Some firsts I'd rather skip

The first year of your child's life is just a series of milestones, one after the other. The first smile. The first word. The first steps. The first trip to the emergency room.

Yes, last Sunday, The Husband and I had the delightful pleasure of taking our baby to the ER to make sure he had not jammed his teeth back up into his head possibly embedding them in his brain. (Short version: He hadn't.) It had happened very suddenly. We had just gotten back from church and The Husband was making grilled cheese sandwiches while I searched for a recipe for cranberry bread and Jack played in the cabinet with the pots and pans. The next thing we knew, he had fallen on his face and blood was pouring from his mouth. Mouths bleed a lot, people.

This was not our first experience with this phenomenon, because Jack has fallen on his mouth at least four other times this year. This was more blood than I had seen, however, and I find bleeding from the mouth particularly troubling, as it is very difficult to see the extent of the damage what with all the crying and wailing and blood pouring out and all. Does he need stitches? Who can tell? At any rate, I held Jack upside down to try and look in there and in the brief flashes I could get, it looked to me like Jack's two front teeth had receded into his gums by at least 50%. I said, "That's it, we're going to the emergency room," and off we went.

I should take a moment here to tell The Husband's side of the story, which is that I "panic" every time Jack gets hurt. He bases this claim on the way I say, "Oh! He's bleeding! Oh! Oh! The blood! Does he need stitches? Should we take him to the ER? How do we clean it? Oh, he's swollen! His lip is swollen! The blood! The blood!" and things along those lines. But it is my position that I do not panic, it's just that I let The Husband be the one in charge of determining the extent of the damage while I take over the job of comforting the screaming, bleeding baby. I do this because I can let him be the one in charge. He's right there, all ready to take charge with his cool, calm, former lifeguard head. If he were not there, however, I would be quite capable of cleaning up the blood and driving to the ER all by myself, because I'd have to be. So no, I don't panic.

So. The ER. The Husband and I were pretty sure that Jack's teeth were probably fine, because he wasn't even crying anymore by the time we were packing him into his car seat, but we weren't going to take any chances with his teeth. He was triaged and registered within 20 minutes of our arrival, and then we had to settle down to wait. The Husband bought Jack a muffin because none of us had had lunch, and Jack had no problems chomping away at it. By the time we were finally seen by the nurse practitioner, Jack was biting a paper cup and pulling on it with his hands, further convincing us that his teeth were fine.

When the NP took a look, he told us that Jack had split his funiculus (that piece of skin that connects the top lip to the gums), but that his teeth looked fine to him. His gums had just swollen up, and that was what made me think his teeth had been jammed. The NP did suggest that we get a dentist to take an x-ray to make sure there was no root damage, and we did that on Saturday. Actually, we didn't. We took him to the dentist, but the dentist said an x-ray wasn't really necessary since Jack's teeth weren't even chipped.

And so it all ended well. Jack's teeth are fine, his funiculus appears to have healed, and we've all agreed that he has filled his quota of accidents for the next year and there will be no more falling on his mouth. We've AGREED.

Hi, Honey, I've reentered the domestic habitat!

The following conversation is a near word-perfect transcription of a typical conversation between me and The Husband as we discuss our days.

THE HUSBAND: You know antifreeze?
MO: Uh... yeah?
TH: I froze it today.
MO: Well, everything freezes eventually.*
TH: We had to run a test at -40 Celsius --
MO: Which is also -40 Fahrenheit!
TH: I know! One time I tried to convert -40C to Fahrenheit in my calculator, and it came back as -40! I did it three times before I realized.
MO: Well, the lines aren't parallel! They have to intersect at some point, right?
TH: Yeah. So anyway, antifreeze freezes at -50F, and we had cooled it so quickly that we overshot -40F, and it froze.
MO: That's pretty cold.
TH: So we're going to run it with ethanol instead, since that freezes below -120C.
MO: Ethanol or ethylene glycol?
TH: Ethanol.

*The Husband helped me remember this conversation, and he maintains that not everything freezes. I said that even hydrogen freezes at absolute zero, and he said no it doesn't. I still think it does, but I suppose he might be right, now that I'm typing this, because I guess that freezing is not the same thing as a cessation of molecular vibration. And yes, I'm typing this footnote as an excuse to write the phrase "cessation of molecular vibration," because I like to show off sometimes.

Hi, Honey, I've reentered the domestic habitat

The following conversation is a near word-perfect transcription of a typical conversation between me and The Husband as we discuss our days.

