Welcome to the Ethan Gazette, Volume 7, the definitive source for all news Ethan-related. If you are getting news about Ethan from another newsletter, please let me know, because unless Sara’s writing it, someone’s watching us.
The response to Volume 6 was so positive that people outside the orbit of Ethan’s family, and Ethan’s family’s coworkers, are reading! With circulation like that, operating costs have inevitably raised, and therefore I am beholden to another advertisement from the kind folks at Mortimer Montgomery.
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Hello, friends. Are you having trouble sleeping? When you lie your head down on your pillow in the evening time do you stare at your ceiling? Have you counted a great number of sheep to the point where you start to imagine that they are all gathering in a large herd and they are bleating and their coats are starting to get long and in a near fever-state you wonder how are you possibly going to shear them all in time and what about the wolves?? Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a guaranteed way to fall asleep within seconds and with fairly limited long-term health impacts? Thankfully, our team of subterranean vegan lab workers have been burning the midnight tempeh and have this solution to offer to you: Mortimer Montgomery’s Sleep Mallet. This is a handsome wooden mallet made out of the finest virgin rain forest wood straight from Brazil. It’s 45 cm long or 18 inches for unfortunate people unfamiliar with the metric system and it weighs approximately 2 pounds or 87 kilograms. It has been scientifically proven that all humans have a ‘sleep switch’ located in the right temple that can only be activated through blunt force delivered by mallet. Inconveniently, the sleep switch has a dual role as a ‘kill switch,’ which is why the Sleep Mallet comes with a Mallet Force Indicator. When you strike the MFI a readout will tell you whether you’ve hit hard enough to cause 4 hours of sleep, reversible brain damage, irreversible brain damage, 8 hours of sleep, or Inexorable Death. When you can consistently achieve a 8 hours of sleep strike, simply use this same force on your right temple. Easy. The Mortimer Montgomery Sleep Mallet only costs $60 so you should get one. How much would Ambien cost over a lifetime? Probably $30,000. It is also a very good meat tenderizer if you think about it. As Mortimer Montgomery used to say, ‘Show me a man who isn’t sleeping well, and I’ll show you a man that will be yawning very much.’
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Sounds like a good deal to me! With our obligatory advertisement out of the way, on to the Ethan stories, which are presented in bullet point format, the way all Gazettes should be.
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Hello, friends. Are you having trouble sleeping? When you lie your head down on your pillow in the evening time do you stare at your ceiling? Have you counted a great number of sheep to the point where you start to imagine that they are all gathering in a large herd and they are bleating and their coats are starting to get long and in a near fever-state you wonder how are you possibly going to shear them all in time and what about the wolves?? Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a guaranteed way to fall asleep within seconds and with fairly limited long-term health impacts? Thankfully, our team of subterranean vegan lab workers have been burning the midnight tempeh and have this solution to offer to you: Mortimer Montgomery’s Sleep Mallet. This is a handsome wooden mallet made out of the finest virgin rain forest wood straight from Brazil. It’s 45 cm long or 18 inches for unfortunate people unfamiliar with the metric system and it weighs approximately 2 pounds or 87 kilograms. It has been scientifically proven that all humans have a ‘sleep switch’ located in the right temple that can only be activated through blunt force delivered by mallet. Inconveniently, the sleep switch has a dual role as a ‘kill switch,’ which is why the Sleep Mallet comes with a Mallet Force Indicator. When you strike the MFI a readout will tell you whether you’ve hit hard enough to cause 4 hours of sleep, reversible brain damage, irreversible brain damage, 8 hours of sleep, or Inexorable Death. When you can consistently achieve a 8 hours of sleep strike, simply use this same force on your right temple. Easy. The Mortimer Montgomery Sleep Mallet only costs $60 so you should get one. How much would Ambien cost over a lifetime? Probably $30,000. It is also a very good meat tenderizer if you think about it. As Mortimer Montgomery used to say, ‘Show me a man who isn’t sleeping well, and I’ll show you a man that will be yawning very much.’
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Sounds like a good deal to me! With our obligatory advertisement out of the way, on to the Ethan stories, which are presented in bullet point format, the way all Gazettes should be.
- Ethan has continued to be a jerk at bedtime! Last Saturday night, Ethan subjected us, or we subjected each other, to a 4 hour battle. Ultimately, we were both victorious.
We had it in our heads that we wanted Ethan to go to bed at 7, because eventually, that's a proper bedtime for little ones. Our previous technique was...I don't know what our previous technique was. Every evening Sara and I will ask the other, what did we do the night before to put him to bed? Now that both of us are heavily addicted on a dual drug cocktail of Morning Baby Smile and Sleep Deprivation, we both adopt a far away, mystified look. It’s as if we wake up every morning and see Ethan in his crib and say, ‘Well, I guess we better take care of that baby. He looks pretty helpless and OH LOOK HE SMILED – this will never go wrong ever!!’
Following the usual boob, bath, boob, bed routine, we laid Ethan down at 6:58. We returned to the living room and turned on the baby monitor. We could hear Ethan’s steady breathing. I was feeling puh-retty goooood. With the summer sun still hours from setting, I relished the prospect of a full evening together. Perhaps we'd watch a film, eat a fine dessert, or indulge in our favorite the-baby-is-asleep activity - Swearing At Each Other With Enthusiastic And Indulgently Depraved Creativity. Sara, on the other hand, was feeling puh-retty tense. This is because Sara knows better than I do, as she does for most things, aside from developing foot calluses.
At 7:20, the monitor let forth Ethan's opening salvo. Sara was prepared with the (Pick Up And) SSH PAT technique. The theory goes that babies can only focus on two things at a time. (Given that he's male, and half mine, I'm surprised it’s even that much.) Once he cries, you pick him up, place him over your shoulder, and let out a long sssssshhhhhhh accompanied by a once-a-second pat. His underdeveloped brain is supposed to overload, whereupon he falls into a deep, unrousable sleep until the morning.
