Halftime special

This past Saturday was Kyle's half-birthday. Hard to believe, isn't it? The day was relatively low-key: the biggest excitement was us feeding him mush that smelled like green beans. There was a party that evening, but it wasn't to celebrate Kyle. No, instead it was a Christmas party. And that's the sad truth that Kyle will have to live with: throughout his life, his half-birthday will be overshadowed by Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day, and New Year's. He will easily get lost in the shuffle, no doubt. Very few people even recognized his first half-birthday, and he didn't get any gifts (except for the green beans). No, Kyle won't have it easy like those other kids who have their half-birthdays in June, especially on June 24th or 25th, when school is out and summer has begun. Those kids certainly have it easy. My only hope is that the half-birthday neglect will make Kyle stronger.

In fact, it has been a recent goal of mine to make Kyle a tougher kid. I've taken it upon myself to start teaching our little guy self-defense by throwing objects at him. You can see the video below (though people who get my posts by e-mail might have to go to the blog itself).

I figure the video can replace the photo album this month, since most of the pictures we took this time around ended up on DaveWeekly. Since we're no longer as camera-happy as we were before, I'm going to start sending out albums every other month. You still can check out the chair pictures at the end of each post.

Finally, this month also marks one year since I launched this blog. If you'd like to see just how naive we were, check out the first post. Ah, the memories... of staying up past midnight.

Enjoy the holidays!

High five

Jennifer did it! The years of hard work, studying and avoiding my many distractions finally paid off. Yesterday we learned that Jennifer passed the New York State Bar Exam.

As you may recall, the bar exam was the final part of the so-called "trifecta of insanity." In May Jennifer graduated. In June she gave birth to Kyle, taking just one week off from studying for the bar. In July she took the bar exam. The exam was extremely difficult (or so they say), but for the torture-loving people of the Bar Association, it simply wasn't enough. They needed to put all of us through more agony by waiting to reveal the test results until now. So we sat there anxiously like children waiting for Christmas, but instead of getting presents or coal from a jolly old elf and reindeer, we received our news from a bland website established by bureaucrats. Of course you know what that means: on the one day of the year the website needed to work right, it wouldn't load correctly, forcing us to wait another eternity. At least we still received a great present.

I'm glad Jennifer passed the bar, though I still have a few concerns about whether she's ready for her new career. Just the other day I asked Jennifer to make me a Long Island ice tea and she seemed awfully confused. She also didn't know how to make a white Russian or a vodka martini. That has me wondering whether that bar exam is as thorough as many have claimed it to be, and whether I will get all the perks I was expecting. At least Kyle is reaping the benefits: with all the studying done, he now has permission to drool all over Jennifer's bar prep books. That makes him one happy baby.

And speaking of Kyle... he's now five months old! Below is a new photo album. We didn't take as many pictures of Kyle this time around because he's doing fewer cute things. Don't worry, though - we've asked him to step it up for next month. He's such a slacker sometimes.

Kyle's Fifth Month

These days Kyle is trying out new foods. He's been eating rice cereal, applesauce, bananas, and pears. I hear next month we'll work our way up to vegetables, and then it's on to calamari and steaks.

Kyle is also flipping himself over and trying to crawl, though without much success. He hasn't figured out that you have to lift your head while doing it, so he ends up buffing the floor with his face and shining it with his drool. At least that's one less chore for me to do.

Life Lessons

I've received a lot of important lessons during the past several weeks. Some I learned just from observations - others came to light after some rather tragic mistakes, mostly involving food. I'd hate for anyone to be deprived of these valuable tidbits, so I figured I'd share them with you.

First Lesson: If you plan to cook a party-sized frozen vegetable lasagna, please check first how long it takes to cook. It might not take 45 minutes. In fact, it might need a full 2 hours to bake. Yours truly probably should have checked the box BEFORE dozens of people arrived at Jennifer's dad's home on the night of the visitation for Jennifer's mother. So, the lasagna had to wait for another night. Fortunately we had beer and Chex mix, and plenty of dollar-menu salads to fix the situation.

Second Lesson: If you plan to cook a party-sized frozen vegetable lasagna, make sure you put it in the oven. The day after the timing snafu, we went to church with the oven going, thinking we'd have that cheesy delight ready when we came home... only to realize then that the lasagna itself was still in the freezer. Thank goodness we had more beer. The frozen lasagna ended up becoming a nice doorstop.

Third Lesson: An airline boarding pass with a poop stain on it is still a legitimate boarding pass. It's true. I'm not sure about spit-up on a boarding pass, but I suppose we'll test that next time.

Fourth Lesson: Cows are a lot like children...



... they're often the source of foul odors.

Fifth Lesson: A child's cow costume does not guarantee Halloween candy for the child's dad... though a little begging helps.

Okay - enough of the lessons. I'm late with getting out some important pictures, so here they are, images from Kyle's fourth month:

Kyle's Fourth Month

I hope you enjoy them.

