What The Smock?

After 24 hours of labor a variety of factors led the wife to opt for a C-section. Once the call was made our doctor said we would be holding our baby in our arms inside of a half hour and he gave us a few minutes to gather ourselves for the impending surgery. What would you do with these precious few moments before your spouse went under the knife and your life would be changed forever? Of course I reassured her that she made the right choice and that everything was going to work out (in the end it was spooky how lucky of a good call we made), and then I immediately changed into the "special clothes" the nurses gave me for the operating room visit, ran into the bathroom and snapped this self portrait of me as some sort of deranged commercial painter.

At first I was bummed that I didn't get a pair of empowering scrubs to welcome the little guy into the world, but then I realized that there would be no better way to soften the blow of a "we're having a C-section" text message than including a goofy ass pic of me in a painters smock and hair net. Most people would probably remember the unnerving amount of tenstion in the air prior to surgery or the amazing skill and precision with which the doctors delicately liberated the little dude from my wife's abdomen. But for me what really sticks out in my mind was me sitting in the hallway prior to being called into the operating room thinking, "Oh crap, I really have to go the bathroom. No time now, the boy is coming and the wife needs me...I really might crap this goddam painter's smock during delivery".  And that's when I knew I was ready to be a dad. I was literally willing to shit myself in public instead of letting the wife or son down.

Hello, World.

Two quick peeks into everything amazing that is my life right now...

Plenty more words and pics to come. I'm currently the world's happiest zombie. If you want a link to all the pics just email me and you can see all the fun.

hi

Jackson David Villa
2.24.2010  09:12pm
9lbs 2oz, 20.5"

pics coming soon

Just Say YES!

The wife made a valiant fight to 4 centimeters, but the exhaustion was overtaking her and she gladly accepted our nurse's offer for an epidural when it looked like she might literally pass out due to the frequency and power of the contractions. My eyes are slightly itchy from the dryness of air conditioning in the room, so I guess everyone had to deal with some physical adversity today. Gosh, so dry.

So now it's just more waiting. If I were a betting man I would wager that little man should be arriving late into the night tonight or early tomorrow morning. If you know about my betting histoey, which always ends the same way, me buying some dumbass friend a burrito for losing my can't miss wager, then you take my prognostication with a proverbial grain of salt.

Allso, if you are planning on sending something to the hospital, no baloons please. Not because of my completely rational fear of inflated latex in enclosed areas, but because the hospital won't allow any balloons due to latex allergies.

Get It On!!!

Spent the night in the hospital. Everything going according to plan. Just began induction and everything should start moving along at a fever pitch very soon here. Wife is doing awesome, easily the best patient in the history of pregnancy. 


Aaand the wife's water was just broken. How many times can I type or say surreal today? Crazy time.

Big Wednesday

One last night for me to live as a free man, or at least to sleep soundly through the night without a miniature human permanently invading my house.

Groundhog day has gotten pretty old and we're ready to finally see the little guy. Tomorrow evening we go into the hospital to start the induction process. It's a drawn out process and we probably won't actually see the tiny dude until sometime late Wednesday. So if you are someone who has my phone number, pleeease hold off on the phone calls and texts for a few days. I promise as soon as the midget emerges I will document his existence photographically and begin the exploitation process by texting you and posting at least one photo on the internet. If you know me at all you know that I don't like putting any sort of actual personal info on the internet, so this is a huge step for me, but if you're reading this it means you have put up with my endless amounts of childish prose long enough and you deserve at least a partial payout. So, no, I will not be starting a cutesy wootsy Facebook page for little man, but I will at least show you what he looks like. Or maybe I'll just find some really cute baby pics on the internet and just paste his name onto them. Ohhh the suspense.....

Big Nothing

Do you remember that scene in the movie Big where Tom Hanks calls home to talk to his mom, but unfortunately he is trapped in the body of a 30 year old man and can't exactly explain to her who he is and why her son is missing? He ends up reassuring her that her 12 year old boy is doing just fine and they end the conversation on a bittersweet emotional note. It's an oddly poignant moment, where her missing child is both dangled in front of her and then taken away again in the course of a very short phone conversation. The first time you watch this scene it probably struck you as a special moment between a boy who literally grew up too fast, and his mom, who will never be able to understand (on multiple levels) what happened to her son. But watching that scene 20 years later you will probably wonder aloud, "Why the hell didn't you call the cops and track down the wildy immature grown man who was not only crazy enough to kidnap your son, but he is now calling your dumbass and having heart to heart chats with you!"

