Life at 100 MPH

As everyone would expect, a new dad would rarely get much rest and would constantly be on his toes.  As everyone who knows me would expect, this would be right up my alley.  ADHD is an understatement, and there’s no doubt I rarely sit still.  However, this new family thing is a whole new level of not sitting still.

What once would be called a relaxing weekend has turned into an every lasting marathon of events that should not take longer than five minutes.  Yes I know this “play on words” seems a bit extreme… marathons are already long… why do they have to be called everlasting?  Come here on a Friday night, and I’ll show you an everlasting marathon.

Saturday’s main event consisted of watching a movie with the little guy while mom was out at the fair.  Seems easy enough:

Before bundle of joy:  Make yourself some lunch grab a vitamin water (I’m a dad now… vitamins are important), take out DVD, turn on TV and surround sound, hit play, put butt in recliner and enjoy.

After bundle of joy: Take out cold cuts for lunch, hear a loud rumble from the other side of the room, realize you have to change gigantic messy diaper, realize there are no diapers at the changing table, run upstairs (realize you left baby on changing table alone half way up the stairs, run back downstairs, pick up naked baby, run back upstairs to get diapers), get peed on walking back downstairs, curse at yourself for not wrapping up that little fire hose, change baby, clothe baby, run back upstairs, change and wash yourself, head back down stairs, forget what you were doing before the mud butt struck.  When you see both your dogs polishing off the cold cuts you left out, curse at yourself again and warm up leftovers.  Eat standing up while dangling keys in front of baby to keep him from crying.  Forget vitamin water; quickly take a vitamin with a glass of water.  Pack up toys and Mr. McGibblets for optimum movie watching in the basement (for those of you who are not familiar with Mr. McGibletts see my earlier blog entries from the end of July).  Once you are completely packed up and downstairs, curse at yourself again for forgetting to bring the baby downstairs.  Realize it’s been almost 40 minutes and you no longer have any desire to watch a movie.  It’s a mystery how anyone with a baby watches anything on TV at all.

I did get out of the house for a little bit Saturday night, which was nice.  Although a night out with the guys now includes showing each other pictures of our kids and swapping stories about how insane it is to think we all have kids now.

Sunday was epic.  “Let’s go to the pumpkin patch and take some family photos before the Packers game.”  (Famous last words!).  First of all how does layering clothes for an infant work.  Remember that old math problems: Jax has 3 different shirts, and 4 different pairs of pants and 6 set of socks.  How many different combinations of outfits can he make from what he has? That perfectly sums up my morning.  If you buy everything the same size: onsie, khakis, sweat shirt and lined jacket… how the hell are they all supposed to fit.  I literally must have had to try 17,000 combinations of layers in order to get this little guy bundled up.  After struggling to get him all set barely squeezing him into his car seat, I realized he hadn’t been changed in a while… at least now I know the perfect combination of clothes. I remember thinking, “I just have to work backwards to get them off.  I’ll make sure to leave a trail of bread crumbs so I can figure out how to get them back on.”

Clearly I could go on explaining how life’s simple events took hours to complete, but I’m sure everyone gets the point.  The funny thing is, I don’t mind.  I don’t mind one little bit.  Every second I spend with this little guy is amazing.  Either way, my ADHD is sure enjoying the ride.

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