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I wish I could tell you how this happened. It was so unexpected, I don’t really remember the sequence of events leading up to it. I think it started when The Wife told me our child’s teachers claimed she said “Elmo” today.

I probably said something like “bullshit,” and The Wife agreed with my assessment. Molly’s making more sounds everyday, but even if she stumbles on a word, there’s been no indication she’s using it intentionally.

I’m…not really sure what happened next. I was sitting on the floor with Molly, holding the one Elmo book we actually own, and I guess for some reason I asked her “Where’s Elmo?”

And she slapped her hand down right on top of him.

Ok, very funny. She just happened to hit Elmo. I closed the book, then opened it to the same page, but this time I moved it so that her hand wouldn’t naturally fall on him. “Where’s Elmo, Molly?”

Without hesitation, she slapped her hand down on Elmo again.

I flipped a page, and I suspect there was a slightly bright quality to my voice. “Where’s Elmo?”

That time she pointed, laying one finger on the page. Almost in the fold between the two pages, where a comparatively tiny image of Elmo was waving.

I think there was some horse, dramatic whispering with The Wife, and some confusion over who was getting the camera. Molly found Elmo a few more times, but of course once we started recording she got totally distracted by a TV remote and stopped having anything to do with the book at all. But The Wife witnessed it at least four times in a row, maybe five. So I know I’m not making this up.

My child is ten months old today. And apparently she understands English. Or at least “Elmo.”

I have no idea what is happening.

The last two years, I had awesome explanations for how I was actually aging backwards. That ended this year.

This year, I turned 29. In itself, not a bad thing. But it’s 29-with-an-8-week-old-daughter, which is 45 in parent years. Many of my friends are in their 30s, but they can all sleep easy knowing I’ll always be older than they are.

The Spawn is two months old now, which means she’s ten pounds and smiles and laughs. Her gift to me was seven straight hours of sleep. It was the first night since she was born that I didn’t have to get up to feed her at least once.

So while I might be older than ever, I’m terminally behind on life, and I’m in a constant state of exhaustion, I could be feeling a lot worse.

The thing I’ve found with side-projects is that you can’t sit on them. If you don’t strike while the iron’s hot, get a jump on them, or make the most of some other crappy cliche, you wind up finding your old notes like 4 years later and going “oh yeah, that would have been cool.”

About a year ago, someone told me I should make a mobile game based on the dick book. I laughed. “How would I even make a game out of that?” I said, “It would have to be something like 20 different bras you would need to open, each with a different clasp that would basically be a puzzle. And for each bra you unlocked, you’d get a free chapter of the book.”

There was an uncomfortable silence. My friend was staring at me with a slightly open mouth.

“Look- no,” I began, “I haven’t even finished the first mobile game I started, and this one isn’t…I mean, sure it would be easier to build but…-”

He was still staring at me.

“…crap.”

I got excited about it, but I didn’t move on it. I came up with all sorts of reasons not to. I couldn’t decide how best to display the book pages. I wasn’t absolutely sure it would work. I’m not a programmer. How could I make the puzzles intuitive but still hard enough to be entertaining? Would anyone ever play it?

A year later, it’s made.

Oh, not by me. No. You see, I was too busy asking myself stupid questions. The game that was made is called 100 Floors. The puzzles are elevators, not bras, and you have unlock one floor to move to the next. Many are not particularly intuitive. Your only reward is moving on to the next one. And for a week it was the most popular free game in the android store.

“…crap.”

This morning, when I got in from walking the dog, I found The Wife standing in the living room without pants.

There was a time in my life when this would be amazing. That time is over.

You see these days, if The Wife greets me without pants, it is because The Spawn has ejected bodily fluids on them.

I could tell it had been an impressive payload, since The Spawn was wriggling on a changing table without any clothes on at all.

But it was the fact that the couch was also missing a cushion that indicated this particular broadside was one for the history books.

I was gonna wait to write a post until I could write something that wasn’t about fatherhood. But everything’s about fatherhood these days, so that’s retarded. I think instead I’ll just run down some highlights from the last month.

-People won’t tell you if your breath stinks, if your fly is down, or if your boss is standing behind you while you rant about what an asshole they are. But they’ll tell you in a second how to raise your child.

