AJ, office buddy

One thing about working at home, you don’t have so many distractions. But sometimes, the wife has to go do something on the farm while she also has AJ through the weekdays (while Daughter Dearest is teaching). So that means AJ comes upstairs on occasion, to hang out with Granddad while he’s working.

AJ has figured out the whole office deal from watching me. The “console” space heater I used to keep my legs warm through the winter became her “desk,” and she has a stool for a chair.

I haven’t even finished breakfast,
and I have to answer this email!

Sometimes, she takes the call.

Hello. Yes, this is Tech Support.

And if I get out of my chair, for more than a second, guess what happens?

You call that information architecture? Jeez. Here, let me fix it.

The school year wraps up this week. That means DD will be home, and AJ won’t be around. But Charlie will likely be my substitute office buddy through the summer.

Who are your office buddies? Comments are open—give us some links!

Up too soon

Image source: openclipart.org

As Daughter Dearest has to be at school at way-too-early a.m., she drops AJ off at our place through the week. Wife gets the baby, she squawks on and off—sometimes waking me up, sometimes I integrate the noise into my morning dreams.

So the wife arbitrarily decided that I would get AJ on Friday not-quite-mornings. I didn't agree to that, or anything else, but whatever. Not that I would have said no if I’d been consulted about AJ in the morning, but nobody bothered to ask.

Thus, her 6 a.m. alarm went off. Some mornings, she’s in the living room recliner (having been put to sleep by the Hallmark Channel). Some mornings, she fumbles for the phone in our bed. And… on occasion, the phone goes off in the bathroom, while she’s in the living room, and I have to silence the mofo and give it to her.

But this morning, she was in bed, with her phone within easy reach. After a few minutes, she said, “AJ will be here any minute.”

Dropping plenty of F-bombs, I threw on a pair of long johns and a T-shirt, and staggered into the living room as I saw headlights drift by the window. I flipped on lights and got to the door in time for DD to bring Granddaughter Dearest in.

After Mama, AJ’s favorite person is Grandmom (but not by much). Granddad is down in the long tail, especially at 6-effing a.m. So when DD handed her over to Granddad, she started howling. DD’s hasty exit did nothing to settle the situation… fortunately, I did have a bottle handy. After some continued howling, she decided to chow down on the milk.

But it was too late. Rosie, aka Doofus, aka Stupidog, decided something was WRONG and hustled down the hall to jump on the wife. Charlie, who had staggered into our room some time during the night (which is unfortunately typical), was already up and around (“Hi, AJ! Hiiiiiiii!”). So wife got to sleep in for maybe 5 or 10 minutes. AJ immediately started howling again when Grandmom didn’t get her right away, but she was busy getting breakfast ready for both AJ and Charlie.

Wife turned on my coffee maker, but I opted to flop back into bed once she had AJ. I could always reheat my joe in the microwave, after all, and that’s what I did. Then I made espresso, and that got me through the rest of the morning.

To be honest, I hope that’s the last 6 a.m. wakeup call for me. I’ve never been a morning person.

The great flopover

Today began the way it often does through the week: wife putting AJ next to me on the bed while she gets Mason on the bus. Today, AJ seemed anxious to be self-propelled; she squirmed and grunted on the bed until I put her on my chest. She’s 3 months old now, and even crawling is another entire lifetime away. It has to be frustrating, to be a curious rugrat and have to depend on the big stupid giants to figure out what you want to do or where to go.

I was working at home today, so I took Charlie to daycare and picked up some breakfast on the way back while the wife tried to keep AJ content. They hung out most of the morning, because I had a call I needed to be on from 10 to 11:30… but then it was lunch break. I took AJ, and let the wife scarf her egg and cheese croissant.

As I’ve said before, AJ is a lot like Mason—she likes to be walked around. I can also keep her occupied for a little while by turning on the ceiling fan in the bedroom; she loves watching it go 'round and 'round. But I walked her around a little more, and she zorched out. I laid her in the bassinet (on her tummy) and went back to work.

About half an hour later, the wife called down the hall: “Did you lay her on her back?”

“No,” I replied.

“Then she rolled over!”

I had to text Daughter Dearest with the news. I missed it :(, she replied. Get video!

Getting video was easier said than done, because AJ only flipped onto her back (she did it twice through the day) after waking up. So when DD came to pick her up, she really wanted that video…

(I cut out a lot of DD encouraging the flopover in a very squeaky voice.)

BTW, don’t suggest to DD that her laying on the bed made it easier for AJ to roll over.

Weekend AJ blogging

Daughter Dearest’s maternity leave ran out last week, which meant she went grumbling back to work on Monday. And that meant AJ was at the manor through the day until she got home.

