Ronan is smiling. And that’s not only good, that’s great. He smiles spontaneously after a feeding if you shout “Smile! Yay!” repeatedly. The smiles get bigger the more times you yell. My landlady must think I’m insane since I’m always shouting “Smile! Yay!” all the time. But it’s wonderful. I think it’s the most wonderful smile I’ve ever seen, all toothless and about half the size of his face. Well, the most wonderful next to my beautiful wife's. If I ever have energy again I will post a video of him smiling. I guarantee it will make you laugh.
He’s also really focusing on objects, which feels like me all the time because he seems to know who I am now. He will follow me around the room from his crib or bassinette. If there are other people around, he will stare at me a lot. It’s really cool on one hand, because he seems to recognize me, but it’s also somewhat melancholy in a good way, because he’s starting to miss me if I’m not there and looks quite sad. I say “in a good way” because I’m selfish and evil, and because he’s incredibly cute while staring at me. While he’s somewhat unhappy about other people being near him, he wants to be near me, and that’s a good feeling.
I have no energy because we’re getting ready for a schedule change. Actually Terry and I have been ready for some time but Ronan is not. The pediatrician calls him the “little prince” because he won’t sleep more than three or four hours. We are trying everything short of hired help, books, swaddling, etc. Starting Wednesday he is sleeping on his belly during the day while we’re awake. There’s also a new sleep ritual at the end of the day. This includes a bath, which for some reason I don’t understand makes him sleepy. The first night didn’t really work, and I woke up this morning with Terry pounding the bed in frustration because she really, really needs sleep. I’ve gotten more sleep but I would like to sleep at night, not during the day, and I’ve been sleeping a lot in the morning. (Okay, the afternoon too.)
Apparently despite the sleep protectors and the rotation, we’ve given our baby a flat head. There’s time to recover from this, but it’s not a good feeling to know that our baby’s skull is mildly deformed. He can recover from this by sleeping on his side or his tummy, and he had 16 months before it’s a real serious problem that can only be fixed by surgery or wearing a weird helmet. Hopefully it will be better at the checkup in two months.
Finally, I feel ugly. I got rejected by the MFA Program in Integrated Media at Hunter College, when I thought I would get in with a 3.89 GPA from Fordham and media credits going back fifteen years. But, I didn’t get accepted. I knew something was wrong when I went for the interview and the interviewer didn’t look at my DVDs or websites, but somehow knew my portfolio was too “light.” In thirty seconds we were through my work of the past ten years. I tried to get her to go back to my work with World War II and working at the UN School, but she wasn’t interested. So I’m thinking about going to the MFA Program in Television at Brooklyn College. I have mixed feelings about this; it means that in a year I will have to put Ronan in day care once a week. It’s a weird feeling. I feel like I’m letting Ronan down somehow, even though I’m not accepted yet, and intellectually I know that I’m not letting him down just because he’s in day care one day a week. But I feel ugly for doing it. I know I will have to let him go to school and such but cut me some slack, he’s only been here two months and already I’m making plans to leave him. And yes, I know many (most?) families don’t have a choice, they put their kids in with someone else as soon as they are born. I still feel ugly.
I guess that’s parenting – the good, the bad, and the ugly. I’ll try to focus on the good, fix the bad, and forget the ugly. But it’s hard.