So…Two weeks and 5 days. That’s how long Veronica has been with us and it feels like 10 years. I kid of course!  Seriously, we love her more than we could ever describe but nobody told us she would be a superhero whose power is the ability to cry at alarming levels for 72 straight hours before taking a breath.

Wow.

Of course it doesn’t help that her parents are easily the most neurotic parents to ever be spit up on. Who constantly wonder what they have done wrong that has doomed the poor child to some horrible life-long ailment. Who jump 12 feet in the air at the faintest grunt with visions of the Train Spotting baby racing through their sleep deprived little minds.

Otherwise, parenthood is a breeze.

Yes, there are ups and downs, strikes and gutters but the last 2+ weeks have been wonderful and watching how she grows and changes on a DAILY basis right now has been facinating. I have done and learned so much in this short time. I have learned that I can walk around two miles in a circle, half awake at 4am without falling down. I’ve discovered that I know all of the lyrics to The Addams Family, Alice, The Jeffersons and The Fall Guy and I can whistle the Hogan’s Heroes, Andy Griffith and Bob Newhart Show themes and they all make excellent lullabys. I have learned how your child can fire off 1000 different emotion with one look.

I have changed roughly 42,763 diapers. Veronica likes to wait until the diaper is off to pee all over the place. Oh you would think I could figure out to leave the diaper there until she pees. She’s smarter than that. She’ll wait all day for me to pull the old diaper away and grab the new one to let fly. She’s a smartass…it’s awesome!

She likes Dean Martin more than Sinatra. That’s cool. She calms down and coos to Dean, fusses a little at Frank.

She has the BIGGEST eyes I have ever seen on anyone! They are gorgeous and they can be downright unnerving.

She can bring me to tears with a look.

It’s taking forever for her to lose her cord. Which is a pain because we can’t give her a proper bath until it falls out.

Her head gained like 15 pounds overnight Sunday!

My apologies for the rambling nature of this post. Neither Steph or I have slept much obviously. I’m just kind of doing some stream of conscience writing here. Speaking of Steph. Well, that’s a whole other blog. Let’s just say ‘amazing’ is too small a word to describe Stephanie.

Many thanks to everyone who has wished us well, emailed, sent advice [Hi Jennifer! :-)] stopped by and helped us out. Our families have been amazing. Our Moms particularly. They brought us food, diapers, tubs, strollers…pretty much whatever we need they have showed up with. And they have this magical ability to calm Veronica down with just a touch. I WANT that power!

Oh look! She’s already a mascot! On Keith’s National’s blog.

One thing that has helped me weather the all-nighters the last few weeks are a series of podcasts from Jupiter Broadcasting. Specifically The Linux Action Show, Radio Revolver and Beer is Tasty.  Veronica got a taste of The Linux Action Show last night through my iPhone.

LAS is easily the best Linux and technology podcast out there today. Since she will be using Linux as soon as she can type her username I figure I should start her off on a good diet of the show now. [Yes I WILL be that annoying parent pitching a fit about school systems requiring proprietery software for kids]

Radio Revolver is a terrific surprise for me. I didn’t think there were other people out there who shared my love for the golden age of radio. Besides Ed Walker of course. [Personal hero of mine along with Willard Scott. They were The Joy Boys!]

Beer is Tasty is hysterical. You have to check it out for yourself, my description will not do it justice. (Hobgoblin FTW!!)

Thanks Chris and Bryan for helping me stay sane during the looooooong nights.

I have been emailing with an old friend of mine about this whole fatherhood thing and he pretty much nailed how I feel. So I’m going to steal it.

There is a lot they don’t tell you.  Like that it makes your heart actually, physically ache with how much you love them!  That threw me, still does.  That time flies.  That nobody will infuriate you more or make you happier, usually in the same 10 minute block.  There is nothing you won’t do for them.  There’s no better way to learn more about yourself and what you need to improve about yourself.  They are quite the sponge and make excellent mirrors.  Absorbent and reflective, not many could pull that off!

Well said Pat!

Ok, that is all the babbling for now.

Time to go see what’s on Veronica’s agenda for today!

PROST!

So I’ve been up for 39 hours so this will be brief.

Steph’s water broke Tuesday night, predictably while I was working late.

Seventeen hours of labor later and a half hour of pushing and Veronica Jane Mangino was born.

She’s 21 inches long and weighed in at 8 pounds 9 ounces. She looks like Jackie Cooper and is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life.

Much longer posts to come, but I am punchy tired and Veronica is sleeping.

So, check out the photo set here LINK HAS BEEN FIXED

Thank you for all the well wishes.

See you soon.

So I’ve been up for 39 hours so this will be brief.

Steph’s water broke Tuesday night, predictably while I was working late.

Seventeen hours of labor later and a half hour of pushing and Veronica Jane Mangino was born.

She’s 21 inches long and weighed in at 8 pounds 9 ounces. She looks like Jackie Cooper and is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life.

Much longer posts to come, but I am punchy tired and Veronica is sleeping.
So, check out the photo set here

Thank you for all the well wishes.

See you soon.

Baby Moves Like An Alien from John Mangino on Vimeo.

Veronica\’s Internal Workout

I was just on my Ping.fm page. Ping.fm is a social service aggregate site. It allows you to post to any combination of social sites you belong to at once. I find I use it everyday now.

But while there it dawned on me that I use WAY too many micro-blog sites. Forget this blog, my Halloween blog, my work blog, my Facebook page , my MySpace page, my tumblr and whatever else. I’m just talking about micro-blogs here.

“What the hell is a micro-blog?” I hear you cry. Micro-blogs are social sites that give you a limited number of characters to post quick messages to friends and followers. The most famous is Twitter. But as Twitter has exploded there is a large crowd of clones following in its footsteps.
And that’s cool…that’s cool man. The question is, WHY AM I ON ALL OF THEM? I, and many of my fellow twitterers, jump on every one of these things that come down the pipe. Part of it is just curiosity. It’s a new API to play with and that’s always fun.
Part of it is frustration with the many growing pains of twitter. Seems there is always some problem going on with the servers and up pops that damn whale.
But another part of it is this ridiculous fear of being left behind in an obsolete social network. You don’t want to wake up one day and find all of your twitter friends are gone and you have no one to fake talk to because you missed the boat on some new service that does exactly the same thing but it’s got AJAX! or “Leo’s on it!”.
Much like the - hang on let me count - 14 social sites I belong to, there really is no point to this post other than to beg all you social butterflies in virtual world, can we please pick one already?

MORE

So, I seem to be leaning towards identi.ca more and more now. It’s very open, it integrates with Twhirl, the layout is clean and it’s been up every time I’ve used it. Of course that could be hit or miss if it becomes twitter popular. But I think I may move to them.

Ok, I’m off to FriendFeed.