Welcome to the Club

Being a dad has its privileges: late nights, poopy diapers, messy apartment, and knowing that it is all worth it because you are 50% responsible for the best thing to hit the planet. There is one other perk: hearing great stories.

Tonight, some of my extended family came over for dinner and to meet Alastair for the first time. We are a large, and fairly close-knit, family. However, we do have our secrets. What family doesn't? Well, some came out tonight. I won't focus on the sad ones, but there were so many stories of extraordinary things happening. Babies survived risky deliveries and are now my teenage cousins.

I never heard these tales before. I don't know if it was because I was young, or I just wasn't part of the club. My wife and I are among the first of our friends to have children; there has not been much celebration of this rite of passage. People smile, and remember, and give some token advise that we heard a billion times before. But tonight, we talked about surviving and coping as a family.

There was laughing and respectful silence.

It was great and I am grateful.

My question:

A picture of what family should be linked to the purple text?

Just some pictures

Alastair for President: a buggy in every hallway and a bottle in every mouth.

Some Baby Issues

Raising Alastair is going well. Here's a list, with a few details, of things Emily and I are dealing with:

1. Emily had a c-section. Until this Monday, I was the only one who could carry things heavier than Alastair. This was no problem, except the two of them were stuck upstairs until I got home. Emily just got clearance to resume normal activities!
   
2. Because he was frank breech for so long, Alastair has hip ddysplasia on the left. The ball portion of his hip is not quite engaged with the socket. The joint can grow together properly while the cartilage is turning to bone. Since his birth, Alastair has worn a Pavlik harness to correct the problem. A recent ultrasound revealed encouraging results. Alastair wears this thing 24-7 over a onesie. I'll address the issues (i.e. bathing) with this at a later post.
3. Alastair has a minor case of hypospadia, a birth defect of the urethra. I will not link to Wikipedia on this; results contain images of the condition. Google at your own risk.... Bottom line, it will be corrected with routine surgery once Alastair is a few months older.
4. Sleep dep. Holy crap I'm a zombie. I've fallen asleep in the shower and in the elevator at work. More writing should be borne out of this.
   
5. Alastair is too cute for his own good. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Food Improv #1

The wife, son, and I had some good friends visit with us this weekend. I had a shelf full of chicken breasts (I skin and bone them myself, I'm cheap and snobby) that were headed to Funkytown, one diner with "sensitivities" to lactose, wheat, and potatoes, another on a calorie-controlled diet, and lots of small quantities of little things laying in the fridge and pantry. Here's what I threw together:

Soundtrack: Vinyl Killer by Drums & Tuba

• bone and skin 4 chicken breasts (removing the tenderloin and freezing it for stir-fry and the bones for stock)
• saute 4 cloves of garlic in a little olive oil
• rehydrate some sundried tomatoes and deglaze the pan with the rehydrating liquid (tomato tea, you could say). I through the liquid in because my garlic was about to burn. Burnt garlic sucks
• add minced sundried tomatoes and some dried herbs (I can't recall, maybe some oregano and basil) and dried hot pepper flakes
• push to one side of the pan, away from the heat source, but keep a medium heat on the sucker
  
• add saltandpeppered chiggin breasts sear for 2 min or so on each side
• add a few glugs of cheap sherry and give the pan a righteous shake, careful of flareups
  
• cover and reduce heat to simmer

This was good, but I had some more things to use up

• after the chikkan is cooked, about 10 min, add a heaping handful of chopped fennel tops (the feathery parts) cover again for minute
• add a glug of Pernod
  
• serve on top of sauted kale and beet greens (or spinach)
• give a healthy drizzle of balsamic vinegar

There it is: dairy free, gluten free, health conscious, alcoholic, easy, and impressive.

Questions

1. What would you add? remove?


2. What should I call it?

Become father

So, I'm going to cut to the chase and not draw out the story I started. Bottom line: my wife delivered the baby via cesarean section. Since it was discovered he was in breech position, there was no room for debate. I saw some of the operation, but stepped back to comfort my wife when the doctors prepped the muscle spreader. No one wants to see their best friend's guts.

Our son is named Alastair William. He was born at 4:22 AM on a school night. 9 lbs. 8 oz and 20.5 inches. A beast. But a cute beast. I'm torn between anonymity and ...nymity? We've received lots of feed back on the name. Here's its story:

A couple weeks after Emily and I found out about her pregnancy, I had a dream that we had a son and his name was Alastair. I shared this with my wife. When the sonigram revealed his male sex, my Emily said: "Alastair it is." For the next 6 months, I played devil's advocate with the name but Emily was convinced it was his name too. We kept the name secret from most (as recommended by sundry friends and advice books). When he was yanked from his little studio apartment, the name stuck even faster.

So this brings me to my dad being an asshole.

When I was growing up my father was like a force of nature. Unpredictable and occasionally cruel. Not abusive, just hard to get along with. Once I moved out, things got better. He took action to improve his life and I did so with mine. We've gotten along extremely well for the past 10 years or so. We still do. However, as I escorted my parents--now grandparents for the first time--my father reverted to his old self. He stated that it was inconsiderate for me to have named our child what we did, that he (and therefore we) would have to deal with this the rest of his young life.

Now I appreciate the viewpoint, but here I was, about to introduce my family to my new family. I was sleep-deprived and high on adrenaline and basking in the glow of my beautiful son and wife and the day and this prick lectures me in the parking garage?

Question:

Should I tell Pops what I think?