THE HUSBAND: You know antifreeze?
MO: Uh... yeah?
TH: I froze it today.
MO: Well, everything freezes eventually.*
TH: We had to run a test at -40 Celsius --
MO: Which is also -40 Fahrenheit!
TH: I know! One time I tried to convert -40C to Fahrenheit in my calculator, and it came back as -40! I did it three times before I realized.
MO: Well, the lines aren't parallel! They have to intersect at some point, right?
TH: Yeah. So anyway, antifreeze freezes at -50F, and we had cooled it so quickly that we overshot -40F, and it froze.
MO: That's pretty cold.
TH: So we're going to run it with ethanol instead, since that freezes below -120C.
MO: Ethanol or ethylene glycol?
TH: Ethanol.

*The Husband helped me remember this conversation, and he maintains that not everything freezes. I said that even hydrogen freezes at absolute zero, and he said no it doesn't. I still think it does, but I suppose he might be right, now that I'm typing this, because I guess that freezing is not the same thing as a cessation of molecular vibration. And yes, I'm typing this footnote as an excuse to write the phrase "cessation of molecular vibration," because I like to show off sometimes.

Uh oh, it's magic!

Nanoposting is almost over, and I am desperately trying to hold my head above water over here. I had no idea posting every day would be so taxing. Well, that's not true. I did foresee difficulties which is why I wasn't going to sign up, and I knew that if I did sign up that I would moan and whine about it, because that's what I do. I'm a complainer. Still, it's been really hard! Did you know that Thanksgiving is in November? And our anniversary? And that I am nursing a cold I've had for over a week and am considering taking Mucinex even though the commercials for Mucinex are the most disgusting commercials ever and I wish not to support them? But still, here I am, slaving away at the keyboard. And it's all for you, Internet! All for you!

Last night, The Husband and I watched Night at the Museum. We thoroughly enjoyed it, despite getting a little over-invested in the plot. (Warning: Extremely minor spoilers ahead. Well, not technically minor in that I sort of give away the end, but if you couldn't have guessed how it ended you have never seen a movie before. Or read a book. Or interacted with humans.) We were both incredibly concerned that the T-Rex and the other museum displays would get stuck outside at sunrise. It seemed impossible to us that Ben Stiller would be able to round them all up. How could he do it? There were too many! Ah, but there was one thing we had forgotten. We had neglected to account for the possibility that magic could solve everything in this story about museum displays magically coming to life. Crisis averted!

I would like to think that it is because the movie was so well done that The Husband and I were so worried. Yes. That must be the reason. Because the only other explanation is that we are both idiots.

When Engineers Cook

Sometimes, we improvise. Like when I couldn't find any "turkey laces" so we had to make do with what was in the pantry.





(In case you can't tell, that there is a gingerbread man cookie cutter.)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Not just geek humor, bad geek humor

Every time I try to type or say "NaBloPoMo," it comes out as "NanoBloPoMo." In noting this, I said, "That's when you have to write really tiny entries every day for a month!" The Husband replied, "Yeah! And it's held in February, because February is the shortest month!"

And oh, our sides. They were splitting.

It's one of those posts again

Jack is teething again, and it’s having an effect on his digestion. Yesterday, I asked The Husband if Jack’s morning diaper was poopy or not, because the best days are the days that Jack poops once, and The Husband cleans it up. The Husband may not agree with me here, but he’s wrong.

“Yes, of course it was,” said The Husband.

“Was it all gross?” I asked, because for the past several days it’s been… not normal.

“Yes, it was gross and sticky like it has been lately,” he said. Then he added, “But I don’t want to have a conversation about the consistency of Jack’s poop.”

“I hate to break it to you, but we just did.”

***

On a completely unrelated note, The Husband is currently playing pinball on the computer, and I feel the need to tell you all that I once scored over nine million on computer pinball. Nine million! And when you get a score that high, the gravity goes wonky. It’s very cool.

He and I lead different lives

Things Jack is afraid of: The hairdryer, the vacuum

Things that The Husband is unaware Jack is afraid of: The hairdryer, the vacuum

(In defense of The Husband) Things Jack is probably afraid of but I wouldn't know: The table saw, the router

Things I sort of wish Jack were afraid of because then I'd have an excuse: Paintbrushes

Bring me the soft one who sings!

A while ago, The Husband put Jack to bed, a job that is usually mine. Meanwhile, I went to Target, all by myself. Par-tay.

