Filling Up the Six Pack

Number Two is preparing to join the world on the move. He's not crawling yet; he's not quite sitting on his own. But he's been set in motion.

He throws himself from his bouncer like a blond midget kamikaze, then hangs upside-down from his lap belt until I right him again. He repeated the act four times just this morning. Still, I'm not ready to face the idea that my baby has outgrown his first recliner.

The Boss was keen to the incongruity the first time she saw her brother pull himself to a full sitting position on that very bouncer. She glanced twice at him, then once at me.

"Look, mom," she said, her voice strange in its confusion. "His head is standing."

I looked, just like she told me to. And it was so very, very odd to see him like that. He wasn't just there. He wasn't crying. He wasn't sleeping or eating. His eyes weren't everywhere; instead, they were fixed. He was flexing abdominal muscles in expression of his fiercest desire to date. He was reaching up without holding on.

Number Two is getting ready to go places.

Number Two relaxes after a strenuous set of crunches.

The Supplest Supplication

It's like a prayer, the way his two feet come together beneath knees bent back and to the side. Each pad pushes against its mate--heel to heel, ball to ball. The grip of ten toes is a stunted steeple. I thought he would've lost that fetal bend by now, but he's three months into the fresh air and still feeling for the womb.

It means he's new. He's doubled his birth weight and discovered the difference between day and night, but the proof is in the crook of his legs and in two searching feet. He's still new. I can run my hands over the silken powder of his thigh, which tapers fatly to his knee. I can put my finger into the grip of his toes and laugh when he doesn't let go.

And I do. I sit there, finger-in-foot, for so long that it becomes impossible to tell whether the newborn is holding onto me or I'm holding onto the newborn.

When a Mental Health Day Is In Order

If I was Number Two, I'd be filing a harrassment report against The Boss over in HR right about now.

But the little guy just sits there and takes it.

Yesterday one of The Boss's fits sent a television remote whizzing right past his head. The day before that, she threw her bowl of dry cereal at him when he would not stop crying in the backseat of the car. She went over to her nana's house last weekend and was witnessed putting her hand over his nose and mouth.

It's not just Number Two who has a valid case against his superior, though. I myself am studying workplace policies to find out what kind of recourse I have when it comes to The Boss's tantrums.

My frustration came to a head last night when she refused dinner on the grounds that it was--AND I QUOTE--"not tasty." Her hysteria rose quickly. When I told her she needed to eat the food anyway, she began to huff and puff and blow sheets of snot from her nose. I put her in her room. She ran back out, screaming. Somehow she made it back downstairs, all the while yelling in barely coherent tones about her thirst. Something about "milk, not juice." She tore into the living room, where she launched a full cup of watered-down Tropical Blend across the coffee table and six feet of carpet.

I made the mistake of calling The Partner. I don't know why. If I wanted sympathy, I was barking up the wrong tree. If I wanted advice, I'd be better off calling someone with practical experience and a non-Hitlerian approach to child-rearing. He immediately went on the defensive at the sound of my impatience, shouting out a string of commands for me to use on The Boss. In fact, I'd already tried them all (except the ones involving duct tape and rope, obviously). Nothing worked. They were tactics that only proved effective when administered by The Partner himself. The Partner's word has always been law as far as The Boss is concerned. My word is white noise.

As it turns out, knowing that The Partner was on the other line of the phone was enough to send The Boss back up to her room of her own accord. I had just hung up on him--being yelled at from both sides didn't appeal to me--when I heard The Boss's last defiant cry behind the slamming door. And, silence. I was still for a moment as I waited to see if it held.

It did. I slunk into a heap on the kitchen stool. My energy drained from all useful parts and pooled like sewage in my chest. I stared out of the picture window onto a long row of weeds interspersed with roses and tiger lillies.

Then Number Two started to burble. Then he started to cry.

Fever! In The Morning, Fever All Through the Night

Number Two has a fever. Again.

