Henry Roy

1.  In seven weeks, Henry completely understands and has mastered the art of fart humor.
Henry is a quick learner.  This is a transcript from last night.

INT. - HENRY'S ROOM - BEDTIME
Mommy and Daddy are getting their son ready for bed.  They have lathered Henry up with night time lotion and put him in his fleecy jammies.  Martin is bottle feeding Henry.   He is extremely content and slowly falling asleep.

APRIL

He is just the cutest.  He is just growing so big.  Don't you remember when we first brought him home?  We had to try to burp him for like 20 minutes.  Now, you pat him a few times and he burps like a big boy.  I need to write all this down in his baby book.  I want to remember everything about.....

HENRY

Henry contorts face.  His face turning a dark shade of red and then farts.

APRIL

...him.

Fantastic.

24 (TV Series)

1.  It's time to put Jack Bauer (and this series) to rest.

This year is a sad one for multiple shows.  3 of my faves will be taken out back and put down.  24, Heroes and LOST.  Heroes deserves to be put down.  The creators had something special and ran it into the ground.  Multiple times.  I don't want to get into LOST.  That would be a 10 page blog entry and I may cry.  On to 24.

I missed last night's episode due to my in-laws being in town and being just plain busy.  It was recorded, though.  As I was firing up the DVR this morning, a thought runs through my head. "Did I see last week's episode?"  I could not remember watching it.  However, each episode has a two minute "recap" before the actual new episode starts so you can follow what is going on.  At the end of the recap, it shows last week's ending.  I had seen it, but had forgotten about it in less that 5 days.  And this leads me to why it is a good time for 24 to end.

Last week's ending was SHOCKING and DISTURBING!  Jack is interrogating a bad guy. In doing so, he realizes the baddie has swallowed some extremely valuable intel.  So, on top of Jack going rogue.....torturing this guy to near death.....he now GUTS THIS GUY LIKE A FISH!  With a 3 inch knife! While he is alive!  The next scene shows Jack holding a SIM card from a cell phone.  That's what he "retrieved" from that dude's innards!

And I FORGOT that scene in less than 5 days!  After 8 season, you cannot shock me, 24.  Oh look, Jack is using illegal methods to extract data from a suspect. (Yawn)  Wait, the President is behind the conspiracy?? (what?)  Look, there is a mole in CTU!?! (eyes roll)  Jack's filleting a suspect to get a microchip out of his gut. (just another day at the office, Jack)  Thank you, 24.  You have desensitized me.

24 has run its course.  Great series.  Ground breaking when it came out.  There have been some great seasons, but Jack has run out of steam.  I kinda hope that Jack meets his demise at the end of this season.  It would be fitting and deserving.  Jack has served his country well, but has made many transgressions.  However, they won't kill him off.  Specially, when there are talks of a Jack Bauer movie in development.

Farewell, Jack.

Exhaustion

1. You can hallucinate.

There is nothing worse than being tired.  Uh, well actually there are thousands of things that are worse than being tired.  Like being lit on fire.  Or running head first into a wall.  How about this....being tired sucks.  I am not a morning person.  Sleep is awesome.  Weekends are the greatest.  Stay up until midnight or 1am and then sleep until 11am.  So great!  My wife would beg to differ.  She is more of a go to bed at 9:30pm and wake up at 6am.  No, thank you.  There is nothing going on at 6am!

One thing I have learned in the past few weeks is that due to lack of sleep, you can actually hallucinate. Like you are on drugs.  Disclaimer...I have never taken hallucinogenic drugs.  But we have all seen those dumb movies with the "tripping" scene.  I believe it is a law that every "road trip" movie must contain one.  The late night feedings of a young baby human being do take a toll on you.  In the beginning, we would wake up together.  Ape would feed King Henry.  I would prepare the diapers and get everything ready to go.  I would also handle the burping.  A few weeks of this at night and no naps during the day lead to a little bit of nutty behavior.  One of these side effects happens to be hallucinations.  I have noted this on about 7 different occasions with Ape.  I have caught myself hallucinating once so far (don't worry, I will share).  A typical "occurrence" would go as followed.....

INT - MASTER BEDROOM - MIDDLE OF NIGHT

Martin and April are tired from taking care of their new baby human being.  It is the middle of the night when April wakes up and says....

APRIL

Martin, will you take Henry from me and put him in his bassinet?

MARTIN

What did you say, Ape?

APRIL

I am just so tired, Martin.  Could you just take Henry from me and put him in his bassinet?

Martin attempts to get up.  Groggily, he finally sits up in the bed.  Due to his partial blindness and the fact that it is pitch black in their room, he squints to find Henry.  He leans closer to April and uses his hands to feel for him.  He is not there.  Panic sets in just as his eyes are adjusting to the darkness.  Martin gets out of bed and quickly walks to the bassinet to see Henry is sound asleep.

MARTIN

Ape, Henry is in the bassinet?!

APRIL

Wait, what?!?!?

MARTIN

Henry was not sleeping in your arms.  Your were dreaming.

15 second pause

APRIL

(deep sigh)

Oh my gosh.

