Brandon Gilbert

By Ryne Gilbert:

Yesterday I ate Spaghetti for the first time. A lot of stuff I eat these days is for the first time. I really liked the Spaghetti a lot. I like chicken fried rice, too. It’s just the right size for me. With all this new and tasty food Mommy and Daddy have given me, I have one thought that keeps creeping in…Why have they been holding out on me? For months and months all I got was milk. Don’t get me wrong…I love Milk, and I thought it was so awesome, but I didn’t know there was anything more than milk. Then they introduced me to steamed apples, spinach, and broccoli. Well, I liked those a lot too, but they were just a compliment to the milk.

I’ll never forget the first time I noticed Mommy and Daddy ate something different than what they gave me. I had just finished some milk, and then I look up and see them eating noodles and sauce and bread sticks. Can you believe I actually gave them the benefit of the doubt? I believed that they were eating poorly and giving me the best they had. I felt bad for them. I wanted them to eat as well as I did. All I could do was just sit and stare as they ate what I thought was crappy food. I can’t believe how I was duped.

I don’t know what changed and made them decide to start giving me the good stuff, but I am pretty upset that I haven’t gotten all of this goodness before now. They told me something about having no teeth and food sensitivities and yadda yadda yadda… It doesn’t matter. It was all a bunch of gobbledygook that basically said, “we didn’t give any to you because we wanted it all to ourselves.” I get that, I just wish they could be honest about it. I don’t know why they think I couldn’t handle it. I mean, after all, I was the one who taught Mommy how to feed me on my very first day here.

I guess I’ll forgive them. They’re human and they’re going to make mistakes…but they’re the only parents I have, so I’ll roll with the punches and go with it. At least they’re giving me the good stuff now. Here’s some pictures of my experience with the spaghetti. By the way…did you know spaghetti was not only a food but also a fashion statement?

BEFORE

AFTER

*Editor’s Note: The sippy cup he uses was mine when I was his age…and it’s full of coconut milk.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before…

This past weekend, I took a trip with my two sidekicks, Daddy and Mommy. We went to a far away, exotic land called “Aldridge.” On the way back, we got stuck on an island. There was a monster made of smoke, but he kept to the other side of the island for the most part. There quite a bunch of people in the beginning, but as time went on, there were fewer and fewer people. There was a boat that came to the island, but then it left to go to the other island across the water.

I had a lot of people who wanted to spend time with me and get to know me. They were nice. Then we all started getting swept through time. We would spend time in the 90’s, 80’s, 60’s, and 50’s. We never stayed too long in one time, though. It was amazing how much we saw as we traveled through time.

It got more and more scary as time went by, though, and it was clear that someone would have to step up and save the island. Being a Super Hero, I of course volunteered to be the one to save us. So I decided to fight the Great Light in the Sky that seemed to be controlling everything. As our battle waged on, I became so sleepy that I just could not hold my eyes open. I’m not even sure what the Great Light in the Sky was doing to me.

Before I knew it, I was opening my eyes and we were back in our car driving towards home. I asked Daddy, “Was it real?” He said that everything that happened was real. I asked him, “what was that place?” He replied, “that was a place that was made so that we could all be together.”

Apparently I beat the Great Light in the Sky and restored everything to order…just like I always do!

TheBrandNewDad Epilogue: What had happened was… This past weekend we went down to Alabama for a family reunion of some of my extended family. This was the first time for Ryne to meet a lot of them. We went to the wrong place first where someone was grilling (i.e. burning to a crisp) some meat and there was a large black smoke column. We have a large family ,and they all passed him around and he had a good ol’ time hamming it up for the camera. He got to be there as some of the more, um, “distinguished” members of our family told stories of long ago. The most important part, was that he got to swim in the lake for the first time. Here’s a video:









In the end, the time spent in the sun proved to be too much and he got real tired. We decided that was our cue to leave. We put him in the car, and by the time we’d driven a mile to get to the park gate, he was already sound asleep. He had quite a time, and we all had a great time watching him. I love my little guy.

