We've been handed a succession of beautiful days recently, and since my heavy-lifting work has largely ended for the semester, I've been out to see some of it. The Park Powers That Be have turned on the water fountains for the summer, which means that the boy spends much of his outside time attempting to get wet and then pulling at his soaked shirt and shorts, wanting them off, saying "Wet! Wet! I'm all wet!"
The newest fountains in the area sit in the park at the back of our building, rising at the touch of a big black button. Our son can sit at our table and spot his friends dousing themselves, calling out their names through his macaroni and cheese. There's Marcus, and Alexander, Ishan with his basketball, the twins Hannah and Emma with their big matching buckets, and Sophia, his best friend, who lives exactly one floor above us, "All Wet" as usual and unable to contain her joy (as usual). This fact about the relative location of Sophia's house has proved to be a tantalizing bit of new knowledge for the boy; he points up to the ceiling before naps and lights out and confirms "Sophia's up stairs." She is indeed, probably pointing to the floor at exactly the same time.
Despite now having a second child, and despite what everyone says about how the second child always "gets the shaft," we've managed to send out a birth announcement for her. The mailings seem like a little bit of left-over ceremony in these e-mail days, but we like the feel of folded paper, the old geometries of envelopes, and we were determined to give them both something like the same public debut. Besides, we had a rough template for the boy's announcement that we liked, which made the craftwork go smoothly. So out it went within, no less, one month of her birth.
The template was a preemie template, however. What made it preemie? Here's a secret: Most birth announcements that meet you in your mailbox provide size specifics--usually length and weight. Those sent by preemie parents tend to avoid these numbers, instead (as we did) remaining satisfied to broadcast the date and place of birth. At the time, we were proud of our son's just existing. Moreover, his birth length and weight tended to remind us of how early he was and of the challenges we most likely had to face because he could fit in my hand. For us, it was enough that he was.
Simply because we didn't publish an answer to the question about his weight and height didn't mean, of course, that it went away. Now it's a curiosity, even if he still hangs low on the growth charts, but then we bristled when someone asked how big he was. I remember once pushing him through a grocery store around the corner from our West Village apartment and being accosted by what must have been a mid-twenties male, who scolded, "What is he, 24 hours old?" He was, in fact, over a month, then, perfectly capable of surviving amongst the bags of flour and cuts of meat. On another occasion not too much later, some middle-aged woman waiting with us for a light to change asked (again with more than a little scold in her voice) "How old and how much does he weigh?" Tired of dealing with blunt, wounding smalltalk, my wife asked her the same--namely, "How old are you, and how much do you weigh?" She seemed to be as happy to hear the question--and as willing to answer it--as we were.
And but our daughter's announcement also went out stating only that she was born in New York on a particular April day and that that was enough to be extremely proud of. Size changes, after all. Our delight at our children's starting their time with us--of being here--is the constant we always come back to.
More later perhaps.
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Big Girl Gets Bigger
Another visit to the pediatrician for our daughter. The scale confirms our smarting arms--she's gained another pound in less than a month. After last visit, she was 10 pounds 7 ounces. My wife and I always have a friendly wager on the new numbers. This time around I won, guessing 11 lb. 9 oz. to my wife's 11 lb. 4 oz. Our smiling daughter came in at 11 lb. 10 oz.
She's already good to her father.
She's already good to her father.
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Big Girl
Just came back from checking out the girl at the pediatrician. Turns out that she's 9 lb. 4 oz., having gained nearly two pounds in about three weeks.
(It took our much earlier son at least three months, if not more, to reach the 9 lb. mark.)
Big, healthy girl.
(It took our much earlier son at least three months, if not more, to reach the 9 lb. mark.)
Big, healthy girl.
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
"Sister Baby"
Bright today, the sun high early and pushing itself everywhere. My son has also been getting up early these past few days, even before 6 a.m. Usually this gives us more time outside to adore the Scoops and Dump Trucks that are clearing the ground a few blocks away for another luxury high-rise. The precious parks that skirt our building here in lower Manhattan are already quite crowded these days, even during the week, so we mutter curses under our breath when we walk by these spots that could each bring another thousand residents or so to the neighborhood. And then we wonder whether we could afford a place there.
