Boy meets Worldperks

Quick side story: at the first day of the conference, one of my fellow conference advisors showed up in a shirt that simply had the word "meh." on it. I'm, like, so ordering this shirt. There's also a matching flask, though that seems less likely to be useful in our current lifestyle.

For those wondering, no, I don't think I really caught up on sleep while at my conference -- had to be up by 7:30 am CDT (that's 5:30 am PDT) each morning, kept waking up every few hours even in the nice and quiet hotel room (occasionally with weird waking dreams that my pillow was actually Zachary and I'd been sleeping on him), and was running around helping coordinate the event all day. Granted, Meh and Zachary had the larger coordination adventure of trying to sleep/eat/drive/etc. without a third dance partner. It was so hard to be away from them, though Meh of course continues to amaze (a-Mehz?) me.

So at a little after 12:30 am this morning, I pulled into our driveway, returning from my flight back from Austin. (Despite successfully catching earlier standby flights when the conference wrapped up, the connecting flight was 2 hours late and thus arrived around 20 minutes prior to my original flightplan. Now add a ridiculously long taxi to the gate, SeaTac's little underground tram getting delayed, baggage delays, parking shuttle delays, and finally major construction on the freeway by our house narrowing things down to one lane. Ack.) After a quick unpack/repack, I kind of sort of went to sleep. Well, Zachary was fussing a bit, so I helped soothe him back to sleep first.

At 5:20 am this morning, we were back up, finishing our packing, and en route to the airport by 6 am. Good times! Check-in, security, and getting to the gate all went fairly well (though the tram system was still delayed and jam packed when the occasional tram did show up), and Zachary had a nice little breakfast before we got on the plane. En route, while we didn't get a whole row to ourselves, Zachary did very well on the flight, occasionally fussing just a bit but always talked down by the classic shush, patting, and/or feeding. I have to say, I was somewhat disappointed by the lack of fawning from the crew and other passengers (though the couple behind us kept making nice compliments every time Zachary locked onto them as an interesting thing to look at while I burped him).

Our glorious plan of bringing earplugs didn't happen (perhaps next time), but I think we managed to pack everything else pretty well. I had the exact baggage I'd used before, Meh had a similar setup of a backpack and one reasonable-sized roller bag (the giant pallet-sized things people manage to carry on continue to boggle my mind), and Zachary was travelling light, with his stylish diaper bag, Boppy pillow, and car seat.

Zachary is one month old today! That means tomorrow is Zachary's pidyon ha-ben, an ancient Jewish tradition typically involving American silver dollars minted before 1965. Huh? But seriously, it's essentially a celebration for a newborn's one month anniversary -- many family friends are going to be there, and Zachary's grandma has of course organized an excellent brunchy smorgasboard. We're really looking forward to it. But for now, the long delayed sleep calls!

The Cheesecake Zactory

(Hm, looks like we've got a whole 'cheese' theme going with two straight blog entries now...)

Today, Zachary went to his first sit down restaurant, The Cheesecake Factory. Of course, he continues to order "off of the menu", as it were. But friends J and S were free and had suggested their favorite restaurant (it's quite high on our list as well). Cheesecake Factory has got everything we're looking for in a baby-friendly restaurant: not too far of a drive, semi-private booths, loud ambient noise, and fairly quick service once you wade through their tome of a menu figuring out what to eat. This was all mostly moot, as Zachary successfully slept through what turned out to be a lovely 2-hour lunch (where'd the time go?). He was only slightly fussy on the drive home before getting his own afternoon snack.

Early tomorrow morning I head to Austin as previously mentioned for a conference. (Incidentally, the temperature there today was apparently 83, with 98% humidity. Ew.) It's going to be very difficult for me to be separated from Meh and Zachary for four full days -- and an even greater challenge for Meh to be home alone. Again, friends have generously offered to bring meals, check in, and otherwise offer support while I'm gone, to which I again say thank you all so much. And Korby will be taking an early trip to the kennel-free dog ranch he stays at when we're out of town. (While he's happy to see us when we pick him up, he never looks back when we drop him off.) But I'll still feel better when I'm back late Friday night. Well, better until the next morning, when we all head out together on our first family road trip, travelling to Michigan bright and early on Saturday!

Zachary says cheese

Though some of his smiles are directed to mysterious patches of blank space over our shoulders, and some folks say these merely indicate gas, Zachary certainly has a great grin. Here are few of his mugs for the camera:

The 'Mr. Right' shirt was a new addition worn to a barbecue at our friends' house today. It lasted a whole hour or two before we had to change him. Ah well.

