The Fine Game of Nil

The weather around Boston has turned in to the beginnings of the wonderful crisp fall days that I like so much. On a whim on Sunday Emily, Liam and I drove out to the Fells reservation just North of the city for an afternoon hike. Driving past the fells, there’s an observation tower that you can see from the highway that I’ve always wanted to go check out.  However, previously I’ve always been on a mountain bike and the tower is on a trail off limits to bikes.  So, this time, with Liam riding with me in his sling, we took a nice 4 mile round trip to check out the tower.  The view turned out to be amazing, a nice panorama of downtown and all the northern suburbs.

Liam turns out to be a very good hiker, staying asleep for most of the walk and holding on tightly as we scrambled over fallen trees and up boulders in following the trail. Towards the end he woke up and leaned back in his sling to just watch the passing scenery and the sun flickering through the trees overhead.

About halfway through we stopped in a nice clearing and sat in the sun while several of us had a bit of a snack. Liam borrowed Emily’s hat to keep the sun off his little baby head.

Each time we crossed the bike trail I couldn’t help thinking how long it had been since I’d gotten out and done any real mountain biking. I’ve done a good bit of city biking this summer, some getting from point A to point B, and some just cruising around for the heck of it.  But with Emily pregnant, and trying to limit her amount of falling-down-on-sharp-rocks, its been hard to get out on any real trails. Really, I can’t wait till I can get the kid up on a bike of his own and bombing down hills. There are of course earlier options, like bike trailers or those bolt on carriers, but those scare me. On the Boston streets I really prefer to only be responsible for my own life and limb. The idea of having my little darling pulling behind me in a trailer as I weave through traffic and dodge car doors doesn’t please me. The bolt on baby seats bug me because there’s no shock absorption built in for the kid. When I hit a Boston pothole I’m able to take the shock in my legs and arms. But, watching cyclists passing with their children on board, every jolt on the bike looks like it beats the hell out of the kid. Its also nice to be able to exit the vehicle gracefully at a moments notice, leaving the bicycle wedged in the grill of an errant sedan as you sail through the air to safety. During such a maneuver I prefer not to leave any stragglers behind as I make my departure. Off-road of course is completely out of the question. When Emily and I were still in college, we took a ride out for a picnic in the woods with a carton of strawberries strapped to the back rack on my bicycle. After an unreasonably fast descent down a road paved in softball sized rocks, we ended up with a carton of strawberry puree. One of my main goals as a parent is never to end up with baby puree.

I was going to write today about how we’ve started getting a proto-giggle out of the boy, but then today I got the stereo hooked properly into the computer and we spent a good portion of the day listening to Massive Attack and Portishead which turns out is remarkably good dancing around the room with a baby music. The Portishead, though, does put one in kind of a mellow mood, one in which I just couldn’t deal with using the word ‘giggle’ as many times as would be necessary to explain the situation. So instead, I sat down with some more recent photos and figured out how to get the very basic controls in Picasa to do my bidding. We’re extremity heavy here because I also have finally started to figure out the focus point on my new macro lens. It could be weeks before you see Liam in his entirety again.

We’re attempting to start a new evening routine, to try and counter some difficulties we’ve been having between the hours of 8 to 11. At about 9 he eats goes down to bed, which is sometimes a bit of a challenge, but at least its at a time when mom and dad are awake enough to be persuasive. At we wake him up again feed him, and then put him back to bed for a hopefully 3 or 4 hours sleep. Strangely, in the past 2 nights, the hardest part of the whole routine has been the waking him back up at 11 part. Once he’s down in a good solid sleep, he’s pretty much a rag doll, immune to most anything we’ve managed to throw at him. We pick him up, talk to him, wiggle him around, poke his nose, tickle his belly, and still nothing. Next we’ll usually try moving his arms and legs around, making him dance the hustle or the cha cha and he still sleeps through. Below is a picture caught mid sleeping through YMCA. Last night we ended up wiping his head and face down with water and barely got a return to consciousness. Tonight, we stripped him down to just a diaper and let the cool air bring him back around to goosebumpy and screaming. Which is easy enough to solve with a blanket and some warm milk, however I can already tell woe be to anyone who would use this method and not have dinner waiting for him the moment he wakes up.

I should also note that while spearheading the baby waking project last night, a certain other parental unit chose to warn me a full two times not to run the baby under the kitchen faucet in order to wake him. As if this is something within the realm of possibility. While I do reserve held-under-the-faucet time for misbehaving house cats, at the very least I’d like to retain the moral high-ground with Liam. A 13 year-old being able to retort “You ran me under the faucet when I was 7 weeks old” would kind of take the steam of a line of inquiry such as, “Why are you spraying the garden hose in the house”.