Anyway, that phone coversation has been my average workday, everyday, over the past few weeks. I show up every morning to see my coworkers' wild excitement in their eyes burning for just a fleeting moment, and before I can even answer their "anything yet?" question you can see the reality sinking in as they realize that if I am standing there in front of them, it's fairly obvious that the wife hasn't given birth yet. I am essentially 6'2" of walking blue balls for everyone I see throughout the day. Keep in mind that I work in an office with about 60 people, have this conversation with a large majority of them, and that my cubicle mate has this conversation at least a few times everytime I go to lunch or leave my desk for any length of time greater than 10 minutes. The funny thing is that it's not annoying at all, I just see it as a challenge to see how many new self-deprecating ways I can come up with to turn the situation into darkly sarcastic fun. So far my favorite retorts are "Nope, nothing yet. Kid's not even here yet and he's already a huuuge disappoinment", "No baby after all ....turns out she was just fat", and, "Yep, but we weren't happy with the results so we're buying a Chinese one instead". It's a pretty sweet humor litmus test for the coworkers. I even had one friend send me a congratulatory text last week...too bad the kid still hasn't been born yet. I know I could be much more solemn and serious about the whole thing, but you try going through it a couple hundred times a week and see how you respond.

Prepare To Be Creepy

Still playing the waiting game, but the end is in sight. Doctor says if the wife's womb ejection button isn't pressed by Tuesday night, then let the induction begin! That means by this time next week I will be a father...aaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!

Of course this feeling of semi-closure has really lit a fire under my ass to make sure I'm preparing myself for the onslaught of crying and what not in a most practical manner. I've been hounding all my friends with kids under the age 5 to get their advice on how to cope with the first few months of absolute madness. It's kind of funny, I have resigned myself to believing so much in the unavoidable chaos of parenthood that I feel completely at ease with whatever is looming on the horizon for me. It's kind of like when I saw the movie Snakes On A Plane. I went in with my friends expecting the worst, most painful experience possible and ended up laughing our asses off because not only did the movie meet our incredibly low bar, but once you remove all hope and just let go it makes it so much easier to enjoy these things. Also, the sake bombs probably didn't hurt either, and after annoying everyone in the restaraunt, having hours absolutely vanish in a total blur, and having to be responsible for my semi-retarded friends practically drooling with laughter, in hindisght, it seems to be at least a mildly good analogy for parenthood.

Back to thoughts actually directly related to parenting. Among the most intriguing advice I got from friends was the 5S methodology being spread by followers of the slightly creepy bearded pediatrician in the video below. He seems like a good enough guy, and his method makes an amazing amount of logical sense, but the only thing more amazing then the light switch like results the method garners, is just how creepy the kind-hearted pediatrician appears while "jiggling and shushing" people's babies to sleep...


If you had just seen that video without knowing that the guy was an actual pediatrician, and what his methodology was rooted in, would you not be about as creeped out as the first time you realized that your parents had to have sex in order to make you?

Along the same train of thought as the previous video, the video below was passed onto me by my friend who came across this similar technique while living in Europe. It uses a piece of, uh..."furniture" I guess you could say, instead of just your bare hands and creepy beard and shushing, but again, without the explanation wouldn't you just think that this was a video produced by Dick Cheney's "How To Get The Answers You Want Out Of Your Baby" video line?



After doing all my research I have decided I will just let the pug be responsible for raising the kid. Even if it doesn't work out so well for the boy's development, at least all the mistakes he makes will be adorably framed by a pug lens.

Oh What A Night!

I bet that blog title made you think I was already a dad, didn't it? Not just yet, but soon, very soon. In fact, the doc says that if little man doesn't make his Shawshank style escape by Tuesday, then we are going to induce labor and bust his ass outta womb jail. So, at the very latest I should completely cease all sleeping by Wednesday, February 24th. I'm living on borrowed time and savoring every second of it.

