When Kitty and I were planning how our baby was going to turn out, we obviously picked what we thought were our own best qualities to pass along to him. Kitty would provide the brains, the compassion and the looks while I would provide the body odor, the lack of patience and the enduring love of completely meaningless trivia. Unfortunately, it does not appear to have worked out according to our plans.
The boy got his first taste of summer this weekend and I think we can now safely say that he's got his daddy's tolerance for the heat. The tolerance of an elderly snowflake. He started crying around 5 pm Saturday evening and is still going strong as I type this. Ever since the Great Seattle Freon Collapse of 1965, houses in Seattle have lacked air conditioning. Instead, like a city under siege, the entire population migrates into the basement to wait out anything over 80 degrees. Kitty and the boy slept down there last night while I sweated it out upstairs. Today, to try and fight off the heat so we could all sleep together like normal surface dwellers, I covered our westward facing bedroom window with an emergency blanket. Nothing says "class" like an emergency blanket hanging in your window. Ask everyone that happened in/over/around West Seattle today. They're sure to have seen ours shining like a beacon of refinement and taste.
Of course, it's tough to pin his displeasure entirely on the 90 degree heat when it happened to coincide with his first head cold too. At least we think it was a cold, based on the amount of nostril taffy I pulled out of his face with that little nose vacuum, even though it was mostly cleared up by today. It could also be his formula, since we recently made a switch from the entirely disgusting hypoallergenic Enfamil to the slightly less disgusting organic milk-based junk. Or it could be bites from the fleas that Tango and Cash have introduced to our ever expanding family. The cats have obviously been feeling lonely and neglected and needed some more friends. I'm pretty sure I pulled one of their friends out of the Ninja's nose on Sunday.
Whatever the cause, it hasn't been a pleasant introduction to summer. I can only hope that this doesn't mean that the boy ends up with the rest of my worthless traits. I don't think the world needs another skinny, Beverly Hills 90210-loving, Journey fan with a penchant for pink shirts.
I'd kinda like this kid to have friends.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Our kid is a genius
The Ninja's favorite movie is American Anthem. He's a huge Mitch Gaylord fan and ever since he watched the movie, he's been in training for the inevitable sequel. Being excellent parents, we're assisting him in realizing his dream. Below is a film of the progress that he's made. With some assistance, he can now sit and stand. We've scoured the historical archives, and we're pretty sure no other child in the world has ever done this so well.
Make sure you watch all the way to the end for his signature dismount.
Genius.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Move Over Gene Simmons
My 12-week (and counting) war with breastfeeding is approaching a stalemate and although I still haven’t thrown in the spit-up covered towel, I’m getting very close. My quest to leave no stone unturned and no dollar unspent means that in the end I will have tried just about everything including, to name a few…lactation specialists, an MD who specializes in breastfeeding, tongue clipping, physical therapy, acupuncture and Chinese herbs, massage, pumping, bottle-feeding, a galactagogue and even a pharmaceutical to stop vasaspasms (don’t ask).
It’s pretty crazy that I haven’t quit yet, but having an ex-Marine for a father seems to have rubbed off on me. I mean obviously the health benefits were a big factor for me and I was (am still) committed to reducing Finnja’s chance of sharing my allergy woes. We’ve already blown the cost saving argument sky high. So why am I still torturing myself with the endless grind of trying to nurse, bottle-feed and THEN pump at every feed time? To be perfectly honest I am still hanging on to the Boob = Bliss dream for both of us. We’ve actually come a long way from the early days when he was starving and I was screaming. Recently I’ve had a glimpse of what it is supposed to be like and let me tell ya, nothing shuts up the boy like the boob. He is usually pretty easy to calm, but there are some nights when his cries defy any swaddle, shush, bounce, sway, song, pacifier Woody can throw at him and guess what? The boob is the magic bullet. Goodnight moon, goodnight Ninja. I just have to make sure I’m ready when Woody pulls the Heisman and retreats to man cave to drink beer and blog. I think that might be all he does these days.
I’m heading back to work July 7th so it feels like the end is near. It might be time for me to gracefully let go knowing that he was at least partially lining his insides with liquid gold for three months. But if you know me at all, then you are already laughing at the idea of me “gracefully” letting go of anything. Just wait for the future blog on his first drop off at daycare for an example of that.
The kid ain’t hurtin' either way. He will eat anything even if he really does love the boob. The supplementation has paid off and Finnja has climbed back into the 50th percentile for weight and jumped into the 95th percentile for length. Clearly those don’t add up to a Buddha baby, but he does look less like Gollum than in the early days.
