The Oscar's Share

Most everyone was happy when Aurora, now 10 months old, was born. Bridget and I were thrilled. Annabelle was excited and curious. Grandparents were overjoyed.

Oscar was not.

And really, it's tough to blame him. Once the focus of all our love and attention, our now 10-year-old Australian Shepherd hasn't had the best few years. For example, before Annabelle came along, he used to sleep in bed with us, claiming way too much space than a 45-pound animal needs. But when we woke up, we laughed, patted him on the head, and got him a treat anyway because he was "adorably incorrigible."

Now he sleeps somewhere in the house -- a chair, maybe, or a couch. Maybe the floor? Honestly, I'm not sure. We have babies, ya know?

Oscar has fallen down, down, down the totem pole, and it's really no one's fault. To think we could shower a dog with attention when two babies came into our house just wasn't realistic. Sure, we give him as much love as we can. He has a Christmas stocking, gets lots of exercise in our backyard, and eats, for some reason, organic dog food. (Really, Bridget?) But we also yell at him when he barks too loud, push him out of the way when he spends too much time sniffing one of his sisters, and wish he didn't smell so bad all of the time.

Sigh.

But, BUT, there is one thing that brings joy to Oscar's heart and is pretty darn convenient for us, too. I call it The Oscar's Share.

The Oscar's Share? In the world of wine and spirits, the angel's share, you may know, is the portion of the drink that is lost to evaporation during aging in oak barrels. (It is similar to the Devil's cut.) The Oscar's Share is the non-stop, often delicious supply of food scraps that find their way into Oscar's bowl (and, subsequently, his belly) because little girls aren't great at finishing their meals. Mostly, Oscar eats:

• Cheerios (so many Cheerios)
• Baby puffs
• Fruit, including strawberries, blueberries, oranges, apples (no, never grapes)
• Cucumbers
• Chicken nuggets
• Bagels
• Raviolis
• Macaroni & cheese
• Rice cakes with peanut butter

Other stuff, too, but that's Oscar's core people-food diet. (He hates celery, though. That's the one thing he won't eat.) And he always takes care of spills at a moment's notice. Simply yell "Oscar!" and he sprints into the room, waiting anxiously to see what treasure awaits. He gets a snack and we get clean(er) floors. Win-win. 

Someday, when the girls start getting a little older, I hope I can give Oscar more attention. I hope we take lots of walks in the woods and I learn to love the smell of wet dog again. Maybe he'll even sleep on the bed again someday. The truth is he deserves more than The Oscar's Share. 

Until then, though, I'd say he still has a pretty good life. And, my God, just so many Cheerios. 

Our 88 Minutes of Morning Chaos

Probably the worst part, as a human being, is saying "good job, buddy" to Oscar while I pick up his pungent poop as he kicks dirt in my face. There are other bad parts, of course, but that's probably the bottom.

How's your weekday morning routine? Stressful? Funny? Chaotic? I'm betting, like us, maybe a little of all three.

Ours typically gets going, for everyone, around 6:30, so that's where I'll start. I figure sharing this average Tuesday morning might help you, a reader, generate some improvement ideas for your routines. Far more likely, you'll compare yourself and feel much better about the way you do things.

6:30: With my eight-minute shower behind me, I'm dressed and ready for work. I'll get there 150 minutes from now. I pick Aurora out of her bed, snuggle her (the calmest moment of the next 88 minutes), and bring her to our bed so Bridget can feed her.

6:33: A light goes on across the hall. Annabelle is awake. Someday, she will hop out of bed and efficiently get herself downstairs. Now, mostly, as depicted in the photo above, she puts stuffed polar bears on her head and smiles.

6:37: Annabelle refuses to wear the outfit we chose together last night. "Okay then, this one or this one?," I ask, using the "choice" technique that has served us well as parents. "Neither." She smiles, realizing how smart she is. Then she cries because she only wants to wear tights, not pants. The only clean pair is too small, so we squeeze her into those. My blood pressure starts rising, but, thankfully she dresses pretty quickly.

6:47: Annabelle and I finally finish her trio of morning bathroom duties -- peeing, washing her hands, and brushing her teeth. (Did I skip something? No. I did not. This, for some ungodly reason, takes like 10 damn minutes. "Annabelle! Just use the hand towel right here!" Annabelle: "But my hands are really wet. I need the big towel over there." Adorable. Infuriating.)

