Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Newsletter: Month 18

Bless me JB for I have sinned... It has been more than 3 months since your last newsletter.



I can't even believe how far off the train I've fallen... You can blame your baby brother or sister for this. Even though s/he isn't even fully developed yet, let alone born, s/he is already affecting the undivided attention that you've come to expect from your mommies.



Let me explain. No time to essplain... Let me sum up: Your mommy got your mama pregnant about 3 months ago. There was a lot of nausea (and some vomiting) at the beginning and you were very often barely in bed before your mama was asleep. The division of labor was upset, and there was a lot to do that didn't involve the (often pointed out to me by non-bloggers) very indulgent practice of posting snippets of our life up on the web.



Ironically (or perhaps predictably) so much has changed developmentally in these 3 months, that I'm not sure how to sum it up or break it down. You have a huge vocabulary now... you will repeat most of what we say, but you have words that you can conjure up with minimal prompting. Sometimes, you just sit and come up with words. It's like you might be flipping through a mental Rolodex and when you shout them out randomly as you consider them. Last week in the car, you kept repeating, "fire" (Fie-her) a word that you had just learned at Nana and papa's house. Then a few minutes later you kept repeating "owl". I couldn't understand what you were saying b/c you pronounced it like "How-ul" and b/c it was so out of context. When I asked you, "what are you saying? I can't understand what word you are saying." You told me, "how-el... hoo,hoo... howel." I looked at your mama and said, "holy (beep)!" Because I was so impressed at how you were able to communicate your point when you wanted to.



A non-inclusive list of words you know: hot, cold, up, down, water, stairs, bib, spoon, more, ball, hammer, truck, bus, car, please, thank you, help, sit, book, beep-beep, yuck, eww, ut-oh, milk, drink, coffee, sip, apple, pasta,waffle, bean, grape, stawberry, blueberry, melon, cereal, cheerios, potty, poop, tissue, snow, light, bright, arm, eye, nose, cheek, teeth, mouth, leg, foot, toe, knee, finger, head, hair, socks, shirt, shoes, hat, zipper, fire, mama, mommy, papa, nana, grandpa, granny, TT, mackenzie, cam cam, Bella, bill, barbara, heather, alisa, amanda (lots of other names from day care), octopus, walrus, fish, puppy, lobster, lion, monkey... When you say a word that ends in "K", you really enunciate the sound. Like in "Milk"... Think of the guttural sound made in Hebrew if someone said, "L'Chaim" and add that "k" noise.



You are singing (sort of) and counting. Singing usually involves you saying "ABC", or "e-i-ei-o", the word "happy" in a cute sing-songy way, then one of your parents or relatives sings the entire rest of the song for your amusement. If there is not a crowd of people staring at you, you will usually give me a mangled, barely recognizable version of the song's epilogue "Now la-no-na-ABCs, ney ney no new see with me." Your cousin, Cam sings the entire Happy Birthday, in tune, not even missing a word... When she's done you sing the solitary word, "Happy" and then let her cycle through it again solo...



Whenever any music is on, we can usually get a "hooray!" and some swaying out of you. You have 2 basic dance moves: the above mentioned rocking side to side, and the staccato demi-plie where you bend slightly at the knees and kind of bounce up and down for a few counts. You truly dance like a rhythm-less white man at this point, and we've thought of getting you a t-shirt that says, "cool kids rock" to mock the over exaggerated simplicity of your dance moves. It is brutally adorable to us. God knows we are mostly responsible for your repertoire, even though we have been trying to teach to you other dance moves (shoulder bounces, raise the roof, dance with your eyebrows, dance with your neck) no doubt, they will only enhance the perception of you as a mini Rick Ashley with top teeth precariously poised to take a chunk out of your lower lip should you roll an ankle if you get too excited while dancing.



You are very mobile and in control of your body, but you are cautious and only a little interested in climbing. You like ladders and step stools, but will mostly stay off on furniture that isn't meant for climbing. You are also a very good listener, and have taken to sitting at the top of the stairs waiting for us when we run down to the basement, for example.



