Cold Turkey!

Let me open this up by saying King Edith has been a sleeping champ for most of her life.  Months 0-4 have been a breeze.  She would go to sleep no problem, and sleep for large chunks.  Until 6 months hit...

She has grown progressively less and willing to sleep through the night in her crib.  This is our fault.  We know it.  I think this is what happended. 

Around the 6-month mark, she had a few spells where she wasn't feeling well.  On those nights, she would wake up extremely frequently throughout the night.  In the early mornings - when she would wake up at like 5am - we would bring her into bed with us.  Just for the last two hours of sleep mind you, but we did it.  Kent and Leslie - do not do this at this age.  Because those two hours become three hours, because she's up at 4am, and we need some fucking sleep.

As time went on, we found that the only way to get her to sleep past the 2am or 3am hours was to bring her to bed, and make sure not to roll over on her as we all slept.  Usually this entailed me going downstairs to make room, but it worked.  She would sleep.  We would sleep.  A small amount of sanity would return to the househould.

See, the 6 month mark is notable for many reasons.  For one, she's much more tuned in to what is going on around her.  She actually knows who is around and where she is.  So she definitely notices when she's all along in a crib.  For two she's picking up all these new skills.  She's crawling.  She's pulling herself up.  She's sitting up.  All this crap that she never did before, that she really likes to do at night.  Three, she hates to be on her back - which is how babies are laid down to sleep generally.  So she wakes up in her least favorite position, notices that she's alone, and starts crawling around. And screaming. 

Such has been our last three weeks.  She's sleeping or screaming in her crib until we can't take it anymore and bring her to bed.  It's also brought about a lot of weird conversations between Chelsey and I in the middle of the night.  We were not meant to interact at that hour.

So this past weekend we went to Kearney, and pretty much had no choice but to let her sleep with us all night for two straight nights.  There was no other way to do it.  I could do into detail about this, but suffice it to say a screaming baby in a house full of people is a lot worse than a screaming baby in a house with just6 sleep-deprived parents.

We got back from Kearney yesterday and she went to bed at 8:30.  She woke up thirty minutes later.  Screaming.  I took her, and tried to settle her down.  She was totally awake.  So I took her downstairs and watched Green Lantern with her on my lap.  She fell asleep instantly, and then woke up 30 minutes later screaming, because she couldn't get comfortable on my lap. 

This was the final straw. 

I took Edith upstairs.  Woke up Chelsey and told her to go to the downstairs bedroom, shut the door, and turn on some music.  We were going Cold Turkey.

Cold Turkey is something we'd been discussing for a while.  It's the method where you let your kid cry it out until they fall asleep.  We figured we'd employ this method eventually, but had designs on carefully planning it out somehow.  I don't know what we were going to do, but at 9:30 last night, I was like "Fuck it.  I can't take this anymore."

And we began.  My friend John Fallon gave me a very practical baby guide that I have since forwarded it Kent.  It contains a very brief guide for this method.  You basically put her down, shut the door, and kiss your sanity goodbye until she falls asleep.  And let me just say, it is as advertised. 

I would let her cry for ten minute increments, and then come in for about 30 seconds. I wouldn't pick her up.  Just stroke her back, give her back her Devery Henderson (yes, we still call them that) and tell her it was going to be okay.  She returned this coaxing with an array of screams.  Then I left and shut the door. 

I did this three of four times.  I think it took about 40 minutes for her to fall asleep.  It took another two hours for me to settle down.  Hearing your baby cry for 40 minutes is not for the faint of heart.  Even if you have a good attitude about it, which I did.  It's just hard.  I watched two netflix movies (finished one, started and ended another) in the process.  I don't know if I was more rattled, or scared she was going to wake up.  But she didn't make a peep until 4:45am.  Which was amazing.

Then - to my great surprise - she actually calmed herself back down in the morning.  I had to replace her Devery Henderson once and she pretty much just went back to sleep.  She stayed asleep until I left for work at 7:00am. 

So that's how that went.  I'm sure there are darker days ahead, but last night was the first one in a long time that I actually felt like I had control of my baby's sleep pattern again.  I could feel the sanity slipping back in over my shredded nerves this morning.  It felt better.

  

New Design!

My glasses seem to get bigger and bigger.

Look everybody!  It's a new design for my blog! I'm very excited about it.

The new stuff is all pretty self explanatory.  I finally added an RSS follow thingy, and I was able to put a cute border around all my pictures like Chelsey. It turns out there's a lot of options in blogger.  I had no idea.  I made the new header in indesign/photoshop.  It took forever to get the size right.  Mostly because I am an idiot.

Also, today I am home sick from work.  It could be that the new blog design has left me ill.

Brent's Top 20 2011 Tracks!

In handy mixtape form!  Thanks Leslie for the Everyone's Mixtape tip.