Poll Results

Final results of our first online poll:

Zach: 11 (37%)
Zack: 14 (48%)
Other: 4 (13%) -- Zac, Zackie D, Zed

Shabbat Shalom, Zachary!

Last night friend K brought us Chinese food and Scoot made challah for Zachary's first Shabbat dinner. It was the first time we said the blessing over our child that is said on Friday nights, and it was very special! Zachary dutifully emulated Ephraim and Menashe and sweetly slept right through it (I think that definitely counts as doing a good deed, which is one reason we bless our sons for these two brothers on Shabbat).

Zachary continued his peaceful repose long enough for Meh to actually eat her WHOLE dinner! Unfortunately, he made up for it by being persnickety in the wee hours of the morning.

We made kiddush with some homemade plum hooch my friend and fellow Dunava singer made, it was fantastic! I only drank a little of this strong and sweet delight, since I wasn't sure how it would affect Zachary at mealtime...though, I wonder if it would help with his sleep?

The most important Zachary vote since 1848

Zachary's very first election closes in a few short hours, and early exit polls have declared Zack the winner. Reports of ballot box stuffing by the so-called "K-team" have not been confirmed by independent observers, though a suspicious number of votes have gone for 'Pat Buchanan'. I didn't even know that name was on the list. Regardless, Zach has not yet conceded defeat to Zack, so we may be in for a protracted court battle.

Today marks the end of Zachary's first month! Well, he's not actually a full month old, but it's the end of August. Neither Meredith nor I had realized that this is a 3 day weekend (at some points, I'm not even sure if we knew when weekends were...), but it'll be nice to have a bonus day spent at home -- particularly since on Tuesday I head out of town for a conference in Austin. (Friends have graciously and continually offered to help come by and visit, bring food, and do whatever Meh needs in my absence - thank you all so much!)

Also this weekend, we're seeing a friend who's visiting from out of town, and joining some local friends for a barbecue later in the weekend. Speaking of food, tonight we had tasty Chinese with our friend K and made our first Shabbat dinner of it. Meh wants to blog about that later, so I'll just mention that more pics of Zachary (including some excellently cute ones K took at the sushi trip, and some taken by Meh earlier today in Zachary's ever-so-smart hedgehog outfit) are now posted here.

Face time

This morning at around 5 am, Zachary and I may have developed our first father-son game. Then again, I may have just been half-asleep and reading more into it than was actually there. Things started at 4 am with soothing, followed by a seemingly simple diaper change going horribly wrong (let's just say that it might be time to more strongly investigate these "peepee teepees". And that wasn't the only projectile of the evening. TMI?)

Anyway, after now changing him entirely, reswaddling, and calming him down the second time, he was still wide awake but mostly quiet, so I took him back to his little bed in our bed, and we were just looking at each other. Well, he was actually looking all around -- he really seems interested in light-dark contrasts, as babies are supposed to, and it was just about dawn at this point. He started waving his right hand around (houdini that he is, he'd already escaped my poor tired attempt at a swaddle), and touched my face. I blew little raspberries/kisses on the hand, and he seemed to actually smile a bit. For the next half hour, he'd wave his hand around, but clearly stop it when it touched my face, I've give it little kisses, and his expression would (seemingly) brighten a bit. Was it a game? Random flailing that stops when encountering an obstacle? No way to know for sure, but it was still nice to be able to share these moments of potential early communication with him, even if it was just one directional, and certainly even at 5 in the morning.

Getting your baby blog fix

Some friends report that they're checking our blog five times a day or more. Dude. I think I can safely report that the day we can post five posts, they'll either each be a single sentence (single word?) or we'll be waxing philosophic and starting our memoirs because Zachary is off to college.

With that in mind, I present a few suggestions for other baby-related blogs that I've enjoyed.

• Sweet Juniper. (Juniper is the baby girl's name.) A friend turned me on to this one, it floors me every time I try to catch up. Amazing writing, wonderful and dedicated couple, incredible parenting journey. I particularly like their mix tape for children recommendations. Check it out, this is the kind of blogging I could only dream of. There's also a Michigan connection (they moved from SF to Detroit), but of course.
• Parent Dish (aka Blogging Baby). For your inner paranoid - find out what's tainted/lead-filled this week, along with how celebrities treat their kids and grandkids. (I love this article about Leona Helmsley's dog inheriting $12M and her grandkids $0.)
• For your inner voyeur, try the Celebrity Baby Blog. Interviews, reports, and the gossip from baby showers (I'm pleased to report that Salma Hayek received our car seat. Well, two of them. And a $425 diaper bag.)

