forceful emptying

spontaneity, i suppose, has never really been something that comes naturally for me. so when such a sudden idea comes, i like to strike on it.

the past 5 weeks have been off the grid crazy for father of archibald jude. that whole ‘feast or famine’ is really ringing true. work was extracting about as much mental expertise as anything that has come before. tasks were mounting and clients were waiting with edgehill productions. household honey-do lists were increasing in both volume and dollars needed. add to all this a string of petty daycare-bourne illnesses for jude that, when compiled, amounted to what daycare fancy’s to call “chronically ill.” vicious cycle i tell you.

so it seemed to peak yesterday, friday 5/28. it felt like i hadn’t spoken a non-task related word to anna in days. it felt like i hadn’t seen jude giggle in just as many. so we’re sitting on the couch in the living room on a payday friday with that sumptuous golden light of a late-may afternoon. wine in hand. jude in giggles with so much as a raised eyebrow. 6.16pm. and then it hits.

HELLO! AND THANK YOU FOR CALLING MOVIEPHONE! WHY DONT YOU JUST *TELL* ME THE NAME OF THE MOVIE YOU’D LIKE TO SEE?

all without anna or jude batting an eye, it enters my feeble noodle that we ought to go see shrek 2 as a family. i get movie times and calculate the overhead in getting the lil dood prepped & ready. when anna hears the idea, she is beside herself with glee. jude doesn’t understand yet, but in 45 short minutes, he’s going to be starting at the business end of the biggest damn tv he’s ever seen.

all in all, guzzle our syrah and we are packed and out the door in 16 minutes flat. daddy may have been driving a bit too earnhardtish (3) because i made it from 10 circle drive to the larkspur landing parking lot in less then 4 minutes. again, if slower traffic would just keep right, then we might not have the traffic conditions we have today. its not a race, its about being efficient. but i digress.

as he sometimes can do, he gets a little fussy in the carseat just as we put it in park and scramble to peel him out of the car. so we didn’t think anything was awry as he began to crank this time.

i’m holding him as anna gets all his various gearbags out of the bakesale. and he’s moaning and hugging me close, almost in that head-on-shoulder lethargy that comes over him right before he passes out on daddy. but that’s not what he did on daddy. no.

HHHHGGGGRRRRRROOOOUUUULLLLLPPH! HHRRRGGGGULLGH! HHHUGHTTY!

all over daddy comes the warm wash and unmistakable odor of a forceful emptying of the contents of my son’s stomach. with about an audience of 13 fellow movie goers also trotting up to the ticket-line. and as you might imagine, the positioning of jude’s head against my shoulder, with face pointing right at my neck, he scored a direct hit on daddy.

up the side of my neck, down the front of him, and all down my chest. oh, and don’t for one minute think that it all went down the front of my chest. aw no! in some sort of cosmic full-court 3-pointer, he hurls a good 4/5th of the goop into my shirt where it can slide, unobstructed by fabric, right down my stomach and into my beltline. good shot ol’boy!

and i bet you might be thinking, did they make the film?

(Originally Posted: 2004_0529)

manual de la jude

this hereby stands as a manual for the care, feeding, and general upkeep of The Joodle at 9 months…

LOCOMOTION & POSITIONS:
1. jude is totally crawling. well. he will truck along towards anything he sees & wants. once he arrives at his target, he will reach & grab. this means anything within arms-reach from the edge of a coffeetable will be stripped off & slimed. bottles & glasses of wine included. you’ve been warned.
2. old (yet clean) remote controls are perfect bait for him to crawl after, as are cats lounging nearby. occasionally, he will either fall onto something he’s going after, or just mash the device too hard into his mouth. these events trigger some, but not much tears.
3. jude has no trouble pulling himself up to a standing position whilst clutching something taller then him. normally, you don’t need to constantly ‘spot’ the lil man when he crawls around. but when he gets to standing, even if only on his knees, here you’ve got to spot him.
4. jude can stand on his own weight for a long time. and depending on mood, will dance up & down on your crotch. men, watch out for the bells if you know what i mean. he can even pull himself up to a standing positon under his own strength. which means he can also fall right the hell back down with a thud and the tears and the wailing. so, whenever he’s standing, please be there to catch his husky ass.

NIGHT TIME ACTIVITIES:
1. most often, jude will be content to wiggle around on your floors, trying with all his might to reach for & devour whatever he sees. watch out for your low-hanging plants and anything on a coffee-table.
2. if the telly is on, he will interchange between wiggling on the floor and sitting up watching the toob. depends whats on. if you’re doing BABY EINSTEIN, then you wont see him move much. if something else is on, he’ll pay some attention, but not much. sometimes no telly and just music yields some great nights with him.
3. offer him things. spoons are a great source of fascination for him. as are cell-phones with the keys locked. anything he does wield will become drenched with slobber. he loves remote controls. you’ve been warned.
4. i’ve also noticed that he’s captivated by being carried around & offered high-postion things to look at. like letting him slap the spines of heavy books, or grasping the tops of drapes, or offering him the handle of the fridge to pull on, just to name a few. again, watch his vice grip. he’s like an ant and can grasp far greater then his own weight.

