It's Christmas, Charlie Heller!

Charlie's had his first full week at home and it's been full of firsts. First Hanukkah, first Christmas, first keeping mommy and daddy up all night, you name it. This week has been great, but I go back to work tomorrow. I'm not upset about going back to work, but I'm not happy to be leaving home. Nilda is even unhappier about my not being home. Luckily, my mom is coming for a few days to help with the transition. Now, she too, can enjoy the bliss that is the aerobed. Here are a few updates from this week:

• Charlie loves Christmas and Hanukkah equally. We know this because he slept through both of them.
• Overall, Charlie is a very good baby, but we've had some rough nights. 11:30 pm - 2:00 am + 4:30 am - 6:30 am = party time. Nilda has asked me to find a way to make him go to sleep on command. I'm still working on it.
• I have never appreciated coffee as much in my entire life.
• Charlie has a number of different nicknames, so far, since "Charlie" is too formal. The most popular has been "Jack," which coincidentally is his cousin's name.
• Charlie has a vicious cycle of eating, being awake for 30 minutes, passing out, pooping, and needing a change, which makes him wake up all over again and by then it's almost time for him to eat again. When I hear a fart, I pray that it's Nilda.
• Nilda did a great job preparing for the kid and the apartment is set up perfectly.
• Nilda looks great and her bellybutton is even coming back. I, on the other hand, look like I'm about 3 months pregnant. Having a newborn is a great excuse to eat all your favorite foods. Especially pernil on Christmas.
• Babies only want to be held. All these toys and swings aren't for the kids, they're to give the parents a rest.
• Charlie's umbilical cord stump just fell off. It looks like a gigantic dried booger. Don't act like you don't know what that looks like.
• Nilda and I love having Charlie around because now there's someone else to make fun of. We especially like to mimic the way he cries.
• Charlie didn't poop for 16 hours and we got concerned. He then spent the next 22 hours making up for lost time. Lesson learned, Charlie.
• No matter how much we try to keep his diaper tight and in place, he manages to leak out of it. Poop finds a way.
• For the record, I recognize how poop-centric this email is. It's an accurate reflection of what my life has become.
  

I'll keep posting here, or you can try following Abuelita Stella's blog, at www.whoneedstheinternet.acomputerwillburnthehousedown.com. In the meantime, here are a few pictures of the dreamy days Nilda and I have had since Charlie the Kid was born.

A Very Charlie Hanukkah

Charlie had his first Hanukkah and he slept through the whole thing. That's the secret about babies. They offer nothing to society. No services of any kind. All they do is sit there and look adorable and make everything better.

As you can see, Charlie was mesmerized by the lights.

As per the arrangement between Charlie's mother and myself, Charlie also gets to celebrate Christmas. Let's see if he wakes up for pernil.

Charlie, Week 1

Charlie is one week old today and everything is absolutely wonderful. Nilda and I are really enjoying this time. Here's a rundown of how his first week at home has been:

• Having a kid is like having a new toy, and Charlie is a pretty fucking good toy. We still can't get over the fact that there's another human being in the house.
• His favorite person is Nilda's boob. His favorite color is poop.
• The pediatrician has us feeding Charlie every two hours. This means he has to START eating every two hours, so if he starts at 2:00, takes a half hour to eat, another half hour to poop, he gets only one more hour before we have to wake him up to eat again. The nurses in the hospital don't tell you that, they leave it to the pediatrician to deliver the bad news.
• We've spent four days inside in pajamas and have lost all track of time.
• I'm up at 4:00 am and, for some reason, I don't mind. It gives me and Charlie time to catch up on new episodes of Beavis & Butthead. Charlie thinks its actually a more relevant social commentary than it was in the 90s.
  
• Andrew told me to take pictures and videos of this time because I'll want to remember it. I watched a video I had taken just one hour earlier and felt sentimental about those times.
• Charlie already hates the flash.
• We went for our first walk outside. Don't get excited, it was just around the block. But still, it was nice. Charlie got to try out his new ride, being pushed by his old ride.
  
• Nothing could have prepared me for the amount of diapers we've gone through, not even people telling me, "You won't believe how many diapers you'll go through."
• We've been putting him in the sun for a little bit each day. The Earth's yellow sun gives him his power.
• God forbid his diaper change takes too long, he starts to scream like this is the worst thing that's ever happened to anyone. Then I can't get this out of my head.
  
• They don't lie when they say the kid will start peeing like a fountain in the middle of a diaper change.
• He's the Houdini of the swaddle. He loves the resistance, but he loves breaking free even more.
• We're starting to figure out poops from farts. I used to wonder how parents could tell the difference between sounds. Now I realize it's all about experience.
• People say Charlie looks just like me. Andrew says babies always look like the father, so the father doesn't eat the baby.
• I'm not making a big deal of this, but Nilda, Brian and Charlie is "NBC." Just saying.
• I'm trying not to overshare, so I've set a time limit of three years on blog posts like this. I think I'm being eminently fair.

Needless to say, having a newborn is not conducive to taking pictures that are appropriate for public display:

Charlie At Home

It's wonderful to finally have Nilda and Charlie home. The hospital sucked because we couldn't get a single room. They only have seven singles in the entire place and Charlie was born during a crazy busy time because, apparently, everyone wants a baby for Christmas. I hated leaving Nilda and Charlie at night, especially to go home, have a beer and sleep uninterrupted in my own bed. It was terrible. Going to the hospital in the morning was great, though. Look at this kid.