Does Zachary dream of electric sheep?

(Never really did understand that book's title -- don't people generally count sheep in order to go to sleep? I don't think they'd typically actually dream about them, though I'm sure Freud would beg to differ. Maybe a better title would be Do Androids Count Electric Sheep While Going Into Standby? Wow, dorky. Sorry.)

Watching Zachary sleep is quite an experience. When he's in deep sleep, he's just a cute, warm little limp lump (how's that for alliteration?), with slow steady breathing. Very cozy to just sit and hold him. When he's in light sleep (more frequent, at least at present), he's much more, well, active. Arms occasionally wave and legs kick (particularly in response to noises out in the awake world - I think we may eventually have another light sleeper like myself). His breathing rhythm is all over the place, with occasional sighs, whistles, and squeaks. His eyes flutter (occasionally opening a bit, which is a little creepy, but I suppose no moreso than other sleeping people), he occasionally makes little noises, and his face makes all sorts of responses to whatever's going on in his little mind - winks, grimaces, and very frequent wide smiles. It's very fun watching him sleep. Until I'm reminded that I too should be sleeping while I've got the opportunity.

On that topic, sounds like he's just about asleep now, so time to join him. Nighty night!

Nice Sleep If You Can Get It

...but alas, we can't get it, though we try.

Zachary has had a few good nights (only waking up 2 or 3 times) as well as rougher nights (being up almost constantly). We've tried multiple techniques to compensate -- going to bed one sleep cycle earlier (7 or 8 pm), the co-sleeping we've previously discussed, and so on. But still, Meh says she's been seeing a pattern of alternating sets of two good nights/two bad nights here. The last two nights were long ones, so perhaps we're due for a better one this evening? In the meantime, we've tried to take advantage of the advice friends were constantly giving us beforehand -- sleep when you can. Afternoon naps (coinciding with Zachary's) are thankfully helping at least a bit; sometimes we're even able to squeeze in two of them.

Today was Zachary's first shopping spree! The three of us zipped off to everyone's favorite baby superstore (Babies R Us) and then Toys R Us for a few quick returns/exchanges and new item pickups (more diapers, but of course). I was reminded once again that this "baby-oriented" place continues to be anything but. Everything was loud and dissonant, from the clanging phones to the obnoxious barcode scanners, to seemingly extra-noisy cash registers, to the ridiculously frequent distortion-filled PA announcements, to the automated (and nearly as loud) announcements directed at employees telling them that someone was standing waiting for help at the car seat aisle. (That was us, four months ago.) This place just isn't nearly as compelling as the hospital boutiques and the smaller mom-and-pop shops (many of which are depressingly still chains, but at least chains of 2-5 stores rather than 500).

Anyway, afterwards, we were right at the mall and Zachary was sleeping, so we ventured into our second meal out, a nice lunch at Panera (grandma's favorite), where the cashier had to explain to me that the salad I'd ordered was being discontinued in two days, but I could still order it after that time as long as they still had the ingredients in stock. Wha-? Anyway, the place is laid out with lots of little alcoves for diners to use, so we were actually able to have a section to ourselves in case Zachary got loud, but he again slept through the whole thing. Then we took a quick walk around the mall (Meh thinks we'd never actually been inside of this one), and during a quick detour to Sweet Factory (aside: good lord, the wholesale stuff on their website is a bit scary) Zachary finally woke up. We zipped back out to the car (once we found it in the maze that is generic mall parking lots), but he clearly needed his own lunch before we could head home. We sat and listened to tunes for an hour while he enjoyed his own meal, then made our way back to the house for an afternoon nap (see above).

Tonight we finally broke into our stash of pre-pregnancy-prepared dinners: herbed chicken marsala that cooked up well and tasted quite yummy.

Zach-atouille

(Speaking of which, that's a film we missed. Perhaps a good candidate for rentals now that Zachary is present during family TV time? I'm still trying to figure out if/how to watch the "grown-up" Netflix we've got checked out.)

Today was another first, Zachary's first trip to a restaurant! To keep it simple (and hopefully successful), we aimed for casual dining at a place that's very easy to get in and out of (in case of crying, wardrobe malfunctions, etc.). As a bonus, it was about the closest equivalent to children's toys and visual entertainment that you can find in a restaurant -- our local kaiten sushi, where the plates move around on a little conveyor belt, and you just grab the ones you want. A quick and easy drive, a space that's generally fairly loud, and definitely quite amenable to quick escapes.