At least I can return to drinking tequila knowing that my perseverance in the war with breastfeeding has paid off. With two tongue clippings under his belt, the Finnja can now be a genuine rock star when he grows up. He is pretty impressed with his new tongue capabilities and hopefully I have saved him from future speech, sinus and dental development problems. You wouldn’t believe how many people are telling us that they now realize that their children were tongue-tied after reading the blog. One thing is for certain, the future Finnja will not be writing into the Playboy Advisor (July 08 Issue) complaining about his tongue tie!
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Over the river and through the woods... in adorable clothes
While the past (almost) three months have been chock full of developmental milestones, we achieved two major ones this past weekend that deserve acknowledgment:
On Friday afternoon, we tricked out the Ninja in a little khaki number and we hit the road for the cabin. Even back in the olden days, it was tough to get out of the house for trips to the cabin. Between our crap and our passengers' crap, we always had the wagon and the Space Case completely filled. At this point, there's no way we're getting anyone else in this car with us. Here's a lousy cell phone pic of about half of our traveling gear (not pictured: infant carrier, beer, baby, food, beer, cooler (for beer)) for a weekend. The real camera was somewhere in that pile.
It took us about two hours, including several naps for everyone, to get out of the house. We were concerned about how the boy would handle his first 2 1/2 hour car ride, but he did it with surprising aplomb. In other words, he slept the whole time. One rest area break for bottles all around and we were up at Snowline with plenty of daylight to spare. Finn seemed to really enjoy his introduction to the cabin. So much so, that he celebrated the moment by launching a whole new level of Poop Tag. Kitty, the hammock and the cabin deck are all currently "it."
Here's a pic of Kitty and the Ninja right before he decided to up the stakes. I couldn't find anything strong in our limited cabin stores to disinfect the scene, so I had to improvise with Clorox toilet bowl cleaner. Please note: while those angled spouts do make it easy to get under the toilet bowl, they make aiming the stream anywhere else extremely difficult.
The rest of the weekend went much more smoothly. The boy enjoyed horseshoes, tennis and s'mores, all from the comfort of his stroller and/or Bluebird. Nothing makes you feel like a quality parent more than rolling your child's stroller over to the side of the horseshoe pits. Or should I say, nothing makes you look like a quality parent more than that.
Now we're back home, and I'm back at work full time. It was a great break, but it's over. Back to the grind. Of course, in my case, "the grind" means showing up late and leaving early to be with the boy.
I sure hope no one from work reads this blog.
- First trip to the cabin for the boy
- First pair of overalls
On Friday afternoon, we tricked out the Ninja in a little khaki number and we hit the road for the cabin. Even back in the olden days, it was tough to get out of the house for trips to the cabin. Between our crap and our passengers' crap, we always had the wagon and the Space Case completely filled. At this point, there's no way we're getting anyone else in this car with us. Here's a lousy cell phone pic of about half of our traveling gear (not pictured: infant carrier, beer, baby, food, beer, cooler (for beer)) for a weekend. The real camera was somewhere in that pile.
It took us about two hours, including several naps for everyone, to get out of the house. We were concerned about how the boy would handle his first 2 1/2 hour car ride, but he did it with surprising aplomb. In other words, he slept the whole time. One rest area break for bottles all around and we were up at Snowline with plenty of daylight to spare. Finn seemed to really enjoy his introduction to the cabin. So much so, that he celebrated the moment by launching a whole new level of Poop Tag. Kitty, the hammock and the cabin deck are all currently "it."
Here's a pic of Kitty and the Ninja right before he decided to up the stakes. I couldn't find anything strong in our limited cabin stores to disinfect the scene, so I had to improvise with Clorox toilet bowl cleaner. Please note: while those angled spouts do make it easy to get under the toilet bowl, they make aiming the stream anywhere else extremely difficult.The rest of the weekend went much more smoothly. The boy enjoyed horseshoes, tennis and s'mores, all from the comfort of his stroller and/or Bluebird. Nothing makes you feel like a quality parent more than rolling your child's stroller over to the side of the horseshoe pits. Or should I say, nothing makes you look like a quality parent more than that.
Now we're back home, and I'm back at work full time. It was a great break, but it's over. Back to the grind. Of course, in my case, "the grind" means showing up late and leaving early to be with the boy.
