Man To Man

One of my funny dad friends, for lack of actually remembering let’s just say it was Max and Mile’s Matt, described the arrival of baby #2 in basketball terms. It’s best to use man to man defense. When baby #3 comes (when Hell freezes over) you go to zone D.

Since my breast milk hasn’t come in yet, Diana has decided to take Luca. I’m taking Elijah. While he’s faster than me, I’m still tall enough to block his jump shot.

Diana actually sleeps downstairs with Luca and I sleep upstairs with Eli. Did I mention Diana is the most wonderful person in the world?

A word on how Eli is dealing. Pretty darn well for someone who just experienced a coup d’etat. He’s dubbed himself the Official Person Who Announced When The Baby Is Crying.

So it’s up to me to entertain Eli while his mom is otherwise engaged. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Diana is amazing. I don’t know how she was able to entertain this kid for the last 2 ½ years. Eli has the attention span of a gnat. There’s a part of me, 99% of me, who is tempted to turn on the TV at 7am, plop Eli in front of it, and go hide in the basement for the next 12 hours.

Yesterday, I decided to take Elijah on the subway for entertainment. Yes, that mode of transportation that I loath for two hours every week day. But he loves trains and for a $3 investment I could guarantee he couldn’t escape unless he overpowered the conductor.

He was mesmerized. Looking at it through his eyes, it was kind of awesome. There were germs. There were stinky people. There was a lot of weird noises. There were doors that opened and closed by magic. There was a lady yelling into her phone. What more could a two year old want?

CUT to several hours later after Eli went to bed. Luca is currently famished all the time. So Diana unfortunately has turned into some kind of half woman, half baby. Last night, there was a rare five minutes when Luca wasn’t attached to her and a little fussy.

So I attempted to occupy him for a half hour so Diana could sleep. I looked at old blog entries and remembered the old “Walk Around The Room In A Figure 8” trick. I turned on the TV and found the groove I had worn into the ground from Eli.

Richar Pryor’s “Live At The Sunset Strip” was on. I spent a half hour laughing myself silly while Luca peered into the darkness. Suddenly, I snapped off the TV. I realized that over the course of that half hour Luca had heard every single swear word in the English language.

I’m terrific.