Maybe I am a record keeper instead of a musician.

I have never in my life had anything that could wind me up faster than Clover. While in the hospital, she was a happy, healthy, nursing baby. When she came home… she was not.

The first day we came home, Clover decided that she didn’t really want to nurse. She was sick of mom’s colostrum, and was ready for mom’s milk. The only problem was that we didn’t have any of that yet. As a result, we had a screaming, not nursing, very hungry baby. I have never in my life, repeat, never in my life, felt so frustrated. I was helpless. We had everything we thought we needed, but Clover didn’t agree. I was so frustrated that I was literally about to start pulling out my hair. After a couple hours, we called a nurse. We ended up mixing up a bit of formula that the hospital sent us home with. This was never our plan, but we were desperate. It worked. Happy Clover. Kristin and I both cried when she attacked and devoured her 15mL of formula like a great white shark that found a wounded seal in the open sea. It was unreal the amount of relief that came over me.

I have never before felt both such strong emotions as well as such a fluctuation of emotions. I can completely run the spectrum of emotion which had previously (pre-Clover) been reserved specifically for life and death situations, and the resolution of said situations… and I run the whole spectrum between her not stopping crying until after I pick her up and say “It’s okay Clover, I’m here.” It is blowing my mind. I can only imagine what my wife is feeling. Just by looking at her I am thinking I can take any of what I feel and multiply it by like 15 or so and maybe that is what it is like for her… at least for the bad things… I have a hard time imagining anybody, my wife included, loving (good thing) my Clover bear more than I do. I mean I know she does, but really, how can that be possible? Anyway, side tracked… My wife is currently on an emotional rollercoaster like she has never been before because of the great change of hormones in her body. The amount has changed by over 200% in the last four days, and the content of the amount I have no idea, but I am sure it is both quite a bit, and quite the opposite of what she had been getting her body used to over the last nine months. I at least have the luxury of a bit of hormonal balance at this time... I think… maybe that is what I should do my doctorate study on… sympathy pains, and if they change the hormonal makeup in the fathers to mimic the mothers.

Whatever. I am going to express a couple of my goals over the next couple weeks, months, and hopefully, years, as far as the idiotbook is concerned.

First, I intend to not make every post about Clover. I mean I understand that she is now as much a part of me, or at least my life, as my fingers and toes, but I am still a sentient being, and as I feel like I should be able to think about things besides my precious daughter occasionally. This book is in fact for me a record of me. I feel like anybody who knows me and has read any of this book, knows that this is me. I aim to keep the integrity of the idiocy, for my sake. Maybe this is a silly and vain goal. I am not going to delete it.

Secondly, I wish to make clear that this is for my posterity now. When I started the idiotbook, I didn’t imagine having children who would one day want to learn about their father. That has changed. I want Clover, and her siblings when they join our family, to be able to look back and know what I thought… about anything, them included. I don’t think that will be too hard, I think I just felt like I need to get that off my chest. I am kind of afraid that I may change the way I write or post just because I know that this is now officially becoming family history. Maybe it should be more like: Secondly, I understand that this will become available to my posterity now. In spite of that… whatever… it’s getting too wordy.

Another goal of mine is to record some of the little things I notice that have changed since I became a father. Not like the huge priority shifts or life altering things that I have been warned about, but the more subtle things that I did not know would happen… Like the beginning of this post… and the paragraph directly after this one.

Today when I got home from work, and after Clover was all fed she was very awake. I took her so that mom could get a few things done, like pick up the room a little and change a load of wash… all things that I would have done had they been asked… but Kristin has such a huge sense of duty, that she feels obligated to take care of everything, and as a result, seldom asks. Sometimes I wish she would, and sometimes I am glad she doesn’t, I will be honest about that. (side note for posterity) Tonight however, I wish she would have. Any way, I took Clover and we hung out. I laid her down on the bed then got in her face. I was kneeling and bent over, kind of like I was praying to the east, but instead I was staring into my precious daughter’s eyes as she lay on her back with her face maybe six inches from mine. I stayed like that for about ten minutes just staring at my pretty girl and thinking about how I should write a poem or a song about how phenomenal she makes me feel. I imagined her looking at me and thinking the same thing. I imagined her thinking about how she loves this man looking at her. She feels safe. She feels loved. She feels important. She knows that this is her place; she can come here anytime for the rest of her life and just know this is a safe place, in my presence and my care. I will take care of her needs, and fight for her wants. I am her advocate and protector. She is my inspiration… not for a poem or song yet, but for imagination… or something… maybe inspiration isn’t the right word… let me try another way to explain it… If I had a flag I could fly, just for me, for the world to see it would be Clover’s flag. She is my team, my club, I am her fan. I don’t want a new Utah hoodie for my birthday, I want a Clover hoodie.

Nobody warned me about that.

-p

PS. I think I am going to put together a lexicon… I am not sure if it is going to be part of the book, or an appendix to the book but a separate project… any suggestions on where or how to start would be appreciated…Jake…just sayin’… this would have been number four on the list of goals.

-p