It's been a week since "the girls" came home, and at first my son didn't take things at all well. This is understandable, as one might well imagine finding another dedicated target of love in the house distressing for someone used to being the Center Of All Things. He's never been an aggressive child, so his frustration at her arrival and her staying didn't bubble up in headbutts or hits. Instead, everything conspired against him inside the house. Go outside and the sun and sandbox make him forget about the change; take him home and he crumples on the floor at the least resistance to his plans. And he's been sick with some sort of respiratory thing that clogs him up, which itself made for difficult sleeping and its nasty friend General Crankiness. The combination of factors turned out to be quite a cocktail, and he proved again and again why non-violent protest can be an effective means of getting what you want. For about a week he simply refused to eat any meals inside the house. Period. Put him in his chair at the table and he explodes into sobs and slurry strings of "Out please!" Pack the same food away to nibble at out on a walk and it's gone in no time.
Where, we wondered, did our lovely son go?
But then, like a fever breaking, he came back to us after about a week, reminding us why we appreciate him as we do. After a particularly bad dinner and an epic Daddy v. Son Bath and Diaper struggle, he came out of his bedroom a new--or rather old and familiar--boy. He asked for his dinner and ate every last bit of quesadilla--cheering "TEE-ah" (for tortilla) in fact, between bites. And before laying him down to sleep in his Big Bed we said goodnight to various things in his room, as we always do. At the very end I took him into our bedroom and stood above our daughter's bassinet. "Goodnight, sister baby," I said. "Goodnight, Sister Baby," he echoed softly through a smile.
From that point on, he's been fascinated by her. If you want him up on your lap, just hold the girl, and he'll make his way over. He gives her sweet pats, points out Baby's Hair, Baby's Mouth, Baby's Ear, etc. He's pure energy next to her, moving closer then away, pointing then holding back his own hands. Just over a week old, she's basically still a tight bundle of need. The difference between them now is staggering, both in size of body and self. We can't wait to see her at his age now, and to see them both come to know each other as we know they will.
So things are working out.
Oh yeah, and we bought him a little doll stroller as a gift from his sister, and he can't get enough of it. Whatever works. Right?
More later perhaps.
It's been a week since "the girls" came home, and at first my son didn't take things at all well. This is understandable, as one might well imagine finding another dedicated target of love in the house distressing for someone used to being the Center Of All Things. He's never been an aggressive child, so his frustration at her arrival and her staying didn't bubble up in headbutts or hits. Instead, everything conspired against him inside the house. Go outside and the sun and sandbox make him forget about the change; take him home and he crumples on the floor at the least resistance to his plans. And he's been sick with some sort of respiratory thing that clogs him up, which itself made for difficult sleeping and its nasty friend General Crankiness. The combination of factors turned out to be quite a cocktail, and he proved again and again why non-violent protest can be an effective means of getting what you want. For about a week he simply refused to eat any meals inside the house. Period. Put him in his chair at the table and he explodes into sobs and slurry strings of "Out please!" Pack the same food away to nibble at out on a walk and it's gone in no time.
Where, we wondered, did our lovely son go?
But then, like a fever breaking, he came back to us after about a week, reminding us why we appreciate him as we do. After a particularly bad dinner and an epic Daddy v. Son Bath and Diaper struggle, he came out of his bedroom a new--or rather old and familiar--boy. He asked for his dinner and ate every last bit of quesadilla--cheering "TEE-ah" (for tortilla) in fact, between bites. And before laying him down to sleep in his Big Bed we said goodnight to various things in his room, as we always do. At the very end I took him into our bedroom and stood above our daughter's bassinet. "Goodnight, sister baby," I said. "Goodnight, Sister Baby," he echoed softly through a smile.
