We got this thing - the Mamaroo - for Jackson.  We hoped it would soothe him and make him generally less of an unhappy / whiny / crying baby.  The thing has five unique motions:

Car Ride

Kangaroo

Tree Swing

Rock-a-Bye

Ocean

It has variable speeds and plays various nature sound soothing noises:

Running Water

Crickets

Ocean waves

White Noise #1

White Noise #2

It retails for $200 on amazon.com.  Luckily we didn't have to pay for it - Kim's brother bought it for us.

Anyway, Jackson doesn't like it one bit.  

OBVIOUSLY.  

Its terrible that this guy had to take the hobojacket site down due to criticism.

How dare you exploit the homeless by giving them jackets!

Won't somebody please think of the children?!

My fantasy football season has been in do or die mode for the last month.  I started out 1-6 thanks to a too heavy reliance on Eagles - specifically Michael Vick and DeSean Jackson.  I kept Michael Vick from last year's team instead of Adrian Peterson.  That was a mistake, both in retrospect and when the decision was made.

Still, I'm not totally eliminated just yet.  If I win my last two games I have an outside chance.  My team feels like its on the upswing - I now do not have Vick, allergic to TDs Antonio Brown, or the horrible Michael Turner starting.  In their places I have young upstarts Colin Kaepernick, T.Y. Hilton and Marcel Reece.  I faced off against the best team in the league this week - Cracky.  I have a 10 point deficit going into tonight with one WR spot to go (while Cracky has fired all of his bullets).

The choice is Steve Smith (Carolina) or the aforementioned DeSean Jackson.

This one decision will likely decide my fantasy football fate.

Reasons to start DeSean Jackson over Steve Smith:

1)  Last name is Jackson
2)  Is an Eagle, and don't I have any loyalty towards the terrible Eagles?
3)  Has a reputation for showing up on prime time, and the two other Eagles prime time games this season (Monday and Sunday Night Football) resulted in his only two TDs on the year
4)  Cam Newton is a really inaccurate quarterback

Reasons to stay the hell away from DeSean Jackson:

1)  Has Nick Foles throwing to him, who is maybe more inaccurate than Cam Newton
2)  2 catches for 5 yards last week facing terrible Redskins
3)  Eagles have given up on the year
4)  Eagles will likely deliver final deathblow to my fantasy football season
5)  Don't need a TD to win - 100 yards will suffice and Steve Smith is more likely to do that

Whatever decision I make will be wrong.  Its just the way this season has been going.

One thing I've been doing recently is gambling on gambling.  Its happened a few times:

I still collect baseball and football cards.  That is basically legalized gambling for anyone of any age in any state.  You can buy a box of cards - and I use the term loosely because a box could mean a single pack of say 8 cards - at costs ranging from 25 bucks for low end brands to 500 dollars or more for the highest of the high end.  The high end stuff is Upper Deck's Exquisite, Topps' 5-Star, and Panini's National Treasures.  So buying a box of cards, in and of itself, is gambling.

I usually buy my cards at Blowoutcards.com.  They ran a couple interesting promotions recently.  They  gathered up 100 or so boxes of cards in their inventory.  Some were very expensive (and some are cases of multiple boxes).  Most were middle of the road or cheap.  You could buy a spot in a lottery for $150 or so dollars.  Probably 2/3 or 3/4 of the boxes were are at or below $150 retail price.  But 1/4 or so were above, significantly so.  The expected value of the spot in the lottery was probably around $170.

So I was gambling twice.  First, I don't even know what product I'm getting.  I could get Ultimate Fighting Championship cards for all I know (a couple of those boxes were listed).  Second, I don't know what will be in the product.  Awesome!

My first foray into the promotion was a big win.  Entry was $150, and I got a box of National Treasures (retail price of $570 or so).  WIN!  But the box was kind of a dud - best cards were an autographed rookie of Patrick Peterson and an autographed 1/1 card of Marques Colston.  Not so much of a win.

My second foray into the promotion was a loss.  Entry was $159, and I got a box of Just Minors Mystery Bats (retail value $60) which actually was a big box that contained a full sized autographed bat.  The player?  I ended up getting Craig Kimbrel, which wasn't bad.  No Jeter or Miguel Cabrera - who were potential autographed bat pulls - but at least I know the player and hey, I have a bat.