6:48: Annabelle and I walk downstairs to get her breakfast. The conversation is the same every day: "Daniel Tiger or Doc McStuffins?" "Waffles or pancakes?" Two minutes later, she's eating a waffle and watching Daniel Tiger. Some days, she gets a full episode, about 25 minutes. Other days, if we're really behind, she gets a half episode. Choosing the episode takes a minute or two, which we don't have.

6:50: I sprint up the stairs to take over for Bridget, who is changing Aurora. This is challenging because Aurora won't stay still. Bridget hops in the shower, while I put Aurora in something that matches only if you squint really hard. Whatever.

6:53: I bring Aurora downstairs and plop her in her highchair to play with some toys. Some days, I sprinkle Cheerios in front of her. Other days, I forget. "Annabelle, eat your waffles, hun."

6:55: I start emptying the dishwasher. "Annabelle! Please eat your waffles!"

6:59: Eyeing the clock, I see we have 21 minutes until we have to leave. Leaving around 7:20 gets us to daycare on time, allows me to catch my train to work, and makes traffic somewhat bearable for Bridget. I sprint (never just run or jog) downstairs to get a couple frozen milks for Aurora's lunch and start defrosting them.

7:01: "Annabelle!! Waffles!! Crackers and sun butter for lunch?" She nods, never looking away from her show. (Yes, we'd prefer she read in the morning. Yes, we'd prefer she not stare at TV. But we also live in the real world, so take your judging eyes elsewhere.)

7:10: After making lunches and getting bottles together, I enjoy the aforementioned Oscar experience. I ask Annabelle to watch her sister while Dad runs outside for a couple minutes. Not sure if this is legal.

7:15: Annabelle's episode ends. "Okay, please turn it off, Annabelle. Please put on your coat and shoes." (I'll say this at least six more times until she actually does it.) Together, Bridget and I gather the lunches, ignored babies, and our own bags. We glance at the whiteboard in the kitchen that we may or may not have updated the night before. We have everything.

7:17: Annabelle still hasn't put on her coat. I race back into the kitchen to get water for Oscar and lock the trash so he won't get into it and eat garbage all day. I pat him on the head and tell him we'll "be right back."

7:20: With bags dangling from every available appendage, we limp-sprint out the door. Because it's winter in New England, we see there is ice on the cars. Crap, I think. I'm going to miss my train. 

7:24: We all leave the house (Bridget goes left and I go right) and I cross my frozen fingers that people let me into the line of traffic and we hit all the green lights.

7:33: Annabelle, Aurora, and I arrive at daycare. I drop off Annabelle (a quick hug and a kiss because, mercifully, she's good at drop offs now) and run across the center to drop off Aurora. I take my shoes off because it's a no-shoe zone. I plop Aurora on the floor or hand her to a smiling teacher, remind them that she needs X or Y, and kiss her on the head.

7:43: I check-in the girls on the computer system at daycare and sprint to my car. "Siri, call my wife!"

7:55: After chatting with Bridget about the morning, the issue du jour, the traffic, and how we can try to get out of the house earlier tomorrow (spoiler alert: we won't), I park at the train station and sprint, for the fifth time this morning, to the waiting train.

7:58: I grab a seat, look at the ceiling, and wonder if this is the train ride home get ready to face the day with energy, enthusiasm, and passion ...

Reconnecting with My Old Friend, Sleep

See that face up there? That big smile. Those impossible-to-resist-squeezing cheeks. Those two little teeth coming up from the bottom. Adorable, right? Thanks to my wife, we make cute babies and Aurora Quinn is in an especially fetching stage.

She's also entering a much more important stage: the one where she actually sleeps.

In her first 10 months of life, Aurora has been, to put it simply, a very lousy sleeper. On a scale from 1 - 10, she's been maybe a "3." Maybe. If we're counting napping, she goes up to a "4," but napping isn't nearly as important as the overnight hours.

She's always gone down pretty well at night, but staying down has been the problem. On good nights, she'd wake up one or two times (usually at 11 PM and then 3 AM) and on bad nights, well, we don't talk about bad nights. Suffice it to say that I screamed into some couch pillows on four separate occasions. (If you're a parent, you can relate; if you aren't a parent, you are either not reading this or probably taking a nap or doing something fun with all of your disposable income.)

We weren't ready for Aurora to be a bad sleeper, unfortunately, because Annabelle had been so good. She started sleeping through the night at six weeks and was a strong sleeper until the horrendous 18-month regression. The second child, everyone says, is easier. Well that's crap.