And one more thought, this one concerning what happened yesterday: Kyle will now grow up taking for granted that an African American was President of the United States. By the time he votes, he likely will have also seen the first (or second) female president. Kyle will grow up believing everything in this country is possible, and that any person - regardless of race or gender - can be President of the United States. For real.

It's such a great time to be an American.

Kyle's Grandma

I was planning to write this blog entry a couple weeks ago, when Kyle turned 4 months old. I was planning to include a new photo album and write about his most recent adventures, including his first flight... on a trip to Florida. But then everything changed. That visit to Florida lasted only one day, as we rushed to North Carolina for what would be our final week with Jennifer's mom and Kyle's grandma.

It all happened so suddenly; I'm still in disbelief. Just a month ago, Neal seemed perfectly healthy. There was some concern when she went to the hospital for emergency surgery, but she was in good spirits after that, and we had every reason to believe she'd make a full recovery. We had no idea then what of was about to happen, and today I just can't believe she's gone.

I've had such a hard time writing this post. I've started it over and over again, and I have found distractions to avoid it. Kyle has helped with that. A lot of times I just want to skip this one and get back to the silly stuff. Neal loved the silly stuff. She was, in fact, my biggest fan. I've been blessed to have had a lot of family and friends write me emails and tell me how much they've enjoyed my blog. Neal wrote me the most. She always would boost my confidence and make me feel good about entries I had thought were just mediocre. I would look forward to getting these emails from her, and many times I'd write a blog entry with her reaction in mind, thinking of how she or Dave (my father-in-law) would take a particular joke. During her last week, as she lay in a hospital bed, she had Dave read her the most recent entry on my DaveWeekly website. She told me how much she liked it during one of our last conversations.

Of course, she didn't read my blogs simply for the jokes. My blog provided Neal with stories about the newest love in her life: her grandson, our little Kyle. Neal reveled in being a grandmother. She had 10 years' experience, with Kyle's cousin Madison. Every time we saw Neal, she would entertain us with a new Madison story. This year gave Neal even more stories, ones about Kyle, which she told all her friends in North Carolina.

Neal was in the car with us when we brought Kyle home from the hospital, and she stayed with us for the rest of that week. She took care of the dishes, the food, and ran all kinds of errands so that Jennifer and I could concentrate on being new parents. We don't know what we would have done without her. In return, she had the honor of being the first person to be squirted by Kyle while checking a diaper.

Neal cherished all the time she had with her new grandson. Whenever she was away she'd talk about suffering from "Kyle withdrawal." We're so grateful that she was able to be with Kyle just two months ago, for his Christening. It might have been "Kyle withdrawal" that motivated Neal to get well enough so that she could move to a regular room at the hospital - just for a day - so she could be with Kyle one more time. These days, I'd like to think that Neal is getting all the Kyle she wants.

This is the second time my family has grieved this year. In May, less than a month before Kyle was born, one of his great-grandmothers, my Memere, passed away. She died on the day of Jennifer's graduation from Law School. My parents were in New York when they received the news. So were Dave and Neal. I will always remember Neal comforting us through our sadness. Shortly after the weekend, she wrote this in an email to me:

Being with you and Bob and Judi this weekend was very special and, I think, strengthened our family bonds. Sharing both happiness and sadness makes a family.

She was right, and those words echoed through my head as our family grew stronger in the days following Neal's passing. Everyone on Dave and Neal's side came to North Carolina to be with us through the visitation and funeral. Many traveled great distances. My parents were also there, and members of my side of the family helped fill the funeral home with flowers. Most of our friends also gave gifts, flowers, or made it there in person. Neal had done it - she brought us all closer together.

Later this week I plan to put a Kyle photo album together and I'll probably go back to writing silly stories, just as Neal would have liked. I will miss her emails, and although I'm certain she'll still be reading my stories, I'm sad thinking that I'll never be able to hear her response again. It's also sad that Kyle won't remember being with her. But thank God that Neal did share a lot of time with her grandson, and she wasn't sick through most of it. She did many things this year, experienced a lot of joy, and shared a tremendous amount of love, especially when the little guy arrived. Neal left us too soon, but she did go after one of the best years of her life. And I suppose we can take some comfort in that.

Lucky 13

We just passed a couple of milestones with Kyle. Yesterday marked 13 weeks since Friday, June 13th, the day Kyle was born. Today is September 13th, which means Kyle is now 3 months old, which just so happens to be 13/52nds of a year. Isn't that something? Heck, if you put a "1" in front of 3 months, you get "13." So, as you may guess, 13 is a key number in Kyle's life. Just take a look at 6/13/21, the day when Kyle will become 13 years old. If you add the numbers of that date together, 6+1+3+2+1, you get 13. Weird.

So, to mark this week's milestone, we're changing things up. We're ending Kyle's weekly chair photos with week 13. We'll continue taking those pictures, but now on a monthly basis - on the 13th of each month. That means the next time you see one of those photos is October 13th.

I'm guessing we'll keep doing the monthly thing at least until he's 13 months old, and then we'll probably do the yearly thing until he turns 13 years old. From there, we'll go decades until he's 130. At that point we'll probably have to stop doing the pictures altogether, since I'm guessing by then the bear will be a valuable antique, and we'll probably have to sell it to pay for gasoline.