Your grandpa gave you a plastic basketball hoop for Christmas and at first you were just too short to get the ball in slam-dunk style. Now you have grown, or changed your tactic, or both, and able to get the ball and put it through. Balls have emerged as one of your obsessions. There is no rhyme or reason to your obsessions, and for those who would automatically hear me say you are inclined to love any kind of ball and report that it is your natural inclination as a boy to dwell on balls, I would like to offer your other current obsessions: tissues, shoes, drawing utensils, and the letter "o". (To be fair to the gender police, you are also a truck, bus, and car/steering wheel addict.) Of all of these, the letter O is the most confusing to me, but if you go for a letter on the fridge 9/10 it is "o" and you can pick it off of my Uconn sweatshirt too.



The "tissues" game we play non-stop. You've never met a tissue or wipe, or paper towel you didn't love. You love pulling tissues out of their boxes; and you love wiping things up including your face and tables and chairs; and you love throwing tissues away... you love tissues.



Every day when you see me after I've gotten dressed, you look down at my feet and say, "shoes." I think if I came down wearing a prom dress, or a fire fighter's uniform, you would not even notice except when you looked down at my shoes.



Your behavior for the most part is admirable. You have started whining quite a bit. We try to discourage the whining and you are responsive. The scene is usually,
JB: eh, eh, eh (whiny trying to get something noises)
mommy or mama: That's whining, and it is not the best way to get things, you know.
JB: (without the previous whining tone) peeease.



The other times you have a melt down, it is usually some version of "I want to do it myself", or what I can only describe as a "You don't know me..." rebellion. Several times, we know exactly what is going on. For example, you are hungry and need to eat, but think you don't want to eat and refuse to get in the chair... you offer us every version of "NO" that you have learned (saying the word, shaking the head, swinging the arms, stomping the feet). We have found that if we just back off what we are trying to tell you to do, you circle round and do it. It seems to us like a hungry teenager, shouting, "YOU DON'T KNOW ME AT ALL!"



Some of the sweetest times with you recently involve watching you become a little more independent. You like to draw. As much as not leaving knives and dangerous objects around, we have to remember not to leave crayons and pens around b/c you like to draw and have no idea about why you should draw on paper and not furniture or walls.



You also like to go outside



and will sometimes grab my 15lb purse and sling it over your shoulder, head toward the door and say, "bye-bye". This usually means it is time to do some bird watching: "oooh, burd... tweet, tweet." Now that I am writing about this, I realize it is exactly what anti-gay groups are afraid of, that not having a dad will make you think you need a purse to leave the house. Ironically, i never used a purse at all until after you were born and I had gotten used to having a diaper bag to carry everything around. But I promise, we can replace that Lady's Bulsa with a socially acceptable backpack, or brief case and no matter what those social conservatives think, we know that boys who are comfortable carrying purses (either their own, or those belonging to the women in their lives) are probably more desirable and useful to society than the other segment of the male population.



JB, your bedtime ritual still blows our mind. Between 6:45 and 7:30 depending on how tired you seem, we ask, "Do you want a bath?" You almost always do and head toward the stairs. You can now be heard counting as we climb the stairs. Mama or I say, "one, two" you often hit "three" then we give you "four" and frequently you come up with "five"... For the rest, we are on our own, you can not be bothered to utter a number beyond five at this point, but it is clear that you get the concept. Once we are upstairs, you get your bath toys out of the drawer while we draw the tub and you throw them into the water one by one: boat, truck, truck, duck, walrus, fish, sea horse, lobster, octopus. At some point you usually ask to sit on the potty by pointing or saying "potty" or saying, "euwwww." Except for that one dumpage that solitary time, you haven't so much as tinkled in the pot, but you still want to sit there.



After your bath, we dry you, lotion you up (most days), use a q-tip on your ears. We diaper and dress you in your pjs. We read a book or two (these last few months you have started to become very interested in books); cuddle for a few minutes with your blanket and binki (the only time you use your binki these days is at bedtime and occasionally in the car); and then we put you in your crib. Oh first, we do a lap around your room and say goodnight to a bunch of things in there... always in the same order. Goodnight lion, hippo, monkey, elephant... goodnight choo-choo train, goodnight giraffe, g.n. tigger, g.n. dinosaur (x3), g.n. lizard, g.n. planets... then we kiss and hug you and put you down. And that's it. I mean maybe once a month there are a few tears and we give you "one more hug" and then you just put your head down, dig into a comfy position and fall asleep. The entire routine takes 15 to 30 minutes depending on how much lotion we apply, or how long we let you splash in the tub. And pretty much every single night, we marvel at how amazing you are to let us put you to bed without any drama.



