Naps Are Wasted On The Young

Do not let him fool you. Do not lend this child any money. That angelic little serious face has not napped in three days. THREE DAYS.

And I don't mean oh, he's fighting his naps, or only taken short naps, or irregular naps, I mean NO NAPS. Not even so much as a 15-minute catnap in the car. Yesterday I saw him half-close his eyes in the stroller on the way home from the playground...and then he caught himself and powered through another four solid hours of daylight.  

6 am to 8 pm, this child is a ball of non-stop terrifying awakeness. 

Is he tired? Exhausted? Collapse-on-the-floor-wailing-because-his-head-is-stuck-under-his-musical-activity-table-again-level sleep-deprived? Oh, fuck yes. All that. He's a complete wreck at this point, possibly able to see through space and time but unable to figure out that hey, I'm tired. I should close my eyes and sleep instead of freaking out everytime I blink. 

Molar number four is cutting through. Which I think (hope) (pray) (trade personal soul for) is the root of the problem. The other three fucked with his nights; this one decided to mess with his days. For kicks! To be different! Oh, that upper left molar, marching to the beat of its own drum, all unique and snowflakey and probably way emo. 

(It's also entirely possible that his teeth have nothing to do with any of it, and he's just staying awake to stare at me exactly like this all day, like I am some sort of vaguely interesting zoo animal or PBS documentary about energy prices. Hmm. Interesting, Mother. Do go on with your theories. I'll brew some espresso.)

Mamarazzi

You may have noticed (or...not, probably not, but allow me a moment to wallow in delusional self-importance) that I have not posted a single non-camera-phone photo in a very long time. I think Ike's birth was the last time we pulled out the "real" SLR camera, and even that was a last-minute scramble of BATTERY! CHARGER! MEMORY CARD! LENS CAP! 

And then it was still easier for me to grab my phone off the nightstand and snap photos. And in a way, the ease of always having a semi-decent-ish camera in my back pocket (and the forgiving hazy glow of Instragram filters) has probably saved poor Ike from the worst of the third-baby photo fatique. Sure, not every picture of him is a professionally framed shot in high resolution, BUT AT LEAST I TOOK A LOT OF PICTURES. I DESERVE PARTIAL CREDIT.

But probably the biggest reason I abandoned my trusty SLR is that it maybe kind of sort of got accidentally punted down the basement steps by my children and/or one of their friends, I don't know who, I was too busy enjoying wine with my friends to pay attention to the fact that our children were playing soccer with several hundred dollar's worth of camera on the stairs. I mean, come on. It's not like I have eyes on the front of my head, or anything.

The camera was in its protective padded bag, at least — I think someone was using it as a purse or backpack before the game turned destructive — and everything SEEMED to work afterwards, but not ever like it used to. Photos turned out blurry a lot, like the auto-focus thingamabob went semi-kablooey (IF I MAY GET TECHNICAL ON YOUR ASSES FOR A MINUTE). So even when I did make the effort to take "real" photos, the results hardly seemed worth it. 

Jason was adamant, however, that we sack up and replace the camera eventually. So I started saving up my Amazon affiliate gift cards (thanks, Ultimate Master Lists! I should do you more often. I should turn this blog into nothing but lists! SEO synergy coupon extreme-Amazoning buzzword Skrillex!) until I had enough to cover a new Canon Rebel camera body and one of those fancy Eye-Fi memory cards that all the Kids Today are using, filling the wifi networks around our skulls with a digital smog of photos and videos and probably giving us all brain cancer or something. Hooray! 

The first thing I did was harrass my children with my new toy. And I realized that — like the concept of life without DVRs and touchscreens — they have absolutely no idea what to do when confronted with flash photography:

WHAT THE WHAT WAS THAT.

NOT SO VERY MUCH SURE ABOUT THAT NO THANK YOU.

STOPIT. SRSLY.

Baby Ike was not alone in his disdain for my sudden paparazzing.

IT BURRRNS SO ANNNNNNOYINGLYYYYYYY.

Eventually, Ike seemed to warm up to the camera, or at least accept the fact that I wasn't putting it away until I'd messed with every single setting possible:

He's a bit of a hammy clown, yes. Also part shark, apparently.

His first birthday is in just over two weeks. 16 days! I need to take at least seven hundred million more pictures before then. Sorry, eyeballs.