Second, I was at a street fair this past weekend.  In addition to the usual tables of junk and stands of random overpriced food, there was a NY lottery table with scratch offs.  Pure gambling!  They also had a wheel spinning and some dice.  If you bought $10 worth of tickets, you got a wheel spin (which could net you items like an umbrella, tote bag, or more scratch-offs).  If you bought $20 worth of tickets, you got a roll of the dice.  A 2,3,11 or 12 got you $15 in free scratch-offs.  4,5,9,10 got you $10 and 6,7,8 got you $5.  I of course bought $20 (happy birthday Kim!) and rolled the dice.  FIVE.  SUCCESS.  $30 of scratch offs for $20.

The scratch offs were a success too - $30 in winnings!

We run the shower when giving Jackson a bath in the sink in order to steam up the bathroom.  It clears up his nose a bit and keeps him warm.  But one weird thing I've noticed is that the bathtub starts to backup - the drain for some reason can't handle the water and starts filling.

But when I shower in the morning, the drain can handle the water.  Its the same amount of water coming down - so what's the difference?  The only variable is that I'm physically in the shower.  I guess I somehow absorb some of the water?  Or some proportion of the water hitting me turns into steam?  Weird.

For those of you who don't have children, you may think this article by Drew Magary at Deadspin re: feeding a baby is just hyperbole for shits and giggles.  But from my one month as a father, it is basically the truth.

I set up a 529 plan last night for Jackson.  It was pretty simple.  NY has a website and you just put in your information, your kid's information and then your bank info.  Easy enough!  And there are some state income tax benefits to making contributions - contributions are deductible up to $10k against state income tax - so that saves around $700 bucks.

I can't wait to do our taxes this year.  It will be such a mystery!  We have all these new deductions:

1)  Kid
2)  Mortgage
3)  Maintenance on Apartment
4)  529 Plan (state income tax deduction only)

Will it be enough for us get some money back from our federal return?  The last couple years of course we've been crushed.  Of course, I have no idea what is and isn't allowed under the alternative minimum tax.

My favorite Eagles headline of the year so far:

I've become quite adept at sucking snot out of Jackson's nose as a daddy vacuum of sorts.  I use this device - Baby Comfy Nose - and there is something strangely satisfying at getting a nasty booger out of his nose so he can breathe better.  My contributions to the parenting team are meaningful!

Jackson checked in yesterday at 8 lb 8 oz, which for 3 weeks old is solidly in the fifty percentile (I think, I had to eyeball some growth charts).  We didn't get a length measurement, which is just as well because that process causes him to scream and be generally angry for a little bit.

Hello everyone!

Daylight savings time was last night.  For most of you this was a joyous event where you got an extra hour of sleep.  For me, it was a painful occurrence which only served to extend the amount of time we have to deal with Jackson’s middle-of-the-night cluster feeding and general fussiness.  I just want the night to be over and suddenly its an hour longer!  COME ON. 

Jackson needs to be fed approximately every 2.5 hours.  Sometimes its 2 hours.  Sometimes its 3 hours.  Sometimes like tonight he cluster feeds and wants to be fed every hour.  The maximum is generally 3.5 hours if he's in a real deep sleep.  Those times are rare.

That being the case, we now live our lives in 2.5 hour increments.  Once he goes to sleep, what do we want to do with that time?  Take a nap with him?  Clean up the apartment?  Pay bills?  Eat dinner?  Whatever it is, you have - at most - 2.5 hours to do it before he requires more food.  You're tired, so the nap is an attractive option.  But you really need to clean up the apartment too because there are random burp rags and tissues strayed about, and the trash is getting stinkier and stinkier.  And you're hungry too!

2 hours.  It seems like a long time, but its really not at all.  And then he'll wake up after an hour anyway, ruining your grandiose plans.

I knew it was coming.  I fought it as long as I could, but it was inevitable.

Jackson pooped on my hand this morning when I was changing him.  Awful.  

At least he peed on Kim when we were giving him a bath last night.