who knew?

that a hungry 3-month-old with sinus congestion and a bit of a cough sounds exactly like a bleating lamb…

…being skewered.

eh? gus? gus who?

you are a loyal tribe, readers of gus. and we appreciate it so very, very much. which you might not realize, since we tend not to post about him much these days.

part of this is relief that we don’t have to be anxious about his safe arrival any longer, and that after expending a lifetime’s worth of energy during his normal and uneventful gestation, we’re maybe possibly a little bit burned out.

and part of this is the sheer pleasure (of which you had the briefest of glimpses from shannon) that the new kid is the damned easiest kid ever to live on this planet. (rumor has it shannon was an easy baby too, but i’m guessing that not even shannon was this friendly. if he was, i want to know what happened.)

and yet another part of it is the reflection of our homelife, dominated as it is by planet mairin, a small and relatively unknown planet with a gravitational pull so strong that the houses on our street are all leaning toward us. it’s easy to miss the fact that there is a cute little baby in the house.

nonetheless, your devotion to gus and his well-being is meretricious meritorious and you deserve some reward. so….drum roll please….we bring you the….

3 month check up! (TA-DA!)

otherwise known as the end of an era, gus’s 3-month check up proved to be his best.

why, whatever could she mean?, i hear you muttering. she hasn’t said anything was wrong.

no? i didn’t? maybe that’s because i was too madly (and angrily) trying to count ounces and time feedings and pump properly and not race my child to the (insanely accurate) kitchen scale every 17 hours.

those of you who have been around a block or two with us might remember our scare when, at four months, mairin had not grown at all from her 3-month check up, and the crazy round of exams and tests (is she a “small person”? does she have cystic fibrosis?) began. turned out she was fine, and her growth took off, and she now rests happily among her peers at the 85th percentile for height and weight while the size of her head is, predictably, off the charts.

so when eamon measured skinny i didn’t think twice. turns out his size, and my lack of concern about it, were sources of some medical consternation. what was i doing to him all day long? wasn’t i feeding him? letting him sleep? what kind of mother was i?

well, you all know what kind of mother i am, so i figured there was no need to reinforce your certainties. instead, i focused on feeding the kid, who was required to visit the doctor every two weeks so that we could learn that his weight is up! his weight is down! his weight is up! his weight is the same! his weight is down! and each visit was accompanied by this look from the doctor as i tried to explain to him how often eamon i ate (well, as often as he wants) and for how long (as long as he wants) and as i tried to explain that eamon doesn’t drain a breast in 15 minutes (yes, yes, i know the literature says babies do, doctor, but trust me, this baby doesn’t) and why i let him nurse longer if he wanted to — a look that said “listen, young lady” (although it’s possible i’m older than he is), “this kid needs to put on weight and it’s your job to make sure he does” and i would say “well, his sister was like this and look at her, she’s fine” and back and forth and back again.

none of this was hostile, mind you, although i do prefer to remember it that way because i know i was right, dammit. but it was frustrating. at first i was told to nurse him for 10 minutes on a side, then to pump anything that was left, and to use that to supplement him. well. after 10 minutes eamon was not finished, and screamed bloody murder if i even suggested he was, and we were usually only partway through the stack of books mairin would want to read when suddenly it was time to pump and i was somehow supposed to hold a baby, read to a toddler, and pump milk at the same time?

i did it once and broke down crying.

which i did not tell the doctor.

instead we created our own loosey-goosey pumping and supplementing schedule and hey! his weight went up at the next visit. but when it was down the visit after that, and i couldn’t precisely explain how our supplementing schedule worked, well, you can see how things might go pear-shaped.

after the third visit of  topsy-turvy mother/doctoring, i made a decision: eamon would get a bottle of formula once a day. he could drink as much or as little of it as he wanted to. i would quit trying to pump after nursing and instead let him take his time to eat. if at the end of the day he was still hungry, well, then, he’d be getting formula. i figured this would give me ounces i could count for the doctor, freedom from timing and measuring our nursing sessions, and might even salvage my milk supply which i feared would drop if the baby wasn’t eating as much as, and whenever, he wanted to.

