Almost In The Present With Little Big Head

Finally, after 2 weeks of writing frantically, I am caught up to almost the present. It has been 2 weeks since the Dr. Trumble appointment. Jack is still teething, we hope. At this point, after going to bed at around 5:30pm, Jack wakes every hour, sometimes every 20 minutes, fussing and whining while trying to get something in his mouth. At around 9pm he wakes up crying, seemingly hungry and typically I feed him. After feeding him, he typically goes to bed and wakes 1 or 2 times before getting up to eat again anywhere between 11:30pm and 1am when Susie usually feeds him. Then he usually makes it another 3 to 4 hours before waking again somewhere between 3am and 5am to eat, yet again. Then he demands we put him in the swing in our room where he sleeps until the sun comes up, when Susie gets up with him and I go to work, usually.

During the day, at least for the past week, Jack has been pleasant based on Susie's reports and my weekend experiences with him. He loves the outdoors. Over the weekend, I walked him on Saturday and Sunday morning with all the Joggers. I hate how happy Joggers are in the morning. However, it was nice when a Jogger ran by Jack and I on Saturday and looked at us, smiling, and she said, "good morning daddy". I couldn't help but smile. I could hear a laugh trail behind me as she was amused by her own delightfulness and maybe how calm the two of us appeared. Then, we returned to The Mother after hour one hour walk, who had slept in a bit (if sleeping in counts when you get up at 8:30 am) and had cleaned the house all by 10 am. Jack downed his upward limit of about 6 or 7 ozs. of formula and then it was off to Lake Eola, downtown. It was a beautiful day. We walked about a mile and then stopped to eat lunch. Jack had fun watching a woman under the influence of some very mood enhancing drugs ordering a burrito, as she was quite animated. I thought, perhaps her calling is entertaining babies as they enjoy fast movements and lots of talking. She left abruptly before I could offer her a babysitting job.

We walked some more around downtown, passing through a group of juvenile delinquents who were painting manhole covers. Jack fell asleep as Susie and I discussed the way in which babies seem to act as a forcefield to stranger comments when not related to babies themself. We decided to walk another mile or two. Eventually, we walked around Lake Eola again finding our way to the public library. We read some books to Jack, fed him another 6 or 7 ozs. and made him laugh alot. We took Jack to the top floor where we looked out the windows. This is the periodicals floor, where very serious people peruse through very old and serious articles, about very serious issues. Jack was not feeling very serious and decided to break the silence by talking very loud. Susie and I, embarrased and proud at the same time of our baby's sense of comedic timing, hid in the some very old Life magazines trying to find the oldest one (1930 something). We wandered around some more and then we went back downstairs, finally leaving in the direction of chocolate ice cream for The Mother.

After getting The Mother some very important cocoa fuel necessary to continue our marathon walk, we found a man playing middle eastern guitar to some recorded drum beats by the lake. We spread a blanket out on the ground and Jack had his first outdoor concert experience. He showed off his new mastery of rolling from stomach to back and attempted to start a Yoga class but there were no takers as they thought he was just a baby on a blanket. He started to get upset.

We walked some more. Somewhere along the way we made a flock of seagulls fly (not the band but real live birds) and let the water from a fountain splash us in the face. We started walking back to the car as it was around 3pm now. Jack fell asleep in the stroller and we walked another mile or so. Finally, it was time to head home at around 4 pm. The first perfect day with Jack, in almost 6 months of life, was almost over.

We headed back home, where we changed Jack, and then headed down to the dock overlooking our lovely lake. This has become a ritual over the past 2 weeks at this time of day. Jack looks for his fish friends, a bass, a brim, and an unidentified fishy looking creature, a seagull named appropriately, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and a squirrel named appropriately, Squirrel Friend, all while Susie and I talk about how many life changes we have had over the past 2 years, how lucky we are, and wonder what we did to deserve such a difficult time over the past year, all at the same time. Then we headed back to our patio where Jack likes to take his socks off and press them on the sun-warmed concrete wall. Finally, it was time for a bath. Ending with some screaming, a bottle, and sleep, all by 6 pm. The Mother put him to bed while I made the dinner.

You would think that Jack would be so tired that he would just sleep for 8 hours. Wrong! Every hour or less he woke until eating again at around 8:30pm. Continuing what we believe to be teething, Jack fussed his way through the night. Every once in awhile we both get quite scared that it isn't teething and it is all due to pressure building in his head from the cyst. This is sometimes more worrisome, like when we notice that the right side of his forehead has veins showing beneath the surface of his skin and the left side does not, or, when we realized that the right side of his forehead pertrudes a bit further than the left side only noticeable to the touch, or, when each morning we check for teeth and no new ones have arrived to confirm our theory of teething.

A week ago, after 2 days of constipation, Jack woke up in more pain than usual from the teething. While on the changing table, he stretched, and on his left side, his abdomen litteraly poked out and moved around like in Alien 1 when the man gave explosive birth to an alien. In hindsight, it seems funny (not that funny, as we have attributed this to gas/constipation only after Jack had what one can only call a "Man Poop" the next morning. But, at the time, I thought...oh my god, now he's got a cyst in his abdomen.

Each day for the past 2 weeks, it gets a little more normalized to know our baby has a cyst in his head. I know we have to keep from letting it run our lives and we are certainly doing that. However, we also have to keep it in our awareness whenever anything unusual happens, and that is pretty often with Little Big Head.

Now that I'm in the present. I promise to lighten up a bit. I'm not sure that anyone is actually reading at this point. I must say, it was therapeutic just to write all of that stuff down. I feel like I exorcised a tremendous amount of negative energy while, hopefully, helping some people who struggled to read my narcistic rantings, to empathize and understand why myself and my wife have checked out and become so obsessed with our baby boy, whom, I might add, I love!