  TOP 20

Name                                 Artist               Album 

1.  Rolling In The Deep                Adele                21    

2.  Go Outside                         Cults                Cults

3.  My Mistakes                        Eleanor Friedberger  Last Summer

4.  The Words That Maketh Murder       PJ Harvey            Let England Shake

5.  Sadness Is a Blessing              Lykke Li             Wounded Rhymes      

6.  Wicked Games                       The Weeknd           House of Balloons   

7.  Two Cousins                        Slow Club            Paradise            

8.  We Need a Myth                     Okkervil River       I Am Very Far       

9.  The Last Goodbye                   The Kills            Blood Pressures     

10. Dirty Mister Dirty                 Generationals        Actor-Caster        

11. Lovers Lane                        Hunx & His Punx      Too Young To Be In Love

12. Serve the People                   Handsome Furs        Sound Kapital       

13. Would You Say Stop?                Acid House Kings     Music Sounds Better with You

14. I Miss My Friend                   Madeline             Black Velvet        

15. Shangri-La                         YACHT                Shangri-La          

16. New Year's Eve                     Tom Waits            Bad As Me           

17. California                         EMA                  Past Life Martyred Saints

18. Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out      The Antlers          Burst Apart         

19. Tina Said                           Those Darlins        Screws Get Loose    

20. Mr. Know It All                    Kelly Clarkson       Stronger

TOP 50

Name                                 Artist               Album 

1.  Rolling In The Deep                Adele                21    

2.  Go Outside                         Cults                Cults

3.  My Mistakes                        Eleanor Friedberger  Last Summer

4.  The Words That Maketh Murder       PJ Harvey            Let England Shake

5.  Sadness Is a Blessing              Lykke Li             Wounded Rhymes      

6.  Wicked Games                       The Weeknd           House of Balloons   

7.  Two Cousins                        Slow Club            Paradise            

8.  We Need a Myth                     Okkervil River       I Am Very Far       

9.  The Last Goodbye                   The Kills            Blood Pressures     

10. Dirty Mister Dirty                 Generationals        Actor-Caster

11. Love Out of Lust                   Lykke Li             Wounded Rhymes      

12. Lovers Lane                        Hunx & His Punx      Too Young To Be In Love

13. Serve the People                   Handsome Furs        Sound Kapital       

14. Would You Say Stop?                Acid House Kings     Music Sounds Better with You

15. I Miss My Friend                   Madeline             Black Velvet

16. Hanging from a Hit                 Okkervil River       I Am Very Far       

17. Shangri-La                         YACHT                Shangri-La

18. Ten-Twenty-Ten                     Generationals        Actor-Caster        

19. New Year's Eve                     Tom Waits            Bad As Me           

20. California                         EMA                  Past Life Martyred Saints

21. Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out     The Antlers          Burst Apart  

22. Parentheses                        The Antlers          Burst Apart         

23. Bumper                             Cults                Cults               

24. Tina Said                          Those Darlins        Screws Get Loose    

25. Mr. Know It All                    Kelly Clarkson       Stronger

26. Rich Kids Blues                    Lykke Li             Wounded Rhymes      

27. Do I Have Power                    Timber Timbre        Creep on Creepin' On

28. Most Wanted                        Cults                Cults

29. Bury Me Standing                   Handsome Furs        Sound

30. Get Some                           Lykke Li             Wounded Rhymes

31. Victory Dance                      My Morning Jacket    Circuital    

32. You Know What I Mean                Cults                Cults

33. I Promise                          Generationals        Actor-Caster

34. Let England Shake                  PJ Harvey            Let England Shake

35. Someone Like You                   Adele                21

36. Two Lovers                         The Rural Alberta Advantage Departing           

37. Your Past Life as a Blast         Okkervil River       I Am Very Far

38. No Widows                          The Antlers          Burst Apart

39. Under Cover of Darkness           The Strokes          Angles

40. Damn These Vampires                The Mountain Goats   All Eternals Deck

41. Where I'm Going                    Cut Copy             Zonoscope

42. Shake It Out                       Florence & The Machine     Ceremonials

43. You Say It Too                     Generationals        Actor-Caster

44. The Curse of Being Young          Hunx & His Punx      Too Young To Be In Lo

45. Inn of the Seventh Ray            Eleanor Friedberger  Last Summer  

46. Goshen                            Beirut               The Rip Tide        

47. Holdin' On To Black Metal         My Morning Jacket    Circuital           

48. Wake and Be Fine                   Okkervil River       I Am Very Far

49. To Have in the Home                Woods                Sun & Shade 

50. Tell Me                            Tom Waits            Bad As Me (Deluxe)  

Because it's important

Kent and I got into an argument about our favorite Tom Waits songs the other day.  Neither of us is pleased with the other's choice.  But it's stronger than that.  Upon relating our favorite song to the eachother we both set about suggesting other songs for the other to pick instead.  That led to a debate about whose song was more of a "classic" in the Tom Waits cannon.  (I'm not sure if I'm using the word cannon correctly there). 