When Ryne was first born I wrote about how all diapers were not created equal. When we were still naive and thinking about the rainbows and unicorns side of parenting, we decided we weren’t going to be picky about what types of diapers we were going to use. We didn’t want to be “those parents” that have to be so particular with their child. Then IT happened. That fateful day when everything that was supposed to stay on the inside was on the outside. Since that fateful day with the most horrible of wardrobe malfunctions, we have stuck with Pampers. A diaper has to contain the devastation…that’s its only purpose in life. Pampers does that well. Sure, we’ve had a few mishaps with Pampers along the way, but in almost every case, I can say with a good amount of certainty that it was a poor fastening job by Daddy or Mommy. Diapers are like a Dam with a Lock. They’re supposed to hold back the flood, but that only really works if you make sure to close the gate.

Then a few months ago, my Pastor, Aarron, tries to convert me. Imagine that….a Pastor trying to convert people. He tries to tell me that Target has a Store Brand that works just as well as Pampers. My first thought was that the stress of planting a church had finally gotten to him. We had seen the devastation caused by not following the  “Thou shalt have no other diapers before me” commandment from Pampers. We just weren’t ready for that kind of change in my life. Notice, I said it was a few months ago that he had told me.

Fast forward to this week. Still without a job after almost 11 months, I am looking for any way to cut expenses. Aarron has still been praising the Target diapers, so we finally broke down and decided to give them a try. At $7 less a box, we figured it was worth at least an experiment. I still was not without reservation. I was ready to try them, but I told myself that the first time they malfunctioned, Aarron was going to get possibly the worst Pastor’s Appreciation Day present in history.

Our whole family was skeptical. When we opened the box, TheBrandNewMom examined them closely to see if they even looked like they acted like Pampers. TheBrandNewSon was waaay confused. The first time I went to put it on him, he raised his eyebrows at me in a worried and perplexed look, as if to say “Hey, Dad….you realize that’s not a Pampers diaper, right?” I calmed his fears….even though I was bracing for the worst. We let him play and then he took a nap. Then he got up and ate, and played again. He didn’t have any poopies….but he did have about a quart of liquid in there. The Target diapers held their own there. But that was not the main test of concern. I can handle a small leak of liquid. It’s the other stuff that gets me. Well, that time came and went as well, and again, the Target diapers passed with flying colors (no pun intended).

So, about a week later, we’ve still had no malfunctions, though there’s been plenty opportunities for it. So, if you have a Target in your area, I highly recommend Up and Up Brand diapers.

There’s a why to the whole concept of the book I’m writing. I purposefully didn’t share it before I shared other excerpts…though that purpose remains a mystery to even myself. I’m just weird, what can I say?

King of Kings: If you’ve grown up going to church like I have, you’ve heard this phrase tens of thousands of times. It’s one of the names the Bible gives to God. He’s the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. It’s in countless praise and worship songs, hymns, and recited prayers. This is what he is to us, but it’s hard to understand exactly what this means for a lot of people, especially in the United States or younger generations of Europeans.

I believe the Bible uses this title because that’s what people could easily reference for a relationship with God back then. Can’t you just hear Moses speaking to the Israelites, “You think Pharoah’s awesome? Well, my God is cooler than the other side of the pillow.” Ok, maybe not…but I think the thought was that everyone lived under some sort of kingdom rule. The king was to be respected, obeyed, and feared. Then, you throw in, that God is the KING of Kings, and that clues you in on just how awesome he is.

Growing up, the only frame of reference I would have for a king is one that came into power from pulling a sword out of a stone, or maybe the father of Prince Humperdinck in William Goldman’s The Princess Bride, or maybe Elvis. While Elvis died before I was born, there were reported sightings of him in supermarket tabloids well into my teens. In other words, I just don’t have a good idea of what it means to live under the rule of a king.

I have never been called to court. I have never had to work land for a king in return for living on the land. I have never had to go to my hometown for a census because my king decrees it. I have lived my life under an amazing amount of freedom. While it could be said that all of these things are done by proxy in the form of earning a wage to pay for items, and taxes paid to the IRS, I still am not commanded to do so under threat of death by the Crown.