I would now like to personally thank the little dude for deciding to delay his groundhog day act for at least one more day, thus providing me with one of my greatest nights of sports ever. Against the backdrop of the Winter Olympics my beloved Manchester United able to travel to hostile lands (Italy - sweaty, tight pants, terrible hair) and defeat the mighty David Beckham's hair...

In truly spectacular fashion my child's predetermined sports idol, Wayne Rooney, was able to carry the mighty Red Devils to victory over their swarthy Italian foes, AC Milan. I still don't understand why everyone scoffs at me when I suggest Rooney as a perfectly adorable middle name for the boy. I mean, who wouldn't want to name their first born son after a prematurely balding, squatty, ill tempered little English footballer?

And to cap off my night of non-hospital couch sleeping, I ended up playing my scrawny little ass off (some might describe it as an extended lower back) in my racquetball playoffs and miraculously came back from a 9-1 deficit in the final game to win the championship 11-10. Surely, defeating a variety of middle age men at your local gym might not register high your personal achievementometer, but for me it was huge because I don't think I have ever won anything sports wise on an individual level, besides sportsmanship trophies in coed boys & girls club basketball at age 10, which loosely translated to, "'Kid can't make a layup to save his life, but at least he shakes everyone's hand at the end of the game". Anyway, after I won I was pretty euphoric, partially because the whole time I was playing I was thinking I don't know when I will be able do this again and I wanted to have a good story for the boy in case he was born last night. He obviously wasn't born, but at least now I will have a totally sweet Racquetball Champion t-shirt he can look at, but never touch. Only champions can wear that kind of shirt. Of course, he'll probably end up whizzing on it (while I'm wearing it) inside of 6 months.

The Final Countdown

 

I woke up this morning with more than a tinge of excitement for the huuuge day that could possibly lie ahead, so I decided to go watch tv in the living room while doing some stretches to prepare my back and legs for the hours of standing and not sleeping in a normal bed that most likely will crush my scrawny frame of a body at the hospital. As I grabbed the remote to flick on my morning news I heard some loud machinery outside, and then a lightning bolt of clarity hit me...shit, trash day. Needless to say, in all my "last night as a semi-free human" preparations the previous evening I forgot to roll the trash cans to the curb. I grabbed my slippers and dashed outside in my offensively small Manchester United soccer shorts only to see the garbage man go whizzing by my house. I grabbed my giant rolling trash can and sprinted down the sidewalk hooting and waving my arms frantically while lugging a week's worth of heavy trash behind me. Of course, the garbage man had his windows up and his truck is loud enough to set off car alarms, so there was no way he could hear me. Luckily my slippers are the cozy fleece jobs with rubber traction on the bottom and my shorts were intended for all sorts of running and cutting motions (even if they were intended to be worn by an adolescent child). I caught the truck at the corner of my street and waved him down. But as I sat there waiting for the giant mechanical arm to pick up my refuse bin I realized that I was standing outside, panting, after just running down the street screaming and waving like a madman while leaving little to the imagination wardrobe wise. Wow, the boy isn't even here yet and I already had a pretty clear picture of my life for at least the next 18 years.

I know what you are saying, how could this day possibly get any bigger for me? Well, why don't you sit back and let me bullet point exactly why this may end up being the biggest day of my life, besides the obvious whole first born child thing that might happen...

 

• Manchester United - The world's greatest futbol club taking on the a bunch Italy's version of the Yankees in the UEFA Champions League. Millions (billions?) of people across the world (and probably about 35 total in the USA) will be watching this epic battle as my beloved Red Devils. This would already be one of the biggest days of the year on my calendar, but sprinkle in the fact that dirty David Beckham's hair is now playing for AC Milan and I don't even know what to say anymore. Get it on!!!

• Racquetball- I have been playing racquetball against all sorts of old sweaty dudes for the past 6 weeks in a league at my local gym. To my surprise I not only made the playoffs, but ended up with the number one seed. Even better, I get to play this bastard that drilled me in the back the first time we played, tries to cheat constantly, and is generally loathed by the whole league because of his unsporting manner. I couldn't have drawn up any better. Take into account that this might be the last real sports acitivity I get to take part in for the forseeable future and I really don't know how I will be able to keep my composure, unless I am already at the hospital. In which case I will be the legend of the number one seed who blew off the playoffs. Which sounds kinda cool to me for some reason.

