Preparedness

Before becoming parents, Dave and I both considered ourselves to be relatively smart people. Both of us hold Masters degrees, we have respectable jobs, we are homeowners and somehow got through the days successfully without requiring too much outside help. For the past week, however, our intelligence has been both tested and questioned.

To prepare for our endeavor into parent-dom we took all the necessary steps. This all started several years ago when we each independently decided to take on responsibility for another being, in this case, cats. When Dave lived in Cambridge, he got his orange tabby, Dignan, with his roommates. While I was living by myself in Boston, I adopted Burrito. Our cats were well taken care of and did not change our daily routines too much. Now, we all know that cats are pretty simple critters and do not require too much intervention, so Dave and I decided after our wedding to up the ante. We got Izzy back in 2006 and embraced all the challenges that a new puppy brought to our home. She was very stubborn and not easy to house train, but she eventually caught on (I attribute this to our excellent training skills). We even managed to teach her a few tricks (sit, stay, high-five, etc) and we felt like we were quite the parents. Izzy made it so that we couldn't be away from our house for longer than 8 hours at a time, a huge challenge for us at the time because we liked going out for the evenings and perhaps staying overnight at friend's houses. After adjusting our routine to dog ownership, we thought to ourselves, "how much more difficult can it be to have a baby??"

The answer to that question is, a lot.

I don't remember ever worrying about Burrito and Izzy's eating habits (something they both managed to master early on), neither had any major complaints throughout the day, other than maybe wanting to play when we had to do other things, and they certainly could be left alone for at least a few hours at a time. Babies, on the other hand, can't do much of anything for themselves. Paige has figured out how to eat, but only sometimes will go back to sleep after her meals (a challenge at 3 am). She will sometimes cry, and we (remember, two people with Masters degrees) can't figure out what she wants. Her diaper is clean, she's just been fed, she doesn't seem too hot or too cold...she's just crying. Now don't get me wrong, we still think her cry is cute, but I can see that not lasting too much longer.

I am fairly confident that we will figure this whole "parenting" thing out soon and will someday be able to get some sleep again. Dave returns to work tomorrow, so Paige and I will have to get into some sort of routine that allows for me to complete regular daily activities (laundry, cleaning, etc) as well as the new baby activities (feeding, bouncing, rocking, etc). I'm sure that a few frantic phone calls to grandad will be made in the first few days, but then we'll work it out...