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…in which I talk about babies and eyes (but not writing because I ran out of time to finish my entry).

So last night was my first real solo attempt at putting Ansel to bed. Every night before this has been either a tag team effort or a solo effort on Heather’s part. Now this isn’t that big of an injustice, as until recently, we only really put Ansel to bed by either dropping him in his swing and letting him rock the night away, or by Heather nursing him to sleep in bed beside her (a task I am gender challenged to perform). But lately we’ve been trying to change some of his sleep habits and as a result, I decided to use the night alone with him to really work on some bedtime practices. I’ve found that when we are both tending to him, we are less able to just leave him to cry, we end up feeling bad both for him and for each other, so he gets rescued much faster. I figured with Heather out of the house, I could “man up” and just let him cry a bit. Turns out, I’m almost as much a sucker as Heather is.

We fed him, changed him and Heather went on her way to the grocery store. It was about his bedtime and he was looking mighty drowsy if I may say so, so I set about putting him to bed in his play yard. I laid him down and started reading to him one of his two most often read books, “Harry the Dirty Dog” by Gene Zion, illustrated by Margaret Bloy Graham. Well, about two pages in, he decided that my voice and Gene’s story were just not entertaining enough to simply lay on his back and be calm, and thus the crying began. After I finished the story, I tried a bit more to console him and then decided I might allow him to nurse himself to sleep so long as he stays on his back in his play yard. So I made up a quick 2oz bottle, all the while juggling him and fighting off the pesterful cat who was impatiently awaiting his dinner. Once I got the bottle made up and the baby back in his play yard, I teased him with the bottle until he realized it was, in fact, not a finger or a pacifier and he sucked on that thing like it was an oxygen hose and he was at the bottom of the Atlantic. He drank down those 2oz in record time and as the last of it trickled away, I stood ready with a pacifier to quickly take the place of the bottle nipple. That ended up being a not so smart idea. He’s more savvy to the pacifier than one might think for being only five months old and he was immediately displeased.

Realizing at this point that he was genuinely hungry, I picked him up and we went back into the kitchen, fought the cat, juggled bottles and babies and poured up a second 2oz bottle. Dropped the baby back in the play yard and stuck the bottle in his mouth. This time he actually started slowing after the first ounce, so I grabbed his stuffed elephant and wrapped his arms around it. As he finished the bottle, he kind of just let go of it and drifted off. I thought I was in nirvana! He was asleep in his dreaded play yard, hugging his elephant, snoring away to the music we put together for him. I was just about to plop down on the couch and get some serious reading done when Heather texted from the grocery store, reminding me that I was to be making dinner that night.

Twenty minutes into dinner, after having already run out of onions, brown sugar, and cooking oil; the baby awakened with, at first, grumpy little grunts, and then screams of loss and abandon. I hadn’t even gotten dinner into the oven yet. I ran in to try and comfort him, but if there’s anything Heather and I have learned over the last five months, its that our baby cannot be comforted without being picked up, and that any amount of comfort he gains from being picked up, is immediately shattered upon being put back down. Regardless, I talked to him a bit, patted him on the back, kissed him and whispered sweet words of comfort into his ear, and then ran back into the kitchen to finish getting dinner into the oven whilst he screamed in the next room. Heather finally came home while I was ass over elbows, head down in the play yard, my lips to his ears, trying everything I could to sooth him without picking him up. My evening did not, necessarily go downhill from that point, but it certainly never picked up.

All that aside, I finally got a chance to get to the optometrist today to get my prescription checked against the old good prescription and the transient bad glasses. Turns out wearing the wrong prescription for a year has been a bad thing and my eyes have gotten worse as a result. I explained the now somewhat comical situation to him and he went ahead and did the exam. Turns out that I now need glasses that are a bit stronger than what was prescribed to me last time, though they are weaker than the glasses I’ve been wearing for the last year. So damage has been done, but its not as severe as it could be. Heck it could probably be chalked up age wearing on my eyes. Either way, I took the prescription back over to Eyemaster and will be getting yet another pair of lenses for my glasses (for those keeping track, this is the third left lens and the fourth right lens). Here’s hoping that I’ll finally be able to see for an entire day with them.