Boy Oh Boyers

Last week Karis came over on Friday to spend part of the day. Karis' mom Leah and I were piloting our baby swapping arrangement which will theoretically allow us each to spend one baby-free day (or portion thereof) at our respective workplaces. Rowan had spent Monday afternoon with Leah and Karis, which from what I hear was an interesting experience. You see, Karis had been sound asleep when I arrived and dropped off Rowan. So this poor one-year-old woke up from a coma-like nap only to find her mother holding a strange baby who seemingly came from nowhere! I think I would have had a royal conniption too. But it sounds like Karis had a big enough one for both of us.

Anyway, it was lots of fun watching a one year old and a two month old at the same time. They paid no attention to each other, and as long as Karis had the attention of Angel (our Siberian husky) there were no complaints. Later that evening I was noting on the phone to my mom that Karis is nearly too tall to fit onto the diaper changing table. The changing pads come in a standard size, so it's not as if you can just buy a bigger one as a baby grows. My mom laughed heartily and said, "You mean you lifted her onto the changing table?" I replied perplexedly, "Of course. Where else could I change her?" My mom wisely stated that back in her day, people would change a diaper on the floor especially if the child weighed...oh...25 pounds or so, which Karis does!

It was with this catty suggestion that I had a bigger thought. There is definite inertia involved in raising a baby. I can already feel it. I mean, if Jill hadn't suggested I offer Rowan more than a 4 ounce bottle at night just in case he wanted it, I would have still been using the little bottles just because that's what I started out doing. If Mom hadn't suggested I push the last feeding of the day back to 10pm so that we could reduce Rowan to one nighttime feeding rather than two, we would still be waking up at midnight and 4am to feed him rather than just once at 2am. This inertia, while the stuff of comedy on the surface, seems to me a dangerous thing. Good thing I'm now aware and on guard! It's sort of like solving a little puzzle every day. It's a puzzle consisting of essentially one question: what am I still doing that no longer makes any sense at all, and what should I be doing differently?

We went for Rowan's two-month checkup today. He is 13 pounds 1 ounce. ("Wow, you've really grown!", said Dr. Zimmerman). All is well. He got three shots (containing seven or more vaccinations), one oral vaccine, a heel prick, and a belly button cauterization just for good measure. He's well on his way to immunity to mumps, measles, rubella, whooping cough, diptheria, tetanus, polio, chicken pox, rotavirus diarrhea, various strains of ear infections, and hepatitis B. Whew! Rowan cried during the heel prick and shots, but the rest of the time he was all smiles. I started seeing spots while the nurse was wringing blood from that tender little foot, so Grandmommy got to oversee the rest of the needlework while I laid down. I know, I'm a huge wimp. Hey, I'm making progress! Slowly. (Oh, and yes, for those of you who didn't know, Grandmommy is back visiting yet again so I can get a paper finished in time for a Friday deadline. We're SO thankful she is such a trooper for that 8-hour drive one way.)

It's my first paper deadline since Rowan's been born. I'm thrilled to report that the paper has been submitted now, a full...well...I don't know, maybe 9 hours ahead of the 11:59pm (Hawaiian time) deadline! It's been interesting leaving Rowan to go to the office so much this past week. On the one hand it was super to be back in productive mode, thinking deep research-y thoughts and collaborating with people. Plus, Grandmommy was here with Rowan so there was absolutely no need to worry. On the other hand, it was extremely difficult leaving him for many hours. There's just this whole part of me that could sit around all day and watch him sleep.

Speaking of which, sleep is pretty much what I want to do now. Grandmommy leaves in the morning, and Leah and I are heading to a 7am garage sale! Whee! (And by "whee", I think I mean, "I'm out of my mind!") ;-) Oh, but wait...tomorrow is FootballDay. Rowan will be helping me cheer on the Yellowjackets. SO much to look forward to, no time to be tired.

Today Rowan gets to fly in an airplane for the first time since he's been born! We'll fly to Jacksonville, Florida (chosen because of the availability of direct flights) where Grandmommy will pick us up and take us the 2 hours back to Valdosta, Georgia. There, Rowan will get to meet his Great-Grammies for the first time! She's so excited to see him, it's eating her up. Anyway, we'll spend a few days there then we'll trek to Atlanta where I'll attend a conference while Grandmommy and Rowan hang out in the lovely midtown hotel room. Finally, Rowan and I will fly back home on Sunday where we'll meet an eagerly awaiting Daddy at the airport.