SLEEP:
1. sleep should come easily, if you know what to look for. somewhere between 7 & 8, maybe even as late as 8.30, yet certainly after he’s eaten, he will rub his eyes. this is what we call the window and it should be exploited as your opportunity to put him in a somewhat quieter, calmer & darker environment. usually at this point, you can lay him down on his back with shampoo* and walk away. usually. always with the nancy* here. always.
2. if after putting him down (after the window) he is fussing & cranking, an effective method to woo him to sleep is to rub his stomach if he’s on his back, or rub his husky ass if he’s on his stomach. he will roll back & forth. he may even try to pull himself up to his knees. simply re-position him back onto his back & continue to rub. a somewhat effective method is to play with his hair, back & forth, forehead to bald-spot.
3. calming soothing ambient music is very effective. he’s into brian eno, enya, and voo doo child (aka: moby). although anything with soft tones & not too much beat or activity will work. it’s the ‘sonic wallpaper’ that helps him wind down.
4. if the above doesn’t work, and he’s either cranking up a storm or clearly not liking going down, it is ok to warm a bottle & give him that. even if its been only 1 hour since last feeding. what usually happens is that he starts the bottle & passes out mid-way. just make sure you got him in a reclined position with the nancy handy.
5. if all of the above fails, there is certainly no problem with putting him right back to where ever he was when he first showed the window. just watch for more signs and try again in 30 minutes or so.

THE SOILY DETAILS:
1. he’s got a bladder the size of a big gulp, and has been known to overflow a supreme diaper in a single sneeze. therefore, it is a very wise idea to change his husky ass sometime not too long after his bottle.
2. if he drops a deuce in the caboose, you will prolly hear about it before you ever smell it. he’s really good about the whole bitching about soiled linen thing. so, if he turns into general cranky all of a sudden, cast a whiff down the backside to see if he’s given you a present. 4 out of 5 times, he offers up classical turds rather then messy marvins. all the same though, have plenty of wet-wipes handy. and also when available, 2 people changing a #2 are always better then soloing.
3. don’t be at all hesititant to really strap his husky ass into the diaper. just when you think its just tight enough, he wiggles a certain way and boom there’s his crack hanging out. so, cinch him in, making sure the strap in the back is flat and snug against his back. no one likes blow-outs, man.

YOUR WITS END:
sean 415.999.0790
anna 415.999.0792

ANOTHER OPTION, COURTESY OF DOOCE
– 6 cubes of ice
– 8 ounces jack daniels
– one can coke classic
– one lime

fill two glasses with three ice cubes each. pour four ounces of jack daniels into one glass, four ounces into another. squeeze one half of lime into each glass. leave the coke classic unopened on countertop, as the coke classic will only hinder restorative powers of the whiskey. drink with your lover. repeat as necessary.

(Originally Posted: 2004_0319)

fabulous days go like this…

so, i had a tuesday off…

i drive my beauty-fill wife into her new job in the city. the classic reversal where it is her that leans over & kisses the driver & drooling passenger goodbye. so there we were, a boy & his da, free in the big city early on a tuesday morning. our only hard & fast commitment being the ReelMoms movie at 11am.

by the time i parked under union square & walked the monkey thru downtown to arrive at the metreon, it was clear that i wasnt alone in this ‘being in charge of a little person’ thing. there were more then a few mommies toting their charge around as we filed into the ground floor lobby ticket line. the line snaked all the way around, almost to the doors. each unit of the line was no less then: 1 mom, 1 little person, & 1 stroller. all of which made the line much longer then it seemed. i could not believe such a wonderful thing was happening. a baby day at the movies.

we must have looked like some freakish version of a domestic army rolling our fearsome wheeled-steeds 4-wide & 12-deep down the dimly lit hallway towards theatre #12. the low grumbling of the crankly & the delighted alike could be heard to grow as the area in front of theatre #12 became a well-organised parking lot for dozens upon dozens of baby strollers. all the while the theatre staff were offering to hold bags whilst babies were hoisted, a personal touch most unbecomming of traditional theatre staff. it took me a bit longer to gather the necessities, which i guess is de rigeur for papas out on their own.