Anyways, here are the two songs.  I know none of you are huge Tom Waits fans, but from an outsiders perspective, which one sounds more like a Tom Waits classic?

 



and

Welcome Back to Work!

Today is Edith's first day of childcare.  Likewise, I return to work from a 2 week sabatical, and Chelsey returns to full time employment for the first time since Edith showed up.  This is a sad day in the Kosterpelding house.  The kind of day that makes you reevaluate your life.

For instance, what sort of cost-cutting measures would allow one or both of us to stay at home?  We don't need our badass cable or our badass cell phones. There's $200 in savings right there.  And who says you need utilities?  That's another $100.  Anyway I add this up, it's not enough.

I have tried to talk Chelsey into going off the grid.  This seems easy enough.  Sell both our cars.  Take the money.  Go to Bolivia.  Disappear.  She points out that this plan is no good, as we don't have the title for either of our cars.  She is right.  The only option is to cash out our 401k's.  There's a good-sized chunk of money in there.  We don't have to worry about the taxes because of our new "off the grid" lifestyle.  This could work. 

In the meantime, I'm reading about how when Tom Waits had his first kid, he was in the process of taking over his management, and finding out he was broke.  He was also moving to New York, and completely changing his musical style to something that his label told him would not sell.  They ended up dropping him over it.  That album turned out to be Swordfishtrombones, which restarted his career, and turned him from lounge act to what he is today.  Of course he did all of this at the prodding of his wife, Kathleen Brennan.  Thank you Chuck, for the fine book.

The answer is clear.  I need to develop some sort of artistic and start to get paid handsomely for it.  Then Chelsey is going to have to come in and make it like twice as good.  Then we move to New York.

Self Discovery

So I have been doing this informal study of people who laugh at their own jokes.  MY hypothesis going in was that I did not like people who laughed their own jokes.  It makes me uncomfortable.  I immediately look at the ground and wait for it to end.

I did this study so that I could have a quick litmus test as to whether I would like someone or not upon meeting them.  But the results were surprising.  

Once I started paying attention, I realized that many people I truly like laugh at their own jokes.  Kent Woynowski laughs at his own jokes.  This led me to my first conclusion:

I only dislike people who laugh at their own unfunny jokes.

Very interesting.  I had no idea.  But I dug a bit further, and discovered the following nuance.

The amount I don't like people who laugh at their own joke depends on how loudly they laugh at their own jokes and how much eye contact.

Eye contact is the worst part of this.  I am incapable dealing with someone who is laughing at their own joke and looking at me while they do it.  Unacceptable.

I also discovered:

Laughing as you tell a joke or funny story is no problem at all - it's just the post joke laughing I don't like.
Smiling while you tell a joke is fine
Laughing after a pun is fine.  As long as you don't look at me.

I'm learning so much about myself.

30 Day Music Challenge - Day 1

So my friend Jeff Clary is doing this, and I think we should all do it too.  I have no idea what categories lay ahead, as he is only on day 3, but I think this sort of thing is custom made for someone like me.  And since this blog has limited exposure, I don't have to worry about looking like a chump.  Here we go.

Day 1 - Favorite Song

Obviously this is really hard.  There are many candidates, but when I have to think of my favorite all-time songs, there are only a few songs that come to mind regularly.  I feel like these have to be songs that I have been listening to for at least 10 years to qualify, so I have to rule out things like "Doomsday" by Elvis Perkins, and "Buriedfed" by Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson.  Which basically makes me pick between contemporary to my life songs like U2's "One", "Boy With the Arab Strap" by Belle & Sebastian or "100%" by Sonic Youth.  Or older songs like "If You Want Me to Stay" by Sly and the Family Stone, "To Sir With Love" by Lulu, or "If I Can Dream" by Elvis.

But at the end of the day, I went with the first song that jumps in my head when this subject comes up.




I love this song.  I couldn't find a decent album version on youtube, but this is good because it's contemporary to the time it was released.  Before Wayne Coyne started wearing the same suit over and over and smearing blood on his face.

I went ahead and added Chelsey's favorite too, so everyone could listen if they wanted.  Her explanation is below in the comments area.




And Chuck's (also explained below)



And Kent's



And Wendy's! I love this song too. It makes me sad that they don't seem to like it as much as I do. I can't remember if it's this or "High and Dry" but they totally ripped on one of those songs in an interview I read. Which made me mad.

Tester!

Here we go.

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I got a new phone!

It takes pictures. And I supposedly can update them straight to the blog. Let's see.

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