And As Soon As I Write This He Cries Uncontrollably, For No Apparent Reason At All

I really dislike fall. I know it's pretty and stuff, but it's so fleeting, and falling leaves only mean one thing: The inexorable slide into winter.

I was thinking about this as I held Animal the other day. It was either early in the morning or late at night or some time that completely escapes me even though it was less than 24 hours ago and my memory of stuff is suspect because of a lack of sleep these last two-plus weeks.

Animal was born just before the end of the year. Animal is not Animal's name. Animal has a Human name but Animal was what we called Animal in the second and third trimester. Animal's full name is actually "Operation: A.N.I.M.A.L." for "Aquatic Nugget Inside Maternal Abdominal Lair." This name followed "Project: Varpu," Animal's first trimester name, which came from an article Jen read in a design magazine, where a young Finnish couple named their child "Varpu."

Anyway, late into the third trimester, "aquatic nugget" seemed a little understated. In retrospect, it should have probably stood for "Amniotic Nestling Inside Maternal Abdominal Lair."

I didn't quite know what to think about Animal before Animal earned his Human name but as I lay there with him sleeping on my chest, I thought of how fleeting this moment probably is. A lot of the last two-plus weeks have been a blur, an endless stream of burping, dirty diapers, laundry and generally trying to figure out what Animal needs, but the other morning (or night) was something different. Jen was asleep and Animal was asleep and I just touched his soft peanut self as he lay flopped out on my chest. It was overwhelming, this fourth-trimester being sleeping innocently on me. And then I started to think about what I hate about fall.

Right now, the day-to-day regimen of raising a child hasn't been too difficult. Yes, there is sleeplessness (more so for Jen than for me) and yes, there is the whole adjusting to constantly having to ensure the well being of another life, but for now we're at the point where Animal is more of an accessory than a child — at least that's how he looks when we strap him in the carrier and strut around the neighborhood. And when he cries it's only because he's either too hot, too cold, too wet too gassy or too hungry.

Not that it was easy to get to this super-advanced point in child rearing: You should have seen the first night at the hospital, when Animal was shrieking and our suitemate had to subtly suggest that we burp him (at least that's how I interpreted the disembodied "burp" suggestion from behind the curtain, followed by the telltale hollow thump sound against her own child's chest; "Oh," I realized, "We haven't yet burped him!").

For now, it's just that beautiful baby smell and soft skin and talking all manner of bullshit to this beautiful little creature whose brain is still not formed enough to make sense of what's going on (beyond the aforementioned heat-cold-wet-gas-hunger consciousness). And for the moment I'm putting out of my head the inevitable neuroses about raising a child to become an independent minded, relatively modestly productive member of the world. We already made it through the scary first part — we have a healthy child who is gaining weight. The next part is the big unknown — and it's kind of spooky. I see middle school students roughhousing and hope Animal will be OK. I hear about a sociopathic case and hope his brain is OK. I hope we're able to provide him with a solid education. I watch Dan Le Batard Is Highly Questionable and hope we have a similar father-son relationship, full of gentle ribbing and smart sports-related opinions.

But all of these things are years, if not months, away. For now, when I'm not expertly changing diapers, I'm basking in the glow of my own whispered, wonder-filled life insurance commercial.

Like They Tell The Bagger At The Checkout Line, If You Find Space, Fill It . . .

We first discovered Jen was with child while we were out of state visiting family. Jen took the test first thing in the morning and bounded out of the bathroom in the guest room.

My first thought was something along the lines of, "Holy moly, that was quick."

It was too soon to tell anyone, even the family, or so we assumed, so we tried going about the day not saying anything. I convinced Jen that even if people were suspicious, no one would dare ask.

This worked well for about half a day or so.

One thing we were aware of was that a baby's organs develop in the first part of a pregnancy, which means that it's important not to use alcohol during this critical stage. It's kind of a tricky thing, that, because unless you are "trying" trying to get pregnant, you're probably drinking.

Suffice it to say, Jen knew that she couldn't be drinking now. Which is all well and good, but unless you're hanging out with George W. Bush — or Mitt Romney, I guess — alcohol is all around. Suffice it to say, covers would be blown sooner or later.

Like sooner. We went to eat that night and the restaurant was behind when we arrived for our reservation, so they sent out a round of sparkling wine as a gesture of good will. Jen sort of barely sipped hers, and I ended up finishing it.