once i entered the long rear hallway leading to the side opening to the theatre, i was treated to one of the most hillarious sights i’ve seen this side of shasta. a large stadium-style theatre litterally PACKED with moms, car-seat-carriers, diaperbags, and every flavour of baby in every state on the emotional spectrum. all with the sounds you would expect from such a motley crew. so packed was the room that i had to think quick & nab the 2 seats on the isle immediately next to th opening. which proved a godsend for my comfort-level to ahve a quick escape-route should the poopypants episode of the motorcycle show rear its ugly head, if you’ll pardon the pun.

this was the domestic issue of pure & utter insanity. to see that many babies in one eyefull. eating, cranking, laughing, being changed in the aisles, every other adult either talking baby-talk or talking with the mom next to them, impromptu singing by clutches of moms to their respective clutch of wee ones, other moms handing their charge to a perfect stranger mom in the aisle in front of them while they got bottle or boob ready. just crazy.

however, in the same breath, it really was about the most logical thing in the world, this ReelMoms concept. its a pure win-win for all involved. the moms get to see a first-run, not too loud motion picture in a comfortable adequitely-lit theatre with wall-to-wall support, the kids get to be entertained by all the stimuli from other babies to will ferrel, and the theatre takes in more in ticket-sales from a full theatre then they ever would otherwise at 11am on a tuesday morning.

as always, Jude was a rockstar. we had only about 6 or 7 minutes of sitting around before the lights dimmed a bit & the picture began, sans previews. and once it did, what can only be called Screen-Trance began as well. just this wide-eyed staring at the screen, mesmerised by the colours, the lights, the noise. so much so that he could be put contently into just about any position from standing on my knees to sitting on my lap. the first 3rd of the movie was spent like this. what i thought would be the most distracting things to do turned out to be the least.

the 2nd 3rd of the film was me feeding him. or, trying to at least. all he wanted to to was to crane his neck to the action on-screen. and then with perfect timing & usual strain, he lets me know he’s in need of a fresh one. diaper that is. ever changed a messy diaper in the dark? at the front of a theatre right below the screen? the whole while will ferrel literally destroys the inside of a department stores christmas display as he attempts to unmask a fake santa? i think i did very well considering the circumstances and conditions, espeically in the shadow of the previous weekends poopypants episode [more on this in a later blog].

the 3rd 3rd of the film saw jude sleeping soundly in his carseat, propped up to see the screen in case he was to awake. it was that famous. the whole experience was that brilliant and if you have the ways & means, i highly recommend attending one.

Funniest thing heard all day in the theatre, spoken by one of the theatre staff into his walkie-talkie:
“jimmy, we got some really irate people up here at theatre #12! would you PLEASE tell them to stop selling tickets to the 11 oclock ‘ELF’ if they’re NOT carrying a baby?!”

and if the above wasnt enough of a fabulous day, a walked to The Irish Bank to have a quaint little lunch in the alley with CindyLoo & MommAnna. 2 pints & a shepards pie aint bad for a leisurely day off. Jude then proceeded to stay content as i Bjorned his ass thru no less then 10 stores, 4 elevators, 8 escalators, and 2 mens rooms. It was on that last mens’ room that he finally said: “ok, ya know what? no. fuck this. i’m exploding. buh-bye” so, i’m sitting in the handicap stall in the Nordstrom mens room. jude is FUH-REEKING out. i’m wiggling around trying to get a bottle prepared for him. its hot. i’m sweating. he’s clearly not in a happy place. and from outside the stall, it sounds like a father & child are in desperate need for some peace.

so, what does the fucking nineball leaving the stall next to us do? as he walks out of the bathroom, without washing his hands i might add, he kills the lights. all of them. pitch fucking black. so help me god if i could have handed jude to a trusted someone i would have gone after this cunts molars with a pair of rusty pinking shears. HOW COULD SOMEONE FUCKING DO THAT?! YOU JUST DONT DO THAT!! Thats like re-arranging the desks at the school for the blind fer fooks sake! Isnt there a REAL Karma Police to come billy-club the teeth of people like this?

COMMENTS

I’ll see a movie with you and Jude any time.
Posted by: unknown at November 14, 2003 2:49 AM

(Originally Posted: 2003_1112)

hot damn, my boy’s a brian eno geek!

hot damn, my boy’s a brian eno geek!
“be careful, man… because Raven slept thru the night until at like 5 months, she did a total flip-flop & was up at all fucked up hours of the night”– Brian Fortin

Oh yea, we were pretty cavalier about the whole sleeping thru the night thing. We werent cocky, mind you. We were just basking in the good fortune of having avoided the New Parent Buzzsaw of sleepless nights & screaming wee ones. We knew we were lucky. But we didnt know we were nearing the end of the line for this here Sleep Train.

