I am...a ninja.

Well at least between the hours of 9-11am, 3-5pm, 9-8am. Because like giants and dragons, you don't want to wake a sleeping baby. Not so much for them, but for you. I have seen significant Dad-duty the past couple of weekends to help Emily do some fun stuff and volunteer. These past couple weekends have forced me to move like the wind that stirs no leaf (cue Asian flute).

The biggest hurdle is that we have high ceilings and wood flooring - some people call that a concert hall. Sound carries in our house with ease. So you set a glass down harder than usual on the kitchen counter and it sounds like a blacksmith forging an axe. All of these factors have been the iron that sharpens my iron - I am now able to operate and function with Low Decibel Output (LDO for you science types).

I walk heel to toe. I level out a glass and slide on to the counter. I can navigate our house in the dark. When I pour Schmax's food into his aluminum bowl, you'd swear it was the sound of a butterfly flapping its wings. I fully turn a door knob so as not to stir the inner-tumbler. I have WD40'ed all of the door hinges to eliminate the haunted house factor.

Am I proud of these things? Maybe. Do I like doing them? Absolutely not. It ends up feeling like a monastic existence. I had to turn on closed captioning on our TV because I was tired of Emily and I asking each other, "What did he say?!" Sidenote - once you turn on closed captioning you can't not read the text. It turns a show your liked watching into a subtitled film you're forced to watch in high school English class. The typos are funny though. During a Packers game it kept coming up as "Bret Farth".

All of this has become a necessary evil. I am a doer and weekends are prime-time for doing stuff - albeit not fun stuff. Floors don't sweep themselves, things don't fix themselves, laundry doesn't wash itself. So a Saturday afternoon has become a Mission Impossible type operation for me where I covertly get things done as to not set off any alarms (Benjamin) in the base (house). If I don't try and make things fun, I'd go crazy. Like literally talk to Mrs. Butterworth crazy.

The net result of this equation is that the opportunities for that thing I remember having called, oh what was it..."fun" - are a little compromised. Yes, playing with Benjamin is a certain kind of fun, but I require activity that either works up a sweat or stretches my mind. At least playing with Benjamin sometimes makes my mind sweat.

So the next time we see each other and I just appear out of nowhere, don't worry. I mean you no harm, it's simply the way of the House Ninja (cue Asian gong).

**Picture explanation - despite our protests Benjamin has enrolled in the 1920's Navy. And his first words were "Yeah-see, you better show up at the docks with the money-see. Or it's curtains-see. Curtains-I-tell-ya!"

Where'd My Baby Go?!

There are tons of expressions that I've heard other parents mention in the past, but I passed them off as pure cliche. One notion has become abundantly true and clear to me these past couple of weeks - babies/kids grow up too fast.

Time is, however, extremely relative. Benjamin is 7.5 months old, but it seems like we have had him longer than that, like years - at least that's what the skin underneath my eyes tells me. Then there are moments where I find myself trying to shove the sand back into the hourglass and keep Benjamin right where he is.

He is on the verge of no longer being what we technically call an "infant" or "baby", closer to "toddler" or "safety hazard". I do look forward to hearing the pitter-patter of feet across the floor, playing chase and having kinds of fun where speaking or remaining upright are critical, but it comes at the cost of losing this snuggle cushion that contours perfectly to my shoulder. The rolls of baby fat will start to recede like the ice caps and sounds like "Gwatp!" will be replaced with "No!" Bittersweet.

I actually have a memory of my mom and I playing cards when I was little and she said something to the affect of, "oh I wish you could just stay this age forever." And I said something like, "Okay, but how about just a little older so I'm better at playing card games with you?" My kid-logic made total sense to me at the time, but thinking about it now it probably made my mom tear up with a mixture of happy/sad thoughts. In one sentence there was the promise of new things to do and experience with a child, but also the reality that you can't go back.

Here's some fun stuff, I am consistently being punched in the chin by a baby. It usually starts off as pats to feel my scruff, then it turns into some excited slaps, followed by a Sonny Liston 1-2-combo. I'll let you know if he ever leans in to take a nibble off my ear. I also learned the hard way that he REALLY hates the sound of a weed whacker, zero to death-scream in a nanosecond. And my simulated sound of an elephant whinny didn't go over so well either. He's either afraid of elephants, or my elephant noise sounds like a weed whacker.