what a week it was...

Soren celebrated his three month birthday on the 18th by weighing in at exactly three times his birthweight, just a half ounce under 11 pounds. He seems so huge to us. I was faced with the mostly fun yet sentimental task of reorganizing his dresser drawers, putting away the small stuff to make room for the 3-6 month size clothes. Gosh those newborn shirts seem tiny. It really wasn't long ago that they were so loose on him. I've begged him to stop growing for a little while, just so I can get used to how big he is already, but that approach hasn't worked yet.

then.

now.

After several days of threateningly misty eyes during crying spells, the inevitable happened... his first real tear! Poor sweet kiddo! I haven't caught it on camera yet, but Soren has an amazingly convincing pouty lower lip face. It's enough to melt even the coldest of hearts. I'd better start toughening up a bit now that we have this new tear development and all. I swear that a vegetarian mom even more health conscious than I would be tempted to give in to the pleas for Easy Mac with hotdogs with the lip and tears in combination...

Sweet Sophie and Milo have been living it up for a week now at their new home. Keeping them out of the bedroom left them with just very little space to roam, and the demands of caring for Soren left them with much less attention than they deserved. I'm sure they'll soon be comfortable and happy on their 100+ acre farm, where the squirrels and birds might actually be chased and not just threatened from behind the window.

Here is Soren's last picture with the cats. Notice his dashing cap! If only we had a pair of suspenders and aminiature bag of newspapers for him to pretend to sell.

Well, at this point I might as well throw in a few more recent pictures. That's what you came for, right?

"Union on strike! Read all about it... only 10 cents! Get your papers here, folks!"

Soren enjoys starting his mornings with a cup of tea and a good book.

He prefers rooibos, but will settle for a lovely jasmine green if that's all that's available.

Two weeks ago my wonderful grandfather died in California at the ripe old age of 95. He was the most loving man you could know, and made a positive impact on the lives of countless people around the world. He will be dearly loved and missed by all of us. I wish Soren could have known him. I flew to the Bay Area last Saturday for his memorial, baby in tow. I was nervous about the 8 hours of travel time, probably almost as nervous as those poor passangers eyeing me suspiciously as I walked down the ailse, baby sling and all. Soren is a super champ though, and just slept and ate the whole time. No crying. He was a huge hit in California, where he got to spend more time with his grandma and auntie Lauren, and saw my dad for the first time. I am certain he would have loved his first trip to the ocean and to SF had he not slept right through it in his sling. He was really on his best behavior the whole 4 days, so now no one will ever believe me again when I tell them I was up all night with him. He really does do this! Really!

Soren is really a happy little guy. This week he magically discovered the captivating world around him. We used to get an occasional smile here or there, but now he interacts with us most of the time he's awake. It's so fun to have him respond to our voices and our touch with his darling sloppy smiles. We've gotten a few preliminary coos out of him too, and look forward to hearing more of those. You can see the determination and focus in his eyes as he stares at the dangling toys of his bouncy seat... he wants them, badly, and is trying to figure out exactly what one must do to reach an arm out and grab them. In time, little bean. You'll figure it out. Soon nothing will be safe from your tiny hands.

Meet the Grandparents

After not seeing my parents for over a year, i was seriously excited for a week of less work and more family time. It became apparent very quickly that being their second son was much less impressive than being the bearer of their first grandchild. Almost three decades of history thrown out the window, and instead, Good job on having a baby.

My friend Chad once jokingly complained to me that he had established a successful business, created and hung an entire art show, was working a second job at night, and all people wanted to congratulate him on was having a baby. He wanted to tell them, "Look, I love my baby, but honestly, ANYONE can have a baby. It's really not that complicated. In fact, it's kind of a natural process."

I cut my parents some slack after half a day. I mean, how can you fault someone for loving your baby to pieces? They were having too much fun anyway, bathing their first grandson in an ocean of Tuolumne Love.


There is so much to comment on about being around your parents as you are now a parent! For one thing- you realize that you were this difficult, fussy, grumpy, irrational, confused, ungrateful, and completely impossible to communicate with! Why do humans just assume that our lives began at 6 years old? It's easy to factually know that my parents "raised" me, but easy to not put together the fact that they, too, put in this labor of love.

Holding Soren as he transforms into an ambulance siren, feeling my body go into panic mode, and STILL loving him makes me grateful that my parents were patient with me. How can you have someone scream into your ear for extended periods of time, then honestly tell them that you love them? Parenting seems to completely override common sense sometimes.

It also makes me realize that when my mom and dad tell me they love me, they mean that they love me with THIS completely irrational love. I mean, I've only spent months with this little squirt and i would jump in front of a train for him... most days. Imagine how this would grow over 30 years!