Upon Jude’s 4-month peditricians appointment, we were asked some rather pointed, albeit familiar questions: “How are his sleeping habits” “Whats your process for putting him down for naps & down for the night?” “Tell me about your schedule so far”

Schedule? Process? What… he goes in The Swing at 8.30, he’s snoring by 9, and we’re opening the kind Pinot & watching another DVD by 9.15. The look on the doctors face was priceless. His body languarge was razorfish: “You silly amateurs!”

We had come to rely on the use of tools. The Swing! Long on the top of the list Desert Island devices that have come along with a new baby, this device is now to be cast aside as if it were the Rake of the Devil. Simply BECAUSE it worked so efficiently on putting the Lil Dood asleep is why it needs to be discontinued. Little did we know, the whole time we thought we didnt need a schedule, that damn Swing, night after blissful night, was establishing the worst kind of schedule we as new parents could have initiated: Dependence Upon Tools.

See, with 4+ months of Swing use under the bridge, the three of us have grown to such a state where the thought of putting him to sleep without the use of The Swing is folly. You’re a fool, man! It’ll never work. Putting him down in the crib, even when he’s tired from the day & drunk with milk, even under the best of circumstances would surely result in the blood-curdling screams of an Unhappy Cranky. But we knew that one day (soon), he’d physically out-grow The Swing and we would be doomed. DOOMED!

So, with the stern admonishment of the Infamous Doctor Dow, we began a torturous regimine of putting him to sleep without the swing. For this, anna began to seek the advice of some Tracy Hogg & the advice outlined in her “Secrets of the Baby Whisperer.” This woman, Hogg, teaches that the use of tools is bad bad bad, the pacifier is a-ok, touch & patting but not rocking, and basically to walk that humanistic line between “rescuing” baby from night-time sobs or, letting them cry themselves to sleep. Thus, there we are at the side of the crib & patted & rubbed a Fussy Monkey for close to an hour at a time until he’d fall into a fatigued sleep. Only to repeat this process 90 minutes later, regardless of how ridiculous an hour it was for an adult. Welcome to NORMAL SLEEPING HABITS!

No longer were we able to flop around with Jude at night only to plop him into The Swing at a reasonable hour to start our dinner. No longer could we rely on the fact that he would sleep straight thru till 7am like last night & the night before. No longer would things be the same. And all of this could be traced back to the Regime of The Swing. Or lack thereof. Regime Change does begin at home, apparently.

We were about solid week into this new Swingless Regime when we were about to lose our sanity & our firm belief that Jude was a very atypical baby. We had been trying various things in conjunction with The Baby Whisperer’s recommendations. Most significantly however, was my use of Jason Falkners BEDTIME WITH THE BEATLES. This amazing compilation sees him covering classic Beatles tunes in gentle lullaby tones & chords. Not gentle enough as it turns out. That was when I happened upon a notion, a recollection.

Back in 1993, I became smitten with a genre of electronic dubbed AMBIENT. Compilations such as Astralwerks EXCURSIONS IN AMBIENCE were, to my palette, a wholly more provocative sound then anything else i could get my Tucson hands on. Research on the genre naturally pointed me at the Godfather of Ambient, Brian Eno & his seminal 1978 release MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS. Here we have tones. Just tones. Beautiful soothing tones. But they cover so much more then that. Simplistic yet moving harmonic studies. Kevin’ll remember that i coined this mans music as “sonic wallpaper,” with the sparse tones acting as ignorable patterns that hint at aesthetics we see, but cannot really express. He may also remember how instrumental this CD was in bringing us down to earth at sunrise from some recreational evenings. Which reminds me of how a wise man once said that John Bonham was such a genius percussionist by what fills he DIDNT fill; your musically-predictive mind never missed the beats he paused over. But i digress…

Anyway, back to Eno. I thought this CD, one of the oldest in the collection, would be perfect for the process of soothing the cranky and inducing the parental patience. The first track, titled simply “1/1” is about 16 minutes long. The first time i played it, i used 2 hands on Jude. My left had held his right arm fast so as to prevent him from rubbing the eyes and ripping the Nancy out of his mouth. My right hand stroked his hair forward from crown to brow. Now, only once before had i tried so brazen a technique, and he nearly took the roof off the place with what i interpretted to be complete & utter displeasure. but i sought to try again. this time, with Mr Eno & his “counterpoint to the frantic arcs of travel” By the end of that 1st track, he was in such a deep sleep that i feared he was having me on, just waiting for me to cease the head-rubbing. But he instead strung his old Sleeping Habits flag back up the pole & slept straight on thru until morning. We couldnt beleive it. SUrely this was a fluke, a mirage, a trick of the light or a result of fatigue. But I tried it again, this time on a muggy & cranky saturday night much later then usual. Once again, before track 01 has played out, he was sound asleep with me rubbin his head. Again, this time employing some testing strategies: swapping out the rubbing of the head for the rubbing & patting of the chest. Again, asleep by the end of the first song.