This stems from April taking care of Henry in the dream world and it crossing over in the real world.  I cannot blame her.  Her entire life right now is Henry... and she is awesome at it.  Another instance involved April asking ME to take Henry from "Martin."  I asked her who she thought I was?  Needless to say, neither one of the MEs had Henry.  Once again, he was asleep in his bassinet.

My hallucination was also due to a dream.  As a prequel to this story, Henry has slept next to me for a few hours before.  I lay on my side with the my arm extended.  I put Henry next to my chest and he uses my bulging and manly adequately sized bicep as a pillow.  So, I guess in my dream I had put him next to me to calm him down.  The next thing I know, I'm awake.  I am laying on my side with my arm extended.  Henry is nowhere to be seen.  In his place is a pillow laying on my arm.  Panic, again, sets in.  Check underneath the pillow.  Not there.  Look on the floor to see if he has fallen off (how freaking horrible would that be?).  Not there.  Then, I realize it must be a dream.  I sit up in bed and can see him sleeping in his bassinet.  Ridiculous.

Are we crazy normal?  Sadly, I think I know the answer. 

FYI: The picture above is from THE MACHINIST.  That would be Christian Bale weighing around 100 lbs. in his role as a "machinist" who is slowly going nuts-o due to lack of sleep.  See the correlation?  Anyway, great flick.  Great actor.

The First Four Weeks of Parenthood

1.  WD-40 is a MUST HAVE!
Remember this.....all the doors in your house squeak.  If you think otherwise, then there are 2 reasons to explain this. One...you don't realize they all squeak because you have been in your house a long time or don't pay attention to it.  Or....Two...you have had a child and within in the first few weeks have WD-40'd every single hinge in your household.  Closet doors, bedroom doors, cabinets, toilet lids, etc.

Prior to Henry, I knew some of our doors squeaked.  At the time, it really did not bother me and did not pay much attention to them.  That definitely changes when you are trying to put your baby human being down to sleep.....only to wake him up when you close his room door as you are slipping out.  Then the door basically yells "HEY MAN, YOU REALLY DID NOT WANT TO SLEEP NOW.  WHY DON'T YOU STAY AWAKE A BIT LONGER?  IT'S ONLY 3:45AM!"  Now, its time to start the winding down process again.  Our squeaky doors has only woken up Henry once or twice (that I know of).  But closing all doors, if feels as if you need to hold your breathe and say a prayer.  Needless to say, I have greased down every single hinge that I could get my hands on.

2.  I go through diapers fast!  (wait, what?!?)
You heard right.  I go through diapers fast.  There is definitely an art form to changing diapers on a baby. The first diaper I changed was a tag team effort on the first night of Henry's life.  He peed on my arm.  Do people that have not had babies know newborns poop TAR for the first few days?!?!  What is that all about?  Anyway, I'm off subject.

Back to going through diapers fast.  For the first few days, I would literally use 3 diapers to change one of Henry's.  How is that possible?  Here you go.  Henry needs his diaper changed.  So, I get ready to change it by having the new diaper. Slide the new diaper under the soiled one he has on.  Then, as I am pulling the soiled one off, Henry decides to go NUMBER 1.  Think fast, Martin! My hand shoots out and blocks the stream from doing any major "damage".  However, there was collateral damage.  The new diaper is soaked before it is even put to use.  Toss it.  Next diaper.  Assuming that Henry's bladder was now empty was my biggest mistake.  Basically, the same thing happened to the third diaper as the second diaper.  Except this time, Henry also let loose a stream that could easily be 2 feet high.  The stream went up and to the right.  It drenched Henry's shirt along with 2 square feet of real estate on our "neutral" colored wall.  The wall is not so "neutral" colored anymore.

April is much better at this area.  Quick.  Easy.  One diaper per change.  She is a keeper.

Just an FYI....I wrote most of this between May 8th and 10th.  However, this morning (11th) I put the final touches on this entry.  Also, this morning Henry put his "final touches" on the wall...again.  My bad, April.....

 It occurred to me that I could probably write an entry entitled "Urination", but I do not want to alienate my 4 followers....

The Many Faces of Henry Lowell

 For this entry, I thought I would take some time to just write about what I have learned about my son.  Babies can communicate.  It's subtle, but it's there.  So, I thought I would post a picture of Henry's face and then write what I have learned what he is trying to communicate with me.

 This face is pretty easy to decode.  First, Henry's face turns bright red because he is holding his breath.  He then emits other noises from the opposite end of his body.  What he is trying to say is....

May I have some privacy while I poop my pants?

However, since he is my son, he would probably quote a movie...like...from Clash of the Titans...

RELEASE THE KRAKEN!!!!

This is another easy one.  What he is trying to say is.....

This is not difficult.  I open my mouth.....you put a boob in it.  What don't you get???

Here is the final one so that I can just post this.  It has taken too long.
I believe I am fairly accurate with what Henry is thinking in this picture.  What he is trying to say is....

I will grow up to be the greatest ninja alive.  Also, my mind control over you will know no bounds.

I definitely believe that one....  There will be more to come shortly.