Our friends M and K (of Fish for Breakfast blogging fame) joined us on this adventure, after which we had some yummy cake they'd made and brought! After a false start where Zachary wasn't ready to get into his car seat quite yet (excellent capture of his initial reaction at left by K's expert lens), the second attempt was successful, and he dutifully sat with big wide eyes all through lunch, looking out through the windows of the restaurant at the world. No sleeping, just the 'quiet alert' Zachary who's very cute to watch. Lunch was yummy, and Meh finally got to have some of the tasty seafood she had missed out on during pregnancy. (Our original plan had been to have some brought in to the hospital - heh, that didn't quite happen.)

A quick story about the restaurant -- I was trying to figure out where exactly to put his car seat. On the floor didn't seem good, and the booths were perhaps not wide enough and a tad less stable than we'd prefer. We spotted child seats and grabbed one, but the car seat was too large for it. Suddenly, the hostess offered a complete paradigm shift by flipping the child seat upside down; the front and rear legs of the base were perfectly proportioned to fit a car seat into. Ingenious! (All experienced parents reading this blog are rolling their eyes at me right now.)

Tonight Zachary got to chat with both mima and papa (in Florida) and grandma (in Michigan) before they went to sleep, via instant messenger video conferencing. Ain't technology cool?

Flying the (Baby) Friendly Skies

More firsts, Zachary's first flight is booked! He will be visiting grandma and meeting grandpa and uncle Gus (his grandparents' dog) in Michigan in September. And since there was space for it on the online ticket purchase form (yes, even for an infant-in-arms), we got him a frequent flyer number as well. If they actually grant mileage when you're sharing a seat with mommy and/or daddy, there may finally be compelling competition for the somewhat bizarre practice of going on mileage runs, which a friend's then-fiancee explained to me a few months back. (Don't knock it -- the fiancee's participation in this frequent flyer "sport" allowed said friend and her now-husband to fly to New Zealand for their honeymoon on miles. First class no less.)

So with a flight in his near future, it's time to start figuring out how to actually fly with a baby. Multiple friends have said travelling earlier is easier than later. We'll see, I think there's still a fair amount of gear involved, though at least things like toys and multimedia entertainment won't be needed. From what I've read/been told, it sounds like carrying on/gate-checking the car seat and snap-n-go rather than a full-fledged stroller is the way to go. Since he'll be just about a month old, we elected the infant-in-arms thing for this time as far as the actual ticket. As I understand it, while he doesn't actually get a seat booked, if seats happen to be available (despite indicators that flights are more overbooked than ever), the airline reps will try to hook you up with a separate one.

Next up is the fun of getting through airport security. The TSA actually has a decent webpage for travelling with kids here (my favorite tip: "NEVER leave babies in an infant carrier while it goes through the X-ray machine.") I was particularly curious about the whole liquids issue, since everyone's heard stories of people having to actually ingest their medications and liquids to demonstrate to the security screeners that they weren't threatening. Nice. But sayeth the TSA:

All items including formula, breast milk, and juice will be inspected, however, you or your baby or toddler will not be asked to test or taste breast milk, formula, or juice. Our Security Officers may test liquid exemptions (exempt items more than 3 ounces) for explosives.

Thank goodness they've made things more reasonable, though I'm sure we'll still be leaving plenty of extra time to get through security.

Meh heard a great suggestion from one of the other mothers at the mommy and me film on Thursday -- when flying with her child, this mother brings multiple pairs of earplugs along, and offers them to everyone sitting in their immediate vicinity on the plane. How awesome is that? I think we'll try to do the same. We're also taking a day flight to try to avoid bothering the poor red-eye folks trying to sleep. Hopefully between all of these strategies, the flights won't be too bad, for either other passengers or Zachary.

Please let us know any other travel tips you've got for flying with young infants! (And don't forget to vote on Zachary's nickname -- looks like Zack has pulled into the lead!)

Mommy and Me at the Movies

Zachary saw his first movie on the big screen yesterday with friend K and baby N. We saw Death at a Funeral which was one of three mommy-movie options at the theater. I had always wondered what these movies must be like, since they are often advertised before the previews in many theaters. Loud, I had always imagined. Well...yes, it was often loud.