I want to write Sir Eno a letter. Once again, this CD changes my life. Now I need to figure out what to do with that damn Swing

COMMENTS

i believe that DISINTEGRATION was their best album
i believe that no one can ever really prove to you where pregressive house end and trance begins
i believe (now) that oswald acted alone
i believe danny boyle donated the most significant asset to the zombe genre: the passage of time

Posted by: unknown at March 28, 2004 12:09 AM

(Originally Posted: 2003_1021)

a wash in milestones

Recently, our Little Lord Sausage Legs began what can only be called a sting of first’s. And now as i write this, 2 week later, he’s not just done these things once, but is practicing them.

This began on Friday night 9/26 upon our arrival in Santa Barbara for the engagement party of Jena Jenkins & Jan Martinez. As soon as we put the little man down on the bed at the hotel, he started to arch his back & body is such a way that he was pivoting & teetering on that one hip. He was [this close] to rolling over. We had NO idea at what age these creatures ought to be rolling over, but if felt like he was early, just shy of his 4th month birthday. With the grunts & groans of anything trying to heft the better part of its own weight from Here to There, he kept trying and kept trying, only getting as far as the left hip. Only to collapse back onto his back in tears under the fatigue of the continued effort. By Saturday morning, with an audience of Jena & Jan, he seemed to get a wee bit further towards the goal as he would find that notch and just hang out there on the left hip. For the rest of the weekend and on into the beginning of the week, he would try his new move whenever he had the chance. The most “amusing” being that 4 second span between being placed into the car-seat and being strapped into it. But on Tuesday afternoon 9/30, Anna calls me at work literally screaming. She had placed the lil dood down to beat his rhino whilst she went downstairs to fetch the laundry. But upon coming back up the steps, there he was on his stomache. “I fucking missed it!” she cried. But soon afterwards, non unlike the training wheels coming off, he began to roll over more frequently then she she could count, always to the left. And it wasnt until Thursday night that i finally saw it. Now, he his literally spinning over not only to the left, but to the right as well. Furthermore, he is reportedly rolling back over in a baby’s version of a 360. Again, i have yet to see this. It is not until DAD sees the event that it becomes real!!

I think it was also on the Santa Barbara trip that he discovered another new trick. It is no insignificant trick either. AS i’ve been trying to tell him, as a boy growing up, it is one of the most important noises he, as a boy, CAN MAKE. For those boys who can achieve higher & more realistic executions of this trick, their social status amopngst their peers will most certainly be elevated. For boys anyway. I am of course referring to the almighty Fart Noise.

Ok, he’s a slobbery baby. So much so that we thinks the excess of spit is the precursor to early teething. Whatever the case, he’s producing so much slobber that anythng that even THINKS of coming in contact with his mouth will get slippery wet. So, add to this the his achievment of pursing his lips and blowing air thru them. Viola: the ones & zeros of the Fart Noise. With his level of moisture, the fart noise becomes the moist sloppy kind. Sometimes, right after i wipe away the fuel from his mouth, he’ll crack-out one of the more classical staccato farts, only thereafter to degrade again into the messy wet farts. Of all the milestones thus far, i am most proud of this one. He’s getting really good at it. He’s putting some vocalisations behind them, which gives them the bass & heft & authentic sound of The Real Thing. And these are SO LOUD for such a little big man! Call me juvenile, but the more realistically he can create these magical sounds, the more revered he’ll be by his mates, and the more effective he’ll be at making people smile.

And in a much more sad milestone, Jude has also caught his first illness. There was an episode in mid to late September where we were sure he had pink-eye. Not so much because his eye was teary and red, but more so because Dad developed a funky stye in his eye not too long after that. But this is different. This is a full-blown cold, complete with the stuffy yet runny nose, the sneezing and the coughing, the loaginess and the lack of appetite. And Dad gave it to him. We had just come back from the baptism in arizona where i had caught the legendary 5-day bender cold. No sooner did i make it out of those woods then he starts to develop the same thing. Have you ever tried to suck thru a straw with your nose clogged? How about a nipple? You CANT! Feeding has become crazy hard. And you lie a baby horizontal with all that gunk in his head, and it just turns to concrete and the pressure increases. In a reality where for the next 15 years it will be HIM that gives US these illnesses, i’m not too sure how i feel about having given HIM his first.