She doesn't mind having her @$$ in a sling!

AJ is definitely her mother’s daughter. DD liked to be held close, so does AJ. The difference is, DD's happy place was rocking. AJ is like Mason; she likes to be carried around. Wife asked me to work at home so she could deal with a couple of things without having to listen to AJ howling to be picked up. After a couple tries, we found a good position for her in my old sling, and I had both hands free for working (and taking a selfie). Of the three babies who have spent time in that sling, she’s the earliest adopter… Mason and Charlie were both about 3 months old when they got comfortable in it. She also sat in on her first two conference calls, and started crying when someone said the schedule had to slip (so she’s already qualified to be a Product Line Manager!).

She’ll sleep about half the day, and we have a little bed for her. “Safe Sleep” notwithstanding, she likes to sleep on her side more than her back (which is what Charlie preferred as well).

She's like 7 weeks old now, growing quickly and gobbling prodigious amounts of formula. When she’s hungry, everyone knows it. Charlie started sympathy-crying at one point.

She looks a lot more like Daughter Dearest now, and the eyebrow ridges and lack of hair make her look a lot like my youngest bro Solar. He replied (paraphrased), “Yup, we’re both gorgeous.”

Both of us enjoy our baby time, and Charlie likes being around her as well (although we have to make sure he doesn’t hug too hard). She’s not a boarder, she doesn’t live here, but she’s aboard.

Mason got a turn…

I asked Mason what he thought of AJ after he had a chance to hold her.

“Small, warm… and her nose is really tiny.”

Tiny nose! Grainy low-light pic!

Speaking of AJ, she’s gobbling down formula (and increasing amounts of what DD is producing) very well. She’s still under a pretty strict germ protocol—anyone who holds her has to wash thoroughly first. We didn’t have those precautions for preemie DD in 1989, let alone preemie me in 1958, but back then we didn’t have MRSA, flesh-eating bacteria, and all those other fun things we have today. [PEOPLE: TAKE ALL YOUR %$@!%&* ANTIBIOTICS. FINISH THE BOTTLE. DOESN’T MATTER IF YOU’RE FEELING BETTER.]


Mason also reached a milestone of sorts yesterday: he got to crawl into the storage space under the stairs and send out boxes of Christmas decorations. Part of it was that he really wanted to do it, part of it was incoming rain paining my titanium knee. He wore out before the last five or six boxes, but all of those needed inspection anyway. I scooched in, identified what needed to come out (including a kitchen appliance the wife bought who-knows-when and never used), and what could stay.

“I don’t know if this still works,” she said about one random decoration.

“We should purge this stuff, then,” I suggested. She seemed amenable to the idea, which is good. The fewer boxes we have to retrieve (and put away), the better.. I’m sure one of the local thrift stores would be happy to get some seasonal decorations. Mason already has a fever-dream of turning that space into a fort. Unfortunately for him, there aren’t a lot of other good places for storing seasonal items around FAR Manor. The small outbuilding (a/k/a Studio FAR), that I wanted to use as an office/retreat, is pretty well packed with junk. Maybe I should return to my idea of bending some of the pine trees out back into a really big yurt; it would at least keep him (and Sizzle’s kids) occupied.

It’s definitely the most wonderful time (to drink beer).

Charlie meets AJ

I’ll let the pics do the talking…

Granddaughter Dearest!

Say hi to AJ, born Saturday afternoon around 4:30pm local time.

Keep me covered!

She was a month early, extending our streak to three generations. I was a month early, so was Daughter Dearest, and now AJ… all for different reasons. Still, she is doing fine, and might get to come home as early as Thursday (Turkey Day). As preemies often do, she has a touch of jaundice and spends some time in a tanning booth (the NICU version, anyway).

DD and I went down to NICU to see and feed her yesterday evening. DD was rubbing her head, and she got visibly irritated and calmed down instantly when she quit… so she’s already showing some preferences (besides hating to be cold). She also didn’t want to eat, pressing her lips together tight. The nurse persuaded her, though. I told her, “I’m gonna call you AJ,” and she gave me a half-smile and a fart. I guess she approved!

We’ve been a little concerned about DD’s high blood pressure, which was a side-effect of the pregnancy. But after she stood up a couple of times, it returned to a normal range. The nurse said it should go away soon, but the BP was what prompted the early escape this generation.

Back at FAR Manor, we’re in a flurry of activity. We’re sending Charlie’s crib mattress to DD for AJ’s crib, and working on converting his crib to a regular bed (he doesn’t have a lot of room to stretch out in the crib now). That on top of Turkey Day.