There were about 30 other moms and babes there. The noise level changed in waves: silence would be followed by some babies starting to sigh, fuss, whine, reaching a peak of crying, then petering off to nothing again. Strangely, it was pretty easy to tune out lots of babies, even though one baby screaming would normally drive me batty.

The lights are kept up a bit, so that mommies can see what they are doing when it's time to feed baby (my Hooter Hider worked brilliantly, by the way!). My favorite part was that the ushers came in and offered to take snack orders and bring refreshments to the mommies right in the theater!

I did feel bad for one person there. When we sat down, there was a woman sitting in our row who exclaimed, "Wow, there are a lot of babies here!" Um...I am guessing she bought her ticket from the automated kiosk, because it would be pretty mean for the staff not to let someone know there would be 30 crying babies in the audience of their movie choice.

It was lovely to be out and about, especially in a place where a fussy baby was socially acceptable. I am not sure I am ready to take Zachary to a restaurant or other grown-up space yet, but this was a great way to start to ease back into the outside world!

Zachary showed his enthusiasm for our outing once we got back home by peeing on the wall during his diaper change. Impressive stream trajectory.

Zachary's First Symphony (Op. 1, "Little Sleeper")

Zachary's dual big adventures yesterday were both successes! I'll let Meh blog about the movie theater experience, which sounds like it was really nice. We got a little bit of a late start to the long drive to the concert in the park, but still managed to arrive in time to hike out with Zachary (in moby wrap), chairs, and food to meet up with our good friends, who were saving a spot and lots more yummy food -- including some excellent kosher South African boerewors (a spicy sausage).

The concert itself was a lot of fun - couldn't always hear the best (outdoor venues aren't known for their acoustics), but it was great to be able to sit in the audience and hear how the group sounds. You get a totally different impression than when you're sitting in the orchestra itself! Zachary was initially moderately interested but quickly conked out -- I think he gets that from Meredith (classical music without singers puts her to sleep). They did a great job with all of the pieces, had me stand up before playing my pieces, and even introduced Zachary to a good amount of applause (don't worry, he continued to sleep through it).

Alas, the concert wasn't recorded (sometimes in the past these things have ended up on Sammamish Community Access TV), so the performance was 'lost to the ether', as it were. But a great evening with Zachary, and all of the gear (and yummy food!) worked out brilliantly.

I observed a wide variety of responses to Zachary's presence at the concert. People I knew from orchestra were of course very excited for us, but generally respectful -- keeping a comfortable distance, asking for permission to touch him if they were into that kind of thing, giving him lots of compliments, being impressed that he was out and about at 2 weeks (well, 2 weeks and a day) old, etc. A few others were somewhat more eager -- one friend was giving him kisses (and inhaling the 'baby smell'? *shrug*), a few other random people came up asking Meh all about him, and one or two even got a bit into our 'personal space' -- Meredith (and Zachary) handled it all wonderfully. The weirdest was our first baby stalker, encountered on the walk back to the car. This woman just kept hovering around Meh, completely focused on Zachary, going in front of us and looking back, falling back and looking at him from over Meh's shoulder, etc. She never asked any questions or talked to either of us, and was keeping really close. Now granted, it was a bit of a crowd heading out of the park, but there was enough space to keep a little more of a comfort zone. Anyway, no harm done. We all had a wonderful time and look forward to introducing Zachary to other exciting activities in the weeks/years to come!

More pictures of coziness, moby wrapping, and said concert in the park are posted here. I'll try to do this weekly (or when we get critical mass of photos).

Zachary goes Hollywood

Today's a big day for Zachary -- first, Meh and a friend of ours are taking their respective youngsters to Zachary's first cinematic experience; a local theater does "Mothers Day Thursdays" early-ish in the morning, with the lights turned up a bit and no worries about babies crying. (I presume they also turn up the volume?) I was wondering if they'd stick to G/PG fare for these, but one of the offerings is The Bourne Ultimatum, so that answers that question -- hopefully no long-term detrimental impact on impressionable baby minds to hear bullets whizzing by and foul language? (I'll admit, I still occasionally use a bit of the latter in Zachary's presence - that'll have to change soon enough...)

Then, if the weather cooperates, and if Zachary cooperates, we're going to have a picnic and attend a concert in the park with some friends. One of the orchestras I perform with is playing a concert of film music (sensing a theme here?), which includes three arrangements/"takedowns" (takedown: I listen to a recording and reconstruct the orchestration) and three original compositions (film cues from back in my USC days) that I put together for them. Should be fun to hear them from the audience perspective, if the stars align and we do indeed end up going.

