The Fine Game of Nil

As Emily mentioned before, Thursday and Friday were my first full days flying solo with the boy. We did pretty well actually. On day one we discussed the Hobbesian concept that “the life of man (is), solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” and that if he wanted his bottle warmed like some nancy-boy, then he’d never get use to drinking his milk cold. He responded by fussing on the nipple until it darn well warmed up in my hands.

On day two I relented a little bit and agreed to warm his bottle up to at least room temperature, which seemed an acceptable compromise for both parties.  Day two went far better than day one, with Liam working on a pretty good schedule and daddy going significantly less crazy.

Today, Emily went into work for several hours in the middle of the day, so Mr. Liam and I hung out again.  We decided to dedicate today to a day of hedonistic excess.  First, we went out and rented a Volkswagen rabbit from Zipcar, and cruised around the town for an hour or two, which Liam enjoyed to the point of falling to sleep.  Once back at home we ate 4 ounces of milk and a burrito, then looked at ourselves in the mirror for about 20 minutes.  Afterwards we read some poetry from the collected works of Dorthy Parker, focusing on the poems dedicated to liquor, parties, and leaving a pretty corpse, before finally falling asleep for a early afternoon nap.  Upon waking, we threw a tantrum, pooped ourselves, and then ate another 3 ounces of milk to hold us till Mom came home.  All in all, a quite successful day.

First things first, the Red Sox won the World Series! w00t! \m/

Next, I had an appointment with my PCP today, just an annual physical since I hadn’t seen her since before I became pregnant. While she was out of the room, I hopped on the scale, just to see, and I am back at my pre-pregnancy weight. For those who haven’t had kids, this is a pretty big milestone. some people take months to get back down, if they ever do at all. I haven’ t been trying to lose the weight, though I have been trying to walk every day and try to monitor my eating. I had heard it’s hard to lose the last 10 lbs while you are breastfeeding because your body just holds on to that weight as a “just in case” precaution so that you could still produce milk in an emergency/dire situation/starvation, etc. Now, to see if more of my old clothes fit!

I believe there will be more cute pumpkin pictures coming soon.

I have just completed my first week back at work. Granted, it was only 20 hours, but that’s four more hours than I will be working once alex starts his job. It wasn’t as hard to be away from Liam as I thought it would be, mostly because I had a big stockpile of milk for him before I left, and he was staying home with alex. I hope that alex has enjoyed his baby/daddy time, because he has two more weeks of it.

Liam has been sleeping very well lately. We usually can expect almost 6 hours between feedings (usually 10:30p to 4:30a). The past few nights, we’ve gotten longer. Wednesday night he slept from 10:30 to 6:15. I think he did it to help me be more prepared for my first full day at work. I appreciated it, whatever the reason.

He’ll be flying again next Friday, as we head down to Missouri to see Alex’s parents again. Our friend Shelley is in town (or will be soon, though her flight is delayed half an hour), and we’re looking forward to spending time with her. Morrissey concert on Tuesday with Saul. Liam was in utero in May when we saw him in Seattle, and I wish he could come to this concert as well.

As promised here are some pictures

here is liam in overalls. How cute? so cute! He looks like a doll!

Here he is in Ipswich, shortly after the day care tour.

So you don’t think that he is always happy and cheery, and therefore hate us because our baby is so perfect (he is), here is a picture of him crying (which is still cute)

I think here he wants to nurse on daddy. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

Here he is on the beautiful quilt our friend Emily made for us. Notice the missing sock. Socks are futile.

Here are two nice big smiles to end the run

I like having mommy time. That’s when I have left enough milk with Alex that I can go out and do something on my own, while he watches Liam. Don’t get me wrong, I love spending time with Liam, but I do occasionally need the reminder that I am human. Today I am going to see a movie, Into the Wild. It looks interesting and there isn’t much else out I want to see right now.

