smonk you: the best freaking daddy blog ever

A year ago Miloh was a week old. I'd spend nights in his room, underneath the glow of the Twilight Turtle, bouncing to soothe him as he cries. When the cries subsided you could hear the soundtrack of some Rockabye Baby lullabies playing on the iPod.

Because of pure exhaustion we forget when we realized that he slept better without the music and the turtle. I'm guessing the turtle batteries and iPod died on the same day. He probably went right to sleep and so they never came back on.

Right before Miloh turned one we dumped the pacifier. We saw that it was becoming an addiction and thought if we broke the habit now it would be easier than later. And since it was only used when he slept it was easy to change out his monkey Harlow for the pacifier.

What helped the transition was a new, well old, routine. The Twilight Turtle was back on and the iPod, packed with Rockabye Baby lullabies, made a return as well.

With a little fuss it worked well.

In Miloh's one year doctor appoint…

Let me start with the second half of the post title first.

Smonk You is going a bit dim... not totally dark... no comments on the dim part.

I'll still be writing but maybe at a bit less frequency. I tried to write 2 posts a week because Blogher (my ad thingy) wants people who use them to post at that frequency... and time just doesn't want to cooperate.

It was so much easier to write a daddy blog before Miloh was born... I had a bit more time and was a bit less sleepy.

I still like doing it and all but it takes a lot of time... and I'd rather post less often but have better stuff.

So if you dig this blog the best thing to do would be to grab my rss feed because then you'll know when I post without having to check back.

Like I said, it's not going away, I have posts in mind, infographics to catch up on and infographic ideas in my mind, and I have some posts I half started and never posted but are still cool.

So thanks for reading, thanks for sticking around if you d…

This weekly tally is actually a week and one day in order to take it through January 21, the day before Miloh turned one.

People have asked how we kept track of all this... Staci made a sheet we (and our nanny, my in-laws and such) would fill out. It all started because we had to track his stats because of his jaundice... so one night when I was loopy from no sleep I started these.

I only planned on doing these weekly graphics for a year... so this is the last. Some folks are probably happy about that, some could probably care less and maybe some are bummed.

Although these are going away I'm still behind by a couple of the month long graphics and my infographic for the 3rd and 4th quarter of his first year.

Then there are some others I have bouncing around in my head.

Thanks for checking them out.

I've never really been a fan of the first birthday pics when a kid has icing smeared all over it's face. I often feel that parents stage it so they have a cute photo.

Miloh must feel the same... and he apparently doesn't like frosting.

We lost Miloh. I don't mean lost him like we can't find him, I mean he no longer needs us... at least when he goes to sleep. Just under a year and he's ready to be on his own.

During our trip to California we realized we had a huge miss... he didn't have a cuddly stuffed animal. He grabbed our friend's kid's stuffed animals and melted into them. He has lovies and other small things, like the Deglingos Baby Blankie Rat that he'd sleep with but wouldn't totally cuddle.

He was missing a cuddly animal that was a good size to sleep with.

It sounds all obvious that we should have given him one... but babies can't sleep with things like that for so long and we didn't prepare... any way getting one was the first thing on out list to get him.

We were going to get something the weekend we got back but in the meantime our nanny gave him a little monkey stuffed animal that we got at Staci's baby shower to sleep with. Miloh liked it so we were cool with …

A few months ago Staci, Miloh and I took a road trip to the fabulous city of Dubuque. My iPod was packed in the trunk... oops, there wasn't enough music on our phones and data service was spotty so Pandora was hard to use.

Life's tough, right?

So we were stuck with the middle of nowhere radio... which in all honestly I like because it's always an interesting search and it's the only time I get to hear Boston or Kansas.

And while listening to an 80s station I made the comment that music has changed in that when I was kid the songs about women where more pining for them, rather than being so confident that the guy would hook up... like I feel they are today. And that insecure pining was great and became the soundtrack to all John Hughes movies.

Which made me wonder whether my observation was right, which of course it is because I'm never wrong. It also made me wonder what the top songs were when I was born.

Also what will be popular music when Miloh starts finding ou…

Two more weeks to go.

Miloh's first word... He's been babbling a lot but now he seems to say this with purpose.



Oh...and he's walking. I should have mentioned that in my last post but he was kind of just taking steps by accident...



not sure why most of the videos we take of him involve us laughing at him... I mean with him.

All of the following events are real. The names had been changed but then changed back again because there was no reason to change them in the first place. And because I'm too lazy to sit down and write a compelling narrative they are in plain-old-boring chronological order.

At 3:45 AM on Christmas Eve I woke up and decided to have breakfast as going to sleep would be fruitless because Staci, Miloh and I needed to be out the door at 5:00 AM for a 7:30 AM flight to El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula... now known as Los Angeles.

There was some fantastic snow on the ground which would be great for boarding but would slow down a drive to the airport. But we knew we'd be good with two and a half hours of time. Then we realized we only had two hours because our flight took off at 7:00 AM.

We got to the airport in great time... which made me happy.

Then I was hit with a startling realization. I had gone from a guy who could fly through a Black …