I came home to a house that was, to my immense relief, blissfully quiet and full of sleeping baby. I asked The Husband if Jack cried before he fell asleep. “Yeah,” came the answer. “It was rough going for a little while there. I kept telling him it was OK, and he would look at me and it was as though he was saying, ‘I believe you, but I am not comforted by you. BRING ME THE WOMAN!’”

How The Husband Very Nearly Ruined Mother’s Day

I’m an easy going person. You don’t get much more low maintenance than me. Take my birthday, for example. All I ask is that my mother calls me The Husband gets me a card. No one else even has to remember it. And I even remind The Husband when it is coming up!

Valentine’s Day? Whatever. A card would be nice, but if he forgets (which has been known to happen), I don’t really mind. Hey, he brings me flowers for no reason all the time, so who am I to complain if he doesn’t bring them that specific day?

And yes, I’d be pretty upset if he forgot Christmas, but only because that would mean he’d had some sort of major head injury.

So for my very first Mother’s Day, I had fairly low expectations. It’s not like I thought I’d have the day off – I’m still a major food source after all. But still, even I have my limits.

See, the night before Mother’s Day, Jack had a rough go of it. Of course, I’m talking about “rough” for Jack; basically, he woke up just when we were about to go to bed and required holding and rocking for about ninety minutes. And because Jack prefers me in the night, The Husband was frustrated in his attempt to give me a break and get Jack back to sleep, and I had to stay up a bit later than I would have liked.

Then, the next morning, Jack woke up earlier than usual, around 5:30 or so. Given that it was Mother’s Day, I asked The Husband if he would go get the baby and bring him to me to nurse in bed. Somewhat grudgingly, he did so. And wooo-eee, but did that baby stink. So I nursed him, and then said, “Do you think you could change his diaper?”

The Husband groaned and said, “I’m really really tired. Couldn’t you do it?”

So I did. And with only the teensiest bit of martyrdom, because, honestly, The Husband looked much more exhausted than I felt. I actually felt like I’d had a reasonable amount of sleep. And naturally, there was a little stinky Mother’s Day gift in the diaper for me. So I had to deposit the baby back in bed with The Husband and then deposit the gift into the toilet and clean up the diaper. (Remember, we use cloth.) Chore done, I returned to bed for what I thought would be an hour or so more of comfy family dozing.

Yeah, no. Jack was UP. He was awake. He was kicking. He was poking me really hard in the eye. And, as far as I could tell, The Husband was oblivious, sleeping away on his side of the bed. Finally, I gave up, got out of bed, and started to get dressed.

See, this is where my line is. I didn’t mind that I got less sleep than The Husband did the night before my very first Mother’s Day*. I didn’t mind having to get up and start my day an hour earlier than I had expected. I didn’t mind – much – having to change a poopy diaper first thing in the morning.

But I did mind The Husband’s sleeping in while I got up to take care of the baby on my very first Mother’s Day ever.

Any other day, I would have happily let him stay in bed, because he was clearly exhausted. But on Mother’s Day? So there I stood next to the bed, looking down at my comfy family, and feeling the prickly little feeling of self-pity and resentment. Should I ask him to get up? Should I let him sleep? I didn’t really want to ask him to get up, because, somehow, that ruined it. I wanted him to offer. And even though I knew he was tired, I really didn’t want to let him sleep in.

But apparently, The Husband’s guardian angel was on duty, because he had a prickly little feeling of his own. Opening one eye, he asked me, “Do you want me to get up with you?”

“Yes,” I said. And he did. And he fed the baby while I steamed some plums for later. Then he surprised me with a card that he put on the flowers he had brought home the day before. And then he acted in the exact same way as he does on every other Saturday and Sunday, and made me breakfast to order.

He makes it so easy to be low maintenance.

*The Husband claims that he was awake the whole time I was in Jack’s room. Since I was actually dozing, I must have gotten more sleep than he did after all. But I did not know this at the time.

Be prepared

The other night, we saw an ad for ABC’s presentation of Castaway. It was the scene where Tom Hanks manages to make fire for the first time. “I actually know how to start a fire without matches,” The Husband told me. “I’ve never had to do it, I just know how. It’s a really weird thing for me to know.”

“Weren’t you a boy scout?” I asked him.

“Yeah.”

“And isn’t that the sort of thing they teach boy scouts?”

“Well, yeah.”

“And did you learn how to do it in boy scouts?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“So it’s not really all that weird, then.”

“Shut up.”