From that point on, he's been fascinated by her. If you want him up on your lap, just hold the girl, and he'll make his way over. He gives her sweet pats, points out Baby's Hair, Baby's Mouth, Baby's Ear, etc. He's pure energy next to her, moving closer then away, pointing then holding back his own hands. Just over a week old, she's basically still a tight bundle of need. The difference between them now is staggering, both in size of body and self. We can't wait to see her at his age now, and to see them both come to know each other as we know they will.
So things are working out.
Oh yeah, and we bought him a little doll stroller as a gift from his sister, and he can't get enough of it. Whatever works. Right?
More later perhaps.
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
What We Can Remember Now That We've Started to Forget
"The Girls" are now home, as of Sunday morning, for good--in every sense of that last word.
The past few days are already fraying around the edges in my memory, so I want to get it out and down before nature completes the job. So bear with me.
Last Thursday night around 7 p.m., after we'd finished dinner (I can't quite remember even now what we ate--see?), my wife's water broke. She had been feeling, well, different for the past few days, like a small hand had reached through her stomach and was gripping her lower back. Which means that we weren't that surprised, really. And since her water broke with our son, is was clear what was happening. This time I wasn't on a plane from Memphis, and we were much more calm overall. We even had a bag packed, like in the movies. We called our babysitter, and she came right away, practically shoving us out the door to the hospital.
It was a beautiful night, the huddle of buildings in lower Manhattan "unutterly crisp" in the twilight, as cummings put it somewhere. We wound our way around the east part of the island on the FDR drive up to the hospital, passing under the bridges dressed in pearls for the night. Traffic was light, so we weren't worried that we'd someday be telling the story of our daughter arriving in the back of a taxi. (And besides, what to tip for that?) We walked in the front doors of the hospital, and when the guard stopped us to ask for ID, my wife pointed at her belly, and he stepped aside. It was late enough that the usually busy halls were rather empty, almost as many mops as people going up and down the marble.
Up on the 7th floor, we checked my wife in and were pointed to Triage Room 4, which was a profound change from the last visits--the first of many. We knew from last time that once the water breaks, we would be meeting the girl rather soon. And since my wife was nearly 36 weeks along, the doctors wouldn't work to keep the little girl in and may in fact induce if nature proved too lazy. The nurse strapped on the familiar monitors and the concise room filled up with the blips tracking her quick heart. We waited. Eventually, a resident came in to check the position of the baby, among other things, and things looked good. A newer nurse, all Texas cheerleader like, arrived to find a vein for my wife's IV. After taping down her line, she wheeled around to me to ask "Would you like one too? I don't want you to feel left out." Funny.
We were moved over to Birthing Room 3, one of the smaller ones but with a nice view. The nurse there, the one who would be with us until the end, could have been, well, more nurse-like. (Throughout the night she questioned my wife's tolerance for pain. Knowing my wife as I do, her questions were certainly unfounded and not at all entertaining to either of us.) Rumors soon began about the doctor who would deliver our daughter, mainly concerning how to say his name. He's French Canadian, and the various accents of those who passed through to check blood pressure, temperature, etc., all finished off his name with their own peculiar flourishes. He himself came in later with his own pleasant lilt in his speech, which helped him seem just a little foreign in the right way and immensely competent. We made introductions and forced jokes.
Her labor progressed all by itself, and no drugs were prescribed beyond penicillin and just plain water. Everyone went away; and we were left to wait. A couple of hours slunk by, and my wife's contractions became more assertive, pulling her face tight every 4-6 minutes. We're skipping lots of downtime here, but eventually my wife decided not to be a hero and asked for an epidural. The two anesthesiologists arrived and ushered me out of the room. Turns out that men are required to leave during this process because in general they don't tend to react all that well to the insertion of a rather large needle into their wifes' spine--reactions that (we were told) usually constitute threats to the doctors or fainting dead away. I probably wouldn't have done either, but I was grateful for the excuse in any event.