There is, however, another title that the Bible gives to God and that is Father. I can relate to this much better in my relationship with God. I have had a father since 1981. On July 9th, 2009, Ryne Nathaniel Gilbert came into this world, giving me the title of father. When you become a father (or mother), I believe it is in that child that God chooses to reveal Himself even more to us. Every lesson we teach to our children mirrors a broader lesson God is trying to teach to us. Often times, just like our kids do with us, we fail to listen to those lessons. I am still trying to relate to God being the King of Kings and what that entails in my relationship with him, but I am definitely learning what it means for him to be my Father.

When you spend all day, every day with a person, you usually don’t see changes in them. With your spouse, unless it’s a new hair color or something drastic, most changes seem to go unnoticed. It usually takes someone on the outside to see changes and comment on them, like a little lost weight here, or some gained weight there. I’ve learned that this does not apply to the little guy living here.

Spending all day, every day with my son is a blessing. As much as TheBrandNewMom and I would love for our circumstances to be different, we realize that having at least one of us here to take care of him is a great gift. Still, even though I am constantly with him, changes seem to come very drastically and without warning. TheBrandNewSon is a goal setter. He decides that he’s going to do something, and then he makes it happen.

When we wanted him to roll over, we would put him in the floor for some tummy time. He hated tummy time. He got to be so defiant about it, he would lay there and just go to sleep instead of actually trying to roll over or scoot a little. One day, he just decided that enough was enough. We had him laying on our bed with us, and he just flipped right over very matter-of-factly. Once he did, he felt he was accomplished. He knew he could do it, so there was no need to prove it again. It was a couple of weeks before he would do it again.

After he became a roller, we tried to get him to crawl. For weeks, he would get up into crawling position, and then he would crawl….backwards. Finally, he made up his mind that it was time to crawl, so he did…he wanted something and he went and got it. Again, he had accomplished his goal, another life skill learned and it’s been a while for us to try to get him to crawl again. He’s crawled a few times, but mostly he would kind of pout as if to say, “I did this once, you know I can do it, so why are you asking me to do it again? I am not a circus monkey.”

Fast forward to the last week. He’s been crawling whenever he wants to get around. He’s decided he wants to crawl and explore now. Today was exceptionally eventful. Today I put him in the floor and he crawled a good 4 feet away to get to the MegaBlocks he likes to eat…er, play with. when he got done, though….he crawled back to Daddy! Then, he proceeded to pull up on me and stand up (another one of those pesky life skills we’ve been working on)! I picked him up and put him in my lap. We laughed and played “Tickle Monster.” When we were done with that, he slid back down to get in the floor and crawled back over to the MegaBlocks, and repeated the whole process until he had tired himself out and it was nap time.

It seems like so much time passes, and then BAM! He decides he’s ready to graduate to a whole ‘nother level of baby awesomeness. I’ve definitely learned that I have to quit watching for milestones, though. It makes the time fly by that much faster. You keep looking ahead to the next milestone, and you miss out on all the cool little stuff that happens in between. This is advice I shared with a new Twitter friend, Chris, who’s Twitter name is @twistedxtian if you want to follow him. He’s a dad who’s studying to be a Pastor…in Canada. He has a 6 month old, affectionately called “Bean.” I see stuff he writes on his blog, and remember what it was like when we were going through those same things. While they’re only 3 months behind us, it feels like an eternity.

I remember holding Ryne on my chest a couple of days after he was born and wishing for nothing else but that time would stop and let me freeze in that moment forever. Now, if it had, I would have missed a lot of really cool stuff…like having my son look me in the eye and say “DaDa.” There are so many moments to hold onto, but they just keep fading away and are replaced very quickly with new ones. I don’t mind him growing up, but I would like it to go at a slower pace. I would like to know one thing… Who ordered the Miracle Grow?

Great Sidekicks come around only so often. Great friends come around even less. So, imagine my horror and anger when my best friend, and keeper of my Super Hero secret was kidnapped right from my own base camp. Jimmy and I go way back. This was not only an attack on Jimmy, but it was an attack on me…and I took it very, very personally.

