sittin’ around, nothin’ to do

5 months!

and in this corner, weighing in at 15 pounds, the round mound of rebound, our very own sweetness, mr. september, the deacon of arbor avenue, the sultan of swat and swing:

eeeeeamooooon….shannnnnonnnnnn…smith!

forgive the old-man pants. it’s laundry day at our house.

 

bonus points for those who name the sports heroes behind the nicknames (tim and christopher, you must refrain from answering immediately.) extra extra bonus points if you can add an appropriate metaphor of your own.

move along, folks. nothing to see here.

for the eternity that is life with two kids under three last two days i have been mentally drafting a post about how unbelievably terrible shannon is. sure he’s a good dad and all. but he’s a terrible, selfish, unhelpful, in-the-way, smelly-man kind of partner. all i’ve been able to think about is how to escape, preferably without anybody noticing.

and then, sleep.

after 6 weeks of sleeping no more than two hours at a time, eamon is returning to his good-baby ways. two nights ago he slept from 8-3; last night, from 8-5. this morning i awoke and the sun was shining and the birds were chirping and the house was perfect and somehow shannon had morphed into a kind, loving, gentle, and considerately (and considerably) fresh-smelling partner.

so scratch the drama. 

ahhhh. blessed relief.

 

for now.

eamon rolls over!

we didn’t manage any rolling-in-motion pix, just ‘before’ and ‘after’ ones — but you can see them here.

go ahead, lad. say it to my face.

(more evidence that i birthed an old man, this one an irish politician. definitely not a vinnie.)

four months!

some days its hard to imagine, let alone remember, that at this time one year ago i was crippled by morning sickness, that we didn’t yet know we were having twins! we were not having twins!, that gus wasn’t here.

but boy oh boy is he here now. “he looks fantastic!” the doctor glowed today, noting that the kid has gained more than two pounds in less than a month. he’s also grown more than an inch and a half and his head–thank the good lord above–has grown merely a centimeter. this puts g’s numbers even closer to the hwp stats parents like to see. (the particulars: 25th percentile for weight [up from the 10th! up from the 3rd!]; 50th percentile for length [up from the 25th!]; and 76th-ish percentile for head size [holding steady from the 75th].)

lest you think for one minute that our concerns about food are over, however, i bring you this: solids.

dr: how is his development?

me: um, well, you know, he’s only four months. so he’s not out running any races, y’know? 

dr: looks at me askance. (or askew. or akimbo. take your pick.)

me: okay, well, yeah, he’s really social. he won’t take his eyes off his big sister. or my dinner fork.

dr: you don’t say?

me: seriously. when i eat and he’s in my lap, he watches my fork from plate to mouth. 

dr: well then it’s probably time to start him in on solids.

me: WHAT? my BABY? on SOLIDS? why, he’s just a little guy. so tiny. he can’t even TALK yet! why would i want to start him on solids?

dr: um, well, because that’s what we do with kids. you know. we help them grow up.

me: harumph.

so it’s not exactly a medical concern (like the slow weight gain) or a dictum (like the injunction to supplement him NOW and OFTEN). it’s just what parents do. apparently. but my BAAAABEEEEEEE! he can’t be ready for solids! next thing you know he’ll be all, like, hey mom i’m stopping off on the way home from work to buy some beer, can i pick something up for you? and i’ll be like, oh, honey, remember when you were a teeny tiny little gu— and he’ll be all, fer crying out loud, woman, not again.

so next time i go to the grocery store (a trip i will now postpone as long as our pantry full of jam and pasta will allow) i will be purchasing rice cereal. and there goes my baby. all grown up. just like that.

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.

maybe it’s just the hat

mairin in chariot, november 2006

mairin and eamon in chariot, november 2008

i look at them both often (duh), and i almost never think they look alike. and then, this.

my kid kicks a**

i have two concerns about working from home: “working” and “home” — two words which, when used togeter, make perfect sense to most academic types, and yet are rendered near meaningless once “home” includes kidlets. (insert long rant about those old-school advisors who tell their female graduate students just to write their dissertations “while the baby is napping.” good god.)

to wit (about home and work, not the dissertation, which i NEVER would have completed had i children at the time, so a BIG SHOUT OUT to you, squab): i am back at work part-time, and it’s ok for all of it to be from home. okay, that is, by my boss. not so ok in terms of efficacy. (mine.) for example, i have 3 one-hour-long conference calls today, but i learned yesterday (the hard way) that my cell phone is no longer up to the arduous work as staying ON for three hours. so i have scratched the “home” bit for today and have come in to campus for the calls. but i have brought a bit of home with me: the li’l mister mister.

and can i just say? he’s sitting next to me, diapered, fed, and swaddled, staring at the speaker-phone activated telephone. and damn if the kid isn’t cooing. cooing. during a conversation about strategic planning.

oh shit. he just smiled at me. this kid is da bomb.

who loves ya, baby!

of man-boobs and other post-partum surprises

my body is making a valiant effort to return to normalcy, which includes jettisoning some hormones…and passing them straight on to eamon. and so i am able to write off his little baby-acne, which i know will pass, as well as the inflated, er, privates, which provided no end of delight to his proud papa until we were reminded that we were seeing swelling that would eventually go down (it has, and all appears to be normal, thank you very much).

but all the while i was passing on chemicals to the little man via my breastmilk, the little bugger was taking things into his own hands. or mammaries, i suppose.

perhaps mairin has been whispering to him at night that i’m not be trusted and at any minute the thing he loves best might be snatched away. perhaps he’s been listening to the news and is simply stockpiling his own apocalyptic food supply. whatever the reason, the kid is ready: mama, or shrub, or the oil conglomerates, or the whole damn global village might be about to let him down, but he is ready.

he’s got milk.

he’s making milk.

which i would never have known, were it not for his pediatrician’s experimentation. “how’s he sleeping?” “what are his diapers like?” “how is his general demeanor?” — all asked while the mister mister was poked and prodded and then BAM! out of his little nipple shot some milk. “wow! didja see that?” his peed asked. “here, look, let’s do it again!” the doctor squeezed, eamon wailed, and i stared in shock and awe as my son’s breasts produced beautiful little gobules of perfectly white, fatty-looking milk.  “don’t do this at home!” the doctor warned. “you could give him an infection.”

there are some things even a mother doesn’t need to see more than once.