He's a fucking GENIUS, man!

At home with Frankie, 8/20
Originally uploaded by silverzephyr.

I'm pleased to report that Frankie survived the first 24 hours in our exclusive custody. In fact, it was a lot rougher on us than it was on him. Anna and I slept in two or three hour shifts, I think. The night is a blur. I feel like what it must be like inside the mind of Dennis Hopper's expatriate journalist from Apocalypse Now, amped out of my gourd on megadoses of fear and awe. I sleep in fitful bursts, awakened by the slightest murmer from the co-sleeper. Frankie has decided to bless me with exclusive rights to his shitty diapers, somehow managing to crap only during my shifts. We tried to maintain a strict feeding schedule for the first couple of hours, but it's quickly devolved into an ad lib, on-demand enterprise, and Frankie's calling the shots. His appetite is the last thing anyone needs to worry about. However, having just typed that sentence, I was interrupted for a ten-minute discussion about our joint inability to recall the exact times and frequency of today's feedings, the long and short of which was Anna's conclusion that he's not eating enough. So what do I know? Seems to me everything's going pretty good, but at this point, I'd be hard pressed to pass a competency hearing, so my opinion is probably not to be trusted. This picture was taken ten minutes ago, and having Frankie on the couch next to me is making the task of writing pretty damn difficult. All I want to do is stare at him, even when he's sleeping. If his captivating spell doesn't wear off shortly, finishing my dissertation is going to be much harder than I'd imagined.