Archive for May, 2008
Jenn’s Daily iPhone Pic
31
May
No… I'm not preggo again or re-enacting said pregnancy! Grace is now
chunky enough to ride in style, in the Baby Bjorn. The only downside
is that I'm back to not fitting in the door sideways!!!
Baby Stats
30
May
Just left the pediatrician where Grace had her 2 month check-up. In addition to learning that she still doesn’t like vaccine injections, we got to weigh and measure her. Drumroll please…
8 lbs 6 oz and 21 1/4 inches!!
This puts her at 5% on the full term chart in weight and 10% on the height chart. Look out Full Termers here she comes!
Jenn’s Moment Of Calm… Oops I mean Jenn’s Daily iPhone Pic
29
May
Not cute, necessarily, but effective. I can hear myself think. Thank you carseat! I love you 
Jenn’s Daily iPhone Pic
28
May
Lying still hasn’t really been in the cards for us today (and I don’t mean me). Come to think of it, neither has silence (aka the lack of crying!) She’s cute, but boy the small quiet version we took home from the hospital has been replaced with one that has a pretty repetitive (and loud) soundtrack
Happy 2nd Monthiversary, Grace!
28
May
It seems impossible that it has been that long, but the calendar doesn’t lie (except when it calculates Jenn’s birthday…29 again!?!). It is even harder to remember when we sit her next to some other kid. She looks so small compared to them, but so big compared to the 2 lbs 15 oz that she started with. In fact, she looks so much like a newborn that I thought maybe we should get her an agent and put her in the movies. Newborns in the movies always look like they are already 12 lbs. All we need is a little vaseline and little bulb syringe to the nostrils (it takes the mucous out and she HATES it) and she will look totally at home in the faux Operating Room.
Speaking of dates, next week marks the last date that could honestly have been her birthday. Finally, we can start looking forward, not back. We can now at least pretend that things are normal and cite her adjusted age (currently negative one week) when people ask how old she is. We could now also take the occasion to give Jenn a little surprise delivery party. Here is the plan running through my head…I have one of the grandparents take the baby for the day so Jenn can run errands etc. I follow her around quietly and, when she least expects it (I vote for somewhere near the crack dealers in Neiman-Marcus’ shoe department), I throw a waterballoon at her feet and say “UH OH! Your water broke! Let us get you to the hospital!”. Then we call the doula (so she can bring over some wine) and head back the house. I think it is important that we have a home birth in this situation as the hospital and insurance companies probably won’t “get it”. At the house, I secretly feed her a smoothie made from several large jalapeno peppers to get the proper stomach cramps going. When I tell her what I have done (assuming she has not figured it out) she can start yelling at me about the pain that I have caused, or how much she hates my beard or whatever happens that those birthing classes never showed us. I tell her that it is too late for pain medication because I can already see the baby (sitting over in the lap of the horrified grandparent). Grace, complete with the aforementioned petroleum jelly and freshly syringed nostrils, is handed to me, we all “ooh” and “ahh” and congratulate the new mother…and drink the doula’s wine.
Or, I could just buy flowers.
Ahhh…Home Again
26
May
I just got back from Las Vegas. My good friend Dave celebrated the imminent end of his long and notable career as a single man. Under normal circumstances I would not have made this trip. Grace’s original due date is only 10 days away and Jenn and I should have been nervously waiting for something painful and/or messy to happen. As it happened, Grace changed the rules and, in the days immediately following the birth, Jenn suggested that I go on the trip. In retrospect, it must have been a perfect storm of things that caused an otherwise rational woman to make that suggestion. What sounded like gratitude and love was really a combination of the sense of relief that immediately follows a narrowly dodged bullet, the false sense of security that the $10,000/day babysitters NICU nurses gave us, and the Vicodin. There was probably some love and gratitude in there somewhere too. In any case, the offer was spoken and I had a plane ticket purchased before the comic book-style bubble that contained her words could pop. Then, 10 minutes later, I rebooked the tickets after Jenn pointed out that, in my haste I had chosen the wrong weekend. Vegas baby, Vegas!
For me, Las Vegas is a great blend of optimism, surreality and ridiculousness that is as fun to fly into as it is a relief to leave behind. There are a decade and a half of you-probably-had-to-be-there memories for me and my friends hidden in the lights and the noise. They are the kind of memories that are only shaken loose by an afternoon cocktail, laughed at and quickly swept away before too much thought is given.
You will forgive me (and thank me) if I don’t get into the details of the weekend. Suffice it to say that I am not a richer or more healthy man for going. On my return, I experienced something altogether new: the difficulty of feeding and soothing a crying preemie following an 11pm return flight. Babies apparently don’t care where you have been or what you have been doing, and they will not be ignored. If I can avoid it, I will never experience that fiasco again. If I can manage that, I might count myself as a wiser man.
Jenn’s Daily iPhone Pic
25
May
Nana’s never gonna speak to me again for sharing this picture, but I can’t resist sharing this special pic of my two most favorite gals first thing in the morning!