This time it all began with his vaccines, which he received yesterday morning at his two month appointment. Yesterday night, we discovered a 101.4 fever. Visions of a lab coats and needles danced in our heads. To say that the whole family has been traumatized by his last feverish episode and subsequent hospitalization (including spinal tap)--which occured when he was just three weeks old--is putting it mildly. But we pushed past the flashbacks and phoned the on-call doctor.

She suggested we wait a bit to see if the fever went down. It did (somewhat). We retired for the evening, happy to be in our own beds. A steady 100.4 throughout the night afforded us all some rest. When I called the doctor's office upon the resumption of normal business hours, the nurse said such a reaction to vaccines was normal and that we should monitor it and call back later today if symptoms persist.

I would be much more blissful if I was ignorant of the risks of fever in a newborn and the speculative risks of vaccines. Yesterday, before Number Two's temp-rise registered, I was talking to my mother about my qualms relating to the recommended vaccine regimen for infants and toddlers. She just laughed at me. She'd never worried about such things, she said, and everything turned out just fine.

As I humphed on the other end of the phone line, I realized we truly are in a strange place in this day and age. It's hard to strike a balance between knowing too much and not knowing nearly enough.


On a positive note, I found a study stating that children with recurrent fevers in infancy are less likely to develop allergies. So that's good. We've got that going for us.

Realizing There's No Net

The thing about Number Two is that I know exactly how fleeting his infancy will be. I didn't have that awareness with The Boss. I guess I thought she'd be tiny forever. Certainly there was bliss in that ignorance, but what remains is a lack of memory for the details.

The rub of it is this: now that I understand the quickness, I've become so preoccupied with it that I still cannot enjoy the moment, what with all my fear for the remembering. I feel pressure to record everything, but this "everything" is so expansive that I don't know where to begin. Sometimes I don't. I get caught up in trivialities that are less daunting. Volunteer projects. Playdates. Yesterday I filled out a page and a half of Number Two's baby book and considered the effort a success.


But behind those everyday moments, my son still snuffles like a horse. He looks at everything with widening eyes that are, of course, turning hazel like his father's. His feet have outgrown all socks sized 0-3 months, even though that classification still fits the rest of his lean frame. More often than not, he smells stinky-sweet from a diaper that needs changing. He's often attached to my breast, hanging vertical, while I chase after something his sister needs--a drink, a snack, a pair of underwear pulled back up, a channel changed on the TV. Sometimes he looks so incredibly cute. Other times the plate of his forehead threatens to take over, and I can only hope that this kid has an unusually large brain. Like his father.


And that's the line. Between living and remembering. Right now I'm walking it like a tightrope, which is exciting if not a bit nauseating. Falling off is not an option; the only choice is getting used to the callouses where the wire bisects each bare foot.


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The Unveiling

Welcome to the new and improved 24/7, courtesy of:



Shannon was a pleasure to deal with. She whipped out the design and helped me install it to my Blogger account in the span of one day. The final product is her telepathic rendering of my vision. It had to be telepathy, because I'm pretty sure I didn't make any sense when I tried to put into words the look I was going for. But no matter. Shannon can read your mind over email. That's how good she is.

But if you thought the new design is the only thing being unveiled today, you underestimated my desire to kill two birds with one title. Today, I lift the curtain on the New Guy's Name!

Before you make any assumptions about the winning name based on the fact that I created a poll and asked you all to vote in it, you have to know a couple things about me. One is that I don't generally go with the most popular choice in any given situation. The second is that I often disregard my gut instinct, only to return to it after a completely useless detour. What I'm trying to tell you is that the name I will use to refer to my new son from this point on is not the one that received the most votes in the poll (though it did come in a close second, which helped validate my decision). In fact, it's the very one I used when I first announced his fetal existence almost a year ago.

He will be Number Two.

At some point in my post-partum haze I decided the name was too condescending and juvenile. The Partner sometimes likes to say I've lost my sense of humor, and I've got to admit that for those first few weeks after having a baby, I really didn't appreciate sarcastic bowel movement euphemisms used in reference to my son. My exact words were: "the name denotes a second class status that I don't want to bestow upon my little guy."