Yet again, not much to write, but things to show. Here are a handful of pictures that Jenny Lisa took when she came over last week. Now, you might ask why we wanted someone else to come take photos when alex and I are clearly maniacs with a camera. It’s mostly because we don’t have many pictures of all three of us together. Jenny did an amazing job with these photos, by the way!

This is Jenny Lisa holding Liam

Alex with Liam. He was out cold for a decent portion of the photos. It’s funny how when you want to wake him up, sometimes you just can’t get him to wake up. But then, other times, when you pray he will go to sleep, he’s bright eyed and bushy tailed.

The happy family

Post second bath after the poo-ing incident. Again, I love the black and white

Mama and naked baby… also, note his buddha, starving child in ethiope belly.

He’s a good boy, even if he both poo-ed and pee-ed on mama during Jenny’s visit.

Ok, so my last post waited around in the draft bin for quite a while because while I was typing the last sentence, Mr. Butterworth Biscuits realized the laptop was in his midst and woke up with a vengeance.  As far as I can tell, the baby and the laptop are mortal enemies, I think because both compete for daddy’s undivided attention.  I even made up a theme song for him, though it mostly just consists of singing “Baby versus Laptop”  to the tune of “monkey versus robot”.  He’s fond of it, though mostly because I’m singing it to him and not the laptop.

Not much to say. We’re tired. Liam’s cute. here’s a few more pictures

This is called trapped-under-the-baby. It’s a wonderful place to be, unless you have to pee!

Also, in response to alex’s post: Liam did not take me up on my offer of $100 for 5 hours of sleep. It’s a shame, I would have really given it to him.

Little darling has switched up his sleeping schedule again. Where as previously he was averaging around 3 to 4 hours at a go, suddenly he’s down to 2 to 3. This might not seem like a very big change, but it means the difference between feeding at 11, 3am, and 7am versus feeding at 11, 1am, 3am, 5am, 7:30am. The night before last, Emily offered him $100 to sleep for 5 hours straight, and $20 bucks an hour is really good for someone with only 6 weeks experience at being a baby.

I thought it might be time for me to try to actually write something with some substance. we’ll see how that goes. Liam is asleep in his car seat next to me. He had a good day at our mothers’ group, and will be getting up soon, so I have a little bit of time. As Alex has mentioned, he has begun to smile much more regularly now. I think his first smile was at about 1 month, but then there weren’t any for another week or so after that. In the past week, he has been smiling in response to noises or facial expressions, and even to mirrors and other toys. So I guess we can officially say he smiled around 5 1/2 weeks. It’s really hard to pin point the exact date, because he made smile-like expressions for some time, but we didn’t really know what counts as a smile. There’s the gassy/poo-ing smile, and then there are smiles in response to what I’m assuming are pleasurable stimuli.

Now, this looks like a gassy smile:

And here is a real, honest to goodnes, I love my daddy smile:

I only have one more week of this mommy’s group. Now, I wasn’t sure how I felt about joining a mom’s group. I thought it was a little silly, and fairly expensive. but, being a new mom, with no friends with babies in the nearby area, it was hard to get a handle on what’s normal and what a mom does. Now, I don’t want to be a stereotypical soccer mom or an urban hipster mom (no offense to anyone who is these things, it’s just not me). I’d really like to be me, just as a mom. And I think I am accomplishing that fairly well. I’m still pretty dorky, I’m still a little earthy/naturalistic, and my sense of humor (while i find hilarious) is still a little bizarre. And that’s okay. I am finding that Liam isn’t really cramping my style too much, and I don’t feel like I’ve gone through a huge personality change or anything. On that note, I am finding that I do fit into some of my pre-maternity clothes, but most of them are in the basement packed up, so I have been continuing to wear the maternity clothes. I do love maternity jeans, though, and I’m not sure I’m ever going back!

Lots of other things going on here. Alex has had several job interviews, and has a big one tomorrow. Everyone please think happy positive thoughts for him. I spoke with my boss about my coming back to work and how that might work out. October 22 is officially my last day of FMLA. I can’t believe I’m half way done with my maternity leave. I feel like I’m just starting to feel like I can handle this baby thing, I can’t imagine going back to work yet. Especially when Liam has changed up his sleeping habits a little, and is going for shorter stints at night again. I have talked with some people and have some ideas about how to address this, so hopefully we can get back on track soon. We’re going to St. Louis on Sept. 25th. I’m not too anxious about the flying with Liam. I’m more anxious about how much stuff we have to bring with us, and how to get it to the airport in Boston. It’s amazing how much more stuff a baby needs. I can’t wait to see the family in St. Louis, and especially for my Grandma to meet her first great grandson. We’ll also make it over to the other side of the state to see Alex’s parents again as well. Also, my sister Anne will be in St. Louis while we are there, so he will get to meet his first biological Aunt. So many new things for Liam coming up. Then when we get back, he gets his first round of vaccinations! oh my.