He’s clearly getting us back by keeping us up every hour of the night by waking up in his crib and practicing what else: the high-decible fart noises and thrashings of a little big man rolling over & over in his crib.

joy…

(Originally Posted: 2003_1010)

the cause & effect reactions

there is the slow growth which reveals itself in spurts and moments of realisation. “oh man these pajamas are already too small for him” and then there is the growth where the progress is tangible enough to taste. some of the first hints i’ve had that i’m dealing with an intelligent being and not some glorified pet was the Cause & Effect reactions he began to develop round about the 2nd month. of course, there was the shallow-slumber, startling-awake, freak-out wake-ups we’d endure when a loud noise was made. then came the smiles.

there is the slow growth which reveals itself in spurts and moments of realisation. “oh man these pajamas are already too small for him” and then there is the growth where the progress is tangible enough to taste. some of the first hints i’ve had that i’m dealing with an intelligent being and not some glorified pet was the Cause & Effect reactions he began to develop round about the 2nd month. of course, there was the shallow-slumber, startling-awake, freak-out wake-ups we’d endure when a loud noise was made. then came the smiles.

at first on their own seemingly without specific causes. then later, there arose a distinct pattern to the smiles. we had insane success with getting the lil dood to smile on cue. wether it be an open-mouth to bare-belly fart or simply the gobbley-gook JudeSpeak one hears around our house, he had a smile for us that took over his whole face. and they’re all day long. when he first sees us in the morning: he’s smiling. when you sneak a peek at him to see if he’s still awake or finally asleep: he’s smiling. when you reach around to console him when he’s fussy in the car: he’s smiling. his smiles even have him at-odds with his other emotions, for when he’s cranky enough to burst into screams, you can throw him a curve by squeaking a kiss on his neck. this puts him into a fit of dualing emotions as the smile cuts thru thru the furled brow as if he were a Muppett.

he had begun to use his voice around the same time. the only patern here being that he was most vocal when he was beating his rhino or in a session with his therapy-bears. sometimes he’s pipe-off a few sentences while he swung watching melrose with anna in the mornings. yet it was at mario’s BBQ in early to mid-august where something spectacular happened. he had just pounded 8 ounces and was being sat upright on my knee facing out towards the party-goers. he just began to orate. it was very important that he hear himself say what he had to say. it seemed that the more he heard himself, the more he would speak. he wasnt playing with the volume of his voice so much as the articulation of the voice. it sounded so authentic that the only missing element was the subtitles underneath him. From then on out, he took advantage of the post-feed-knee to express his opinions. and it hasnt stopped there. he’s liable to sit in his swing and have lengthy conversations with the telly, his llama, or just with himself.

and here enters The Screech. In his first call & response action, he had a week where he was practicing his squeals of delight. Yet, not so much on his own, by himself. No. These were in direct response & reaction to similar noises from anna or myself. Anna would hit a pitch like bird, and a few seconds later, he’s respond with a pitch & decibels that would shatter a wineglass. One right after the other. Call & Response. But about the 24th consecutive hour of this, we thought it best to cease & desist. They were cute, but highly disturbing for the hour before bedtime. But The Screech is gone. For when we stopped the bird noises, so did he. And now we cannot get him to do them again, at all. Now that they’re gone, we miss them.

Yet, in the week since i wrote this, he’s begun something that just trumps them all…

(Originally Posted: 2003_1001)

babies beget baggage

its a scenario thats been played out for us time & time again. perhaps you’ve been on the business-end of it, or simply chuckled along with Bill Cosby’s stand-up bit of the same. but it seems that without fail, there is an extremely disgruntled infant on almost every air flight i’ve ever taken. be it the friday afternoon departure, or the sunday afternoon hung-over return-trip. some poor parent or pair thereof dealing with an infant wailing & screaming & bitching. this was the genre i subscribed to the scene prior to fatherhood. fatherhood changes everything. unfortuneately, no one can be TOLD what fatherhood is; they have to be SHOWN. and as such, having our lil dood come with us on everything anna & i do is not unlike experiencing everything for the first time, all over again.

as with most pre-parents, a screaming baby is simply an audible nuisance. a thing most likely caused by, and thus to be dealt with & stopped by the parent. not once did i don the hat of compassion & think about just what it was causing the kids discomfort. and now square on the other side of the fence, i have such a massive wealth of overpouring respect for the parents i scorned prior to Jude.

babies beget baggage. think of what you alone take onto a flight, not including the bags you lug to the ticketing agent where you (hopefully) check them. so you got your carry-on, great. now, add to that the stroller, the diaper bag, and the general baby-gear bag. oh yea, and the lil dood himself. you’ve just negotiated the gauntlet of getting in & out of the car that got you to the curb. you’ve dealt with the queue at the ticketing counter. now you’re progressing en masse thru the metal detectors with gear & baby, all the while racking up points for patience in an arizona airport in august. Jude was a ‘beeping baby’ so the 2 of us are directed to the second-stage station where both our asses are wanded up & down. then like effluent from a drain, we 3 re-group & re-dress & re-pack out entourage & progress the rest of the 3/4 mile to the gate.