And, selfishly-- it was also validating for me! My parents have made comments to my brothers and i for years about how having kids was so much fun, and it was the thing that they were most proud of in their lives. And then within a day of holding Soren, my mom made a comment to me: "Oh, wow, I forgot how hard this was!" I wanted to spin around with my magnifying glass and tweed coat and yell, "A-HA!!!!!!"

That part definitely was filtered out of their memory! Not that we weren't fun and weren't worth it, however; people forget to tell you how completely consuming having a baby is, especially when he was born with an underdeveloped immune system and is prone to getting sick! (Last time we took him in for a Urinary Tract Infection, by the way, the Hospital billed us $30,000. {Good luck on that health care reform, Democrats. We're behind you}.)

If nothing else, it was amazing to have two sets of helping hands for nearly one week. Lisa and i went on a series of exciting "dates," featuring extremely trendy destinations and dressing up in all the latest fashions. Well, kind of just glorified errands, really, and a drink outing or two. We felt slightly panicky getting into a car without our baby, as if we had forgotten him in Target somewhere. But to get to enjoy Lisa's company, and for her to get outside without a lovable squirmy infant attached to one of our bodies-- Priceless.

Sure, my parents took us out to Indian buffet, Ethiopian fare, and Arthur's burger madness. But we wanted to spend time at home, too; I tried my hand at some gazpacho with three varieties of tomatoes (grape, heirloom and slicing), mild peppers, and fresh basil-- all from my garden. Hooray! I also made a quick loaf of beer bread (my new favorite), a spinach salad, and some Arizona melon. Totally a hit. Nothing beats a really fresh meal from your garden, believe me. And cooking for your parents-- totally a treat.

Besides, they had to be impressed. There is a notorious story of a much, much younger version of me preparing a "meal" for my family, which included boiling a batch of vegetables in cups of vegetable oil. I assumed that vegetable oil was for vegetables, just like a rice cooker was made for rice. (By that same reasoning, i should have been perplexed that i couldn't find the Meat Oil for the rest of the dish...)

At any rate, my parents were in a state of euphoria.

+++++++

Not only did the folks at Kentucky's Richwood Presbyterian get to hear Lisa and i play a Haydn duet, they met my parents, and met Soren for the first time. They've been so generous to us and so encouraging, and it was a treat getting to finally introduce Soren to them after all these weeks of hiding him away at home on Sundays.

Sophie commandeered any attention she could.

Soren was actually a little overwhelmed to have so much affection and attention over the course of a week. Not a bad problem to have! It also makes him look like a slug from a science fiction movie in this one.

And quite strangely, donning a burp cloth makes dad looks like a Buddhist monk in this one.

It's still funny to be in a "family photo" that doesn't involve our parents....weird! Instant family!

two months and two days old...

Our teeny bean is now officially a newborn. His due date was the 17th, so his adjusted age (3 days!) is finally no longer a negative number. Even though he chooses not to sleep at convenient times (like at night, for instance), we still like him a lot. Here are some reasons you'd probably like him a lot too...

• his bright, hell-I'm-just-happy-to-be-here, post-nap eyes
• the new additions of pudge and dimples on his hands
• the way his tiny hands flutter around ours like little birds when we hold him close to feed him
• his dead-on impersonation of baby pig sounds
• how he often reaches out to stroke my belly with his fingertips while we're sleeping, as if to make sure I'm still there next to him
• his new sigh... "tchoo!" it reminds me of a tiny cartoon mouse.
• the drunken old monk smile. perhaps not yet intentional, but still charming.

I wish this picture showed his long eyelashes. They'd melt your heart.

Thinking about getting hungry... there's a song about this. Ask Leif.

Baby bums and feet are a great argument for why it's a good idea to have children.

This is Barnslut, the IKEA ostridge who poses with Soren each Sunday so we can see how much bigger he's gotten (Soren, that is. Not Barnslut). His Christian name (well, true IKEA name, at least) is Barnslick Struts, but that's much harder to say 8 times fast, don't you think?

Anyway, he's Soren's favorite.

Sleepy bean.

Admittedly, they don't do many video-worthy things at this age. But, this is Soren waking up from his nap.

Our Sea of Reeds

Two miracles in one day:

1. Our favorite Ethiopian restaurant actually reopened, and
2. Soren did pretty well in his first dining out experience.

We are both losing a little bit of steam. Lisa is really missing actual adult conversation and being outside of the house, and i am missing feeling actually well rested and creative. I think that we both feel a little less than interesting-- something happens with the repetition of changing a diaper and heating up breast milk.

