The Plight of Late Night Feedings

Since I'm working and Lindsay's a saint, she's agreed to do the lone "middle of the night" feeding during the week if I do the bookend feedings adjacent to that crappy middle of the night feeding. It's a fair enough deal (perhaps too fair). Lately, I've found it to be downright comfortable. Why? For once, I'm not complaining about the late start time of live sporting events in the Eastern time zone.

At Lauren's current pace (and her requirement to stay vertical for 30 minutes after feeding to stave off supposed reflux), the entire process takes about an hour from the start of the feed until the time she can realistically be put back down. NCAA tournament games have been lasting until well past midnight which means I can delay that last feeding until 11:00pm or 11:30 to still catch the end of the games guilt free.

Tonight, we're only a few minutes from the start of the US/Mexico World Cup qualifier and she's closing in on four hours. I find myself glancing over her way saying, "stay asleep...stay asleep" so I have an excuse to stay up to watch the game (again, guilt free). In ordinary infant-rearing situations, it would be completely irresponsible for me to forgo an hour of sleep to watch a game if she had already been fed. However, if I know I have to be awake at some point during the game, there's really no point in trying to catch a quick nap, is there? Plus, I can always use the "I was trying to extend the amount of time she could go between feedings" excuse in the event I'm overtired the next day.

Let's just say if you're a dude that lives in the Eastern time zone and anyone ever gives you the choice of months to have an infant in the house, you could do a lot worse than March. Anyway, I need to run...fine, you caught me: I need to make sure I've got a beer in hand for the start of the match.

Quick addendum - Before going outside to get that beer that you want to have in hand for the start of the match, make sure your wife hasn't set the house alarm. On the bright side, Lauren slept through it (Lindsay awoke slightly to very confused). Of course, I might be a little tired. Upon opening the door to get to my beer fridge, I heard an alarm and my initial thought was, "what idiot just set off their house alarm."

Book Review: The Cat in the Hat

Since I'm pretty much the world's greatest parent, I read books to my two or so week old daughter. I know she can't understand but I've heard it's important. I haven't read out loud since elementary school, so I'm rediscovering a lost skill. In addition, my sister said she's read books to her twins every night they've been home since they were born. There's no way I'm going to fall behind my sister.

Earlier this week I selected Dr. Suess' classic, "The Cat in the Hat." It had been a while since I had read the book; in fact, it's possible I never did. I was always more of a "Green Eggs and Ham" kind of guy.

I get that with kids books there's a whole suspension of disbelief thing that's pretty much a prerequisite; however, that isn't going to stop me from offering my thoughts. First off, how plausible is it that a cat rings someone's doorbell and immediate treats someone else's house like some sort of amusement park. The only thing I can even come close to comparing it to was my first couple years out of college when myself and a couple buddies lived a block from Wrigley Field. Seemingly every weekend we'd have some sort of visitors coming into town, tearing through our apartment and the north side of Chicago, and leaving a path of destruction. At least the Cat...

<SPOILER ALERT>

...ultimately comes back and cleans up. Something our fraternity brothers never seemed to stick around for.

The other thing I struggle with about this book is exactly who's in charge of taking care of the children while their mother is away. It's pretty obvious they're not old enough to be left alone and the lone authority figure and voice of reason is a fish. I'll grant you that in the land of children's books it's plausible that an animal might be designated as a temporary caregiver, but a fish? Is there a more ill-equipped member of the animal kingdom to care for human children than a fish?

Even though the key message I took from this story was that the two children were obviously neglected and quite possibly unloved, it's still a fun read, though probably not age-appropriate for a 17 day old. As with most Suess classics, there's a lot of rhyming and ridiculousness. And couldn't we all use a little more ridiculousness in our lives?

What I Learned from Hugo Chavez

During our first six month assignment in India, we lived at the Taj Palace Hotel, which is in the heart of the Diplomat Enclave in New Delhi. When world leaders visit India's capital, they often stay either at that hotel or the nearby ITC Maurya Sheraton.

One Friday after work we made a quick stop by the hotel to drop our drycleaning so we could subsequently take a cab home from dinner (during our 2004-2005 assignment, we didn't have the luxury of our trusty drivers Kailash and Ashok). I noticed the portico of the hotel was eerily empty but that didn't stop me from calling over a bellhop to fulfill my request. Expat entitlement was in full effect. As he nervously stepped over, I noticed the few people that stood around were all equipped with machine guns. Well, except myself and the bellhop. Not thirty seconds later, a luxury vehicle stopped, the door opened, and then-Senator Hillary Clinton quickly hopped out of the car in a stylish red pantsuit (I'm not being sexist here in that I noticed what she was wearing, but when an important person wears something so distinctive, you tend to take note), and quickly ascended the steps to the hotel. The entire scene happened so quickly that Lindsay, who was still seated in the car, had no idea what had taken place.

At that time, we were living a life that made this experience somewhat notable and slightly more exciting than "just a normal Friday night." But not by a lot.

Shortly after the Clinton visit, we went to the Mauyra Sheraton for dinner. I'm guessing it was less about dinner and more about India's premiere Irish pub, Dublin's. Regardless, as we approached the front entrance to the hotel, it was obvious that there was beefed up security via both extra guards and metal detectors. I asked one of the friendly mustachioed bellhops in traditional Rajasthani garb who was visiting. He responded, "Chavez."

For some reason, and I have no idea why, I decided I'd test the security. Now please understand, and this is no excuse, but I was in my twenties and at the height of my obnoxious "I'm a westerner that does no wrong" phase where I thought I knew exactly how to navigate the Indian culture when the reality was more that I sort of knew how to navigate the Indian culture of luxury hotels. I decided it would be a good idea simply to walk around the metal detector at the front door. For all I know, I could have been shot - and probably would have deserved it. But guess what happened? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I simply walked around the metal detector and into the hotel.

Granted, in the eight years (nearly to the day, if my slight research is any indication) since this event, security at Indian hotels has increased but it's still less than meets the eye. We were told by Indian colleagues that the security checks at blockades to enter hotel grounds are far more thorough when there's a westerner in the car than when there's not. And as you might expect, when we stayed at the Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai, security was tight to enter the hotel (it was one of the hotels attacked in 2008) and access floors via guest elevators but there were obvious gaps to access the floors via service entrances.

So what did I learn from Hugo Chavez? I basically learned the placebo effect of Indian hotel security and that it's far more show than substance.

Special note: I'm not sure what it says about my life or priorities that 16 days after I became a father (we welcomed a healthy and beautiful daughter on February 18) it was the death of Hugo Chavez that made me come out of writing hibernation (I'm certain I will hear about this from the wife). But no worries, the labor, delivery, and early fatherhood posts are coming (including one where I try to compare labor to visiting India for the first time - which seemed easy in concept but is proving harder to actually execute).