Finally, here is a picture to make Hannah jealous, says Alex*

* 1, I’m not sure Hannah reads this blog, and 2, I’m not sure holding a baby is a jealous making thing for Hannah, but Alex is convinced.

As you might surmise from the pictures in Emily’s last post, we had a visit from my parents last week. Liam was, of course, a huge hit with them, being their first grandchild and all. I know I said this before, but every day he’s really turning into more and more of an actual little person. Hanging out with my parents, he loved staring at everyone and has started interacting back at people. During the week he also started making believable smiles at us. Before this, his smile-like expressions seemed to mostly be grimacing for a poop. Now it seems like he’s actually able to enjoy nuances of a good poop. Penny was especially thrilled at having him stare up at her and grin at her antics. It’s been a good 28 years since she’s done any serious baby-wrangling and she was a little nervous at first. But, with Liam on his best behavior and being extra cute, she was able to get back in practice relatively quickly.

Bruce was the highest contrast of the two of them with is black shirt and grey beard, and as such was especially visually interesting. He’s already planning what tools he wants to buy his grandchild.

We are waiting for both of them to sit down with a microphone and record some of my favorites stories from when I was a child for Liam. Somewhere in my collection of items in my old room at home there might still exist cassette tapes of Bruce reading some of those stories to me while he was off on a trip. Next time I make it back there, I’d really like to see if I can dig those up and digitize them for safe keeping. My parents have already sent a bunch of my old books up to us, and its been a lot of fun going back and rereading and remembering them. There are all these stories that I’d completely forgotten about but flipping through the books and looking at the illustrations brings back all these fond memories of them. Liam doesn’t yet really appreciate the pictures in the books, but he seems to enjoy listening to the stories we read to him.

The past weekend was also Liam’s first wedding ex utero. He did very well for a 5 week old baby at a wedding full of people he didn’t know. His great-aunt Linda was especially taken with him and even risked holding Mr. Milky McSpittup on her new black dress an hour before her son’s wedding.

As everyone probably learned in health class, pregnancy is contagious. At the lab, I’ve seen it burn through the postdocs faster than a flu bug. First the one in the end bay has a kid and brings it in on their clothes. Before you know it, two or three people in the next bays are either pregnant themselves or have wives who had caught it; it brings the whole lab to a standstill. It can really decimate a research institution, jumping from lab to lab and bringing work to a halt. What’s a shame is that its the sort of thing that’s completely preventable with a bit of simple hygiene. Things like always washing your hands after touching a baby or pregnant lady and always covering your mouth when you coo over a child. Anyway, at the wedding, one of the couples was actively looking to have a kid in the near future so we made sure to bring Liam over and have him sneeze on them a couple of times. I hope to get a nice thank you note along with their birth announcement. On the other hand, one of our other friends came over a night or two ago and was actually pooped on by the baby. She’s not in a relationship right now, so I really hope she does alright as a single mother.

Turns out that my winning streak as playing the daddy in Liam and I’s games of Poop-on-Daddy (previous post with rules…) was unbroken simply because he has been letting me win.  Not, I don’t believe, out of any kindness in allowing his amateur class father to believe himself a competitor, but instead so that when he chose to bring defeat upon me, he could do so with such a swift and crushing blow as to leave no further questions as to who is the champion of the sport.  His strategy was both cunning and elegant.  Poop on mommy with such vigor and quantity that daddy is left with no choice but to willingly mire himself elbow deep in the fray during the rescue attempt that followed.  With his flare for the dramatic, he even timed the event to occur only after a professional photographer had been invited to our house to document his doings.

You have been spared those photographs.  You’re welcome.

Alex’s parents were here for a week. It was a nice visit, and kept us pretty busy. Liam slept in his pack n’ play for the first time at their hotel, and then while we were in Vermont. We weren’t sure we were going to get one, but decided it would be useful. Will be bringing it to St. Louis, as well, and I think it will be well worth the money.

Here is Penny, Bruce, and Liam at the Post-Wedding Brunch

Here’s the whole family outside the Church:

How can you not love this face?

I weighed Liam on Tuesday, and he was about 10lbs, 14oz. that means he is almost 11lbs. He will be six weeks old on Friday, and I think that he have hit 11lbs by then. He’s definitely growing very well.

I really love this baby! I think he’s going to be a rock star when he grows up

He’s so metal