• Lost- Blah blah blah, I like Lost a ton and you are sick of hearing about it. I don't care, the end is so near and I start getting excited to watch this Tuesday night show sometime around 4pm on Sunday. Is there something wrong with me? Yes. I don't care though, what better way to prepare myself for this epic journey of anxiety known as "expecting a child" then spending time planted on my couch searching for answers and overanalyzing every freaking minute detail until you phsyically feel your brain begin to melt? I'm sure there are better ways, but screw that, I am still watching this damn show. I need my stories! And all praise to Lord DVR...

Probably no more post for me until the little dude shows his face, at which point I will post pics up here for everyone to see and hopefully save hours of endless emails.

Thanks for playing!

It's Gonna Be Just Fine

Not a whole lot of blogging going down over the past week, mostly because I was convinced the little bundle of boy would pop out over Super Bowl weekend and blogging felt extremely redundant since I have been giving roughly 83 pregnancy updates per day to friends and family. Not stressed at all, not overwhelmed, and am not even annoyed about talking about it everyday. Hmm, I think I just subconsciously described my feelings towards the final season of Lost. Wow, just when you think you couldn't possibly be more pathetic, you go an inadvertantly compare what is probably the most amazing experience in your life with tv show. So...close...to....finale.....

What is even more pathetic is this CD I found while checking out a baby boutique with the wife today...

I'm not sure what is most troubling about this CD, the fact that some greedy bastard thought to himself, "How can I possibly dilute an artist's hard work and passion enough to make it appeal to humans that still crap their pants?" or the fact that anyone would consider playing Coldplay for kids. But on the bright side, I did have a good chuckle imagining the type of overprotective gelding would purchase this product for their child. "Coldplay, now that's just a little too rock n' roll for little Cody's maturity level. Gosh darnit, is there a version of this CD that is a little more 'Two and a Half Men'?"

If you are ever feeling anxiety over whether or not you will be a decent parent, just go to a baby boutique and you will immediately realize that you will be just fine. It's the yuppie dorks buying fake Coldplay for their kids that Social Services should really look into.

Pug Purpose

Many moons ago, when we lived near the beach and were a one dog family, I used to take our pug to the dog park near my work every other day. If you know anyone who has a pug, you would understand that as soon as the little wrinkly lump of fur and snorts enters your life you instantly lose your grip on reality and become a psycho pugtard. Of course, this syndrome is characterized by a natural gravitational pull towards other pug idiots of a similar ilk. One day while hanging out at the park with my little dude I was talking with another pug owner and asking him how he got his little porker to stay so close to him without a leash. He said the key was a backpack that pug wore. I laughed it off as sarcasm, but the guy went on to explain how someone told him that pugs crave purpose and are really good at staying focused when they have a task. So he would get a tiny backpack and put a rock or a soda can in it, strap it to husky nugget, and then just go for a walk. Apparently the little lumpy bastard would stay right by his side and hang on his every word because he felt the need to stay on task. Needless to say, my mind was sufficiently blown. Even though I never actually got a pack for my pug, I did figure out he is very task-oriented. His favorite tasks over the years have been stealing my food when I'm not looking, jumping from high points on the couch and landing squarely on my crotch, and for a few years he would pee on me in public every six months or so.

Now you're probably thinking my little pug-centric anectdotes were intended to demonstrate my years of awkward doses of pain and public humiliation somehow prepared me for the less fun aspects of fatherhood. Sorry to disappoint, but at this point in my life I feel more like my buddy's pug. I wish I could say I felt more like my pug, freely whizzing on friends in public, eating everything in site, and using farts as my morning alarm clock. But ever since I found out the wife was pregnant I have felt a much greater sense of purpose. This is not to say that my life somehow had less meaning or brought me less satisfaction prior to conception, but I am the kind of ADD riddled human that is infinitely more productive when I have time restrictions and a very clear goal. For example, my home improvement efficiency has increased exponentially over the past few months, just because I know it is the last thing I will want to address when the little guy arrives and I don't want it stressing out the wife in any way. Whereas prior to this baby madness all those tasks were just items on a long list of things I would do when I didn't have anything better to do. I have also noticed an increase in my physical activities, movie watching, and work productivity. Now that I have a metaphorical backpack to keep me focused I am like a pug that ate all the Christmas Snickers in the house and can't be contained (yes, that one was my pug).