Saturday, August 22, 2009
2:48 am

Mere moments ago, I lay my Alessandra down to sleep. Whether she’ll be up again in a couple of
hours or whether she will sleep until ten in the morning, I can not say. It matters not to
me – I win either way. I don’t plan to sleep again until tomorrow evening, and god knows I may
wind up catching my Z’s all day Sunday instead.

In fact, that’s probably the route I’ll take, since I gain a tremendous benefit by splitting the
wee hours of the night, which has always been my most productive time of day, between my beautiful
daughter and my simple, hand-me-down Mac Powerbook and Intuos4. The day time is fraught with
fighting brothers, demanding everything from money to food to milk to the constant changing out
of Thomas the Train VHS tapes.

As a quick aside, to those marketing geniuses behind those massive 37 minute tapes that parents
must get up and change so frequently that we may as well sit and watch the awful things, may I
just say,

FUCK YOU AND DIE.

Yes, I think I will sleep Sunday away entirely before my next week of ratracing begins and I once
again find myself completely devoid of any time whatsoever to work on or play with the things I
would like to.

Back to the present moment, I still feel such an incredibly warm buzz lingering from the
interaction I just had with my beautiful 7-week-old daughter. She awoke so sweetly, smiling,
kicking and pawing at the air, huge gorgeous dimples exposed on the sides of her cheeks. I snuck
immediately into the bathroom with her bottle, prepared the drop-in by adding distilled water
to Similac formula, shaking, and heating in a styrofoam cup under hot running water.

Tonight my daughter had graduated both from a 4oz bottle to a 6oz (actually an 8oz, which I
fill to 6), and from a “slow” nipple to a “fast” one. My son, now 4, had made this same
transition somewhere around his fifth to seventh month. Allie has been rapidly approaching
ready since her fifth to seventh WEEK.

The past couple of weeks of increasingly painstaking hour-long feedings and constant, hourly
wake-ups melted away as I held her, watching her sweetly guzzle down the six ounces in record
time, making no mess whatsoever in the process.

But why on earth would we have suspected that she needed so much more food and such a larger
nipple hole? For her age, that isn’t normal at all!

Thankfully I gave it a try and voila. Happiness.

The 30 minutes or so following the feeding was a happy blur of loving energy, big beautiful
baby smiles and warm tingly fuzzies as I held her, wrapped in a soft thin blanket, bouncing
gently up and down on the bed and singing some silly nonsense to her to the tune of “Daddy’s
little baby loves shortening, shortening”. I changed “shortening shortening” to “puddin’ pop,
puddin’ pop”, which is what I call her, and every time I said the words she broke out a smile
even prettier than the one before.

Finally she melted more deeply into my arms, feeling limp and heavy, and I carefully laid
her in the bed, kissed her good night, and watched her fall into a deep sleep immediately
before my eyes. But not before she blessed me with one last smile – the most beautiful smile
I’ve ever seen.

This is why I’m here.

And so, as I return to my trusty, beat-up Powerbook in the comfort of my bed, less than three
feet from her, I know that, though the site will not be ready for at least another month, this
will necessarily be the first post in my blog. Because every great business starts with a
purpose, mine is clear: enable myself to passionately pursue the things I love to do, actively
expressing all of these things and sharing all of my fun, knowledge and joy freely using
my one centralized and departmentalized website, and free myself to spend every day with my
daughter and family.