Anyway, speaking of pictures, we have a new round of photos from Kyle's third month, complete with captions. You can view the slide show below, or click this link to go to the photo album: Kyle's Third Month.

With this milestone, I figure it's a good time to stop writing a weekly post on the Baby Beaudry blog. I will continue to write here, but only once a month, when we have pictures to share. Instead, I'll write most of my Kyle stories on my new blog, Daveweekly.com (for the dyslexic: WeeklyDave.com works, too). So, I hope you continue to join me there. If you're receiving posts from Baby Beaudry via e-mail, you'll have to sign up on the DaveWeekly site to get e-mails from there (I can't transfer the e-mail list). Let me know whether you have any problems with that.

Enjoy the photos, and see you at DaveWeekly.com!

(Diaper) Change you can believe in

The past two weeks were "Politics Gone Wild!" in our household, and by "wild" I simply mean politics had invaded our television. There was really nothing else wild about the weeks, unless you count the squirrel that's been scratching at our apartment window. Each night, after putting Kyle to bed, Jennifer and I would try desperately to stay awake through both the Democratic and Republican conventions, either by hitting each other in the shoulder or throwing beer in each other's faces. After all, this is HISTORIC stuff, and we didn't want to miss any of it... unless, of course, there was a good movie playing on cable.

After this election, Kyle will be living in an America that has either elected an African-American president, or a female vice president. This is phenomenal, and it makes me proud of our country. I'm hoping that either way, this election will open the floodgates, and every president and vice president afterwards will be either female or a minority. That way, in about 40 years, it'll be rare to see a white male receive a presidential nomination. That's when Kyle can step in and be a candidate of "change."

I don't want you to think that we have outlandishly high expectations for the little guy. After all, I'd be perfectly happy with him becoming just the Secretary of State. However, a parent can dream about the possibilities, and I have reason to believe that Kyle would be a great president, even if he was elected today.

First of all, Kyle is not afraid to stand up to authority. It doesn't matter who's holding him - if Kyle sees an injustice or wants food, he will let it be known and won't stop crying until a solution is found. Second, he is willing to work across party lines. I have seen him coo and smile at Republicans, Democrats, Independents and Socialists, and he has treated each one fairly. He's also not afraid to spit up on someone from his own party, either, if it means achieving what's best for his country. Third, he's a great asset to the American GDP: since his birth, Kyle has forced Jennifer and I to pump hundreds of dollars into our struggling economy, and we know he's just getting started.

Sure, some environmentalists might have a problem with the whole disposable diaper thing, but Kyle has been researching alternatives (such as his onesies and bouncy seat), and he promises to have complete independence from Big Huggies within five years, barring any unforeseen circumstances. Critics might also have a problem with his leadership experience. However, that really shouldn't matter, since both Democrats and Republicans no longer seem to be requiring experience for their presidential/vice presidential tickets.

Kyle is excited about all that he can do for America. I fully expect him to form an "exploratory committee" once he starts crawling. But why wait 'til he can vote, or even run for president? Write in Kyle for President (Jennifer for VP) this November! ... unless, of course, you live in Florida, Ohio, or any other state where your vote actually counts.

Silent night

It has taken me a while to write this entry. I don't want to jinx anything, and I could be doing that tonight. But I guess it's time that the truth comes out: Kyle likes to sleep. At night. I know, I know. It's stunning. It's shocking. And, quite frankly, Jennifer and I are awfully lucky.

It wasn't always this way, of course. When we first brought the little guy home, he took the "city that never sleeps" thing to heart. Or rather, he took it to heart when it came to the evening. Kyle would be drowsy and sleepy all day, but as soon as his head hit his crib sheet, it was party time! And Mom & Dad had to take part, or else King Kyle would force us to. We'd try to rock him to sleep, we'd sing songs to him, or we'd read him Jennifer's law books, but nothing would work. He'd seem to go to sleep, only to wake up and go nuts as soon as we put him in the crib, as if we accidentally hit the "reset" button on a detonated nuclear bomb.


But now all that's changed, or so it seems. Kyle goes to bed around 9:30 PM, and he doesn't start wailing until around 6 AM. 6 AM - no earlier! The sun is rising, birds are chirping, clouds, trees and chipmunks are singing, and Jennifer and I are waking up after about 7 hours of straight sleep. It's all beautiful. Granted, this could all change, as we hear kids like to switch things up once you're on to their "game." But we've appreciated it so far. Having sleep has allowed me to speak in complete sentences while reducing my crankiness. I am also no longer walking into walls or forgetting things, like "always remember where you put your toothbrush" or "underwear first, THEN pants." Again, it's all beautiful.

I know we'll pay for this if we have a second child, so we're savoring it while we can. And if you have a child and this entry made you jealous, I do have a few diaper stories that might make you feel better. They're rather dreadful, and I hear they're somewhat unique to our child. So, give me a call... but not late at night. I'll be sleeping then.