I sure hope no one from work reads this blog.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Competitive parenting
We hosted PEPS at our house this week. Given the fact that PEPS is a group of relative strangers trying to establish a connection via weekly meetings, my thinking was: if ever there was an event that called for tequila shots, this was it. But tequila shots are frowned upon at PEPS events, so we had crudité. Vegetable platters are the "new parent" equivalent of booze. It makes me sad inside.
As if it weren't tough enough to do this whole thing without liquor, you then spend the two hours hearing about how perfect all of the other PEPS kids are. They're sleeping through the night. They're breastfeeding properly. Their diapers smell like candy canes. They're all obviously lying, but I can't hold it against them. They're just trying to win PEPS. That's the only reason any of us are there. We're all holding out hope that we've got the best baby so we can feel better about the lack of sleep / free time / coherent thought.
Aside from our feeding issue, I used to be certain that we had the best baby. That is, until I started receiving the "Your Baby This Week" emails. In the beginning, I enjoyed them. Even if they did continuously refer to me as "mom." When they told me that my baby would start smiling, it gave me something to look forward to that week. When he did start smiling, I was thrilled. However, our baby is apparently no longer getting the memos. Last week he was supposed to start examining his hands intently. The only way Ninja notices his hands is when they spastically punch him in the face. I'm pretty sure that's not what they meant.
Next week, I'm going to tell everyone at the class that Ninja's already doing the hand jive.
I'm totally going to win PEPS next week.
As if it weren't tough enough to do this whole thing without liquor, you then spend the two hours hearing about how perfect all of the other PEPS kids are. They're sleeping through the night. They're breastfeeding properly. Their diapers smell like candy canes. They're all obviously lying, but I can't hold it against them. They're just trying to win PEPS. That's the only reason any of us are there. We're all holding out hope that we've got the best baby so we can feel better about the lack of sleep / free time / coherent thought.
Aside from our feeding issue, I used to be certain that we had the best baby. That is, until I started receiving the "Your Baby This Week" emails. In the beginning, I enjoyed them. Even if they did continuously refer to me as "mom." When they told me that my baby would start smiling, it gave me something to look forward to that week. When he did start smiling, I was thrilled. However, our baby is apparently no longer getting the memos. Last week he was supposed to start examining his hands intently. The only way Ninja notices his hands is when they spastically punch him in the face. I'm pretty sure that's not what they meant.
Next week, I'm going to tell everyone at the class that Ninja's already doing the hand jive.
I'm totally going to win PEPS next week.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Happy Father's Day
Finnja would like to send a shout out to all the Fathers and Grandfathers that made it possible for him to be here today!
Friday, June 13, 2008
Save the Ninja, save the world
Finn got his first vaccinations on Monday. He is now protected against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (DTaP) and the rotavirus. It was one shot and an oral vaccine, and he slept through the shot. I couldn't even watch, but he didn't move. He's a lot tougher than I am, apparently. That brings the list of those tougher than me up to three: girls, bunny rabbits and now 2-month old babies.
In the unlikely event that you haven't noticed, vaccines are a hot-button topic at the moment. Time magazine recently dedicated its cover to the debate over vaccine effectiveness and risk. In fact, the two greatest thinkers of our time cannot agree on whether they are a medical miracle or a shortcut to autism and other unspecified childhood ailments. And if two pithy, and hilarious, advice columnists can't get this one straight, what help is there for the rest of us? (OK, one pithy & hilarious advice columnist, and one slutty former advice columnist.)
Normally, I'm the kind of guy that relies on others to do my thinking for me. It's why I watch TV. However, when it comes to parenting, there are far too many conflicting opinions out there for me to confidently base all of my decisions on soundbites from Entertainment Tonight. There are 50 different answers to any given question, each with a study or a survey detailing why its response is the only valid one. You begin to wonder if there are any right answers, or by extension, any wrong answers. It's like that philosophy class you took freshman year. You know, the one you signed up for because you figured it would be full of girls and you thought they would think you were totally cool for being into philosophy but then it turned out that the class was at 8 AM so you only ever attended the first one? Yeah, it's like that. Except the stakes are a lot higher, so the idea that there aren't any wrong answers seems a little far fetched.
A key argument in the pro-vaccine camp is that the shots benefit more than just the baby being immunized. They benefit society in general. Even if the chances of your baby actually contracting diphtheria are relatively small (and they are in the US), the argument is that if you don't get your baby vaccinated, you weaken the herd. If lots of people opt out of vaccination, the chances of the disease gaining a foothold and once again becoming a realistic risk to your child and society as a whole is greater. So it's not enough that you need to worry about your baby, you now need to also be guilt-tripped into protecting everyone else's babies too. Awesome.
