suckling

in true chabries-smith style, this kid needs something to suck on, all day long. luckily, unlike mairin, eamon is easily satisfied by all kinds of things that are not me. good baby.

 

do i have to do everything myself?

mairin lends a helping finger

giving all of our digits a break

do they make that in emperor-sized?

over the past two weeks, as eamon has slept for entire football games and gone twenty-four hour stretches without making more than a creaky squawk, and mairin has kissed her brother with real affection and, when out of his presence, repeated over and over (and over and over) “i see mommy i see baby” — carole and i have remarked repeatedly how smoothly this transition from a family of three to a family of four has been going. heck, even the dogs took perfunctory sniffs of the little man’s head, wagged their tails, and curled back up on their blankets, as if to say, “yup. been there.” (me: “yes, but don’t you know that’s new baby smell, the BEST SMELL IN THE WORLD, you curs?” dogs: “heh. you’re kidding, right?” abby: “hey rufe, remember when the squirrel got run over, and then the popeye’s chicken wrapper got stuck on its body, and then the temperature went up up up, and i rolled in it? remember that? now that was the best smell in the world.” rufus: “oh yeah yeah yeah yeah. let’s go do it again. yeah.”)

but during all of this blissfully smooth inital domestic adjustment, a little voice in the back of my head has been whispering (think dennis hopper in apocalypse now): “yeah, but things change, man. they change quick, man, when you got two little ones. fast and quick, man.”

and poof. things’ve changed. mairin doesn’t like to sleep any more. and eamon doesn’t like it as much either, unless he’s attached to his mom. and apparently that toddler bed we got mairin and that cradle we have for eamon were simply frivolously hopeful expenditures, since these nights we’re all lined up across the king-sized bed: carole, usually with eamon on her; mairin, not infrequently sideways, with her head on mama’s arm or belly and her feet (stinky by the way, ever since she quit wearing socks with her mary janes) in dad’s face; and finally dad, who is contemplating investing in one of those mountaineer’s tents that you can spike to the side of the mountain, since he sleeps with most of his body hanging over the edge anyway (you can tell i’m tired because i’m speaking of myself in the third person). “sleep” being a relative term, both because of the discomfort of the position and because of mairin’s wakefulness: she came in around 3am the other night, crawled into bed, and proceeded to lie on her back, fiddling with her belly button and whispering “zoom zoom” over and over (and over) for about two more hours, before we all fell asleep in the predawn and were subsequently late for work (okay, the last was just me).

on the other hand, she’s got the first seven letters of the alphabet song down, to go with the last four (sounds like “bub-ba-ets-why-iy-cee”), she still loves her little brother, and she still has a (largely) delightful disposition. and her brother is coming along nicely, having just had a glowing report at his two-week checkup.

who needs sleep?

lights on!

power was restored late thursday evening, thanks to our noodgy neighbors who had the gumption to walk down the block to pester some guys from one of the power crews until they agreed to come look to see why our street was still without power while every street adjacent to us was shining brightly. we drove up to our house (after eating dinner with shannon’s parents, yet again, bless them) and mairin squealed “lights on!”

and now, thanks to the serendipity of functioning electricity and two children who are actually napping at the same time, we gladly bring you this. happy gaping.

so this is what life with a good baby is like

i never would have said that mairin was not a good baby. she was a gem — she was quiet, she ate a lot, she slept pretty well.

as long as she was attached to me like a limpet to its rock.

we made that work pretty well while i was at home with her. it got a little tougher when shannon did his stint as a sahd, but still, we felt that she was easy. sure, i held her practically nonstop (she nursed and slept her way through a very loud theatre-viewing of daniel craig in “casino royal” at a mere 12 weeks), but i didn’t really mind. i was willing– happy, even – to hold and nurse her 24/7 in order to keep the peace.

so yeah, i thought she was easy. and then along came eamon.

mr. “oh, sure, i’d like to eat now. that sounds like a nice idea.”

mr. “oh, has it been three hours already? oh, okay, i guess i can wake up now.”

mr. “oh, you’re not my mommy? that’s okay. i don’t mind if you hold me.”

mr calm, cool and collected.

he started out this way almost immediately. sure, he came out of the womb more or less screaming his lungs out, but a quick cuddle with shannon and rest against my cheek and he was fine. based on those first few hours of life, when everybody around us commented on his great set of lungs, we were prepared to pull out all the old tricks: the swaddle, the sssssssssshhhhh at 80 decibals or louder, the milkshake…the whole dr. karp routine. but very quickly we learned that while it helps to swaddle him, it isn’t absolutely essential; with a good snuggle, he’ll rest quite comfortably and loose-limbed. the ssssh? mairin likes to tell him to “shop, beybey” — which is either “stop, baby,” or “shaddup, baby,” we’re not sure — but he doesn’t really seem to need to be quieted or calmed. and the milkshake? it’s a waste of perfectly good parental energy. (although the benefits to the parental biceps might be enough to get us both milkshaking, selfishly.)

