Since Jess normally writes these posts and she’s too modest to even acknowledge her roll, everyone but her gets the shout outs. It’s about time someone mentions her.

Everyone knows that newborns pose some difficulties, so I won’t list them all here.  It suffices to say that our newborn is not exceptional in this regard, and Jess has stepped up in every way.  She hasn’t gotten more than 2 hours continuous sleep in a month, yet she has never responded to any of Moxie’s (or my) insane demands with anything but an impossible amount of love.

Moxie wants to feed every 15 minutes for a day? No problem.  Moxie forgets how to burp?  Sure, mom will pat her back and walk around for an hour until she remembers.  Moxie wants a $1,000,000 in unmarked tens and her own Greyhound Bus to transport the hostages to airport?  Of course, and here’s a helicopter with enough fuel to make it to Cuba.

I know, lots of kids have been born (107,602,707,791 as of October of 2011, in fact), which means there have been a lot of mother (around 48,421,218,506).  Maybe they’ve all been this good; I don’t know.  But that doesn’t in any way diminish my astonishment and appreciation of her.

I’d like to say that I’ve enjoyed helping her in this process, but it goes too far to say what I’ve done is “help”.  At best, I’ve tried to relieve her of all the things she has to do to take care of me, and not always so successfully.  (She’s still my best alarm clock.)  Sure, I’ve changed a diaper or two in the middle of the night, but given how hard it is to wake me up, it’d be easier for her to just do it herself.  Yet she does wake me up, just so that I feel like I’m contributing to the effort.

Whenever I come home, she has a smile and a happy baby ready for me, which, after many sleepless hours of dealing with tears, poop and vomit, I imagine is an Herculean task.  (And our stables are also always clean, incredibly.)  She’s not just good at motherhood, but also at spousehood.  (I’m a pretty middling spouse, which just shows how good she is.  I want to be supportive, but I’ve never been great at expressing sympathy or love.  And yet…she kindly hears the things I don’t say.  Were I her, I would’ve killed me by now.)

So I just thought I’d mention Jess and a small amount of all she does, as this blog seems rather lacking without it.  And to those of you who said she’d be a great mother and a great wife, you mightily underestimated her.