Day three –

This morning was a refreshing one for me. Mom is staying home longer than usual today and-so took over the early a.m. touch-ups with our son. The 1:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. dressings were handled by her – I took advantage of the extra sleep.  The 6:00 a.m. feeding was handled by myself and I was greeted by a round of smiles and tongue sticking-outings (hereby scientifically called TSO’s from this point forward). The TSO’s, we have found, are the most valuable tool in communicating with our son up to now. Sticking out of tongue once = hello; sticking out of tongue twice = happy; sticking out of tongue three times = very happy. Our pre-parental research found that a newborn is able to stick out their tongue, with purpose, at a very early stage of development. These TSO’s are the only form of validation we (ourselves) know of that a newborn is truly capable of routinely offering to their parents… and they are absolutely priceless to us.

Mom set out on her shortened workday and things progressed nicely at home. Our 12:00 feeding was followed by a half-hour of tummy-time. Short videos were sent to mom to enjoy. Our son rolled over on his own and then stared at the wall for 15 minutes, cooing the entire time. It was time to return him to the crib. Oma Mamu later called to ask if there was anything we needed from the store; a snowstorm was brewing and she realized it would be difficult for us to fetch any items from the grocer. I gave her a short list of items we needed and she delivered them to the house around 1:00.  A little fuss from the noises, our little man awoke but soon went back to sleep. On mom’s return, she continued with our cloth diaper experiment at the 3:00 change and asked for my assistance in applying the diaper. She handled the task well and, as instructed left the diaper in the bathroom sink while she finished out the change. One bit of instruction that I failed to mention was to close the bathroom door off to the rest of the house, while the diaper was unattended. One of our dogs found the tasty treat she left alone and took charge of it in our living room. The dog, again, cleaned up the diaper for us – disgusting. The day finished nicely, having mom around to keep things calm and orderly. I took advantage of her presence and did some more landscaping work that was needed to keep a lake from forming at the front door of our home. The work was very taxing, digging a long trench in cold, rainy weather. I put on durable military fatigues I received from my brother and set out to do my manly work for the day. As the cold of the coming snowstorm set in and rain mixed with flakes of snow fell on my body, my fingers were frozen, my back was aching but the job was finished - we will no longer have a (frozen) lake to contend with at our front door. Time to come inside and have some wine and dinner with mom. I was in bed by 8:30.