but ooooh, here’s where things get better for a spell. we’re now in the elusive PRE-BOARD group, temproarily spared from the filth & bile & competitive peasants on the open-seating groups A, B, & C. but this blithe ends soon thereafter as we’re hearded down the gangplank where we’ve got to split duties, and fast. i take Jude + diaper bag + single carry-on into the airbus & quickly locate a clutch of 3 seats together. meanwhile, anna collapses the stroller & deals with the ever-effervescent SouthWest flightcrew in their attempts to hand-check the stroller for the duration of the flight. she then re-joins the herd round about, oh, i’d say the 3rd boarding group to file in-turn onto the plane & find Jude & I fiercely guarding our 3 seats from the godless heathons of a full-flight. of course, we cannot be allowed to hold this 3rd seat for the lil dood, so he’ll spend the entire jaunt on my lap.

NOW….

here is where physics & presure & eustachian tubes come into play. as they pressurise that tube, the wee little eardrums of our hero get pummeled. each atmospheric incline the bus reaches, the level of pressurisation jumps accordingly. this is why we adults have to equalise our own eardrums multiple times per ascent & descent. but Jude cannot do this. he can barely even coo on cue let alone plug a nose. herein lies what must be the root cause of most if not all grumpy babies on an airflight. their wee ears are getting the works, and they’re just reacting to this. and those with even simple nasal gunk may be dealing with the dreaded sinus squeeze. so the long & short here is that any parent of any stage of development will have by now surely offered the best advice to combat this: have the lil dood eating/drinking during take-off & landing. We all know swallowing has a direct effect on our eustachian tubes.

Keep in-mind that the entire ordeal only outlined above is greuling enough, as is, under the best of conditions. those conditions being the low-grade hangovers of Mr & Mrs Parent. But thats another story for another time. But the whole thing would be made worse by lugging around a fussy baby. our first experience with flying the lil dood was just the opposite. like almost everything else with the kid, he just observes things. no peaks. no valleys.

once again, we go into an experience that is wrought with cliches & hazards for the parent of an infant. high on the list of gruesome would surely be for hungover parents to fly with an 8-week old. but we instead dealt with smiles, a hearty appetite, and an overwelming sense of curiosity as Jude was Bjorned thru the dozens of hoops that represent air-travel in the heat of arizona august.

(Originally Posted: 2003_0804)

ungodly sleeping habits

Oh sure we had read the grizzly books & heard the horror stories regarding how mythical parental control over the lil doods sleep-wake cycles. We had thrust upon us all sorts of texts describing ways to get your child on a sleep schedule, or ones specific to baby diets, and even one on how avoid what we were horrified to learn as the barbaric yet commonly practiced “cry to sleep” method [dont even get me started].

Oh sure we had read the grizzly books & heard the horror stories regarding how mythical parental control over the lil doods sleep-wake cycles. We had thrust upon us all sorts of texts describing ways to get your child on a sleep schedule, or ones specific to baby diets, and even one on how avoid what we were horrified to learn as the barbaric yet commonly practiced “cry to sleep” method [dont even get me started].

But it is an understatement to say that anna & i lacked a plan for establishing good sleep cycles. in short, our plan consisted of pumping the lil dood so fulla boob & formula that he’d pass the hell out never so much as stirring until noon the following friday. This method is solid gold, yo.

A bit rocky at first given how we struggled with exactly where his food supply was coming from. As well, the fact that he was sleeping right inbetween us & as such, every wee grumble or stir snapped one or both of us into some reverse feeding frenzy or another.

But right about the time his bed transitioned from between-the-pillows in mom & dads room to in-the-crib in his own room, right about this event his sleep cycles shot up & up & up. What began as every 3 hours at time at 4 weeks old, has now risen to 6-7 hours thru the night at 7 weeks old.

There were a few sleepless 1st nights using the monitor, where i’d hear nothing & therefore have to go in there & make sure the lil dood wasnt blue. There were other rocky mornings where he;s get up at 5 and be blazing to go for the day. But in general, he goes down around 10-11pm and sleeps all the way thru to early-early morning.

Night after night he snores 4-lanes-wide striaght thru mom & dads 2am shift-change. Anna has been instrumental here. No longer to grunts & groans qualify for heating-up a bottle. We would assume these sounds were proof of oncoming consciosness, thus pick him up & begin feeding. When in fact they are now clearly just sleep-sounds of a vocal monster baby. It now takes a full-on concussive cry in order to be sure he’s awake, but usually long before that.