I pause for a moment and reflect on the day, today. I'm sure everyone else will be reflecting too since just saying "September 11th" brings so many difficult memories. For me it also brings memories of transformation. See, it was September 11th, 2001 that made Delta Air Lines offer generous leave packages to employees, and I took one. It was that leave package that let me move back to my hometown and begin teaching at Valdosta State University. It was that teaching job that helped me see a Ph.D. in computer science, followed by a teaching career, is what I would pursue. And it was living back there again, in the most unlikely town in southern Georgia, that I met my husband. And of course, it was meeting that husband that led me to the life I have now, including the most wonderful baby ever born to anybody. See, transformation. So I fly today with nothing but thankfulness in my own heart and prayers for restoration and justice yet to come for all of us.

Rowan was awesome in the airport and on the plane. He nursed on takeoff and landing just like the pediatrician said (swallowing clears the ears so the pressure change isn't uncomfortable). He looked around and dozed the rest of the time. Thanks to several helpful strangers, I didn't have any trouble getting all the baby "stuff" through the airport or on and off the plane. Rowan has now met his Great-Grammies. I think we'll all take a nap! By far the most traumatized of the day has been the cat, who surely must have thought a tiger had moved in the first time Rowan let out a screechy wail. Perhaps the cath's tail will get un-fluffed sometime soon, but for now the he's still quite on guard!

This post is going to be filled with twirly whirly events. I can only describe them that way because theyre so strange. :-) Well, I guess not that strange, but they've at least kept me on my toes.

Last Tuesday Rowan and I flew into Jacksonville, FL where we were picked up by Grandmommy (Beth, my mom) and whisked off to my hometown so Rowan could meet his Great-Grammies. That went great, but I came down with a little cold. It was basically just some congestion and a low grade fever. Friday we set off for Atlanta as planned: Grandmommy, Aunt Julie, Rowan, and me. Our dear friends Angel, Michael, and Patrick live south of Atlanta so we stopped for dinner there. It was great, and we headed to our Residence Inn in Midtown. Somewhere in the middle of the night I woke up feeling really cold and sweaty so just to be safe I took my temperature -- and it was 102! I IMMEDIATELY went downstairs to the front desk, armed with my credit card, and explained what was going on: I needed a room separate from the suite where everyone else was. I mean, even when I had just a low fever (99.3 average) I was covering my face while I breastfed Rowan, and I practically refused to touch him otherwise. Now with a high fever I absolutely couldn't stand the thought of exposing him! Anyway, the front desk guy was SO understanding, he gave me a room for free for the night. In the morning when I still was fevered (though not as high) he let me stay in the room for a very reduced rate for the next night. I spent all day yesterday (Saturday) cooped up in my hotel room when I was supposed to be at the conference. It was awful! At least there was football on television...until the cable went out on the whole city block! Yikes. That motivated me to take a what I thought was very short stroll to a drugstore to get surgical masks so I could finally go feed Rowan rather than pumping milk and passing it off to Mom and Julie That worked, and finally last night after 24 hours of not getting near him, I fed Rowan while wearing the mask, fresh clean clothes, and scrubbing up to my biceps with anti-bacterial soap!

He is totally healthy, as are Grandmommy and Aunt Julie Today my fever is gone so I did attend part of the conference (yay). But I definitely am not feeling well enough to fly with Rowan, so would you believe I'm typing this message in the car (Grandmommy has one of those awesome Cingular wireless cards for the laptop) on the way back to south Georgia? I'll fly home Thursday instead of today...from Jacksonville instead of Atlanta. I'm sure to be healthy as a horse by then.

Now that you've read this story for its entertainment value, take it also as my excuse that there may not be a picture of the day for tomorrow and possibly a few days after that. I'm sure you've noticed I post the pictures of the day many days ahead of time, and today was the last one. Not only am I low on energy, the internet connection from my parents' rural house is pretty slow so uploading pics will be a task of torturous proportions.

Oh, and Georgia Tech lost yesterday. The cable in our hotel came back on in time for me to see that.

Well, I've done it. Late, but better than never, right? Picture of the day for today is up. I'm working on posting more for the upcoming days. Cross your fingers and keep checkin'!

We got home yesterday from our wonderful visit to Georgia. And Florida. Rowan and his father were clearly thrilled to see each other. Right now one is taking a nap on the other's chest (I'll let you figure out who's who.) Anyway, to celebrate our safe homecoming, here's a bonus photo. Isn't it sad when there's only one per day? :-) Great-Grammies was doing her best to get a laugh out of Rowan by rubbing his tummy, and clearly she succeeded!