We did all the stuff you're supposed to do with babies, this being our second rodeo and all. We had a regular routine, and tried magic suits, sleep sacks, pacifiers, and anything else that would keep our sweet little angel down for more than three goddamn hours in a row. No luck. Bridget and I eventually developed a system where she would take wake-ups before 2 AM and I'd take them after. We both got up almost every night for weeks, then months. I woke up on the couch in the basement -- with Aurora tucked into a quickly shrinking Rock 'n Play Sleeper -- far more often than I woke up on my bed.

"It has to get better at some point, right?" I'd ask most mornings.

"Yes, someday," said my bleary-eyed beauty.

Parents who suffer from sleep deprivation, I heard once, fall into one of three categories: 1, This is fine; 2, This is tough, but bearable; 3, This is an unimaginable hell. We were firmly in 2, I think, but I felt like 3 on more workdays than I'd like to admit.

It's comforting that they're studying sleep deprivation in Dads now because it's tough. The worst part, for me, was that for days, weeks, and sometimes months on end, there was no light at the end of the tunnel. When we went to bed at night, we knew we were getting up very soon.

And then, this week, as 2016 turned into 2017, something happened. Sure, we'd had a few nights of success (6- or 7-hour stretches), but somehow, some way, the clouds parted and the light of good sleep has shined on our little one. She sleeps from 7:30(ish) - 6(ish) and we feel like we're walking on air.

As parents, we know nothing lasts forever. Bad phases are somewhere on the horizon. Heck, even last night wasn't great. But for now, goodness, would you look at that face ...

Because Someday She Won't Let Me ...

Annabelle, Aurora, and I walked to the bakery in the center of Reading last Wednesday. We do that most Wednesdays, the weekday I had off for a lot of 2016 thanks to my company's progressive paternity leave policy. And every Wednesday, we have a similar conversation about the walk to the bakery.

Me: "Annabelle, do you want to go in the stroller?"

Annabelle: "No."

Me: "Do you want to walk on your own?"

Annabelle: "No. I wanna go on ya head."

Me: "The stroller would make it much easier. Are you sure you don't want to get in there? It'll make us faster."

Annabelle: "I wanna go on ya head, Daddy!"

And on my head she goes. Well, on my shoulders, to be specific. And we walk the mile and change into town that way, with Annabelle bouncing around on my shoulders as I maneuver the sizable stroller through the town streets. Annabelle gets down, selects her cookies (or cupcake or, sometimes, on special occasions, both), eats said sugary treat, and then hops back on my head for the mile-and-change walk home. She gets off my head, climbs up the stairs, sometimes says, "My legs are so tired," laughs, and goes into our house.

And I let out a sigh of relief. My neck, almost always, hurts a bit afterwards. (It is, after all, a 35-pound weight jostling around on my neck for about 45 minutes.) My back is a little sore because I have to duck several times so Annabelle won't hit her head. There are several hills. On the way home, I'm usually balancing an iced coffee for Bridget, too, just to add a little icing to my sympathy cake.

Why do I do it? Bridget asks while I rub my neck after every walk. "Just have her sit in the carriage or walk ..."

My answer: Because someday she won't let me.

That may seem silly, but I think about it all the time. Annabelle is already 3 and has grown out of lots of things. She hasn't napped on my chest in years, rarely sits on anyone's lap, and actually kicks us out of her bed after we read her bedtime stories now.

So when she lets me do things, even things I don't necessarily like, I try to remind myself to enjoy every minute of them.

"Yes, I'll watch that episode of Doc McStuffins with you for the 83rd time ..."
"That puzzle again? Sure, of course ..."
"Okay, six more big hugs even though it's 45 minutes past your bedtime ..."

Because someday she won't let me. She won't let me watch TV with her. She won't want to do puzzles with me. She won't want me to tuck her in.

It makes me sad, but it's reality. It's part of parenting.

After more than three years of this parenting thing, I've learned that there are dizzying highs and gut-wrenching lows. There are joyful hours, frustrating minutes, and infuriating moments. And everything changes. Constantly. But, looking back, oddly enough, the moments that seem the worst at the time are often the memories that stick with you and make you smile. The diaper blowout that went, literally, everywhere. The tantrum in front of the post office. The dinner of four Cheez-Its, half a yogurt, and two candy canes.

Will my neck hurt for a while after our "walks"? Will my back be sore? Will my shoulders ache? Of course. So what? Hop on up, Annabelle. It's time to go to the bakery. And let's get moving because time is catching up to us ...