I searched the scene where he was taken. There was some kind of paralyzing agent sprayed on Jimmy to allow them to take him. I found the residue in the camp. I know they had to use it because Jimmy would never allow himself to be taken alive. I also knew immediately who had taken him: The Evil Dr. Daddicus and his Partner, The Baroness Mommy Von Milkstein. They’re always trying to take over the world. I have yet to figure out why they taunt me so much. I always win. At that moment I made the decision not to wait for any ransom demands, but to instead fly immediately to their Lair and get Jimmy out. He was going to be free and I knew I couldn’t sleep a wink until that happened.

I must admit that the thought did cross my mind that I was flying into a trap, and that they expected me to come right away, but I wasn’t worried. They aren’t the brightest villains in the comic book, if you know what I mean. Well, having said that, I was in for quite a surprise when I got to their Lair. They had moved it offshore and underwater.. There was no way to get to it except by a submarine, of course, unless you’re a super hero and you’ve got the friends I do. My friend Sally Seahorse (who is a fantastic singer) came to the surface, created a bubble for me to ride in, and then escorted me down to their Lair.

I busted in and searched until I found where they were holding Jimmy. Actually, they weren’t holding him at all. They were all having some tea as I walked in (prepared to kick some hiney). They apologized for keeping him so long and that he was free to go. I was very curious as to the nature of their visit, as this seemed all to easy. At that moment however , I didn’t care. I raced to hug Jimmy, thankful for his survival, then with the help of Sally we rushed back to the surface and back to our base camp.

Will RynoBoy find out the true nature of Dr Daddicus and Baroness Mommy Von Milkstein’s plot?
Will Jimmy remain the same friendly, care-free giraffe he’s always been?
Tune in next week. Same Rynoboy time, same RynoBoy Channel!

TheBrandNewDad epilogue: What had happened was… One evening last week, Ryne’s dinner didn’t completely agree with him, or it agreed with him too much. Either way, when I went to check on him in his crib before I went to bed, he had thrown up some of his dinner. He had avoided most of the catastrophe, having moved to a different part of the crib. Jimmy, however, didn’t quite make it. He was soiled, to say the least. Well, we had to wash him in the washer, but Ryne also had to be woken up so we could change his sheets.

I took Jimmy and put him in with the dirty clothes then went back to change his sheets while Jamie changed him. Then came time to put him back to sleep. Ryne doesn’t like to sleep without his friend Jimmy. It was hard to get him calmed down without his best friend around. So his other friend, Sally the Sea Horse sang him a song (which she does every night…Sally’s a sea horse that’s kinda in the same vein as a Glow Worm). And we comforted him as much as we could. He finally fell asleep…but the look on his face said he wasn’t happy about it.

The next day when Jimmy was finished being washed and dried, Jamie brought Jimmy for me to see if I thought he was clean and dry enough. Ryne was in the living room, and caught a glimpse of Jimmy. Now, he’s still not walking, but I believe at that very moment, he could have done one of those cheesy scenes of he and Jimmy running towards each other in a field. He kicked his legs, reached out his hands and started yelling (not crying or screaming, but kind of a whooping) for Jimmy. Jamie handed him to Ryne, and Ryne clutched Jimmy to his chest and squeezed him so hard, I would sware I could actually hear the thing wheeze. Ryne and Jimmy were finally reunited.

Why can’t we keep a friend like that as we grow up?

I remember that on Christmas 1987, the most wonderful thing in the world happened (well, at the time, at least). The Nintendo Entertainment Center came to my house. Yes, there it was in all its gray, darker gray, and black magnificence. I wanted to be Japanese, so that I could understand the Japanese games. I wanted to beat all the levels in Super Mario Brothers, but I couldn’t pass up warping through worlds to beat the game faster. Tetris gave me an appreciation for Tchaikovsky, who still remains my favorite composer.

As awesome as it was, Nintendo was incredibly simple. I sometimes wish that parenting could be as simple as Nintendo. Think of all the do-overs you could have with your kid if they had a game controller? As soon as the baby is out of the womb, you quickly punch in the old up up, down down, left right, left right, BA Start….and you’re golden! Your kid has at least 30 lives….but you’ll never really have to find out, because they’ll beat the game before then.

Today I was feeding Ryne and he obviously didn’t like what I was feeding him. I kept giving it to him, and he was eating, but in between every bite he was crying. I didn’t understand what his problem was other than he just wanted something else. Can you imagine how great it would be if every time your kid malfunctioned in this way that all you had to do was blow on them like a cartridge and then they worked like they’re supposed to?