The American Academy of Pediatrics currently recommends a schedule of 10 vaccines against 14 diseases with as many as 30+ shots between birth and age 6. According to their recommendations, a 2 month old baby should be receiving a total of 6 shots at their 8 week checkup. That's a lot of needles. Even if you think the ruckus being raised over vaccines is a little overblown, that's still a lot of crap to be putting in a little tiny baby's bloodstream in one sitting. We did our research and opted for a less shot-intensive, more drawn out schedule. We are still getting him vaccinated, we're just trying to be smart about what he's being vaccinated for and when it's going to happen.
He was great on Monday, but unfortunately the alternative schedule has us back in there next month for two more shots. And the month after that for another. I don't think we'll be so lucky during those visits. It'll probably only take one major shot-related meltdown to convince me that maybe we should be taking vaccine advice from Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn.
Until then, we're just going to continue doing our research and hoping that we're making the right decisions. Even if there are no "right" answers, we're going to try our hardest to keep away from those that just feel wrong.
________________________
If anyone is just dying to read up on vaccines, their ingredients, the diseases they are intended to prevent and the studies that have (or haven't) been done on their safety, allow me to recommend The Vaccine Book by Dr. Bob Sears. It's not beach reading, but it's informative and accessible. Neither Charlie Sheen nor Denise Richards appear anywhere in its pages. Of course, if they ever make it into a movie...
In the unlikely event that you haven't noticed, vaccines are a hot-button topic at the moment. Time magazine recently dedicated its cover to the debate over vaccine effectiveness and risk. In fact, the two greatest thinkers of our time cannot agree on whether they are a medical miracle or a shortcut to autism and other unspecified childhood ailments. And if two pithy, and hilarious, advice columnists can't get this one straight, what help is there for the rest of us? (OK, one pithy & hilarious advice columnist, and one slutty former advice columnist.)
Normally, I'm the kind of guy that relies on others to do my thinking for me. It's why I watch TV. However, when it comes to parenting, there are far too many conflicting opinions out there for me to confidently base all of my decisions on soundbites from Entertainment Tonight. There are 50 different answers to any given question, each with a study or a survey detailing why its response is the only valid one. You begin to wonder if there are any right answers, or by extension, any wrong answers. It's like that philosophy class you took freshman year. You know, the one you signed up for because you figured it would be full of girls and you thought they would think you were totally cool for being into philosophy but then it turned out that the class was at 8 AM so you only ever attended the first one? Yeah, it's like that. Except the stakes are a lot higher, so the idea that there aren't any wrong answers seems a little far fetched.
A key argument in the pro-vaccine camp is that the shots benefit more than just the baby being immunized. They benefit society in general. Even if the chances of your baby actually contracting diphtheria are relatively small (and they are in the US), the argument is that if you don't get your baby vaccinated, you weaken the herd. If lots of people opt out of vaccination, the chances of the disease gaining a foothold and once again becoming a realistic risk to your child and society as a whole is greater. So it's not enough that you need to worry about your baby, you now need to also be guilt-tripped into protecting everyone else's babies too. Awesome.
The American Academy of Pediatrics currently recommends a schedule of 10 vaccines against 14 diseases with as many as 30+ shots between birth and age 6. According to their recommendations, a 2 month old baby should be receiving a total of 6 shots at their 8 week checkup. That's a lot of needles. Even if you think the ruckus being raised over vaccines is a little overblown, that's still a lot of crap to be putting in a little tiny baby's bloodstream in one sitting. We did our research and opted for a less shot-intensive, more drawn out schedule. We are still getting him vaccinated, we're just trying to be smart about what he's being vaccinated for and when it's going to happen.
He was great on Monday, but unfortunately the alternative schedule has us back in there next month for two more shots. And the month after that for another. I don't think we'll be so lucky during those visits. It'll probably only take one major shot-related meltdown to convince me that maybe we should be taking vaccine advice from Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn.
Until then, we're just going to continue doing our research and hoping that we're making the right decisions. Even if there are no "right" answers, we're going to try our hardest to keep away from those that just feel wrong.
________________________
If anyone is just dying to read up on vaccines, their ingredients, the diseases they are intended to prevent and the studies that have (or haven't) been done on their safety, allow me to recommend The Vaccine Book by Dr. Bob Sears. It's not beach reading, but it's informative and accessible. Neither Charlie Sheen nor Denise Richards appear anywhere in its pages. Of course, if they ever make it into a movie...
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