What a Sunday! Let's cover the catastrophes in reverse order. This evening just before Uncle Tim (a.k.a. Tim) arrived for dinner, I was simmering a promising pomegranate rub for the pork tenderloin. (Gotta' love that Alton Brown on Food Network). Anyway, it was time for Rowan to eat and by the time his meal was over, Tom and I noticed an odd smell coming from the kitchen. Apparently my pomegranate sauce had gone from thickening to...um...smoking. And it was the consistency of black tar. Which is just about how our house smelled. Thank goodness for the 15-minute marinade in the pantry.

Just an hour before the Pomegranate Sauce Disaster of '07, I had spilled nail polish on the carpet. Could it be that I would spill it during a French manicure, where some pale color of white or pink might fall on the tan fibers in our living room? NO! I would have to be painting "Chick Flick Cherry" onto my little tootsies. That's right, dears -- red nail polish on the living room floor. Thankfully Tom read quickly online and we were able to get it up. Here's a surprise: to remove nail polish from carpet, apparently you should use nail polish remover! And no, it didn't eat a hole in the carpet (at least not yet).

About two hours before the the Nail Polish Disaster came the minor catastrophe with really deep comic value. Tom and Rowan had retired to the recliner for a little Sunday afternoon reading while I went to take a little nap. I had fallen into quite a deep slumber when I was awakened by Rowan crying and Tom saying "Gonna' need some help. There's poop everywhere." Everywhere indeed! Sometimes I suppose the sheer air pressure is just too much for a diaper, and the poop goes up the back (of the baby, not just the diaper). Of course then it comes through the clothes onto whatever happens to have the misfortune of being around. Oh, yes -- and then when the soiled garment is removed, there's poop left in the hair. Yummy. It was straight to the kitchen sink for this little stinker!

After that short list of unexpected obstacles, followed by what ended up being a delicious dinner, we did our normal nighttime bath. It is this bath, and its accompanying after-bath ritual, that I'll tell you about now to leave a smile on your face after all. As you may have noticed from the photos, our Rowan is a roly poly boy. He's squishy. Ample. Cuddly. You get the idea; frankly, he's a fat baby in every sense of the word! But we're not worried about this. He's had nothing but breastmilk since he was born so whatever fat he has, he obviously needs -- but the fat he does have is extraordinary. It results in creases all over the place: on his wrists, forearms, upper arms, neck, thighs, ankles, wrists, and more. These poor crevices have become irritated perhaps from moisture, so Tom had the brilliant idea to powder them after the bath. But we don't have baby powder. Corn starch, though, is a pantry staple. So we went for it. The next thought: how to apply it? I decided it seemed powdery indeed, therefore my normal mode of applying powdery substances was brought to bear on this new task. Yes, my makeup bag was robbed of quite the high end makeup brush, and it is now relegated to brushing powdery whiteness into my son's fat folds! In case you wonder how a baby might react to having his hither and thither regions tickled by a makeup brush, let's just say he thinks it's funnier than Jay Leno doing a standup about pomegranates.

Three months is considered a sort of magical age where experts seem to agree a baby should be in some sort of routine. Our little one is just over a week shy of three months (can you believe it?!?), so I was wondering just how much routine is actually present in his everyday behavior. You know me: I made a chart to track it. And, it turns out he's actually quite the little creature of habit. Every day he seems to be waking up just before 6am which is good because his father eats breakfast while entertaining our chipper fellow. Then Dad and Rowan venture in to wake up Mom, who wastes no time getting awake and cheerful. Breakfast is around 6:30am for Rowan, who then plays for another hour by usually doing any subset of the following set of things: sitting in Mom's lap making faces with her, laying on the Winnie-the-Pooh mat doing tummy time, bouncing in the bouncer while sitting in front of the patio door with the glass open, sitting in the high chair (which reclines to quite the comfy infant position) listening to Mom narrate her dish-doing tasks, or possibly bouncing in the bouncer with Mom while she showers and sings every silly song she can think of (do you know your school's alma mater? Rowan's mommy does!). :-) Around 8am it's naptime for Rowan who sleeps for about an hour in the crib. Then, more playtime and a second breakfast around 9:30. More playtime until about 11:00, then another nap until about noon for lunch. Just after lunch we've seemed to have to run a wide variety of errands on most days, so we load up into the car. Turns out Rowan is ecstatic if we ride with the windows down! The afternoon follows the same eat, play, sleep pattern. Daddy gets home around 5:30; Rowan is usually just waking up from another nap and gearing up for his dinner at 6:00. After Rowan's dinner, Mommy and Daddy have dinner while Rowan sits in his swing next to the dining table (for those who have visited us, yes, the swing has been moved from the living into the dining room). Then there's more quality play and talking time, heavily peppered with making "goo" sounds at Daddy. 7:00 brings bathtime, which involves Mommy filling up the big ol' tub with warm water while Daddy strips Rowan down. Then Mommy gets into the tub and Rowan is passed to her. Could we accomplish a bath without the huge tub of water? Yes. But it would be far less fun for Mommy. (I'm just thankful he has never pooped in the bathtub! He used to poop all the time during his spongebaths. Small blessings, right?) Anyway, after the drying routine including a generous dusting of cornstarch to the crevices, Rowan usually takes his final nap of the day on Daddy's chest. In fact, right now downstairs Daddy is watching "Heroes", a show which Mommy finds far too stressful (kinda' like that "24" thing that started some years ago. One episode of that had my blood pressure through the roof! Who needs it?). Anyway, at my pleading, Tom is even wearing wireless headphones (they were his Father's Day present) so the sound doesn't overload Rowan's napping little brain. But Rowan is snuggled on the Daddy chest just as happy as can be. Finally, around 9pm Rowan wakes up and gets his goodnight meal. After a diaper change and a swaddle, he goes right to sleep in his crib.

