Coming up for air

It's been a month, now, since Hurricane Baby hit these once placid shores. And I've learned a few things:

• 4-week-old babies are covered with acne, they smell like sour milk curds (thanks to having surreptitiously spit up on themselves), they grunt like a trucker in an outhouse, they have calluses and blisters on their lips from constant suckling, and their noses are clogged with dried breast milk. But I'll be damned if I can't stop cuddling this little guy - he's so damned cute! Biology At Work, I guess:
  
  
  
  
• My WoW days have not come to an end. Turns out, if the boy is snoozing on my lap, then I'm not actually playing WoW, I'm Watching The Baby. Plus, the early exposure to flickering lights and low-level electomagnetic radiation will no doubt turn him into some kind of super infant.
• The dog has gone through a number of attitude shifts regarding the baby. At first, there was intense curiosity ("What is it? It makes noises! Is it prey? Is it a squirrel? YES! They brought me a squirrel!"). This changed to resentment and moping ("Nobody likes me anymore - they just keep playing with that damn squirrel..."), followed by Establishing the Pack Order ("Ha! Look at me! I'm sleeping in the squirrel's bed! Who's the Alpha Dog now, Bitch!"). The next stage was Boredom ("Aw, Christ, that squirrel is screaming in the middle of the night again - I'm gonna go sleep downstairs on the couch").
  
  I think we're at the final stage now - we let our guard down for a minute, and the dog finally grasped the glittering Holy Grail he'd been pursuing for weeks: he jumped in the bassinet with the baby and for 30 glorious seconds got to sniff and lick the kid from head to toe, before we rushed in and broke up the love-fest. I think the dog has finally figured out that this isn't actually a squirrel, but is instead a really ugly, hairless puppy.
  
• It's amazing how quickly (and slowly) the kid grows. In one month, he's gone from a little guy who literally could not find his ass with both hands, to a tiny tyrant who howls when he doesn't get his breakfast right this goddamn second! and who can projectile vomit distances exceeding 12 inches. Of course, he still doesn't sleep through the night, which brings us to...
• A few years ago, when a friend of mine told me that he was occasionally sleeping in the guest bedroom while his wife took care of the baby all night, some part of my brain thought "sheesh, what a jerk".
  
  This week, I spent my first night in the guest bedroom.
  
  I felt amazingly guilty, but too many consecutive days of 5 hours of sleep were just destroying my ability to go to work. And, uh, besides, women are more biologically suited to go without sleep and take care of babies, right?
• Breastmilk is sweeeeeeet. Like honey mixed with water. Ick.