Now that Alex has a job pending, it’s become time for me to make a decision about returning to work. After much discussion with Alex and my boss, and searching myself, we have decided that I will go back part time, two days a week. I will no longer be working in Cardiology with the heart transplant patients, which I’m really sad about. I will instead be working in the pediatric psychiatric unit. This is the job I was originally hired for two and a half years ago, for those of you who remember. I begin to transition back to work on Wed. Oct. 24th, shadowing the girl I will be job sharing with for four hours. I’m nervous about going back to work, and finding time to pump milk. I’m also worried about the supply of milk I’ll have. At least for the first two to three weeks, Liam will be home with Alex and not at day care. We go to tour the day care facility tomorrow, and I have a list of questions 3 pages long to ask them. Sometime in November, Liam will start commuting with Alex to work in Ipswich two days a week. I know he will be fine. Many babies go to day care sooner and for longer, so I can’t really complain. The budget might be a little tight for a bit, but as Alex noted, having more time with Liam is more important than the little bit of extra money, in the long run. There’s such a small amount of time when he is this little, we really want to cherish every minute of it before it is gone.

And besides, a boy needs his mom:

Be on the look out soon for more cute pictures, including Liam in overalls!

Lately I’ve been telling Liam that the breast pump is actually the Autobaby5000, a mechanical automaton against which he runs the risk of replacement.  Which really makes me really want to write him a baby song based loosely on the The Ballad of John Henry, a folk song about John Henry the steel drivin’ man versus the steam drill.

Because Liam is a milk drinkin’ man.

Lyrics to follow…

Dear Emily’s Ovaries,

You may remember our recent driving trip out to an apple orchard.  You may also remember that we traveled along with another new family, also with a child of approximately the same age as the one you assisted in producing.  Though it is dark and muffled in Emily’s torso, you might also remember that the two children ran on opposite schedules.  One sleeping while the other was hungry and crying, and then reversing once the crying one was fed, pacing each other in order to keep up a constant dialog with the adults in the car. You might additionally remember one of the adults in the car noting that this must be what it’s like to have twins, except with half the number of parental caretakers.  You may have found this remark funny, or possibly the seed of a entertaining joke to play on Emily and I.  I am writing to inform you that as of today you are officially on notice.  One at a damn time. You did some quality work with Mr. Liam and I appreciate that.  I expect you to maintain that level of craftsmanship and professionalism on further orders, not attempting to substitute quantity for quality.  It is my hope that this letter leaves the matter settled between us and this will not require further discussions.

Sincerely,

Alex

Last Sunday Liam, Emily and I, as well as our friends Evyan, Stewart and Alasdair bundled up and went off to the one of the local apple orchards to go apple picking.

I’ve been to this particular place, Honey Pot Hill, a couple of times before, but it really seems like its expanded in popularity since we last went, and is well on its way to becoming the Six Flags of the pick-your-own world. It also probably didn’t really help that we went on Columbus day weekend, meaning most of the city of Boston was out there with us. Next time I’ll probably pick one of the smaller less popular orchards in the area.

That said, I shouldn’t complain too much, we ended up having a great time. Also, though we brought a large bag of apples home, picking apples was actually only a secondary purpose of the trip. Really we wanted to bring our child to the pumpkin patch, dress him in his pumpkin hat and sweater, and take sickeningly cute baby photos. And really, if we’re going to do things like that, I’d much rather be in the middle of a pack of parents behaving badly, at a location that has prepared themselves for silly new parent shenanigans.

This is Emily being a complete daredevil, and getting yelled at if she tried to go higher than the second rung with my child strapped to her chest.

Liam dons his knit pumpkin hat

Because, if you take your child to the pumpkin patch, with a pumpkin hat, and a pumpkin sweater, how can you resist posing him in the bin of pumpkins for a picture.

You can see what I mean, though, about Honey Pot Hill being bullet-proofed against exuberant parents being cute.  If you look in the background of the photo below, you can tell that the pumpkin patch is like a Chuck-e-Cheese for the parents.  A safe space full of Anne Geddes style props and a team of handlers trained not to lash out in sarcasm as the 250th photo of baby sitting on pumpkin is posed (see above).