People are always asking what he's like at night. Well, of course we've only been back from Georgia for a few nights, and while we were there Grandmommy took all night duties. Here at home, he sleeps until about 3:00am before demanding a feeding. Sometimes it's very sound sleep, and other times he does a lot of grumbling and grunting. Very rarely do I have to get up to put him back to sleep; maybe once every other night I've had to go give him his pacifier. Daddy does the 3am-ish feeding with a bottle and then looks after Rowan for the rest of the morning while Mommy gets some uninterrupted earplug-aided sleep. Then, a little before 6am, the day starts anew.

We're working on ending the feeding in the middle of the night. The pediatrician says it's fine to do that, the books all say it's fine, and we're following the Ferber method of gradually reducing the volume of the nighttime feeding. We've gone down by half an ounce every other day. Tonight he'll get an even 4 ounces; two days from now, 3.5. Supposedly he'll adjust to taking slightly more nutrition during the day as his nighttime menu option is pared down. And SUPPOSEDLY after that, we'll be 75% of the way to a baby who sleeps somewhat reliably through the night (10am until 5:30am or so) without needing us. Supposedly. ;-)

Speaking of which, sometimes to keep things in perspective I go nose around other babies' blogs...and seeing this post by the Teagues reminded me just how fast this beautiful, silky soft, cuddly infant stuff will be over. I guess the midnight kisses and rocking will seems like only the blink of an eye as I look back on this precious time.

Leah and I executed a successful baby swap again this week. It's always so much fun to play with Karis when she comes over. For the first time today, Rowan actually seemed to care that there was another baby in the house! And the awareness was mutual. Even though the words aren't fully formed, Karis is displaying an impressive vocabulary. She definitely knows "baby". And "ball". Oh, and "dog", "woof", "duck", "light"...

In this picture you can see Rowan in his Bumbo baby seat. He's still just a tad small for it, so there's obviously space for him to slouch over a little. But he'll be filling it up in no time. I let go of him just long enough to snap this picture, which is why it's one of the more candid shots you'll see on this site. Well, maybe that's not accurate. They're almost all candid, it's just that I take a series of 20 or 30 shots within one or two minutes to ensure that at least one of them will come out looking cute...or at least entertaining. With two babies on hand, there's no such luxury!

What a beautiful day! Cool in the morning and evening, just warm in the afternoon with low humidity and a nice breeze. Uncle Tim came over and we all had dinner on the deck. After the Great Pomegranate Disaster, it was a relief to make one Alton Brown recipe quite succesfully. Cumin in kabob meat marinade? I never would have thought of it.

Rowan and I suffered two disappointing FootballDays prior to today; but for now we're triumphant as Georgia Tech slipped past Clemson to win. Whew! There's only so much stress a football baby can take. :-) Oh, by the way, to all grandparents: don't worry that Rowan will grow up to be a football player. Nope, too high stress for Mommy. It'll be a much safer sport. Not sure what, but we'll do the adequare research when the time comes. Tee Ball for Dummies, anyone?

Our living room has been rearranged. The sectional, massive as it was, has been broken apart. The love seat portion is now in our breakfast nook, the totally un-used kitchen table a thing of the past. Now there's floor space in the living room for Rowan's Superyard (no pictures of it yet, but you can see Karis playing in hers here and here.) The Superyard has been populated by numerous toys that fascinate Rowan. The fact that he can't reach over and operate them yet doesn't seem to limit his amusement. It's nice to have a reserved area where the toys and Rowan can lay about and not be walked on by the dog! I'm sure there will be MANY pictures to come in the Superyard.