turns out loosey-goosey parenting is the way to go. sometimes eamon drinks one ounce of formula, but sometimes he drinks six. and we don’t have to guess: we just make a bottle, and he drinks until he’s done. and it’s working! yesterday at his 3-month checkup he had gained almost two pounds in 3 weeks. he’s not chubby by any stretch, but at least he’s up to the 10th percentile for his weight, which is enough to get his doctor off my breasts back.

his doctor is happy. i am happy. gus is so freakin’ happy that he laughs out loud, all the time, just because he can. and after guzzling his way to milky-happiness, eamon has also progressed to 25th percentile for length, while his head is up at the 75th, making me wonder whether it’s too late to change his name to QTip.

daddy’s boy

when mairin was little, i simply got used to the fact that if she was in the same room as me and carole, i might as well be invisible. she would dance and cry and smile and stare holes in her mother, but if i made attempts to catch her eye, suddenly there would be something very interesting on the wall, or ceiling, or out the window. but certainly not me.

so i got used to it, told myself it wasn’t personal, that all babies are fixed on their mothers and for good reason, especially if the mother doubles as the cupboard. i read the paper, organized the bookshelves, did the dishes, and, yes, took pleasure in watching the two of them cement the bond that currently manifests in almost-parodic repetitions of “i want my mommy. i want my mommy. i want my mommy.” (oh, who’m i kidding? — they’re more parodic than any parody — high-pitched, pouty, dramatic). just last week, mairin was whining from her crib for her mommy one morning, and i walked in. she, standing at the rail of her crib, melted down onto her mattress and wailed “NO! No, Da-ee! I WANT MOMMEEEEE!!” charming.

but my boy — well, he’s my boy. i mean, sure he wants his mom, especially when he’s hungry or tired, or can’t tell whether he’s hungry or tired. but put the boy in his bouncy-seat with a full belly and lines of sight on both his mother and father, and he’ll fix on me and laugh and coo and squint playfully and throw his arms and legs around (okay, he doesn’t have any control on that last one yet, but it does serve to emphasize his excitement) and generally do the ol’ soft-shoe to get his dad’s attention.

at first, carole would have to point this out to me: “um, shannon, someone wants your attention.” and i’d say sure he does, and put the paper down but not too far, since of course he’ll be turning back to his mother soon. and then he wouldn’t. and i love it.

i think we’ll have to cancel our newspaper subscription, though — it’s just not getting read these days.

new love

Manhattan Coffee Soda

Made with actual espresso, this drink is a bit of heaven in a bottle — especially when accompanied by the world’s best sandwiches, courtesy of the Cafe al Mercato on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. YUM!

what do giraffes say?

this has been mairin’s favorite question since her excursion to the bronx zoo. and in the ways of all parents everywhere, we’ve made up our answer. it goes like this:

1) begin to make the “mmmmm” sound of “mmmmm mmmmm good”
2) partway into the first “mmmmm,” press your lips apart by pushing your tongue up against them
3) open your mouth by forcing your tongue all the way out , all the while continuing as much as possible with the  “mmmm” sound
4) open your mouth all the way, stick tongue out as far as possible, and make as much of noun sound in “bleeeech” as you can
5) roll your tongue around as giraffes do when they eat popcorn out of your hand (i know! i know! but when *I* was a kid, you were allowed to get closer to the animals) while changing from the “eeeeech” sound to a grass-chewing kind of noise
6) finish with whatever kind of open-mouthed, tongue-lolling, grass-chomping strange sound you can make, without sounding scary (not as easy as it might seem)

and that, my friends, is what giraffes say.

mairin watches the fish in the crocodile tank at the bronx zoo

health hath no fury like a virus taken on a road trip

somehow i managed to leave cincy in perfectly good health, only to arrive in ny — okay, okay, it was new jersey, but SO CLOSE! — with a raspy voice. not a sexy lauren bacall raspy voice, more like a phlegmy rhea perlman raspy voice. not attractive at all. and it is only just now clearing, in the seriously unattractive ways that phlegmy voices eventually clear.

mairin left cincy in perfectly good health only to arrive in nj with green rivers running out of her nose. pair that up with the cutting of the last of her two-year molars and the child was seriously uncomfortable. the molars are through (and consequently she is no longer chewing on her own hand in some desperate-coyote-like manuever to free herself), her nose has cleared, she no longer asks for medicine to make her feel better, and she is almost sleeping through the night again.