Reason #912 The Husband and I will be an embarrassment to Jack and his potential siblings

On Sunday, The Husband made us pancakes for breakfast while I got dressed. When I emerged from the bathroom, he said, “I made church pancakes.”

“Oh?” I said. “Are they shaped like a church?”

“No.”

“Are they shaped like a cross?”

“No.”

“Are they shaped like the Holy Eucharist?”

“That’s just a circle,” he pointed out. “The traditional shape of pancakes.”

“Well, I know,” I said, “but I thought maybe you were just making a joke because it’s Sunday.” Then I sat down at the table and found amidst the standard circular – or Holy Eucharist shaped –pancakes, two pancakes formed into rings. Looking up, I saw The Husband grinning like an idiot and waiting expectantly. “Are they church pancakes because they’re holey?” I asked him.

“Yeah!” he shouted. And then he giggled for about five minutes.

Uh...I think he did it on purpose

Last night we watched The Office. I wasn't paying close attention at the beginning, so I'm a bit unclear on why, but Michael Scott was organizing a bachelor and a bachelorette party in the office. He charged Jim with hiring the entertainment for the bachelorette party. Jim told the camera that Michael wanted him to hire someone from "Banana Slings," but instead he hired someone from "Historical Figures of Pennsylvania."

"How could anyone get those confused?" asked The Husband.

We don’t expect to be offered a cooking show any time soon

The Husband went grocery shopping yesterday, and bought whole grain tortilla chips. We had them at dinner with salsa which led to a discussion of salt content, as the whole grain chips are much saltier than regular tortilla chips – probably because whole grain is less tasty than processed corn. We compared the milligrams of salt in the two types of chips, and then The Husband read the ingredients on the salsa jar.

“Oh, so that’s why my homemade salsa never tastes like store bought. I don’t put any salt in my salsa, and this jar has 125 mg of sodium per serving,” he said. Then he added, “I wonder how much salt is equivalent to 125 mg of sodium.”

“That’s right,” I said, “because salt weighs more than sodium.”

“But we could figure it out,” replied The Husband. “It’s a simple calculation, after all.”

I considered this. “Sure, but we’d have to get a scale because most recipes call for volumes of salt, and we don’t know how much a teaspoon of salt weighs.”

“True,” said The Husband. “And we couldn’t use the density to convert it because salt is crystalline, so a teaspoon wouldn’t be uniformly dense.”

“Good point,” I said. Then I paused, and added, “You realize I’m going to have to blog this conversation.”

“I understand,” said The Husband

An ounce of prevention

This morning, The Husband asked me to please wake him up when I feed Jack from now on. This is because last night, for the second time, The Husband accused me of putting Jack back to sleep without feeding him. He woke up and saw me swaddling Jack up to get him ready to put to bed, and said, “Did you feed him?”

It had been over three hours since the last time I fed him and I get increasingly weary with each nighttime feeding, so there was more than a little testiness in my tone when I snapped, “Yes, The Husband, I fed him.” But who wouldn’t be at least marginally insulted by the implication that they are using the “starve the baby back to sleep” method of child rearing?

Thus, The Husband’s request that I wake him up whenever I feed Jack from now on. He is attempting to avoid a future incident wherein I completely lose my temper at being accused of starving my child. The Husband does not like it when I lose my temper. Because I so rarely get angry (Confidential to The Doktah: Shut it.), he once told me that being the recipient of my wrath is “like being savaged by a chipmunk.”

The good news is that I don’t have to shoot him death looks anymore.

This post has been brought to you by Emily, who is an Internet Rock Star and linked to me again! So I had to write something new for her legions of fans who are checking me out. Hi, Emily’s readers!

If I’m awake, everyone should be awake

We are extremely fortunate in that Jack usually wakes up twice a night. Once around 1:00 or 2:00 am, and once around 4:00 or 5:00 am. And he also usually goes back to sleep with minimal difficulty, although not always. But the other night, he woke up at 1:30 or so, and then again at 3:00. At 1:30, I fed him after The Husband changed him. When he was done, The Husband, who had just woken back up, saw me swaddling and starting to soothe Jack back to sleep, and he said, “Uh, it’s been almost four hours.” Apparently, he was under the impression that I had sent The Husband to change Jack and then decided to skip the feeding all together and just put him back to sleep.

“Yeah, I already fed him,” I told The Husband.

The Husband was doubtful. “Are you sure?” He really, truly thought that I was just too lazy and tired to feed our hungry baby.