I've since gotten over that. No words exist that can describe how close he is to my heart. So why not accept that fact, and have a little fun with the words we do have?

If Number Two is going to flourish in his new position, he needs to realize that if he doesn't do his own self-deprecating, someone else will always be there to deprecate for him.

Backseat Drivers

The Boss does not take kindly to it when Topher* shatters her "ignore him and he'll go away" mindset with his newborn wail. The scene most often unfolds in the car, where seatbelts, five point harnesses, and the fact that I am driving separate me indefinitely from the two prisoners in the backseat. The acceleration in my sporty little v-6 has nothing on The Boss, whose mental deterioration can go from 0-60 in five seconds whenever she hears him cry.

"Mommy, he needs you! HE NEEDS YOU!" Her scream is a rain of spit as she joins in with him--all red-faced, wet and puffy--until their joint clamor builds to a crescendo that will one day either make me drive off the road or wish that I had. Either kid crying alone is tolerable to a hardened mother like myself, but the two of them together in hysterics is an invitation for me to let loose right along with them.

I don't know what it is about Topher's baby yelps that tears his sister up. She won't acknowledge his existence in any other circumstance. He is six weeks old and I still haven't been able to get a picture of the two of them touching. Is it the idea of his discomfort that upsets her? Or are her ears, which have become so accustomed to the quietude of being an only child, just that sensitive to her brother's new noise?

I don't know. I ask her, but she's too frenzied to be coherent. She couldn't tell me anyway. That's actually what she says when she doesn't know the answer to something: "I can't tell you, mom." Her tone is almost always frustrated when she says it.

Since there's not much I can do from the front, I push all the questions and uncertainty into the backseat with my two screaming offspring. I try to drown them out with classical music and the loud exhale of the air conditioner, which is now blasting to counteract the humidity.

And we drive each other crazy, all the way home.


*The polls are still open. Vote on the baby's new blog pseudonym in the box on my sidebar if you haven't already.


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Cast Your Vote - Name the New Guy

The blog lines are now open! Head over to my sidebar (below the fold) to cast your vote in the Name the New Guy contest.

Thank you to everyone who submitted a name in Round One. The field has been whittled down to five finalists. Go vote now! Don't let your favorite business-world-inspired bloggy pseudonym go home.


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The Boss Grows Into Her Role

The Boss at 4 days old

When I wasn't looking--maybe it was while I was busy transitioning Topher from womb to delivery room--The Boss turned solid and grew long legs.

She's been a baby her whole life. That's only two years and ten months, but it's what I'm accustomed to. She started out small--a round repository of fat cells beneath pale skin--and grew so stealthily that I failed to notice when muscle moved in and her face colored with the blush of ideas. Until her brother came along in comparison, I couldn't see how much she'd grown.

The other day, I was folding a mass of laundry that had been piling up in the wake of Topher's arrival and subsequent hospitalization. After stacking romper after romper, onesie after onesie, I pulled a pair of The Boss's pants from the bin. The jean material seemed voluminous. I looked at the tag. They were 2T, a size that I knew--conceptually, anyway--was actually a bit too small for her. Emotionally, I still didn't get it. As I put them aside to be packed away with all the other outfits-turned-artifacts, I puzzled over the discrepancy.

When did she grow into them?

And just when did she grow out?

The Boss 4 days ago

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Sending Out Birth Announcements

Birth announcement by Tiny*Prints

Five weeks after my son's birth, I am finally getting around to mailing the announcements. But thanks to Tiny*Prints, putting the 41 cent stamp (wait, I blinked: now it's 42 cents! Do I hear 43? Come on, 44!) on each envelope will be the most painful part of the process. Choosing the design, personalizing it, and placing the order was a piece of birth-day cake.

There were a lot of cards to select from. I chose to search the boy-themed options with the least expensive cards showing up first. When I wanted a closer look at a particular card, I was able to click on it, opening up a window with a full-size screenshot of the design.

