Baby Boo-yeah

On weekdays, my day starts some time between 6 and 6:30. This is the time in the daily ritual where Clara begins to grow restless for one of the three following reasons:

1) She’s hungry.
2) She’s no longer tired.
3) She’s clamoring for her daily sports news and highlights.

So I roll out of bed and grab the little one out of her crib, which sits alongside Katie. I have to hand it to my wife – she’s able to wake up in the middle of the night, know why the baby is restless, amend the situation, and go back to bed without me even knowing. There have been several occasions in which I’ve woken up and asked her if it was time to feed the baby and she’ll calmly respond, “I just did 20 minutes ago.” It appears that I’m a bit of a heavy sleeper. In other news of the Completely Obvious, gravity works, water is wet, and Nordberg phones it in.

(C’mon, that joke has been long overdue.)

So minutes after rolling out of bed, it’s the baby and me in the living room. This is my parenting shift, as well as an opportunity to give Katie 1-2 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Now this isn’t necessarily playtime, yet. There’s things that we have to get done before Mom wakes up. Medicine, a change of clothes, and a feeding are all on the docket. The first two require me to be up and about, moving around the apartment gather the necessary implements and apparel. The latter? Once we have the bottle ready, we sit.

On the couch. And....I'm lights out.

Or at least that could be what happens if I don’t add another element into the morning routine. Remember, it’s still O-Dark-Thirty, and I haven’t had my morning cup of, umm, well, uhh, whatever it is I need to break out of Sleepy Chris mode. Handling a baby requires you to shock yourself awake, at least to the point that you’re not going to run into walls or adhere a clean diaper to the tea kettle, but it’s still a drowsy part of the day. Sitting on a comfy couch with a warm body in your lap that’s sucking down milk like it’s going out of style is a very calming and serene place to be. I need visual stimulation to stay awake – something that will keep me from letting the bottle slide down the baby’s torso.
We watch Sports Center.

That’s right, Clara starts her day off with a dose of what’s hot in the world of athletics, crammed nicely into a 60-minute timeslot. There are highlights, there’s analysis, there’s predictions, and she loves it. But even a few weeks into her routine, Clara has noticed some glaring flaws to the once-mighty ESPN flagship, and in between sips of milk, she’s imparting her feelings to me. I shall interpret them now.

Synergy: An increasing problem with ESPN’s SportsCenter has become the need to promote other brands of the Disney Corporation. Look, Clara knows that Dancing with the Stars has a short-track speedskater and Clyde Drexler on it, but that doesn’t mean it should make Sports Center. Their March Madness highlight reel? They set it to a Rob Thomas song that is on the soundtrack to Disney’s latest flick, Meet the Robinsons. Look, Clara’s all for letting them tell her what ABC Sports will be showing on Saturday, but she’s tired of the flagrant cross-promotion.

Features: If you’re going to take 3-6 minutes away from the highlights to do a human interest story, let Kenny Mayne do it. Every time Clara hears Chris Connelly’s voice, she falls asleep, mid-feed. She doesn’t care about the life and times of Bobby Knight, a college b-ball coach who hasn’t coached an elite team since 1993. It’s a show-killer.

Anchors: Too many of ‘em. In the olden days (circa 1998), there were like 6-8 people who could find themselves behind the Sports Center desk. You go to like them, know their catchphrases, who works well together, and who doesn’t. These days, we wake up and could find any of the following leading off with the Suns-Mavericks recap: Van Pelt, Anderson, Stu Scott, Mayne, Everett, Buccigross, Verrett, Berthiaume, Bonner, Greenberg, Cohn, Ravech, McKendry, Trey Wingo, and a cast of thousands more. Look, there’s a reason groups like the Wiggles and the Teletubbies were quartets. Babies can’t be bothered with so many bit players.

Hockey: Clara knows that the NHL no longer has a TV contract with ESPN, but that does not mean ESPN has to treat it like a second-class citizen. I try and teach my baby about the coolest live sport there is, and all I have to work with is a 3 minutes Hockey Night segment with Melrose, where he only gets to two games of highlights. Couldn’t we cut one of the six Barry Bonds sightings for a little Flyers-Devils action? Clara gets so mad at this that she’s been known to crosscheck her teddy bear.

Note: Clara’s only been watching the show for two weeks, and she’s sick of hearing "Boo-Yeah." Warrants mentioning.