On Friday morning Melissa woke up not just one day older, but an entire year older. She really doesn’t like when I tell people how old she is so I’ll just say last year she turned 27 and next year she turns 29.
On this birthday we had a lot of things to celebrate. Obviously this is her first birthday being a mother, but it is also her first birthday as my wife too. What a year! Just a couple weeks ago I had the best birthday ever while spending all day with Melissa in the hospital having Landon. Three weeks and one day later it’s now Melissa’s birthday and Landon and I had to make sure we let her know how much we love her.
So a couple days before Melissa’s birthday I went to the jewelry store to pick out a bracelet for her. I ended up picking out a really nice charm bracelet because I wanted to be able to personalize it with some charms to represent some of the amazing things we have been through this year. One of the charms is a tag with Landon’s name on the front and the time and date he was born on the back. The other charm is a baby shoe with Landon’s birth weight and length on the bottom.
Landon’s gift for Melissa was supposed to be fairly simple, but as you are about to find out it turned into anything but that. The gift itself was a nice picture frame with Melissa’s favorite picture of Landon and her in it. To go along with the picture frame I wanted to get a really cute card that Landon could sign. The only problem is Landon’s signature really isn’t something recognizable yet. So in thinking what I could do I decided to try and get something that I could transfer his hand print to the card. After trying 3 different stores with no luck, I decided to try the hospital since I knew they had the transfer sheets that they use to get the footprints of newborn babies. Using my charming sense of humor and good looks I was able to sweet talk the nurse at the hospital into letting me have one of those ink transfer sheets. Whew… the hard part was now done right? umm…. not exactly…
So later that night Melissa went to bed and it was my turn to watch Landon downstairs so she could catch up on some sleep. Once Landon fell asleep I tried to open his hand so I could try to transfer his hand to the card. I thought once he was sleeping it would be easier to control his muscles… man was I naive!
So I placed the card down on a coffee table and held Landon above it with one arm trying to get him to relax his kung fu grip enough for me use my other hand to transfer his prints. This was not an easy task by any means. Eventually after about 15 minutes I was finally able to get him to open his hand enough for me to transfer it without letting him face plant into the table. I pulled his hand away from the transfer sheet and the hand print came out great… NICE! One down, one to go…
I resumed my stance and held Landon over the table but once again I had a lot of trouble getting him to relax. Eventually I was able to get his hand open so I quickly grabbed the transfers sheet… threw it down on the card… pushed his hand down… picked it up… and as I raised his hand the transfer sheet came up with it…
Yes, I successfully inked my son’s hand with black ink! My 3 week old that has extremely dry skin who loves to suck on his hands and rub his face. Needless to say I started to panic. Do I wake up Melissa? Do I call 9-1-1? What the hell should I do? All I could think about is my poor child getting ink poisoning and dieing right before his Mom’s birthday. Some birthday present Mike… WAY TO GO!
So I brought him upstairs trying to keep his hands away from his face and grabbed as many wipes as I could in the room where Melissa was sleeping without waking her. I then placed him down on our WHITE carpet and started to frantically wipe him down. It took about 8 sheets, but finally I was able to get him pretty clean. At least enough where I could start to breathe again, but as any stubborn, persistent, perfectionist dad would do. I brought him right back downstairs to finish the job!!!!
Unfortunately most of the ink was now removed from the transfer sheet so once i finally got him to throw down is right hand it came out like crap. I was disappointed, but I convinced myself that this mistake actually added character and a story to this gift that she will never forget.
In the end Melissa loved her gifts and had a really good laugh at my effort to make her card extra special… Next year I think I will just take a picture of his hand and staple it to the card!
That seems like enough drama for one post! Take care everyone and we hope to see you real soon.
Love you all,
Mike, Melissa and Landon.
In fact I had so much fun that I ended up sleeping on the floor of our friends hotel room wearing a pair of borrowed shorts and 2 bathroom towels laid over me to try and keep warm. It wasn’t until I was shivering at 4am that I wished I was changing diapers, giving Landon a bath, or even trying to settle him down in the middle of the night because he couldn’t sleep. Actually, that last one I can’t really say I have too much experience with since Melissa has been taking on most (if not all) of the weekday night duty. I love you hun!!! I must get that from my dad since my mom told me the story about how he used to tell people I was sleeping through the night very early on, and my mom would correct him saying “No hun, it’s you sleeping through the night.” 
It is also helping him sleep much better now since he can relax with a full belly. He is also recovering great from the circ. he got yesterday. He has been having plenty of dirty diapers so that’s good news too. 