You have clearly demonstrated your capacity for tantrums, but at 18 months old, guess what else you can do? You can whistle. I swear. You are like a Casablanca advertisement: You just put your lips together and blow, and music comes out. This never fails to astound any bystanders...



You are a super star.
We love you so much it hurts.



Your mommies

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Idle chit chat

The kid has a lot of words now.

This morning he woke and we took him into our bed trying to steal a few extra winks. He cuddled and tossed and turned and then called out into the darkness:
"Eat... cup... milk... apple."

Really? Tell us what you actually want, JB.

I was guilted into peeling the covers back and putting on clothes. As I carried him down to breakfast, i wondered if he had been storing vocabulary up to use on at a this perverse hour; as an ironic backlash from all those times in the last few months his moms responded to his whining with the half-joking, "use your words."

This evening when I picked him up from day care, he was crying. (His mouth is literally a bloody mess between the new teeth and the cheek that he has bitten with those choppers.) I picked him up, packed him up, dried his eyes and got him out of there. He looked at my coat and said in the clearest pronunciation: "zipper". Then he looked at the ground and pointed:

"Down... walk... rocks" (pointing up) "bird... sky... wow... " Then he finished as we approached our vehicle with, "car... in... binki."

These aren't actually sentences, but amazing progress, and Mad communication skillz

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Weighing in

No pun intended, but I figured it was about time I weighed in on this whole pregnancy thing. Since I'm the one that's preggers.

It started with a few frustrating rounds of at-home intra-uterine tries (did I mention that this post won't be for the squeamish?). And by a few, I mean 3. I am fully aware that I should just shut my pie-hole about only having 3 frustrating times and 1 successful time. The problem was that I, predictably, got in my head about the whole thing. I tested before it was time. Got frustrated with the negatives. Tried to find pink lines where there clearly were none. Went so far as to make the infertility appointment.

Then came the fourth try. I woke up our good in friend in a west-coast crunchy city at around 5am her time on a sunday morning in a panic: The million dollar fancy fertility monitor you made me buy went positive today unexpectedly! How many vials of the swim team should I try? 2? Ok. But when? This conversation was to be legendary, but I'm sure LSG was just glad to get off the phone and go back to sleep. T and I had debated whether or not to go for two vials this time, weighing in the fact that our donor (of which we had 4 vials left) had none left in the bank. Ultimately, we decided that having to change donors if we happened to run out was not the end of the world, and it was worth a try.

So we packed up the existing kid, raced to the storage facility and convinced the very nice lab tech to give us two vials out of deep freeze with 2 minutes notice. I'll skip the next 24 hours since it wouldn't even be appropriate for those who aren't already squeamish.

We went to Ohio after Christmas to visit my family. I brought all the supplies: pregnancy tests, the fertility monitor, and monitor sticks. And one night I had a moment of complete clarity. I woke up around 2am and in total darkness with my wife and baby quietly sleeping in the room thought, "We don't need anymore kids! One is perfect! We can just stop trying!". I should have known.

Tracy let me sleep in the following morning and before I went upstairs to see the fam, I decided it was the day. So I pulled out a stick, peed on it, and then ran away from it. The last three times I had stood there and stared at it. I couldn't bear to watch it come up negative again. So I organized (my default activity when I'm anxious).

And there it was. 2 pink lines. Uh oh. So much for clarity.

I walked up the stairs to where T was and said sternly, "I need to speak with you. Right now." Fully convinced that she had done something terribly wrong, she followed me. I showed her the stick, we rejoiced, and then looked at each other. "Damn that LSG." Always right, that one.

Anyway, that's a long drawn out version of how this adventure started. I spent 2 weeks feeling totally normal. Then the puking started. Again, details not necessary, but I spent a good portion of each evening either praying it wouldn't happen, or just getting it over with. T was unfortunately experiencing a higher than usual stress level at work, JB was getting teeth and discovering the word "no", and I was completely useless. Suffice it to say I would not have gotten through that first part without my amazing wife, very helpful in-laws, phone support from my parents, and co-workers who made sure work was as easy as possible during that time.

Now that the second trimester is here things are much better. My appetite is back full force and it feels fantastic. I've finally started putting on some pounds after losing a few in the beginning. I have a for-sure belly bump (not the pretend one I was "making up" the last couple of weeks). My clothes don't fit. My boobs are a whole new country. And while I have loved bread and butter pickles my whole life, they taste AMAZING right now. Which also means that my olfactory nerve is working overtime and I can smell a dirty JB diaper from a mile away.