Nilda is doing much better and is a fantastic mother. It took me a while to realize she's not pregnant anymore. Here Charlie is with his former ride.

We're still not sure who he looks like. Stella says he looks like me, or sometimes her father, though he definitely has Nilda's lips. He's got my blood type, so I win that one. But without a doubt, he has Nilda's monkey toes.

Charlie is a remarkably good baby, very alert and he doesn't get upset easily. Considering who his parents are, that will definitely change.

He even sat for a glam shot at the mall.

Charlie was part of a sleep study at the hospital on how babies can learn in their sleep. While measuring his brainwaves while sleeping, they played a tone for Charlie and would then blow a puff of air on his cheek. They are testing to see if he can learn to turn his head away just from hearing the tone. The goal is to get a test for learning disabilities as early as possible. Let's just say Charlie did NOT like the puff of air and the test lasted only a few minutes, though he luuuved being all bundled up for the test. I was there the whole time and got a shot of Charlie testing out Cerebro.

Charlie had a lot of visitors in the hospital, including Aunt Irene. Andrew and Harley brought the kids to see Charlie a bunch and it's been great. Andrew said that finally, there's a niece/nephew that won't ever call him "Uncle Brian." "Daddy" is bound to happen, but I can tell him from experience that it's not bad at all.

I drove Nilda and Charlie home from the hospital on day 4, and I swear to god I've never driven as carefully. It was freezing that morning and we bundled him up like he was ready to summit.

After we got home, Mommom, Poppop, Abuela, Aunt Julie Rocks, Aunt Harley, Uncle Andrew/Daddy #2 and his cousins Lilah and Jack came over. Mom and Dad brought a ton of food and we should be good for the week. No one besides Nilda and I can use our touch faucet or tell the difference between the trash and the recycling, but it was great to have everyone together. We watched the Eagles/Jets game, though Charlie didn't watch too much of the game. I tell him that the Eagles still have a chance to make the playoffs, but he's written off the season and is seriously questioning whether Andy Reid should return next season. I asked him who he thought would be a better replacement and he pooped on me. He makes a good point.

Charlie's first night was just fine. We still have the glow of having him home so the lack of sleep isn't a problem, yet. Nilda was doing the "mommy stare" and needed constant reassurance that he was still breathing. He's been eating great and that makes us happy. I never thought I'd be so excited to see so much pee in a diaper.

We had Dawn, our postpartum doula, come this morning and help us get everything settled and that was a big help. She helped Nilda a lot and we even snuck in another couple of hours of sleep. It's sort of like having a ski instructor. You still have to ski, but at least there's someone around who knows what they're doing. Stella's here and she's helpful too, but it's been a looooong time since she's dealt with a baby, and I can say that because she. Things are going great and now we can finally settle in.

The hours are just flying by. Next time I need to get anything done, I'm going to start viewing my life in three hour increments.

Yael wrote that I overshare on facebook. In response, here's a video of Charlie crying. He does this thing where his lower jaw goes up and down at supersonic speeds. I can't move my lower lip anywhere near as fast, but his mother can. That's how we know he's Hispanic.

Charlie Sebastián Heller

Born December 15, 2011, 11:58 am
8 pounds, 5 ounces
Everyone doing great.

No Closer

The kid does not appear to be in the holiday spirit. Nilda is due in five days on Saturday, December 17, and Baby C is no closer to being born than he was a few weeks ago. Nilda had an ultrasound last week and the baby was completely healthy: 10 fingers, 10 toes, still a boy. The one thing we didn't count on was his MASSIVE HEAD. He's measuring 62nd percentile generally, but his head is in the 95th percentile, which means his head could actually be above 95%. Nilda was 38 weeks & 3 days, but he was measuring 40 weeks & 3 days. His head, however, was measuring 41 weeks & 1 day. It's possible that his head is too big to drop into the birth and get labor started. He was estimated to weigh 7 pounds 14 ounces, give or take a pound, which means he could weigh close to 9 pounds. The doctor walked in looking at the results of Nilda's growth scan and her jaw dropped.

No details yet, but we're looking at setting an end date by c-section for this pregnancy. The doctor said we could wait to see if Nilda goes into labor naturally, saying, "Women do give birth to babies with heads this size." This is about as reassuring as telling us that a species of rare bird may not go extinct because they can to burrow into the ground to survive a wildfire. It makes no sense to wait for a natural labor that may not come that will most likely end in c-section, anyway.

Now we're both done with waiting and we're ready for this kid to get here. Nilda is especially done. I now know how far the difference between 32 weeks and 39 weeks is. I have done a fabulous job of completing Nilda's list of things for me to do around the house, but it keeps getting longer and the only thing that can save me is for the baby to come already.

I've been getting things ready at work, too, trying to buy some time for upcoming deadlines. Court conference scheduled for next week? My wife and I are expecting our first kid = adjournment. Discovery deadline? I'm going to need a brief extension because I'm about to be a father and if you don't agree you're a terrible person. Yes, we know that it's going to be a boy. We have a name but we're not telling people until after he's born, so no one can criticize it. A surprisingly common response is "Your life is going to change," which basically means that the speaker had no idea what having a kid was going to be like and is still recovering.

We got a picture of the kid at the ultrasound this weekend. Look at these cheeks and know why we now call him Baby Chubs.

I fully expect the kid to read this some day and know now that I say this about you: I love you and you have a ginormous head.