“Yes, I’m sure!” I said. The Husband very reluctantly decided to accept this, and went back to sleep. Which means he was asleep when Jack woke up again a scant ninety minutes later, looking for more food. Asleep The Husband was and asleep he stayed while I had to wake up, stay awake while Jack ate, and then put him back to sleep.

The entire time Jack was eating, I shot dangerous looks at The Husband. It was all I could do not to poke him and say, “Hey! I’m awake! Jack’s eating! Hey!” but I heroically restrained myself.

However. After I got Jack to go back to bed and started to get myself settled, I noticed that about 90% of our blankets and sheets were on The Husband’s side of the bed. In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that this was purely accidental; The Husband does not routinely steal the covers. But on this particular night I was still pretty mad at him for sleeping through the last feeding, so when I lay down and tried to pull the blankets up over myself only to find that they barely covered me, I resorted to yanking them quite viciously from The Husband. I also incorporated a violent roll-over-and-pull-the-blankets move in the secret hope that The Husband’s sleep would be at least a little disturbed.

No such luck.

Not crazy

So I felt the need to reassure the legions of 20 or so people who read my blog on a regular basis that The Husband and I have not gone off the deep end, what with the data-taking and threat of bar graphs. Big Sister #1 got all worried and emailed me because she thought I’d gone off the deep end.

First of all, I am pretty much done with The Baby Whisperer. I found her E.A.S.Y. routine helpful in that I am better able to interpret Jack’s cries and give him what he wants based on his eating/hangin’ out with his peeps/sleeping cycles. For example, Jack cannot stand being tired, and often thinks he’s hungry when he’s actually tired. So when he’s crying but has eaten less than two hours ago and is not rooting, I swaddle the bejeezus out of him, bring him to a dark room, and quiet him down. The Baby Whisperer’s soothing techniques also work pretty well for Jack, and she has a secret tip for burping that also helps.

However. I had to stop reading the books because she’s a little bit nuts. Jack is only four weeks old, so if he wants to be held, I’m damn well going to hold him. I will also rock him if he so desires. And because, as a new mom, I have been stricken with self-doubt and insecurity, I couldn’t keep reading a book which kept telling me that I shouldn’t let my baby sleep on my or my husband’s chests because he’ll get used to it and be unable to sleep without us. Four weeks old, people!

I’d also like to comment on the whole Excel thing. As Big Sister #4 put it yesterday, the fact that The Husband and I were inputting data into Excel is not actually a sign that we have gone overboard. Although using Excel to track their baby’s behavior would be a warning signal for, say, an English major, The Husband and I are engineers. That’s just how we think.

That said, I’m pretty much done not only with the Excel tracking thing, but also with the whole “writing every single thing Jack does down” thing, because I am feeling a bit more comfortable now, and no longer need the crutch to figure out what he wants when he wants it.

But also because I need to chill the heck out.

His mother's child

Jack is pretty much a tiny clone of The Husband, so I was pleased to find something he has picked up from me. Yesterday during his naps, I left the radio on for company. Tuned, naturally, to NPR. After he fell asleep in his second nap, I turned off the radio.

He cried.

How many engineers does it take to raise a baby?

I’ve been reading Secrets of the Baby Whisperer by Tracy Hogg, and have therefore been keeping track of what time Jack eats, how long he does an “activity” (such as staring at the black and white picture thingy), when and for how long he sleeps, etc. But I am having trouble actually seeing a pattern to his schedule, and so I decided to input all of my data into Excel so that I can better visualize his behavioral trends.

“What’s the best way to enter the data?” I asked The Husband. “I think I should probably make a column for the time of day in fifteen-minute increments and then have daily columns for ‘Eat,’ ‘Activity,’ and ‘Sleep.’ What do you think?”

“Yeah, that will work,” replied The Husband. “And just put for how many minutes he does each thing at the start time and it will be easy to make a bar graph.”

I’d say the two of us are pretty well matched, wouldn’t you?

Three years

As I was cleaning up the dinner dishes tonight, The Husband came into the kitchen and gave me a hug. “Happy anniversary,” he said.

“Oh yeah!” I exclaimed. “I forgot!” A lot has been going on lately, so it sort of slipped my mind. “So,” I said. “Three years.”

“And a baby!” replied The Husband.

“So I gave you a son for our anniversary,” I said to The Husband. “What did you get me?”

“Uh…” came the response.

“Nothing?” I cried. “I gave you a baby and you got me nothing at all?”

“Well, I remembered our anniversary,” he protested.

Touche.