When it came time to choose the wine, everyone of course turned to Jen. Jen had just got her advanced certificate in wine and spirits studies. She picked out a bottle of wine, then refused a glass when the server returned with the bottle.

"Is there something you want to tell us?" Mom asked.

We hemmed and hawed and denied anything, which seemed to "work" in the sense that the line of questioning ceased. Jen then proceeded to check her phone for low-mercury fish.

So the lesson we learned on the first day was not to refuse the glass. Instead, always accept the glass, and allow me to drink it, as slyly as possible. I basically spent the first trimester drinking for two. Friends informed us later that we fooled absolutely no one with this method.

When we got back to Kawama, the first thing I had to do was seal the grout on the tile around the tub. One thing I didn't realize about grout was that it needed to be sealed. Now we're low-VOC kind of people. I even know that VOC stands for "volatile organic compound." I sort of understand the idea of a volatile compound. I don't totally understand the organic part. (OK, I just Wikipediaed it; I get it.)

Anyway, so given the news we got while we were away, I made sure to look up the VOC number on the grout sealer. I noticed there was a number. I had no idea whether it was a good or bad number. I figured that it was only once that we'd be using this stuff, and we needed to use it, so I bought it anyway.

It went on like this as long as I was working on stuff around Kawama: Avoid things with VOCs; use them anyway figuring it was better to get it out of the way sooner and sort of lance boils or whatnot.

And then about that the spacious front room on the second floor that we wanted to use for a big office . . . like I said before, it's very easy to fill up space once you find you have it.

Soap Scum As Archaeological Expression

Let's be clear: If it weren't for several key factors, we wouldn't have been able to live out the American Dream at Kawama.

One, the housing market had cooled. It wasn't that there was a deal to be had in Astoria but prices weren't as ridiculous as they could have been. Housing prices had stabilized and flattened out, meaning they were barely in the ballpark for us.

The market being what it was, it meant that we didn't have any competing bidders. We couldn't have gotten into a bidding war. We couldn't have paid the listed price. In a hotter market, we wouldn't be in the mix.

The market being what it was, our skimpy down payment and FHA loan sufficed. The realtor said that the seller was nervous about it, but he convinced him that this was what it took these days.

An interesting note about FHA loans: At the beginning of April, political fighting over the government spending bill was threatening to shut down the federal government. I was reading about it on the way to the closing. It wouldn't have affected our loan, since a commitment was already issued and the bank indicated that they weren't going to stop those, just new loans, but it still got me thinking how lucky we were (again).

As soon as we were done with the major painting projects, I set out to work on the bathtub. Jen's impression of the bathtub made it sound like we'd have to completely renovate the bathroom, but I wanted to try to clean it first. So I went to work doing that.

I don't quite understand what people see in those sliding bathtub doors, but both our apartment and Michael's apartment upstairs had them. You get the feeling that somewhere down the line it was seen as some kind of major technological advance to never have to use shower curtains or something. I don't much like them. They make a small bathroom seem that much smaller. They create a tropical micro-climate that makes it hard to clean. Half the time the damn things fall off the track.

Anyway, so I started by scrubbing the tiles. I don't know if what I was scrubbing off was an extra layer of grout or fifteen years of tenant scum, but I got a lot of it off and it ended up looking halfway decent. Decent enough to forestall a major renovation at least.

Sometimes when you clean stuff you get to a point when cleaning turns into a minor repair project. Kind of like that Viagra ad where the supermarket produce aisle morphs into an orchard, except not as wonderful, and with considerably less certainty.

Which is to say, I started scrubbing at the moldy caulking where the sliding doors met the tub and after seeing that pull away, decided to take down those fucking doors altogether.

Now this could go two ways. It could be a really inspired idea, and turn out great, or all the tile could fall off the wall and shatter and the plumbing would explode or something horrible like that.

Actually, it turns out that it's pretty easy to take off those sliding doors. Our frame was bolted to the tile in three places on either side and held to the tub with caulk. So it came out pretty easily. Inspired! I just had to grout in some holes where the bolts were and put up a curtain rod.

I grouted the holes and spaces in the tile on Friday, just before we left to visit my parents. We got in to Phoenix late that night. The next day Jen took a home test and found out she was pregnant.