Welcome back, Dat Lem Guy (2),

Great to have you back. My oldest was a preemie. Born at 31 weeks, so I've been there. I hope that your NICU nurses and docs are as amazing as ours were. Take care of yourself.

And just before your baby is ready to come home, take a weekend and get away with your wife! This is the best advice we ever got. The baby was is good hands, we had run shifts for three weeks, and we needed to re-connect before taking on the challenge of a new (preemie) baby at home.

@JustJustin

Sounds like you are on the right track. I was on to my second kid before I started working on this stuff. Nice work and keep it up!

The worst that happens is they send you home.

(At least that's what you're supposed to think)

Take it easy and you'll be fine.

How far along are you?

I'm having a hard time getting up the momentum to start on my Master's Degree, but that's not the same.

I do suggest that you get as much done before the baby comes as possible. You're going to be a wasted mind for a few weeks, maybe months, as you adjust to having a little screamer in your home. Slow down for that period and then pick back up as you can.

And accolades for making a priority of your education. It's one thing that can't be taken from you, no matter what happens, and it will enrich your life and your family for the rest of your life.

You say Gamers and I think tabletop RPGs, board games (Settlers of Catan and any number of stretegy games), or Amber Diceless RPG. Especially Amber since I'm going to Ambercon US in a couple weeks. But maybe that dates me as an older generation. Those games, ARE harder to stay active with as you acquire kid-shaped responsibilities. I read countless reports of families using video games as entertainment or stress relief. In SAHD-land, there are networks of dads who regularly schedule some A$$ Whoopin' right after bath time. Maybe the budget isn't there for a new game every week, but that doesn't mean they don't fit it in.

As for me, I don't do video games. It strikes me as odd that the people, who in the 1980s and 1990s got together to play a game around a table or living room were considered loners but now the people who spend time alone with a game console are part of a community. Just a migration of marketing and social norms.

I can't wait for ACUS. We frequently have parenting conversations between games. One family had a pseudo-christening at the con a few years back. But then, I'll even be done with that for another year.

Perfectly normal, AbbyLyn. I highly recommend getting the DVDs on Netflix or buying them. The pre-delivery time doesn't work well with books for most guys. After the baby's out and you can't use a hammer or chainsaw to fix things, then we read manuals.

Had a bottling party with the folks who are part of the Lenten Brew project. It's a splinter groupd from church treating the brewing and fermentation as a Lenten Discipline. Great fun.

We bottled about 70 bottles of Belgian Pale Ale in 20 minutes.

Then, because three potential drinkers had to leave quickly, three remaining of us HAD to split some beer...

Bell's Expedition Stout, Dark Horse Raspberry Ale, Victory Hop Wallop, Goose Island Pere Jaques, Unibroue Ephemere Ale, Three Floyds Robert The Bruce, Original Sin Cider, Rougue Dead Guy and My Penguin Ate Her Dopplebock and Morello Stout (w/ coffee).

Just a bit.

+1 (Welcome and Good Luck.)

As for how to include a dad in the experience, I think it varies quite a bit. Bottle feeding isn't the same as other options and I just never felt that it was "special". One observation I've made and that I've heard some other dads make is that babies tend not to seem human to us until they start developing a personality. That's probably around six weeks. Before that, it's easier to lose our temper and walk away from the baby. Don't take this as a sign of something horrible. We don't have that 9 months of bonding. We start building our relationship when all the dirty work (from our perspective, anyway) begins. It takes a while, especially with the first child.

In the black is white world we live in, I guess the She-nis was just a matter of time.

As a result, I only demand that we get couches in all of *our* bathrooms.

Hope she remembers to life the seat.

I don't know, Bob. Maybe you could find a club near you and see if anyone will help you brew a batch with their equipment so all you have to buy to start is a Better Bottle carboy (and accessories) to ferment in and then a month down the road, get a box of bottles and caps to bottle in. You'd be in for less than $100 and it would all be stuff you could reuse. Using the Alton Brown method (but modified), you might be able to do it yourself with very little additional equipment than you already have.

I bought my first equipment kit for $35.

Thanks, Bob. I should copyright it.

so, Clay. It sounds like you want a quick tour of The Cave. As you walk in, there is the chest Freezer. It's not enormous, but the largest of the three we own. Maybe 24cf. It faces toward you on the right, keeping the (cave) door in the open position. Next to it, but facing the door is a smaller chest freezer, maybe 18cf, that has a two tap beer faucet on top and room for five kegs and a CO2 cylinder. Behind it it a concrete ledge, roughly three feet deep and three feet high that runs the length of the room, a part of the house's foundation. I put wire shelves above this to hold beerware and supplies, as well as serving as a drying/curing rack for garlic and cheese. Yes, cheese.

The ledge gets used for fermenting beer and mainly manly storage of bits and pieces.

Now, turn your head right and up and you'll see sausages hanging from the joists. Mostly smoked summer sausage and beef sticks.

Then there's the entertainment corner in the left far corner which has been used, maybe three times in the last three years. And the facing wall, left of the door, is a work bench piled with things my wife had well before we met. Some of it is inventions of her step grandfather, like a quarter inch wide bench belt sander. Outside The Cave is a fermentation freezer, the freezer I killed in trying to drill through to have CO2 enter from a tank outside the freezer because it would only have fit two kegs. Now it houses fermenting beer that needs to be insulated from the heat or cold. It has 12 gallons of Belgian Pale right now.

So, the meat. Our farm offers meat with the full CSA share. You can read all about it on beer www.hawkinsfamilyfarm.com. Half a hog is 85-95 pounds and half a steer is only slightly more. It sounds like more than it seems when you pick it up. The pig fit in 2 coolers.

*The reason for no photos? It's an absolute wreck right now.

You don't come off as a particularly crazy, first-time parent (all of them are at least a *little* crazy, IMHO). You come off as someone that listens to their pediatrician. Which you should. And ignore me.

Because our preemie experience was different.

Ours was also a "big" preemie, born at 31 weeks and about 4.5 lbs. He was about that size when we brought him home from the NICU three weeks later. Our doc prescribed synagis to prevent RSV, but did not suggest that we needed to curtail visitation. I have clear memories of putting his tiny self in a sling and taking him to a faculty party within days of bringing him home.

Now it sounds like we should have neither brought him out *or* used a sling. Things evolve, I guess.

It's actually much, much, much easier to go out and do things with an infant than it will be later on. Take advantage of it and treat yourself to a little fun. Eating out is still relatively easy, which will not be true again for a really, really long time.

I agree with Ben that you want to do something to mitigate the sound at the movie.

Have fun!

Ben- You must have a battery of freezers in the basement. Right next to the brewing equipment and keggerator. Dude. What the hell else you got down there? A particle accelerator? You're like the Phineas and Ferb of fatherhood.

A half a pig?!

Dick Chop is an Austin legend. The name has got to rank up there with the pediatric office that I went to as a child (Dr. Hurt and Dr. Payne), and my teen years dermatologist (Dr. Cheek).

Our toddler was trying to put on a bright yellow Bjorn the other day. It made him look like a crossing guard.

And...

If anyone sees a 2 year old walking around town with a yellow Bjorn and his 3 month old brother safely mounted to his chest, do let me know. I just know they're planning their escape!