"We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." T. S. Eliot
Aunt Zoe and Grandma Linda came to visit baby Ernie.
But what they found instead was a one week old big boy.
Zoe made some cool greeting cards and stickers with Ern's chubby cheeks on them.
We decided Ernie needed some sea breeze so we took him out to West Seattle to visit Alki Beach Park. Wikipedia says that it "was the first public salt-water bathing beach on the west coast of the United States."
Ernie was only a week old and already was asking to go to his second bar. The guy is a machine.
The Good Society Brewery & Public House had some fun bottled beer that I needed to make my own.
Pizza boys! There was some sort of cool kid parent group there having a meeting and so there were kids everywhere. Maybe I can still be cool after all.
We stopped at Marination Ma Kai for some Hawaiian soul food. I went with the loco moco because I'm a real one.
Our philosophy with raising lil Ern Dawg is that we want to bring him along on our life journey, not completely change our lives for him. So we wanted to get him out and about as soon as possible.
Our big first step social outing was taking Ernie to check out the little bar in our local QFC grocery store. We introduced him to our friends Miriam and Michael.
We were starting to get into a new groove of a routine with our new roommate.
Maybe I should just quit my job and be Ernie's personal videographer.
We took Ernie on his first Target shopping trip. He was very impressed with the selection of merchandise.
A kickball teammate was having a birthday and I agreed to make a short appearance, which was an excellent excuse for us to try Crumbl Cookies. They were delicious, very large, and pretty expensive.
The event was at Golden Gardens Park in Seattle. It was nearly impossible to find a place to park. I was kind of impressed that I had never heard of a place that was so popular.
This friend group was so organized that they had their own swag. It was a nice opportunity to return to the world of adults for a short time.
I guess a recent rule change decreed that people aren't allowed to have campfires on the beach anymore. Well the people on the beach didn't seem to think that was a good rule at all. So a poor park employee in a four wheeler would drive out to the fires he spotted, and douse them with I think a big bucket of sand. Some of the fires miraculously had a way of... coming back to life. He would then dutifully go back out and kill them again while their creators stood by. There didn't seem to be any punishment other than that so I wonder how long this exchange continued.
An awesome moment was when seals in the water and dogs on the beach took turns barking at eachother.
I hurried back to my fam at home. I'm kind of a night owl by nature so I've been taking the night shift. I feed Ernie his bottles, rock him to sleep and generally just hang out and spend some quality bro time together while Lydia takes some very needed rest.
One of my favorite parts of my day is watching all the funny faces that Ernie makes while he's sleeping. It's kind of aggravating actually because while he's asleep he has a whole range of emotions, but while awake he doesn't really react much to me I would say. For one thing his vision isn't great yet so I'm not sure how well he can see me in the first place. I think I'm just eager to interact with him but I need to be patient while his little computer boots up.
One of Ernie's quirks is he doesn't really seem to mind when he has a dirty diaper. He does, on the other hand, mind when you change his diaper. Part of it may be it's cold, and part of it may be he's out of his swaddle and the lack of that safe feeling makes him sad. At any rate we often tag team him when changing his diapers.
Feetsies!
I sort of figured once I had a kid that I would never be able to play a video game again. It turns out I can still play and just have a sleepy little potato in my lap while I do it. No big deal.
Ernie getting some of his first tummy time.
At this point Ernie's play time involves a lot of staring at high contrast pictures.
We took him out for his first walk outside in his new stroller. We got this cool thing where his carseat attaches to the stroller.
I've never really needed to take the elevator in Kirkland Urban before. I guess I'm an elevator person now.
We couldn't give Ernie real baths yet because we weren't supposed to get this umbilical cord stump wet. We did give his crusty hair a little wet brush treatment, though. He's not really into pacifiers but he does like to suck on your finger for comfort on occasion.
At work I'm a contractor so I don't get any sort of parental leave benefits from my job. Luckily though I live in Washington and they have an awesome paid leave program. I get three months, of which I'm going to take three weeks off initially and then additional weeks off sporadically later on. Lydia has done some magic with leave, summer break, PTO, and who knows what else to create a beast of a maternity leave that will last like 7 months. What a lucky baby.