The things we know: I'm due 9/10/09. I measure big enough for ONE BABY. I have ONE extra heartbeat in my abdomen. I will have an ultrasound on tax day that will tell us the gender (yes, we're finding out) as well as whether the baby has all its parts in all the right places. I think it's a boy. Or a girl. Everyone at work and all of my parents think it's a girl. I should be able to start feeling the baby move in the next month or so. I plan to eat everything in sight in celebration.

Stay tuned for updates over the next 25 weeks!

Thursday, March 19, 2009

more chai please!

Somehow in the midst of getting another enormous tooth (this one made him bleed while eating) we managed to convince JB to do some of his tricks...

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Capt Sully saves the day

This is awesome.

Katy just made me watch it. She's seen it a few times already.



After we watch it together (for the first time) i say, "That was awesome."
I look at her and she is crying.

Me: What... um... why are you... what's going... How's that now?
Her: It just makes me cry.
Me: (blank stare)
Her: When things are that organized... and people do their jobs so well... and disaster is averted... it just really makes me cry.
Me: (careful to control facial muscles) Yup.

No hormones here.

hattip: dl004d

2nd trimester

Well, we are into the 2nd trimester (duh, you coulda guessed that from the subject)...

Also, yesterday, JB had his follow up hearing test. Tubes are in place, patent, and ears are fluid free... Hearing is normal!

Woo Hoo. Surgical success.

And woo hoo too for baby number two... keep growing little bean!

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Life at 13 weeks 6 days

Life is good.
Work is nuts.
We turned the clocks an hour forward this week.
(Is that DST? or are we out of DST? I'm not sure how it works)
Katy is still nauseous. (getting better we think)
The baby is the size of a lemon.
JB is throwing a few fits here and there.
We are tired.
The blog is suffering.
I haven't written a newsletter in 2.5 months.

Monday, I witnessed our son's very first full-blown tantrum. It was a little like a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon and included him meandering through several rooms crying, screeching, sobbing, sweating, head-banging, kicking, throwing himself on the floor, putting his head in his hands and crying on the closed toilet seat, banging his head on the wall, spinning and rolling around in little break-dancing moves... It ended in child's pose with a head butt or two thrown in for good measure before he finally calmed down enough for maternal intervention.

It was dramatic, and irritating in the moment, but still (I'm not going to lie) cute. JB is a sweetie 90% of the time. The fact that he is starting to have opinions is "interesting," but it is new enough that it is still a source of pride to me.

He struggles and suffers through the eye drops every morning and at night; crying and fighting with all of his limbs flailing and no amount of calm words or pleading on our part can get him to understand what we are doing. He seals his eyelids closed against the antimicrobial medication, as if we were pouring liquid mercury into them. Katy found a way to make us feel better about torturing him: When the drops are in at the end of all the fussing, we say, "Say 'thank you'." And through the sniffles, he loyally gives us a slightly hesitant "tth-hank-cue."

And we quiver in silent laughter that he's so pliable.

Here are some pics from a birthday party this weekend
(right before the pink eye attacked.)

Oh, a car... Excellent! I think I'll play "in and out of the car" for 25 minutes!


"beep beep"



"HEY BUDDY, GET OUT OF THE WAY OF MY CAR!!!"


"Vrrrrrummmmmm...."

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Chopper has pink eye

It started with a tiny glob of curd in the proximal corner of his right eye.
Ten minutes later, there was another.
One hour later, I could have practically served cheesy grits out of his eye socket.

Nasty.

We paged the doc on call at about 6pm and had the first round of drops in by bedtime.

Our motto was: "We will not be taken down by conjunctivitis - he'll be 36 hours on antibiotics and ready to gobble up the other kids fingers at day care by Monday morning - so help me God!"

Friday, March 06, 2009

Chopper

So all the kids at day care are quaking in their boots 'cause jb has started biting.
He's bitten 2 girls and 2 mommies in 2 days.

We swiftly put him into time out each time and then watch his lower lip protrude and quiver tremendously prior to the heart-wrenching tears he produces. These tears are either true regret for mis-deeds, or unadulterated anger at having been punished. When we reprimand him, he has difficulty making eye-contact and he looks so remorseful that it is hard to stick to our guns.

I think we would not be such hard-asses, but we definitely don't want to have that kid at day care that everyone else's parents call "Chopper".