get semi-arrested after getting off the train, things escalate, and a BART cop shoots Grant while he is handcuffed. The cop claimed he thought he had his taser pulled, not his gun.

And the movie abruptly ends when Grant passes away in the hospital the next morning. I say abruptly because you think the movie has around a half hour left when this happens. You expect to see public outcry, trial of the police officer, etc. But you don't. Instead you get a few seconds of footage of some protests, and then some text about the aftermath. Done!

The film itself seemed like it was trying to be a bit too artsy for me. Ending shots of scenes would just linger on an escalator or train. I kind of got dizzy at one point when a cameraman on foot followed Grant through he daycare for like 2 minutes. It was enough to be noticeable.

Of course, it was a good movie. I don't know if it was 94% good (or Pacific Rim good) but it was one of those movies that will probably win some awards. It was certainly not a comedy though. Thanks Kim.

Last week was Jackson's 9 month checkup with the pediatrician. Kim told me this would involve taking blood, so I had to be there. Kim promised me that the experience would be awful. It was.

The first part of the visit was fine. The nurse did height and weight measurements (all good), and the doctor came in and did some other things. Check his heartbeat. Look in his ears and nose. Tell us to stop giving him allergy medication. She then told us to go into the next room for the blood taking. We brought him into the room, a little unsure of the process. Kim asked the nurse if they were going to strap him down. No. One of us has to hold him. The job went to me.

I sat down in a chair with Jackson on my lap. Kim saw 4 empty vials sitting on the table. She asked, "Are you taking all four of those vials?!" The nurse said yes, but they wouldn't be filled up all the way. Seemed like a lot of blood. The nurse turned towards me. She looked at Jackson's left forearm for a vein. I made a passing comment about his chubby forearms, and she said that they don't like chubby forearms. Bah.

She played with his left forearm for a bit, and then his right one. She decided to go for the left. She told me to hold his right hand against his chest and his left hand out. She wrapped the rubber thing around his upper arm (which did not start Jackson's crying, against our expectations). Then the nurse jammed the needle in.

This set Jackson off. He started wailing and struggling to get away.

I did my best to not let him move, but he is surprisingly strong for a 20 pound human being. Another nurse used a bubble gun to shoot bubbles in the air behind the nurse. Obviously, this had no effect on the crying. I looked down. No blood was coming out. The nurse wiggled the needle in his arm, trying to find the vein. Then she would remove it slightly and push it back in. Then more wiggling. This continued for no less than THREE minutes. T

Three minutes may not seem like a lot, but when your kid is screaming and struggling in your arms, it is an eternity. The bubbles were not working to distract him. Kim was doing her best to tell him (and herself) it was okay. He was not convinced. He balled the whole time.

In the middle of this, the nurse asked us if he was dehydrated. Our response: 1) Would that even matter? You can't find the vein. His blood is obviously running because he is alive. 2) No, he's not dehydrated, he's had a lot of formula and water all day today. Okay, we only said the second. But we should have said the first too. The nurse gave up. Jackson sort of calmed down.

We asked what was going to happen now. The nurse said she'd try again. Kim asked - the other arm? She said yes, the other arm. After a minute or two she tried again. Jackson started going berserk again. And again, she couldn't find the vein. The nurse said - look - he's crying but no tears are coming out. He must be dehydrated! Ummm, that's specious reasoning. I think no tears are coming out because he's exhausted his tears from crying hysterically for the last five minutes.

And right when Kim was about to tell them to stop, that we'll do it next time (or maybe never), the nurse found the vein. FINALLY. She filled up the four vials (which still took an obnoxious amount of time) and took out the needle. Jackson, again, sort of calmed down. She put on some band-aids and we were on our way. An awful, awful experience.

And the results of the test? He's allergic to almost EVERYTHING. GREAT VISIT.

EDIT: After a visit to the allergist, he is only really allergic to peanuts and eggs. Not EVERYTHING.