Ryne also has a problem complying with my don’t-do-anything-awesome-unless-I-have-a-way-to-capture-it-for-posterity rule. If he does something awesome, you can guarantee that it won’t be while I have video or audio ready to capture it. Today we were having one of our “conversations.” I was saying, “Hey Buddy,” and he would say, “Hey Da Da.” During this, I would tell him, “I love you.” One time after I said it, I noticed he mouthed it back to me. I got real excited and said it again. He started playing again, and I just kept talking to him. Then without warning, he busts out in this deep, matter-of-fact voice with “I LOVE YOU DA DA.” There was no 50 syllables to get it out, no wasted time. He just said it plainly. Well, I hit the ceiling I was so excited. I immediately tried to get him to say it again….this time with my iPhone in hand to try and capture the moment. Alas, he has a technology radar and WILL NOT perform on command. When this happens, you literally have a “tree falling in the woods” scenario. There’s no record of it, so did it really happen? With a Nintendo child, you simply press the reset button until you get the desired result.

Unfortunately, there is no game controller for your kids when they’re born. Unless you join the NRA…then they come with the NES light zapper.

I’ve written quite a bit a bit about the dreams of my son and what infants could possibly have to dream about. I’ve written about the Sweet Dreams, and the Nightmares. But what about the parent dreams? Parents have recurring dreams about their children. They sometimes dream that:

They lose their child.
They forget they have a child.
Their child is on a cliff, and they can’t get to them.

OR…If they’re like my wife, they dream that their child (who is completely physically incapable) has climbed out of the crib and walked into the bedroom and is now slowly stalking us in our sleep, not unlike a certain demonic doll from cheesy 80’s movies.

Last night I had a dream. It wasn’t about my son, it was about football. More specifically, it was about my high school football team and my role on that team. Nevermind that my high school no longer exists. Nevermind that I had not been back there since 2000. Nevermind that the last year I played was 1997. No, the only thing that matters is that on the night of March 28, 2010, I was back on the team at T.W. Martin High School. It was the first game of the season and we were playing our arch rival, who, in my dream was some team in University of Wyoming yellow and brown. It was a very important game and our whole season was apparently riding on that night. In practice, our coach kept telling us how important it was for us to do our job so that we could win the game. That was basically all the instruction he gave…”Do your job.”

I was so pumped up to be playing again (in my dream, I realized that I was 13 years removed from playing football), and I was excited that I was going to “do my job” and we were going to win the game and be champs (even though it was the first game of the season). I decided to rest before the big game so that I would have all my strength to be able to “do my job.” So, I went into the field house and took a nap.

The next thing I know is that I’m being awakened by the sound of cleats on the concrete floor of the field house. I jump up, realizing everyone is ready…but then it hits me, they’re coming back into the field house. The game was over. I kept asking, “why didn’t you wake me up? I didn’t hear anyone wake me up so I could “do my job.” I was told that they didn’t need me to “do my job” after all, and that they won the game anyway. I was simultaneously disappointed and relieved. Then I woke up (for real).

Immediately upon waking, I realized the meaning of the dream, and it was almost a literal allegory for last night. Before bed, Jamie informed me that she wanted to try to keep Ryne from waking up for night feedings because he should be growing out of that by now. Her plan was to have me go in and calm him back down and get him back to sleep if he woke up. I needed to do it, because if she went in there, he would automatically assume food was on the way and he would pitch a fit until he got some milk.

So I went to bed thinking to myself that I needed to make sure to get up if I heard him crying and settle him back down. I had to psych myself up for this because I didn’t want to sleep through it, or have Jamie forget that she wanted me to go calm him down and just do it herself. So I reminded myself as I was falling sleep to “do my job.”

Then morning came. At 6:30, I woke up in a panic. I knew I had not gotten out of bed, and I had not heard him crying. So I asked Jamie what time he had woken up. And…he hadn’t. He slept right through the night. I had not needed to “do my job,” and we had a victory. It is super scary that my subconscious was playing all this out so vividly in my dream. I have other dreams that are very weird…but they almost make no sense at all in relation to anything else. I will share those at another time. Do you have any recurring dreams or just weird dreams in general? Please share by leaving a comment at the top of this post!