I went with our card because it gave me the flexibility to highlight our son's nickname atop the full version of his name. I also changed or switched some of the fonts and type sizes, choosing from a limited selection of styles that were guaranteed to complement the design. The process made me feel like I had a hand in creating a truly personalized card, while guaranteeing that the finished product stayed true to the sophistication of the original design.

Ordering was quick and easy. Delivery was well within the two week window that the site indicated. When the cards arrived, the image was exactly as I ordered it and the quality of the colors and card stock was impressive. Envelopes were included.

The rest is up to me. If I don't get these cards stamped and addressed in a timely manner, it's no fault of Tiny*Prints. Too bad they don't sell Self-Motivation and Follow-Through.

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Posted in conjunction with the Parent Bloggers Network.

Like Roses, or, The Obligatory Mommy Blog Post on Poop

The Partner thinks his shit don't stink.

Well, it does.

But his son's? Odorless.

I guess they aren't exactly carbon (err, methane) copies after all. Ever since we started Topher on antibiotics for his urinary tract infection, his diapers have ceased to emit a stench. Still, he's as loud as ever when taking care of business. Now it is my auditory sense, with no help from my olfactory one, that recognizes when a visit to the changing station is in order.

One would think from the fluorescent green mass gelling in his Pampers that the smell would be toxic. How strange that it's not. But you'll hear no complaints from me. I'll enjoy the phenomenon for three more days, at which point his antibiotics will have run their course and our son will resume his normal newborn output.

But even that won't be so bad. There's something so innocent about a just-born baby's digestion.* Anything that comes out of the little guy is like roses compared to his father's noxious fumes. The Partner may not admit it, but it's true.


*With the possible exception of projectile vomit. But that's a post for another day.

Name the New Guy

I'd like to solicit your input regarding a name for our newest arrival that fits in with the nomenclature here at 24/7. I've been calling my son by his real world name up to this point, but that's only because I haven't had the time and/or energy to come up with something to match the other prominently featured titles here (e.g. The Boss and The Partner).

At first I was going to call him "Number Two." But whenever I thought about it, images of bowel movements popped into my head (which I guess is part of the point, but still. . .). Perhaps more importantly, the name denotes a second class status that I don't want to bestow upon my little guy.

So I'm reaching out to you, my four loyal readers. Please help me figure out what to put on the new guy's office nameplate.

The prize for the winning idea? My eternal gratitude. With a cherry on top.

The Spitting (Up) Image

The Partner, circa 1978

The fact that Topher resided for roughly nine months in my body seems completely out of context. His correct context is his father. They look exactly alike.

The Boss resembled The Partner from the beginning, but those inclined to look hard enough were able to rationalize a resemblance to me that they would offer up with only slight hesitatation. As in, "Hmmm, well. It looks like she might have your eyes."

With my son, no such rationalization is possible. He is his father from the devil's-horn hairline to the flaring nostrils to his waif-weight at birth. As much as I love The Partner, and don't doubt that I do, it's strange watching this miniature version of him sucking away at my teat for an approximate total of 12 hours out of any given day.

To look at us--this baby and me--it's hard to see the connection. I should've saved that last blackened remnant of the umbilical cord as proof.

Topher, circa last week

Homecoming

Last time The Partner and I left for the hospital, we came back with a new baby that turned The Boss's life upside down.

Maybe that's why she was so concerned when I stepped into the ambulance with Topher for our transfer to the children's medical center, leaving her with the Partner to await the arrival of nana's babysitting service. It must've been a strange flashback to just three weeks ago, when we took off for the hospital while my mother came in with outstretched arms to take care of The Boss.

I just hope that our little girl isn't causing herself unnecessary worry as she waits for our return. In her two-and-three-fourths-year-old brain, there is a clear association between hospitals and the arrival of new, unwelcome family members. I can just hear her now: "Oh, no. Not again. You're going to bring home another one?"

Or maybe she's still holding out for Tallulah.


***

Topher is doing well, by the way. Thank you for all the well wishes. His temperature is back to normal. He'll be undergoing a few more tests to determine if his UTI was caused by anything internal and he will be continuing his regimen of antibiotics, but I'm happy to say we should be home very soon.

