I've said it before but I'll say it again, but it doesn't stop being true.

My life has stopped moving since Alex was born.

And no, it's not a negative thing, babies are wonderful and cute and reaffirms why we're needed on this earth, but it's still true. Free time has gone out the window completely. Now I only get windows of idle time whereby I do extremely adventurous things like chores, wrapping up old projects, or write on blogs. It's very different when other people visit the baby because it's just a short span of time. Having a baby full time is so incredibly overwhelming it can be a bit tough. Makes us wonder how we're going to deal with two babies.

But I love Alex a lot, I do. I have fun watching him, studying him, and making him laugh. I like to groom his hair to maximize his cuteness, and clean his dried snot with my licked finger to clean up his face, and give him kisses on his cheek because it makes me so proud to be his daddy. I like to hold his little arms and think about how perfectly proportionate his arm is to his chest, and how sometimes he can't help but seem like a little dapper gentleman. I like it when he reaches for me, to touch my face or grab my glasses, or to see if I'll keep chomping on his little hand and making tiger sounds. I like to smell his head after a bath, in the middle of the day, or pretty much whenever I feel like it. It smells great. I like to bury my face in his chest and tickle him with my nose, making him giggle is one of the greatest sounds in the world. I like to dangle him upside down and watch his mouth hang open, with his gums being gummy and toothless, and his eyes trying to make sense of the upside-downess of it all. I like it that he'll stop crying the moment I pick him up from whatever situation - it's like I cured his sadness, even if just temporarily. I like it when I hold my face close to him, and he makes that sound, and I mimic that sound, and we have a conversation of sounds. I like his raspberries - they're our way of bonding now, and it works great. I like it when he does raspberries and continues playing with his toys. I like it that he's so curious about everything, and I like the way he studies something by holding it in the air, and then moving it one angle, then another, then another, then back into his mouth it'll go. I like it when he hiccups - it's just so cute. I like it that he farts so nonchalantly and causually.

Like I said, my life stops, and his just gets more interesting everyday. I guess my growing is now enjoying my little boy.

I love my little boy.

Well, I'm cranky now. I posted a big long entry and it's missing. Grr.

Bad Accountant!

I do the accounting around the house mostly because I'm better with Quicken and am pretty strict about keeping receipts, but evidently I'm not doing that great of a job because I forgot to enter a expenditure in my wife's checkbook and now she has 74 cents in her account. As for me, a stroke of weird luck when my gas bill that was due on Tuesday come back to me for shortage of postage - 37 cents short. But what had happened was that the hotel that I booked in Vancouver actually charged me for it, which I thought was pretty weird. Usually they hold your Visa number so that they can charge no-shows, but actually taking out the owed amount was really strange to me, because most hotels have you pay after you check out. Those crazy Canadians! But anyway, had I remembered postage, my checking account would've bounced as well. So, my wife took this opportunity to tell me that God worked in mysterious ways.

Like he would tell my wife to steal all my stamps so that I wouldn't have any.

Then when she was standing over me, she burped silently but I caught wind of it, and she said that God was working again, in his mysterious way. I agreed and said, "Yes, perhaps a puppy somewhere lived because I smelt the 3 hour old sausages on your breath."

This is our life together.

Well, first of all I'd like to ask a favor - if readers around B'ham forward this address to anyone who might be interested in acting for an improvisational drama, or just acting in general, that would be great. We're trying to get people together on Saturday for a concept testing, otherwise known as an audition.

http://pub53.ezboard.com/bbellinghamartistsnetwork

Thanks.

Back to the news.

Alex is now scooting around like a mad baby, though he's not graduated to "crawling" yet. I guess crawling is when the baby's on his hands and knees, and scooting is similar to the green army guy who's sprawled on the ground with his rifle, simply draggin himself with his arms. So anyway, the little boy is making rather good time doing that, so we have to watch him quite a bit more now, since his favorite things to explore are never toys or soft, cushy things. But wires, sharp objects, and cats. Yep, the cats have been pretty good, considering Alex grabs a handful of fur and attempts to eat them before they walk away calmly, probably mumbling under their cat breath, "Boy, if you weren't feeding me..."

He's also gotten into full raspberry mode the past few days, just doing it non-stop. Don't know if he's just enjoying the fountain of drool that emits from his mouth when he does that, or just enjoying the sound it makes, but I brought it full circle tonight by adding some stupid zingers to his punchlines.

Me: Hey, didn't you have onions today, little boy?

Alex: Bbbbbbbppppfffff!

Me: Boy, that Mexican food sure was tasty!

Alex: Bbbbbbbpppfffffff!

And so on. Childish, sure. But what else do I have to entertain myself?

I've been a little depressed as of late, what with realizing that my free time has basically been drafted off somewhere else, and won't be back for quite a while. And putting my movie making aspirations on the back burner is also a little tough on me, just imagining all these things that I'm not doing anyway when I had free time, and just thinking that things are sad, and will get sadder when Peanut comes along. Don't get me wrong, I'm a very proud father and I'm happily married, but it is hard to re-priortize and put all these other things ahead of your own needs. Now it's all a balancing act that I'll have to learn to adjust to, and it's hard.

The bright side is, we're really looking forward to this coming Sunday, because my wife and I are celebrating our 1 year anniversary as a married couple and are going to Vancouver BC all by ourselves! No babies or kids! Our friend Karen is going to watch Alex and JL will spend a little bit of day with her sister, and then go to school as usual. It'll be nice to spend some time with my wife, being how I've inadvertedly ignored her for the past week. Not intentional at all, but just the whole re-priortizing deal that still needs to be ironed out. Our marriage is very important to me because a lot of how I define myself is through my wife. At the risk of sounding all codependent and everything, I would say that I need her very much. She is my life. So, tooling around Vancouver and sleeping in is all in our agenda, spending money we don't have and overestimating the American Dollar over the Canadian dollar will probably be in the plans too.

The other day I was doing some weird babbling and Alex laughed, just thought it was hilarious. So i tried it again when my wife was watching and he didn't respond. And I felt like a big prat. Tonight I did it again, using my version of the raspberry and then making it really annoyingly high-pitched, which he thought was funny. Brought it the video camera - nothing. Enjoyed batting at the camera though. So anyway, I was over-analyzing it and thought, well, my baby is a human baby, and sure, repetition is funny, but there are only so many times we can laugh at the same joke. But my jokes are always altering, always different. Hmmm. He doesn't get sick of Peek-a-Boo, why would he be bored with my vocal weirdness?

And then my head exploded.

Don't worry, I ordered a new one. Always wanted a mole below my lip.