Our biggest challenge so far is probably doing all this without any significant help. Our families are pretty far away, and we can't seem to work out the timing with friends and coworkers who volunteer to help. So we end up passing the baby to each other kind of a lot. I'm definitely putting faith in an idea other than a nuclear family (oh, sorry Mr. President-- i mean "nucular"). Right now, the idea of having a live-in aunt, or a cousin Charles, or being on a hippie commune definitely has its draws. I could even agree with our almost-first female president, and say that I could see how this would take a whole village.

What i keep reading, though, is that no matter how difficult things seem, they are always do-able. Everything in life seems to be too difficult at one point or another, and if you stop and think it out and plan it out, it just won' t happen. But my hero Roots Manuva would say, Chin high, head up we step right to it/ The choice is there ain't no choice but to pursue it. Basically, you walk straight into the fire, and then marvel as it all seems to work out. My brother Ben commented on the story of Moses parting the Red Sea so that the children of Israel could walk through. According to him, many scholars translate "Red Sea" to be "Sea of Reeds." Maybe we can't part the crashing seas of parenthood, but i bet we can part some reeds.

Our baby vampire. Only awakens from 10pm to 2am every day.

I have to say that drinking wine never made so much sense. You go, Jesus.

********************

I don't know if people know this, but we have a career of electrical engineer/computer programmer picked out for our son, so that he doesn't suffer a similar fate of a working artist/musician. However, he's already picked a career as a philosophy professor, as I'm sure you can see in these photos.

Getting Better All the Time

When we stop and think about things, we have this new creature who sleeps, eats, and poops (probably in that order; the last two could be switched, depending on the day).

Things are, all in all, relatively simple right now. I can't help but feel duped sometimes when i see parents with three teenagers who have clothes that don't fit, use sentences that don't make sense, and have hair that obscures their breathing canals. This is going to happen to our sweet little eight pound baby?!

Anyway, here are more pictures. Soren is feeling much better today, and i got him all to myself for a good chunk of the day. He's a great napper.

Screamers

Good news and bad news.

Good news: Soren is home. No more wires.

Bad news: He has an awful case of reflux, so whenever he eats, he makes this horrible grimace, tries to throw it up, and looks awful. Then he tries to eat more because he's still hungry. When he used to get hungry, he'd cry a little and scrunch his face up. Now, he goes from zero to scream in one second. No warm up. He's just out of the bull pen full out screaming, in a pitch we've never heard. If Lisa hadn't been there the whole time, I'd suspect that the nurses did something awful to him.

He is on antibiotics and will be having more tests done next week. He's also going to the pediatrician today.

This all makes me much more sympathetic to those parents (like Joel and Jenni, and Daniel and Christi) who have unusual pregnancies or kids with different needs. Johanna and Rosella were born at 10 days or something ridiculously early. Daniel's second son has a form of autism and about 30 food allergies (I think).

I'm now gearing up to start making lists of everything that Soren will be allergic to. I'm imagining raising Bill Murray in What About Bob?

But, poor guy. The most infuriating and most helpless feeling is watching this little guy in total pain, without any means of communicating how to help him. Lisa and i were so frustrated-- we nearly started hitting each other with chairs, WWF style.

We were looking forward to a nice low key summer, but this is a whole new thing. We're pretty much under house arrest, in order to keep our boy safe until he gets a bit older and stronger. So we'll be watching LOTS of Netflix, cooking a bunch, trying white wines, and wondering what it feels like to sleep more than 2 hours at a time.

Thanks for all the posts and phone calls. They go a long way- - we can totally use the support.

The E.R.

We took our boy into the ER last night.

He's had a slight fever which has grown slighter, but last night he was dropping off, looking lethargic, barely eating. We took him in at the insistence of our pediatrician, who said that fevers are the only real indicators in newborns that something is wrong.

He had a fever of 100.6, which dropped to 100. The hospital staff saw enough cause to want to give him a spinal tap to test for bacteria, which could allude to menangitis. That in an adult is not too big of a deal, but to an infant, it could be really caustic.

Our poor little guy had more blood drawn. Watching nurses look for veins in a baby who is technically minus two weeks old is really heartbreaking, no matter how gentle or empathetic the medical staff is. And he cried like we have never heard they put a catheter into him. Nothing makes you wince like a newborn squealing in pain. He was on this hospital bed that was giant. Just this baby, lying helpless and tiny.

So, after being home for a week, he will be back in the hospital for a bit. We don't know exactly how long. But when they hooked him back up to the heart, pulse, and blood oxygen monitors again... it really broke our hearts. It was a deja vu that we really didn't care to revisit.

The irony is that Soren is much more graceful, empathetic, patient, and forgiving than either of us are towards this whole situation. He has a heart of gold.