Sara went in first with the deportment of a soldier going to the front. She might as well have added, ‘Tell my mother…that I love her.’ An hour later, she emerged from Ethan’s lair, ears flattened, hair biggened and tangle-ated, and eyes perma-stare-ified. It was made clear to me that if I did not go in right that second and take over, she might use our Sleep Mallet on me for an unintended purpose.
Ethan waited in his crib, his reddened pout-stricken face set in a combination of desperation and defiance, while the rest of his overtired body lashed out in full flail. I commenced with the SSH PAT. I picked him up. I sshed and patted. He quieted down. I put him back down in his crib.
Now, I would be highly susceptible to this technique. One day at work, I decided to fill up my water glass. Opposite the water machine was a fridge. I decided to open the fridge and look at people’s lunches. I put my glass down on top of the fridge. I went back to my desk. It was only when I got to my desk that I remembered that I was thirsty, and that all I had accomplished was moving my glass to the top of a fridge.
Ethan has not picked up this trait from me. As soon as the first molecule of his body hit the crib he instantly remembered that he was VERY ANGRY ABOUT BEING TIRED!!, his calm face changing with dispiriting speed into fury. I picked him up. I sshed and patted. He quieted down. I put him back down in his crib. VERY ANGRY ABOUT BEING TIRED!! I picked him up. I sshed and patted. He quieted down. I put him back down in his crib. VERY ANGRY ABOUT BEING TIRED!!!...
By the 25th time I picked up Ethan, I had sssshhhed more than the last five Librarian Society’s Quietening Competitions combined. Ethan was in an overtired distressed panic, which he made clear in no uncertain terms by coming up with a new sound, a horrible escalating mewl that crashed down into car-alarm-regular wails. I left him to cry out his frustration for a few minutes while I regrouped with Sara, and noted that the pleasant evening light, with all its promise of a long relaxing evening, had passed and given way a color that can only be described as F**k It’s Dark.
During my skirmish with Ethan, Sara found a contradictory post on the internet which said that the lifting component of SSH PAT was too stimulating for a baby under 3 months. We modified to the lying down SSH PAT. I went in for my second tour of duty while Sara fended off Post Traumatic Ethan Disorder.
I sat myself on the bed next to his crib, and positioned Ethan over on his side. I ssshhhed and patted him until finally, mercifully, he gave in. Minutes later, like the villain in a horror film, he jolted awake, but I had my hand on his chest, which was enough to tame him and send him back off to sleep for good. I joined Sara, battle scarred, in the lounge. We tried to watch a show, but nothing stuck. In the morning, Ethan smiled at us, as if nothing ever happened. Jerk.
- I had Ethan for a variety of reasons. Among them are my enduring love for Sara, the life-altering experience of raising a human through all of this world’s joys and challenges, and the knowledge that this precious, miraculous person will be obligated to give me presents. With uncharacteristic foresight, I purposely timed Ethan’s conception so that he’d be born 9 weeks before Father’s Day. This would allow him to get over the birth, figure out eating and excreting, and then have enough time for the important work of getting me his first present. Ethan got himself a job as a Cuteness Tutor at Tots B Learnin’, an online ‘Babyversity.’ (Ethan is enrolled in Mummy And Daddy Don’t Disappear Forever When They Aren’t There and Advanced Farting Technique) With his income, Ethan has purchased me a Father’s Day mug. It says I (Heart) My Dad in the style of the I (Heart) NY font and there’s a picture of the two of us mugging – see what I did there? - in the mirror. It holds a Proper Amount of coffee. It’s wonderful and I love it. Each time I take a sip out of it I think about how grateful I am to have Ethan in my life, about all that’s happened so far and the delightful mystery of what’s to come. And I wonder what he’ll be getting for my birthday.
- Sara and I live in what’s called a bungalow, which is British for, ‘A Rather Small Domicile That Is Good For Retired People But Perhaps Not Ideal For Babies But These Are First World Problems Pass The Tea Old Chap Wink Wink Nudge Nudge God Save The Queen Lorry Lorry Looooooooo.’ We have a kitchen, baby’s room, bedroom, lounge and a hallway. The main problem with a 4-room-and-a-hallway home is that you can hear everything from everywhere. And it’s only after we’ve had Ethan that we’ve realized that everything in the house is specially designed to make special bonus noises. The floorboards whine, the bathroom light switch CHINK-CHINKS, the bedroom door squeaks and pops, the bathroom door handle creaaakks, and don’t get me started on our collection of 18 antique grandfather clocks. Through practice and slow motion, we’re able to cut down on most of these noises. We tip toe, skulk and sneak. The moment we make a noise more than a whisper we freeze in our tracks like a tranquilized possom, waiting for Ethan’s cry. Should I clatter something, no matter where Sara is in the house, she’ll magically teleport in to hush me. She can’t SSH me or I’ll collapse asleep because I’m so used to Ethan’s technique. I guess the point I’m trying to make here is: does anyone want to go on a jewel heist with us? We’ve become very good at sneaking around, which I gather is the main component of jewel heistery. We’ll split the proceeds, 50/50. Also, I’ve read at www.
That wraps it up for this edition of the Ethan Gazette. Stay tuned for the next exciting edition where we may tackle such topics as: Will Ethan have learned to stay awake at his various baby classes? What’s his relationship like with bottles? Will we have broken his will and sent him to bed at a reasonable time? What new noises is he making? All will be revealed, maybe, and more, maybe.
Thank you for reading. I thrive on your attention.
- Jason, father and only staff writer on the Ethan Gazette