-Before I had a kid, I would listen to people who had kids. They would say things like “I wish I could find the time to work out.” And I would secretly think to myself “You have the time, you’re just prioritizing sleep. Cut out an hour of sleep from your schedule, you have the time. It’s what I do. If you wanted it badly enough, you could make it a priority, and you could work out.” Dear people who had kids I secretly thought that about- I am so, so sorry. Please forgive me. Love, Ben.

-The Spawn rolled over at the age of 7 days. No, she hasn’t repeated it since. But we put her on her stomach and she flipped the hell out and did a push-up at the same time her legs spasmed and over she went. It counts. My child is a genius. Alert Yale.

-In the last week she’s discovered how to scream in her sleep. She’s not unhappy. If you go over to the crib, she’s got both eye closed and isn’t moving at all. But she’ll scream. In her sleep. She gets this shit from The Wife.

-A lot of parents write some sort of letter to their child every month. I guess I could do that, but even if I did, it seems weird to post it in public. Also, I managed to work as hard as I think I ever have in advertising, while still having to get up every 3 hours to feed The Spawn. My feelings on this are mixed. On the one hand, now I know I can do it. On the other hand, ouch. So, I put this post up instead, and that’ll do for now.

Good lord, was that a chore. Someone once said “When you’re 95% done, you’re halfway there.” Dude knew what he was talking about. But it’s done. Finally up and available. Click, buy, etc. If you don’t want a silly overpriced physical copy, or if you have embraced the digital apocalypse, imma have a super cheap ibook version up in a few days weeks whenever I get around to it. Gotta go feed The Spawn.

This is exactly what it feels like to change a diaper.

Only if you screw it up, instead of getting crushed by a boulder, you’re peed on.

Born at 1:12pm on April 26, 2012. It’s been a little over 15 hours since she came.

I’m fairly certain I’ll never sleep again.

Seems like a fair trade.

My wife is resting in a hospital bed across the room, and I should probably be doing the same. Then again, this is the last day of my life as a not-parent. I feel like I should say something about it.

I won’t ever be the person I am tonight again. My priorities, my focus, my entire approach to life will change once my daughter is born.

What’ I’m saying is, this is sort of a Big Deal.

If she’s born tomorrow, that actual date won’t hold much importance to her. Beyond using it as proof of identity, I don’t attach any real emotional significance to what happened on June 20, 1983. June 20, 1996 was pretty great. And 2004 was epic. But it never occurred to me until tonight what that birth date must mean to my parents. To me, it’s cake and presents. To them, it’s the day their son was born.

That’s really pretty awesome, in the original sense of the word.

If the first chapter of my life was growing up, and the second was independence and marriage, tomorrow or the day after will clearly begin the third chapter. So, here we go. I expect the next post will be the one introducing my daughter.

End Chapter 2.

If you’re wondering why I haven’t pushed the “Owl Book” more, it’s because I’ve discovered it is fucking expensive to print color. It’s looking like this 24-page book is going to cost something like $15. That’s ridiculous, but it’s a whole other order of magnitude on the ridiculous scale when you realize my last book was 100 pages and sold for $10. What the hell do they make color ink out of anyway? Baby harp seals?

With shipping, it cost me an absurd amount to get my proof copy from Blurb. Something like $22, after coupons. The printing is gorgeous, and the quality is amazing, but I can’t even sell that to people “at cost” with a straight face. I found a way to shave at least $3 off the base price with Lulu, but for some reason their book upload process shits the bed when faced with CMYK files, and all my colors turned neon.

As interesting as my new book about a radioactive owl was, it’s not quite what I had in mind. As was evidenced by my stream of consciousness tweets.

Don’t worry, the neighbors don’t even have a cat. (any more)

So I converted everything, and now I’m going to sit here wondering what the hell the colors in this book will actually be when it shows up on my doorstep in a week. And then, if it looks as good as it should, I’ll put up a site and pimp this owl properly*.

If you people didn’t keep liking this stupid shit I do, I wouldn’t have to go to all this trouble.

Thanks for that.

*I am totally going to start a gameshow called Pimp this Owl Properly. Who’s with me?