Because our internet / cable provider can't get their act straight, our internet has been down all day. This wouldn't normally be a problem, except that I got called into an office at 5 PM yesterday with some urgent work that needs to be done today and tomorrow. My solution? Go to the nearest NYC Public Library branch and work away. I showed up at 9:55 AM this morning, assuming they would open at 10. I was right. There was one other person waiting, an older man who seemed very excited for the opening. Eventually 10 AM came and we hustled inside. I found a bank of computers upstairs. I sat down at one and a library worker promptly asked if I had an appointment. I said no, and he directed me to a computer at the end of the row. I typed in my library card ID and pin (miracle I remembered, I haven't used the card in probably three years) and got a receipt for 45 minutes of time. My reservation was next to the guy who was waiting with me outside at 10 AM. If you watch Ray Donovan, you saw Ray's father (Jon Voight) go to a public library, pay some kid to leave the computer, and then promptly look up music videos that had attractive black women dancing. He played the music really loud and had a grand old time. This was not far off from what the guy next to me was doing (although he wore headphones). He started out innocently enough by watching youtube videos of cats doing funny things. He laughed out loud a lot. Then he progressed to watching some other video of a girl dancing extremely seductively with a guy. I think he watched that one twice. Next up were a lot of music videos with not-unattractive women dancing, including a Pitbull video. The rest of his time was spent playing Tetris. Suffice to say, it was difficult to concentrate on my work. My 45 minutes went pretty quick and I walked out of the library. With the internet still not working at home, and Jackson back down for another nap, I had a better idea. I'd bring my laptop and use the free unsecured wi-fi. I'm not the only one - there are so many people here using laptops it hard to find a seat. The guy next to me is playing World of Warcraft. The other people seem to be more interested in academic pursuits. But the wi-fi is free and pretty fast. I hope I'm not getting identity thefted right now though.

Kim and Evan's Day Off

Kim and I found out earlier this week that Jackson's daycare, while closed for July 4th, was open July 5th.  What we pay them is independent of whether we use the day. Hell, we have to pay them for the last week of July when they are on vacation the ENTIRE WEEK.  Kim asked if we should be good parents and take Jackson home with us on the 5th, since neither of us have to work.  After about two seconds of thinking we decided he would go to daycare and this Friday would be Kim and Evan's Day Off.

I dropped Jackson off this morning and went on a short jog afterwards.  Exercise!  It didn't last long due to the 90 degree heat.  Kim decided to take a nap while I tried to make sure that I don't keel over when I'm 40.  I got back, showered (which was largely useless since the AC was broken in our building yesterday and today), and we headed off to a shady "Spa" that is down the block from our apartment.

We originally wanted to get massages at a more reputable place.  But Bliss is very expensive, and the other place Kim found ($80 an hour) refused to pick up their phone on Wednesday.  So, while walking around yesterday to avoid our stifling apartment, we walked by the shady spa that I walk past every morning when I drop Jackson off for daycare.  It looks extremely suspicious from the outside:

But a random person we saw outside recommended it to us as very good but pretty bare bones.  Good enough for us!  We went there this morning and it met expectations.  It was very bare bones, pretty shady on the inside, but provided a good solid massage at a very affordable price.  $50 an hour!  A good experience.  

After that, we had a reservation for lunch at Nomad.  Nomad is known for their special roast chicken for two.  

The skin is stuffed with a foie gras stuffing and there is some black truffle used in some way.  It was amazing, served with some cheesy potato thing made with a lot of CO2, and also some asparagus and some other potato thing.  At 79 dollars it seems like a steal.  We also got the tagliatelle, which was the best crab pasta concoction I've ever had. I'd return in a heartbeat.  

After that awesome lunch, we went bowling.  It was the first time we've been bowling since Jackson was born.  I was pretty high variance, having the low and high score out of the three of us (James joined us).  Regardless, it was nice to get back out there.  

And now we're back at our place (with the AC fixed), and Jackson is kind of cranky for some reason.  At least we had a good 8 hours out and about.