Oh, and did we mention that the boy is cute.

After what has seemed like quite a long time of looking, and more recently some really nervous waiting on a specific offer, today I finally got word that I am being offered the job that I’ve most recently been interviewing for. This is a postdoctoral position with New England Biolabs in their parasitology bioinformatics division. Basically, a postdoc position is much like an apprenticeship done after spending 7 years earning your PhD. New England Biolabs is a company formed in the 70s producing enzymes used almost ubiquitously within biological research, which has chosen to plow a large portion of their profits into researching under-served diseases of the developing world. Their main push is parasitology, studying the nematode worms causing diseases such as river blindness and elephantiasis. The bioinformatics group approaches this by studying the genome of the organism and its symbiotic bacteria in order to identify potential drug targets to kill the worm. Not only is the project really interesting and the team excellent, but it should provide some great resume’ experience if I want to continue in the world in biotech.

It’ll also be nice not to have to worry any more about this post-graduation unemployment. The time to play with the kid has been really nice, but its also nice to keep him in diapers and Swedish bouncy chairs. The coffee shop down the street has been hiring for a while now, and it was beginning to look pretty tempting.

As alex mentioned, we are home from Missouri. Liam flew well, sleeping most of the way on both trips. We opted to just hold him, as it seemed silly to pay for a third seat, when we would hold him most of the time. Alex had the joy of changing his diaper on the plane, which was actually not as terrible as we imagined it would be.

Liam was a hit at grandma’s new apartment. It was great to get to see the family and introduce them to liam while he is still so small. I hope that we will be able to make more regular visits so that they can watch him grow in person, not just through this blog.

I will now post several pictures. this trip could be named “everybody holds liam”. almost all the pictures we took were of people holding liam…

Here is my sister anne, or Auntie Anne, as it were

Here is aunt beth having a pleasant conversation with Liam. We stayed at Beth and Jerry’s house while in St. Louis, and they awesomely did not mind some of the fussing that Liam did.

Here is aunt libby and cousin bridget

Liam is a Cardinals fan (he’s also a red sox fan)

Here is Liam and I taking a nap at the Lake of the Ozarks while we visited alex’s parents. this was especially nice because we were outdoors and the weather was just perfect.

Hanging out with Penny

eating his blueberry omelette

Hanging out with great grandma

and last but not least, a liam and daddy picture

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve put anything up here. Mostly because we were preparing for, and then departed on our trip back to Missouri. We’re back home now, getting used to sleeping in our own bed or crib, and had a fun though exhausting week. Child was a joy on the plane and slept most of the way there and back. Except for a massive poop just as we taxied away from the gate and the resulting excitement of changing a baby in an airplane bathroom, the ride was uneventful. Liam met his great-grandmother, and was called a neglected little child because no one was offering him the cookies or pizza we were eating. He was passed around among most of his aunts and uncles on Emily’s side and made an excellent impression on all of them. We also took a quick trip to Lake of the Ozarks to visit with my parents and aunt and uncle. Penny was even more enamored with him than before and spent most of the time either playing with him or with him asleep on her shoulder. While there, Liam also managed to get licked by two enormous German shepherds and a rather large collie mix. I think its a good start on the path to dog ownership, and probably overall good for the kid. Some people hire a foreign speaking nanny so the kid will grow up bi-lingual. I grew up first with a German shepherd and then later a husky mix, so I speak a good bit of conversational dog.  Large dog dialect though. I can speak a bit of border collie or greyhound with a heavy accent but anything sub-beagle is unintelligible to me.

Pictures from this trip coming later. We still have to sort through the roughly 300 or so that we took. Too tired right now to be both lucid and entertaining. I could tell you more about the trip, but it’d read like the instructions to your washing machine. Or, I could tell you more about our wacky adventures, but it would only be loosely based on reality and the word ‘potato’ would consistently be used as a verb. Sleep instead.