COMMENTS

Dear Sir,

My son, let’s call him…oh I don’t know…Austin, is not a fan of sleeping through the night. My wife and I, let’s call her Liz for sake of argument, have started to let him cry. Instead of crying himself to sleep, he seems to enjoy crying. I’ve gone so long as to let him cry for 45 min. When I finally break down and go in to put the binky in his mouth (which is the reason he is crying 99.99% of the time) he ususally just looks at me and smiles. One of those big happy smiles only with tired puffy. eyes. Then he quickly rolls over and goes to sleep. I guess my question is, is this kid messing with me or what?

Yours Truelly
Let’s say my name is..oh I don’t know….Warren
Posted by: Warren at July 29, 2003 04:51 PM

(Originally Posted: 2003_0722)

testing the waters of public interest

this is a first. always have the audience to my words been somewhat capitive. at least known. but this format lends itself to the anonymous soapbox. who’ll read this? who’ll know, if read, if it will be digested? who’ll care? herein lies The Folly of the Blog: who really cares?

this is a first. always have the audience to my words been somewhat capitive. at least known. but this format lends itself to the anonymous soapbox. who’ll read this? who’ll know, if read, if it will be digested? who’ll care? herein lies The Folly of the Blog: who really cares?

i suspect that its more important, in some situations, to be heard then to have the meat & potatoes of your words be digested accurately. got to let them go eventually; once spoken, you’ve little control over how they are digested. thus we seek as desireable an audience as possible. so as to minimise confusion or to ease the palletability of the subject.

but when a petty author has a literary tailwind such as Archibald Jude for inspiration, its little wonder how/when shit will come to the surface. I mean, i talk to him, and he does listen. he means well. but he’s got an attention-span that last about as long as a yellow traffic light.

(Originally Posted: 2003_0719)

SPEW :: the envelope please

created: january 22, 2003

there is an envelope. there is an envelope, the contents of which, reveal the gender of baby. a colour of infant. i flavour of alien. this envelope is currently sealed. for how long is a question of patience and a question of sanity and more over, a question of curiosity. never before has there been a more important envelope. not even the envelope marisa tomei refused to give back to the academy can beat this one. prior to this morning, not one single entity knew the gender of the little bug. now, there are a few in the medical profession in central marin county who know. them, and this envelope.

i think i’ve heard the spectrum on this topic, whether solicited or not. it seems from the surface to be an issue of a unified front. for surely for every couple who chose to find out, there must have been some amongst them who grappled with disagreement. perhaps those couples, like us, had a canned response to the 2nd most popular question to the baby on the way. seems rather trivial really. perhaps in the future when we’ll be able to check a box for BOY and have a boy. but for now, whilst its still out of our control, it seems odd that some people would be so concerned with the topic. yet i was met with this underground resistance to my response. “why wouldn’t you want to find out? its going to be surprise either way!” as if it was about trying to prevent the spoiling of something.

and i capitulate in certain regards. it *does* seem trivial to clutch such a massive swath of news and keep it under-wraps. even when we’ve the technology to peer into the future like we did this morning. and perhaps thats the base of where my mindset is coming from. empirically, there’s a black & white issue at hand. the bug in annas belly is either a boy or it is a girl. but symbolically and spiritually and emotionally there is still a mystery under there. there is still the wonderful awe of not knowing the colour of the wee little wizard behind the curtain.

there is no doubt that certain peoples minds will have a better ride for the remainder of someone else’s pregnancy knowing that its a boy or knowing its a girl. it makes the ‘gearing’ and the ‘personalisation’ for the pending sausage easier for them. the manufacturers of all the baby-schwag appear to devote little attention to the ungendered baby. perhaps they feel that light-greens and pale-yellows and lavenders are too neutral. one MUST find out the baby’s sex and one MUST then choose blue or pink. but it *does* go deeper then that. couple want to make themselves as well as their surroundings more suited to the baby thats coming. neutrality is for business suits, where some couples want to know what shade of paint to buy. better still, grandparents tend to stoke the fires of impatience in the gender revelation.

i’m all for clearing the fog of uncertainty and revealing what there is to know in this world. i feel the more we humans can learn about ourselves and the world we live in, the better off our children’s’ world will be. that means embracing controversial research, that means debunking ritualistic practices, that means exploring the limitless world of genetics of our inner-space. but all of this, it all means something else. it means exercising the choice inherent in all of it. sure, we can find out the gender of a baby before its born. but here come the choice.

of all the things that we as humans can do with our lives, it seems frivolous to me that there should be some pursuit of greater importance then giving birth to & nurturing our young into the world. call it prehistoric in light of evolution, call it animalistic in spite of our intelligence, but I feel it is our most profound gift. In concert with that, of all the wonderful things we as intelligent humans have revealed, of all the current & future knowledge we wield, the single-most distilled example of a secret is if its going to be a boy or if its going to be a girl.

Aw fock sean. All this spew and what has it all gotten us? So fine, you’re in the camp of keeping it a secret.