Back to the Hospital

Last night three different doctors tried their hand at jabbing my son's back with a needle before successfully extracting the spinal fluid necessary for a full work up after we brought him into the emergency room with a 102 degree fever.

Apparently, any fever in a newborn less than 8 weeks of age requires that needles be stuck willy nilly into limbs and torso while probes are inserted into each orifice. Additionally, there is a mandatory two day hospital stay in anticipation of the results. In our case, Topher is well on his way to sleeping through his first full day at the children's hospital due to the exhaustion wrought by five straight hours of night torture.

So far it looks like a urinary tract infection is the culprit. This kid is almost exactly like his father in every way, but here we are, three weeks in, and my son and I have found something we can commiserate about--a propensity for bladder infections. And to think, I would've been satisfied if we just shared the same blue eyes or even similarly large foreheads.

There may be more tests of the urinary tract once the definitive results come in, but now we wait. The little guy is sleepy and cute and hot in his hospital cage. Next to it is a cot with my name on it.

Holding On To the Little Things

I didn't realize I had completely forgotten what newborns are like until my second child sailed down the Punani Canal and into town. It didn't take long to conclude that, somewhere along the line, the initial half-year of my firstborn's life had been erased from my memory.

The same goes for The Partner's flawed recall. On our first full day at home as a family of four, he called me into the room in which he was sitting with the baby. "I think something's wrong with him," he said.

"What?" I squawked.

"Watch. He won't even look at me." The Partner waved his hand in front of the baby's eyes repeatedly. "And he doesn't react to sounds." He clapped his hands right next to the little guy's ears. Topher didn't flinch. "The Boss was never this vacant, was she?"

"Well, I. . .uh, I mean. . .he is only three days old. . ." I stumbled over the seeds of doubt The Partner had planted. Though my instincts told me everything was fine, my brain was hormonally fertile ground in which visions of the worst case scenario flourished. My heart started to pound in my chest as my eyes watered. Was there something wrong with my baby?

I walked over to the book case and pulled out three different parenting books. I dropped two in front of The Partner and took one for myself. It didn't take long for us to determine that Topher was right on track. None of the experts expected him to do anything but lay there.

Looking at The Boss now, it's hard to believe she was ever so small and dependent. Seeing in Topher all the characteristics we'd forgotten about in her, I'm nostalgic for those lost traits. Soon enough Topher's newness will go the way of his older sister's. But at least now I know that. So we take more pictures, and bring out the video camera more often. And I write. . .

. . .Topher makes sounds like a bull, or sometimes like the whinny of a horse. When he's hungry, his tongue pokes through slightly rounded lips. He's always hungry. He sleeps a lot too, though, so that he nods off for four hours and then eats almost straight through the next four. His fast growing nails are scratchy on my chest, next to his face. He looks at me now and I think he sees me. Yesterday his cheeks pulled his mouth into the first hint of many smiles.

He is three weeks old.


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Where'd the Party Go?

Lately, The Boss likes to ask me where the party went. This line of questioning began over a week and a half ago at the end of our impromptu “Meet and Greet” barbecue for Topher as the guests began to trickle out the door.

At first she turned to the guests themselves. “Where are you going?” she’d ask.

“Home,” they’d say.

“Why?”

There were different answers, but none were deemed suitable. The Boss turned to me with each new departure, setting her eyes in a big, blue quiz on mine. “Where’d the party go, mama? Where’d the party go?”

I thought it was a good question. I could relate. It had been a fun party. There was food, there were friends, there were stories tossed around and there were balls thrown to the dog. The sun was high and warm, but not hot. The Boss got so much attention that she didn’t even notice the party wasn’t for her.

I thought it was a good metaphor, too. After the constant high of hope and expectation that came with pregnancy and childbirth, I was a bit nostalgic for the party, myself. Not that it was all fun and games—in fact, I was never really comfortable with the idea of living so deep inside myself for nine months. But it was different and intense and life-changing. After the baby was born, it was time to return to daily life. I don’t know quite what to do with that.

