So What Does the Boy Monkey Think About All This?

Ok, little RJ is ten days old. How did she manage so quickly to twist me completely around her tiny finger?

I love this little girl. It's an unconditional, brain stem kind of love. It's unaffected by 3:00 a.m. wakeups, poop-filled diapers, and her inability to make a decent fist. And it isn't mitigated by a new parent's nervousness or uncertainty, unlike early days with my precious Sara. This is just fun and glorious and frickin' amazing. Who knew that being sleep deprived could be so exhilirating?

I realized today that I'm a slave to a ten-day-old whose whole reason for being is to get drunk on breast milk. No, worse than a slave, I'm actually a facilitator. Regardless of what I'm doing, when she starts turning her head to the side and opening her mouth and making sucking sounds and, lord help me, crying, I drop everything to carry her to the milk. I do it without hesitation and, yes, I like it.

We have two very smart dogs who are extremely concerned that they've lost their once-exalted status. Purdy, the girl dog, is sublimating her anxiety by becoming very maternal. When RJ cries, Purdy scrambles to find me and let me know ("What's that Lassie? Timmy has fallen down the well? Good girl!!"). On the other hand, with no real role in this new world Hank has become incredibly needy. He's a shadow of his former self. It's as if he knows that we no longer have the time or energy to keep up our old game, where we all pretended he was the big dog, and we were all just pups up on the porch. Lo, how the mighty are fallen.

Check out KB's picture of RJ and Hank practicing their synchronized yawning routine. That's why my brilliant and creative wife gets paid the big photograper bucks.

I'm scheduled to start work at Vignette on the 21st. I can't begin to imagine how, in a little over two weeks, I'm going to get in a car and drive away from this domestic paradise...