I came back from the hallway outside and an overpriced bag of pretzels to find the epidural guys finishing up. In perhaps the most bizarre stretch of the evening, we talked for several minutes with them about one of their passions, namely a website called www.privateislandsonline.com (billed as "The world's largest online directory of private islands for sale or rent"). He proved scarily knowledgeable about where one could buy entire islands, from $20,000 plops of sand in the Philippines to multimillion dollar places off more popular resorts. So there's that. Satisfied with my wife's numbness, they left us alone to rest as much as we could.
I'll skip ahead again, bypassing the fitful attempts at sleep and the nervous chatter about muscling two kids. And so the resident came in around 4 a.m. to check my wife's progress, and she was nearly ready. "You're an excellent patient," was her diagnosis. She called the doctor, and he came in looking a little rumpled. He had been napping when the resident called him, but he sharpened up quickly (and the confession was cute, we thought). The baby was indeed on her way.
I expected more doctors and nurses to flood in, but only one, a staff pediatrician, started to shuffle things around in the adjoining room housing the newborn warmer and the isolette. With our son, I can remember at least five to six folks standing ready. No Code Blue expected this time around apparently. In what seemed like a Why Don't We Try This? kind of approach, my wife was encouraged to push as her contractions came on. So she did that, me counting to ten like in the movies and on TV, reminding her to breathe. (ASIDE: Lamaze is basically a rip-off; any kind of distraction will do just as well.) For the weak-stomached, I'll pass over the particulars to the most striking difference to our first birth experience. She came out rather easily all in all, wet and slick and flailing. The doctor lifted her in a towel and settled her in my wife's arms for just a moment. No crowds, no tubes. The pediatrician took her to clean her up, and a strong, sharp cry burst out of her. We didn't hear our son cry for about two months. They weighed her. We had placed our bets--I said 5 lb. something, my wife, feeling reckless, guessed in the 6-lb. range. She came in at 7 lb. 1.5 oz., a true heavyweight for a 35-weeker. And her APGAR scores were 9 and 9. (We were told that the pediatricians at the hospital "just don't give tens.")
I got to hold her in delivery for a bit before they took her to the nursery. She felt like nearly nothing, a piece of light that would float up if I let go. I didn't. We looked out the window together for the first time at the great city into which she was just pushed. I could only imagine her thoughts, her body beginning to bloom just like the city itself on any Friday morning. She met the sight with a cry, and it was all I could do not to join her.
Our girl had arrived.
Good night.
The past few days are already fraying around the edges in my memory, so I want to get it out and down before nature completes the job. So bear with me.
Last Thursday night around 7 p.m., after we'd finished dinner (I can't quite remember even now what we ate--see?), my wife's water broke. She had been feeling, well, different for the past few days, like a small hand had reached through her stomach and was gripping her lower back. Which means that we weren't that surprised, really. And since her water broke with our son, is was clear what was happening. This time I wasn't on a plane from Memphis, and we were much more calm overall. We even had a bag packed, like in the movies. We called our babysitter, and she came right away, practically shoving us out the door to the hospital.
It was a beautiful night, the huddle of buildings in lower Manhattan "unutterly crisp" in the twilight, as cummings put it somewhere. We wound our way around the east part of the island on the FDR drive up to the hospital, passing under the bridges dressed in pearls for the night. Traffic was light, so we weren't worried that we'd someday be telling the story of our daughter arriving in the back of a taxi. (And besides, what to tip for that?) We walked in the front doors of the hospital, and when the guard stopped us to ask for ID, my wife pointed at her belly, and he stepped aside. It was late enough that the usually busy halls were rather empty, almost as many mops as people going up and down the marble.
Up on the 7th floor, we checked my wife in and were pointed to Triage Room 4, which was a profound change from the last visits--the first of many. We knew from last time that once the water breaks, we would be meeting the girl rather soon. And since my wife was nearly 36 weeks along, the doctors wouldn't work to keep the little girl in and may in fact induce if nature proved too lazy. The nurse strapped on the familiar monitors and the concise room filled up with the blips tracking her quick heart. We waited. Eventually, a resident came in to check the position of the baby, among other things, and things looked good. A newer nurse, all Texas cheerleader like, arrived to find a vein for my wife's IV. After taping down her line, she wheeled around to me to ask "Would you like one too? I don't want you to feel left out." Funny.