“Everyone at the party had to go home,” I told The Boss. “They had to leave so it would be just the four of us. So we could be a family.”

“Oh,” she said. She wasn’t any more satisfied in her acceptance of my answer than I was in giving it. But we let it go.

The question still pops up at random moments in that daily life we are slowly getting back into. Sometimes things are slow. Sometimes I am feeding her brother while she is thirsty. Where’d the party go, mom? So now we make plans. We talk balloons, hats and cake. We talk guest lists.

We are party planners.


____

Ten Days Old

I have to keep reminding myself that humans beings do not procreate solely for their own personal fulfillment. If that was the case, we'd rue the milestones instead of celebrating them. We'd be too fearful of progress to foster our children's independence like we need to. We'd live in the past and the future, with only a high, rickety bridge spanning the present. If we had kids for our sake instead of theirs, the speed of their growth would render us immobile.

But the point of parenthood isn't permanent attachment. The point is, from the very first moment, letting go.

Right now, holding my second child, I am all too aware that he will only be this small for a short time. I may never have another teeny tiny baby to care for in the same way. I hate nevers. I hate endings. I hate overs. And I could get caught up in all those things if I didn't remind myself that what we have here is my baby's beginning. It's his chance to live what I pray will be a long, thrilling life. His infancy, his childhood, his teenage years...they will be bittersweet for me but for him they will be the foundation he doesn't even know is being built beneath him and his first car, his first kiss, his first job, his first day on his own.

Being a parent is about being a parent. It's not about being ourselves, with all our inherent needs and wishes. That's a tough idea to swallow, especially now when I'm 10 days post-partum and prone to way too much introspection, but it's liberating, too. This is not about me! This is a whole new ball of ear wax!

Yes, the Partner and I made this little guy. That much is about us. But the little guy is the one who is going to make a life.

Management Meltdown

Roughly three hours before my first labor contraction hit, The Boss had a precognitive existential crisis. She was sitting on our bed as The Partner and I nested our way through a much needed pick-up of the bedroom. Maybe it was witnessing this act of cleaning that shocked her system--so foreign was the idea of seeing her mother with a duster in one hand and vacuum in the other--more than intuition of the imminent arrival of a sibling, but whatever the cause, it's safe to say that The Boss freaked out.

"It's not fun being bigger and older!" she shrieked suddenly. It came out of nowhere. She rose to her feet on the semi-firm mattress and threw herself prone. "It's not fun!" She was screaming again, and rising again. Then she threw herself back. She was crying.

"What's wrong, honey?" The Partner and I both climbed onto the bed with her, patting and consoling and wondering. We had hazy notions of what troubled her, but we wanted her to articulate it. We wanted to say the right things back.

She probably wanted words, too. But all that came out was I don't know.

The Boss's New Hire

The Boss was expecting a sister named Tallulah. Though we did not find out the sex of the impending arrival and did not have a name lined up, The Boss's conviction was firm. There was a Tullalah in mommy's tummy.

When we pulled into our driveway after the short stay in the hospital, our first born was waiting on the front lawn. I powered down my window and waved at the girl who had seemed to have aged at least two years in the two days we'd been gone. Her hair was carefully plaited by nana; her long legs were showcased in shorts that had been taken out of the attic in a box of clothing I had, until now, been unable to conceptualize her fitting into.

"Is Topher with you?" The Boss asked. I couldn't tell from her tone what answer she was hoping for.

"Yes!" I enthused, in reinforcement of the positive. I gestured in exaggerated sweeps to her brother in the back seat. "He's right here waiting for you!"

"Oh," said The Boss. She was perched on a slope of grass that was mostly green and dotted in places with the detritus of pre-winter foliage. She rocked back on her heels. This time I saw concern in the midst of slow-growing enlightenment.

Her eyes were huge and blue. Her chin was square where it lowered with the weight of words about to emerge from shining lips.

The truck was still moving up the driveway. I craned my neck out my window, waiting.

"Where's Tallulah?" The Boss asked.