This Too Shall Pass

So, fun fact: yesterday at around 2:30 AM, I checked into the emergency room.

I had woken up about a half hour prior with severe abdominal pain, and based on my extensive medical background of watching sporadic episodes of Gray's Anatomy, I was 90% sure that my appendix had burst and was shooting little appendix bullets into my other surrounding organs.  After some painkillers and a CT scan, I was told that I actually had a kidney stone that was slowly and excruciatingly making its way from my kidney to my bladder.  I was then dismissed with a handful of medications for dulling the pain and a device that is perhaps best described as a pee sieve.

You Will Call Me Sister, Will You Not?

One of the things that felt entirely new with the birth of Cecily was the interplay and relationship that she would have with Simon.  I grew up an only child while my wife had two siblings, and we were both interested in how Simon would react to having to share "his" house with another child, especially in the early days when we'd probably be lavishing a bit more attention on his new sister.

The Sound and the Newborn

Approximately 48 hours ago, my wife brought our second child - a daughter named Cecily - into this world.  I was once again plunged into the world of a newborn.  We have a two-year-old son named Simon, and maybe he was the same way he was just born and I'd blocked it out, but Cecily seems to be much more of a screamer.  It's nothing that seems unusual; if anything, maybe my son was an exceptionally mellow newborn.  It's hard, though.  It's hard because outside of changing her diaper or handing her over to the wife to feed, there's not much I can do to make her feel better.  With Simon able to articulate his feelings and communicate his frustrations, it's tough to go back to a world where the only feedback is decibel level and the intonation of a yelp.