so instead of pulling out all the stops, we are learning that stops might not even be necessary. that i can actually detach the kiddo from my breast and — whoa! — he might not even wake up. that i can wrap him in a blanket and put him down and he’s just as likely to simply look around and smack his lips as he is to show signs of mairin-like desperation and mommy-neediness.

if i want to ensure that he sleeps for a few hours, i need only provide a good nursing session and a nice swaddle and a bed or blanket that smells familiar. this is true EVEN AT NIGHT, when he nurses (more or less) at 11, 2 and 6, and sleeps soundly in between. to get him back to sleep, i need only lay him, tummy-down, on my chest with his legs dangling down my ribcage…and he sleeps, sleeps, sleeps. if i’m tired of lying on my back, he’ll rest happily on his back with my torso curled like a comma around him. no objections, no insistence that things go his way, no nighttime chest- or neck-hickeys from his frantic efforts to latch on to anything, ANYTHING AT ALL that will help him feel better.

“i kiss beybey, mommy.” and mairin leans down to kiss his head and tumbles over onto him. “i touch beybey’s nose, mommy,” and then she sneaks a jab at his unsuspecting eyeball. “i tickle beybey, mommy,” and she gouges and scratches, laughing maniacally. and eamon just looks at her, and at me, and might squawk, but just as likely won’t. 

people tell us he’s like this because he’s a boy, since caucasian male babies are apparently notoriously lazy. people tell us he’s like this because he’s used to hearing the chaos of our lives. people tell us he’s like this because he’s not our first and we’re more relaxed this time around. all of these things might be true. i suspect they are also mostly irrelevant. that just as mairin started out fiesty and opinionated and wanting her mama nearby and has more or less stayed that way, eamon is starting out quiet and relaxed and mellow.  and i think none of us – including rufus, who just the other day was forced to endure giving mairin a ride as if he were a small pony and she a rodeo cowgirl – will mind if he stays that way.

power down

to revisit a well-worn theme…: cincinnati still seems out to get us. eamon’s welcome home was accompanied by an ike-inspired windstorm that knocked out our power. (right in the middle of the sunday bengals game, too.) we are still without power. and now, after several days, without most types of fresh food. we are bored and restless and frustrated. (not to mention grateful as can be that when we moved it wasn’t to texas. we may be ungrateful, but we’re not totally callous.)

s went back to work today (campus was closed monday and tuesday — no power there either) and mairin, to her never-ending glee, is back at school. i am hangin’ at a neighborhood coffee shop, where i will sit and entertain myself until lunchtime (since i have more, and heavier, items with me than i yet have doctor’s approval to lug around) when shannon comes to pick me up, tote my bundles, and take me out to lunch. eamon is lounging in his sling, enjoying the lovely aroma of freshly roasted coffee beans.

pics and details to follow as soon as duke energy sees fit to allow.

will the real gus please stand up?

back in the day, s and i were discussing possible family names for tnk. we both really liked shannon as a boy’s name, but it seemed so blueblooded of us to name the poor guy shannon iii. neither of us were drawn to 3 out of the 4 grandfatherly names available to us — harold, roy, and melvin — and while i liked all four of my fourth grandfather’s names (matthew benjamin hamilton murray) i just couldn’t see naming a kid matt smith or ben smith. murray could be in the running, shannon suggested, if tnk was going to be gray haired and jewish. i observed that he may be both of those things some day. shannon pointed out that when that day comes the kid can certainly change his name. 

pressing on with family tradition, we turned to names buried more deeply in the past. i liked the idea of naming him after s’s famously tall great (great &c.) grandfather whose height saved him during the civil war: a bullet that would have killed a man of average height went through his throat instead of his head, leaving him alive if unable to speak. but “tom jones smith”? we’d sound too much like the lit-geeks we are. so shannon kept digging and unearthed ”alexander” and “neverson.” we agreed that together they make a great name — they have a nice rhythm and neverson fits the bill of being unique but not completely whack.