We were moved over to Birthing Room 3, one of the smaller ones but with a nice view. The nurse there, the one who would be with us until the end, could have been, well, more nurse-like. (Throughout the night she questioned my wife's tolerance for pain. Knowing my wife as I do, her questions were certainly unfounded and not at all entertaining to either of us.) Rumors soon began about the doctor who would deliver our daughter, mainly concerning how to say his name. He's French Canadian, and the various accents of those who passed through to check blood pressure, temperature, etc., all finished off his name with their own peculiar flourishes. He himself came in later with his own pleasant lilt in his speech, which helped him seem just a little foreign in the right way and immensely competent. We made introductions and forced jokes.
Her labor progressed all by itself, and no drugs were prescribed beyond penicillin and just plain water. Everyone went away; and we were left to wait. A couple of hours slunk by, and my wife's contractions became more assertive, pulling her face tight every 4-6 minutes. We're skipping lots of downtime here, but eventually my wife decided not to be a hero and asked for an epidural. The two anesthesiologists arrived and ushered me out of the room. Turns out that men are required to leave during this process because in general they don't tend to react all that well to the insertion of a rather large needle into their wifes' spine--reactions that (we were told) usually constitute threats to the doctors or fainting dead away. I probably wouldn't have done either, but I was grateful for the excuse in any event.
I came back from the hallway outside and an overpriced bag of pretzels to find the epidural guys finishing up. In perhaps the most bizarre stretch of the evening, we talked for several minutes with them about one of their passions, namely a website called www.privateislandsonline.com (billed as "The world's largest online directory of private islands for sale or rent"). He proved scarily knowledgeable about where one could buy entire islands, from $20,000 plops of sand in the Philippines to multimillion dollar places off more popular resorts. So there's that. Satisfied with my wife's numbness, they left us alone to rest as much as we could.
I'll skip ahead again, bypassing the fitful attempts at sleep and the nervous chatter about muscling two kids. And so the resident came in around 4 a.m. to check my wife's progress, and she was nearly ready. "You're an excellent patient," was her diagnosis. She called the doctor, and he came in looking a little rumpled. He had been napping when the resident called him, but he sharpened up quickly (and the confession was cute, we thought). The baby was indeed on her way.
I expected more doctors and nurses to flood in, but only one, a staff pediatrician, started to shuffle things around in the adjoining room housing the newborn warmer and the isolette. With our son, I can remember at least five to six folks standing ready. No Code Blue expected this time around apparently. In what seemed like a Why Don't We Try This? kind of approach, my wife was encouraged to push as her contractions came on. So she did that, me counting to ten like in the movies and on TV, reminding her to breathe. (ASIDE: Lamaze is basically a rip-off; any kind of distraction will do just as well.) For the weak-stomached, I'll pass over the particulars to the most striking difference to our first birth experience. She came out rather easily all in all, wet and slick and flailing. The doctor lifted her in a towel and settled her in my wife's arms for just a moment. No crowds, no tubes. The pediatrician took her to clean her up, and a strong, sharp cry burst out of her. We didn't hear our son cry for about two months. They weighed her. We had placed our bets--I said 5 lb. something, my wife, feeling reckless, guessed in the 6-lb. range. She came in at 7 lb. 1.5 oz., a true heavyweight for a 35-weeker. And her APGAR scores were 9 and 9. (We were told that the pediatricians at the hospital "just don't give tens.")
I got to hold her in delivery for a bit before they took her to the nursery. She felt like nearly nothing, a piece of light that would float up if I let go. I didn't. We looked out the window together for the first time at the great city into which she was just pushed. I could only imagine her thoughts, her body beginning to bloom just like the city itself on any Friday morning. She met the sight with a cry, and it was all I could do not to join her.
Our girl had arrived.
Good night.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)