Jamie and I finally got the Christmas Tree up in our apartment. We are not “Day after Thanksgiving” types, but more like “2 weeks ’til Christmas, we need the tree up” type people. The act of putting a tree in the living room and then hanging shiny things on it was a great source of entertainment for Ryne. It only seemed to confirm for him how weird his parents are.

Son: Dad, I’m telling mom you put a tree in our living room.
Dad: Mom already knows…she asked me to put it up for her.
Son: I highly doubt that. An idea this crazy seems like it would be totally your own. What about all the animals and bugs in it?
Dad: It’s not a real tree, it’s plastic, and besides, this is the Christmas tree, and we’re putting it up so you can enjoy Christmas a little better.
Son: I don’t even know what Christmas is, so how could I enjoy it more?
Dad: Well, Christmas has a very deep meaning, and I don’t know if you’re old enough for me to go into it right now.
Son: Why don’t you try me?
Dad: Well, Christmas is the time of year that we celebrate the birthday of Jesus.
Son: I thought that’s what we were doing all those Sundays at Church.
Dad: Well, I’m glad you picked up on that, but it’s a little different. At church, we are celebrating much more about Jesus’s life than just his birthday.
Son: OK, I know I’ve only been here a little while, but you guys sure do strange things. Tell me more about Christmas.
Dad: Well, the things that will interest you are the Christmas tree which has these bright lights and all these ornaments on it. It’s pretty and shiny.
Son: What’s a plastic tree got to do with Jesus?
Dad: I’m not sure, it’s just been that way since I was a little boy, and much longer than that.
Son: Why do you hang shiny things on it?
Dad: I’m not sure about that either, except that many,many years ago, they hung the most precious thing in history on a tree…but we’ll get into that another time. Another thing that’s cool about Christmas is that when Jesus was born, some men traveled a long way to see him and bring him the best gifts they had to offer. That is why on Christmas Eve, Santa Claus travels all over the world bringing presents to the good boys and girls.
Son: Who is this Santa you speak of?
Dad: You had your picture taken with him a few weeks ago.
Son: You mean the old man at the mall?
Dad: Yes, that’s him.
Son: I was meaning to ask you about that. Handing your baby over to an old bearded man in a red velvet track suit hardly seems like appropriate behavior.
Dad: Trust me, Santa is a cool guy. You’ll really appreciate him when you see the gifts he brings.
Son: So this guy who flies all over the world to take toys to all the boys and girls just sits around taking pictures at the mall?
Dad: You’d be amazed at how much Santa actually accomplishes in malls.
Son: That’s a strange story. It might as well be an egg-laying bunny who brings presents to kids.
Dad: Umm, about that…

I can’t believe it’s been 5 months already. December 9th marked that milestone in his life. Every month I try to do a comparison to see how much he’s grown. The picture on the left was taken roughly 30 minutes after he was born. The picture on the right was taken roughly 30 minutes before I started writing this. When he was born, his little hand barely fit around my fingertip, and now it will go all the way around my finger, and it’s width comes up to my second knuckle.

There’s no doctor’s visit until next month, but we’ve been weighing him at home and measuring him as well. For a refresher, when he was born, he weighed 6 lbs, 9 oz. and measured in at 19 1/2 inches. He now weighs 16 lbs, 9 oz and measures in at 28 inches. For perspective, he’s gained a light-sized bowling ball, and gained roughly the length of a business-sized envelope.

He’s gaining 1.8 inches every 5 months. At that rate, he will be as tall as his Nana (my mom) in about 18 months. Ok, so he won’t continue to grow at that rate, but at any rate, I hope he grows taller than me.

New Tricks:
The day after he turned 5 months, he rolled over for the first time.
His crib is now his personal jungle gym. Wherever we lay him down at night is never where he ends up.
He’s scooting on his tummy a little bit….but it’s always backwards.
He hates tummy time, and knows something’s expected of him, but now instead of crying about it, he just falls asleep.
He’s sitting up with a fair amount of authority now.
He’s giggling a lot, and finds the little baby in the mirror to be an interesting companion.