no sooner had we determined that “alexander neverson” was our top choice for naming the boy, we ran up against the problem of what to call him. “alex” is nice but i wasn’t willing to choose it over the dozen other names i liked better. and “alex smith” didn’t seem to have much kick to it.  shannon nixed “xander,” as much for aesthetic reasons as for its increasing popularity. we tossed around the idea of “nev” and then tried out  funky combinations of syllables — “dernev,” “alson” — but ultimately we couldn’t picture ourselves standing on the porch and hollering out any of those names. this gave us the perfect opportunity to turn to the time-honored smith family tradition of nicknames, and we quickly ruled out dutch, tub and pood in favor of gus. at that moment, beer in hand and baby in tummy, we really thought this was a viable option: name him alexander neverson, call him gus.

gus stuck. alexander neverson didn’t.

when shannon brought gus to me in the o.r. it was clear the kid was no alexander. (vino, maybe, but no alexander.) back to the drawing board. we had already ruled out two of shannon’s favorites — conor and colin — and two of mine — ian and gavin. once i was stitched up and we were gazing with drunken parental love at our little mobster wannabe, i insisted on reconsidering some lovely biblical names — elijah, isaac, ezekial (i had just read the most recent easy rawlins book and was taken with ’60s l.a. cool) – and shannon re-enlisted some serious gaelic names — dermot, declan. 

when these names were clearly also not right, i turned my morphine-addled attention to the internets, searching out and trying on baby names by saying them out loud while staring at the kiddo. thus engaged i found i really liked sheridan, riordan, angus, and liam, but no longer cared for fintan, finian or callum. then i hit on dominic, which rejuvenated the timothy rocco conversation — especially the rocco part, since his father is named dominic – until i pressed too far with dominic ignatius and shannon, ever the lapsed catholic, put his foot down.

and on it went.

meanwhile we were being visited by a steady stream of nurses, doctors, residents, nursing students, technicians, lactation consultants, and the very friendly woman from medical records, all of whom wanted to know the baby’s name. the more they asked the more anxious i got. it was starting to feel like we’d done something wrong, like we hadn’t prepared for the baby, like we weren’t good enough parents. shannon went to pick up mairin from playschool, where miss kassie told him we should name the baby jaden. the next day shannon stopped by campus to pick up a few things, and was told by some very helpful women in the registrar’s office that we should name him tyler or stephen. while he was out i was back in the hospital room trying on names like a teenager trying to pick her outfit for the first day of high school, lists of names strewn across the hospital floor like so many discarded almost-fashionable-enough pants and shirts.

we finally narrowed down our choices for middle names: shannon or michael. i made one last half-hearted attempt at “ian shannon” while shannon was ready to sign off on “fergus michael.” from there we settled on a final four: fergus michael, ciaran michael, liam shannon, and eamon shannon. fergus michael was the first to go, if only because “fergus” sounds best out of the mouths of actual irish people with actual irish accents. liam shannon was next to go because liam, while beautiful — probably because it isbeautiful — is becoming too popular.

ciaran michael had long been shannon’s first choice for naming the newbie, and i was pretty certain the decision would go that way. i thought this even though in the moment that shannon brought me the baby in the o.r. he had said “he looks like an eamon.” i figured he was acquiescing, throwing me a bone in a moment of extreme weakness (what with my organs hanging out for all to see) so that later he could say he had seriously considered one of my favorite names. and even though we practiced calling him ciaran, and even though he’s got that touch of the irish that brings out some red in his hair, ciaran michael just wouldn’t stick.

welcome to the family, at long long last, little eamon shannon smith.

meet vinnie!

actually, he looks like the love child of burt young and aleksander vinokurov, which, most assuredly, he is not.

here, however, is photographic evidence that i have somehow managed to give birth to a slavic-looking mobster. all he needs is a thick gold chain around his neck and a half-chewed cigar stuck between his gums.

warning: do not be fooled by the stuffed giraffe. vinnie is the real deal.

coming up next: will the real gus please stand up? and so this is what life with a good baby is like.

 

 

a few more details…

…before i pass out.

9/9/08, 8:25 am, 8lbs 1oz (technically .7 oz, but they round up), 21 in.

cries like a champ. we should know, because he did it almost nonstop for two hours after delivery.

his big sister isn’t so sure about this little brother thing, although she did kiss and hug him as she was leaving the hospital this evening.

his mom is great, given that she just had significant abdominal surgery.

we’re so happy he’s here and safe and well and and and …

now that it’s here, i’ll admit that i really didn’t know if this day would ever come.

but damn. i’m glad it did.

g’night, and thanks for reading.

Baby’s first photo

 I haven’t heard a name yet, but this is him in his wee little cap.

New Baby!

The new kid is here and healthy.  8lbs, 1 oz.  Carole is good.  Pictures later.

(p.s.  This message is from MH, posting for Shannon because he’s away from his computer right now.)