all of which makes this a perfect time for eamon’s teenytinylittle nose to get plugged up, making it difficult for him to nurse and breathe at the same time, which in turn makes it difficult for me, as i alternate between stuffing his milk-hole and unstuffing his nostrils, squeezing milk in and suctioning mucous out.

we were all, i thought, on the path to good health and returned good humor. instead, eamon and i were up all night and i’m tired as, tired as…well, as shannon put it so delicately yesterday, “tired as i was back in graduate school when i started [fill in your own verb] this hot aerobics instructor and never got any sleep.”

yep — that tired. and not nearly so, um, relaxed.

road trip: homeward bound

from ny to oh: google never got it so wrong.

we knew going into the thanksgiving week that we faced two 12-hour drives. we thought we were ready. we planned to break up the outbound trip with a stopover to see COUSINS! in maryland; we thought we were prepared to tackle the inbound trip in one fell swoop: bite the bullet and drive, as s said. we had steeled ourselves for a 12-hour drive with a toddler and an infant, knowing that neither of them would want to be in a car seat for that long.

but everybody assured us the drive home would absolutely not take 12 hours, and that we were crazy for worrying it would.  it’s so much shorter to go straight from ny to cincy than to go via baltimore, they all said. it will be a lot easier than you think. trust us. trust all of us.

so we did…for the last time. we’re done trusting you, rocco, or you, stephanie, or even YOU, mapquest:

Total Estimated Time: 10 hours 49 minutes
Total Estimated Distance: 641.01 miles

my ass.

we drove for fourteen and a half hours. in the cold and dark. with two crying children, leaking breasts, icy roads, and foul, foul moods. by the time we got home shannon had blisters on his hands from gripping the steering wheel, our children were sobbing, and shannon and i were each contemplating the list of irreconcilable differences we would be handing the divorce attorney.

somehwere in pennsylvania, a britney spears moment. no, not that kind. the other kind.

eamon is on my lap, nursing, in the front seat of the car. (wanna make something of it? i didn’t think so.) we come to the end of a tollway. shannon points out that we’re going to have to stop and pay, and i may want to put a blanket over the baby. so that, you know, it’s not so obvious that i’m holding an infant in the front seat of the car, where, when we wreck, well, fill in your own terrifying images here (i shall not tempt fate by publishing my own).

i am, for once, relieved that shannon is indeed not brad pitt, so there are no paparazzi to catch this on film.

welcome to west virginia! or, carole ponders blessed relief.

we are 10 hours into a long, cold, rainy, windy, icy drive, during which neither eamon nor mairin have seen fit to nap. mairin is crying “mommy, mommy! hold my hand! mommy!” as she leans as far forward as her car seat will allow, reaching her right hand toward me. eamon is crying “mommy, mommy! feed me! hold me! i’m not even 12 weeks old! what in god’s name are you thinking, woman?” shannon has suggested i ignore them to see if they will stop. this was about seven hours ago, and appears not to be working.

i sit up, undo my seatbelt, and turn around to lean my chest against the back of my seat. with my right hand i reach out to mairin, who grasps at my fingers, sighs, and collapses, eyes closed. with my left hand i give eamon something to suck on, alternating between my fingers, his fingers, and the only pacifier i can find that isn’t on its way to road-trip-disgustoville. i rest my forehead on the headrest of the passenger seat. a car cuts into our lane, forcing shannon to suddenly brake hard. i push my knees down into the seat, hoping that will be enough resistance not to send me flying, face up and shoulders first, through the windshield. i briefly flash on the pleasantness that oblivion would bring.

did anybody really think i wanted to drive through west virginia again?

almost home, or, no, no, no! i do not like it.

our two-year-old child has been in her car seat for twelve hours. she has had it with the car seat, the road trip, us, the whole damn world. her sad, sad cries now culminate in desperate full-body twists, olympic high-dive style, accompanied by the shrieks “mommy! MOMMY! HELP ME!” shannon looks at me desperately. oh no, i say. not you too. help your own damn self.