I'm keeping most of it here, but for a more condensed version of how things are going in my life: "I'm very busy with taking care of the baby." If you'd like to skip most of the babble and just see pictures of the little guy, go here.

Thankfully Patri is splitting baby duties with me. In fact, he does more than I do, although I still have to pump breast milk six times/day in addition to the more direct work. (we have to switch Tovar over from bottle to breast slowly due to his being a premie, and will probably continue partial bottle feeding for 4 months to 1yr)

The baby is doing well thus far. He's gaining weight and seems pretty content, at least so long as he's in a sling ;) Unfortunately he gets upset very quickly if left alone in his bassinet, swing or the like. Also, since he eats every couple of hours and feeding him requires a fair bit of prep work, co-sleeping doesn't result in the parent getting more than an hour or so of sleep, so we've abandoned it for the time being.

As it stands, when not eating or being changed, he is pretty much always in a sling, occasionally he's sleeping on daddy's chest or we'll try the bassinet for about a half hour until he starts screaming.

A baby crying is a terrible sound. In fact, Patri and I dislike it so much that subjecting someone to it is what comes to mind for Patri when he thinks about vengeance ;)

I've heard that Americans measure crying in hours, whereas in other cultures they measure it in minutes. Thankfully minutes would be a much better scale to measure Tovar's crying on. The only times he typically cries are when he's being changed, a quick cry to let us know he's hungry, and if he wakes up in his bassinet.

Taking care of him has been a lot more work than I'd anticipated. I'm glad that Patri anticipated that he should be here once the baby came home and not use up his paternity leave while T was still in the hospital. But even he has been a little taken off guard. Part of it is certainly that while we've heard what hard work kids are, we just had to experience it ourselves to really grasp it. Another part could be that having a premie is more work than average, and another is may be our style of parenting. We could just leave him in the crib and let him cry more, but as stated, in addition to wanting him to be happy, I don't think either Patri or I could stand it ;)

Thankfully we at least don't have to worry about spoiling him for now. There have been a lot of studies showing that you can't spoil a baby by holding them, and that babies held more tend to grow up as more secure and independent adults rather than less. And there are also studies showing that baby wearing reduces crying and promotes development. Unfortunately I don't recall the reference, but I recently read a great line by someone about evbio, paraphrase: "Back in the tribal days, if a parent was not with the baby they were probably eaten, so it makes sense that the baby should scream for someone to come take care of him."

For the time being Patri and I are just sleeping during opposite parts of the day so that one of us is awake with the baby 24/7. However, it would be really nice for us both to be able to sleep at the same time, and Patri will be going back to work eventually, so we're probably going to be hiring a nanny some time soon to watch T for a few hours/day. The prospect is pretty scary... but its not like he hasn't had many different strange people caring for him from birth anyway... I'll get over it... ;)

For the meantime we're doing alright. I've had a lot of sleep deprivation related mood swings, but Patri and I have been more careful about our sleep time these last couple of days and I think its helping. For a while there we were going around the clock: spending more time awake together and sleeping for longer periods, but this seems a bit better.

I'm currently working on "adjusting my attitude" ;) With the prematurity I was in major serious, OCD mode for a while. I've been having to remind myself that being able to enjoy it is what makes life worth living, and why I've worked to bring more life into the world. I've tried both attitudes and found that I'm a much happier person when I'm more accepting of the parts of the world which are less than perfect than when I invest more of my energy into micromanaging my environment and that of those around me.

And the new addition to my "things to work on" list is to appreciate and be more affectionate with Patri again. Back when I was a kid my old neighbor once told me that the most important thing to remember in relationships was to give my guy a big hug and be happy to see him when he comes home. Historically I've been really good about this with Patri, its easy, he's a sweetheart :)

Now that the baby is home I've been finding that my first greeting to him when he gets up is often to give him a list of things we need to take care of for the baby. And in general, I've been rather business-like with P. I'm not so good at business, it stresses me out, which stresses him out as well ;) But hey, at least I'm realizing it early and working on it. And P's really good and understanding about it. The sling is of course also part of the issue: when cuddling the baby 24/7 its harder to cuddle each other, and of course, sex is obviously out... yup, we've got a lot of motivation to find a nanny soon... ;)