And that's a wrap

Ah, the magical draw of baby gear. And here I thought all of the stroller and car seat research was the tough part. (Incidentally, once we picked ours, all of that seemingly crucial info instantaneously fell out of my mind.) Today I was a man on a mission -- to find new weapons in the war on ter-, er, um, the war on being able to actually function with a babe-in-arms. Though Meh and I can pass Zachary back and forth, we were effectively immobilized once we had Zachary in hand, and it was time to bring some technology to bear on the problem.

First, at our class last night, we were introduced to an incredibly innovative, complex, and high-tech gadget for baby wrapping. Nah, I'm kidding, it's just a ridiculously long piece of fabric. Yet somehow these Moby wraps still cost $35? There aren't even the heavy-duty metal rings that are attached to our existing sling-style Maya wrap, nor the Maya wrap's value-add explanatory DVD of hilariously poor quality. Ah well, the Moby wrap *is* "100% soft cotton" and "ergonomic," and at least it's sold by one of the local hospital's 'boutique' shops. And the course teacher (who's also a doula/nanny/night nurse) was showing it off so we had to check it out.

Second, also at the class, Zachary got hungry, and Meh felt that she should leave the room to feed him in more seclusion. Draped blankets weren't cutting it, so it was time to get a privacy screen, and a stylish one to boot. I now had a second objective for today's reconnaisance mission -- to go acquire one of the excellently named Hooter Hiders.

I was thankfully able to find both of these at the local hospital "boutique" shops. The idea here is quite good, if a little strange to see aisles and cash registers dropped in the middle of a waiting room. These stores are within the maternity centers at the hospitals themselves, and they appeal to me more than the local baby superstore, since at least all of their proceeds go towards sustaining the hospital's maternity/parenting services.

Upon arriving at home, I tried on the Moby wrap and dropped Zachary into it. He loved it, and slept for like 4 hours (Meh's major sleep break for the afternoon). Plus I could actually hold him and type (even part of this blog) at the same time. With this hands-free option, I can at long last resume my plans to take over the world. Exxxxxcellent.

Just to tie things up, last night's class was quite good, despite it focusing primarily on (and being about a half-step short of a sales pitch for) this generation's Dr. Spock, Dr. Harvey Karp and his The Happiest Baby on the Block (endorsed by Michelle Pfeiffer! And Pierce Brosnan! And even (swoon) Dr. Phil!) She walked us through the book's view that the generic term "colic" (which she spelled with a k at the end - I don't think we'll be asking her to vote on Zachary's nickname) is a load of soiled diaper, and that babies really just need to be soothed better. It's all about the "5 S's" -- swaddling, sidelining (holding baby sideways), shushing, swinging, and sucking. She walked us through all of them, giving a few new good swaddling techniques along the way that work if you happen to have a tarp-sized swaddling blanket. Oh, and we left the class with the DVD version (apparently 'better than the book' -- my brother likes the thought that the baby book of this generation is actually a DVD) and a CD full of soothing sounds. I'm afraid to pop that CD in, with track descriptions like "fast & vigorous - this "strange" sound gets a crying baby's attention (10 minutes)". You know these tracks will do something cool if you play them backwards.

And in this corner...

I forgot to mention an important milestone for Zachary -- at yesterday's appointment at our local hospital's post partum center, he weighed in at 7 lbs. 12 oz. He's now back over his birth weight, several days ahead of schedule. (Apparently, babies typically lose around 5% of their weight after they're born. Zachary had left the hospital down about 4 oz., or 4%. Docs like to see babies back at their birth weight within two weeks.) This also gives us a data point showing he gained 8 oz. in 6 days! By my calculations, this means that by his 18th birthday he will weigh in the neighborhood of 540 lbs. Take that, Freakonomics guy -- I can totally manipulate limited data to silly extremes much better than him.

Tonight we're trying out a new parent class, again a service offered at the excellent local hospital. We're not entirely sure what to expect, though I hope we get to meet other new parents and possible future friends for Zachary! Meh is also taking him to a new parent group earlier in the day -- hopefully more from her on that later. Speaking of which, I've also got to hunt down a local PEPS group, another strongly recommended resource for us to take advantage of.

Lastly, a new nickname debate is now brewing (did we ever really settle the Ziggy one?) -- it's Zach v. Zack. Granted, the kid is already in trouble with our ever-popular last name (alternate spellings/pronunciations include Selton, Seflon, Shalfont [I kid you not, this one occurs all of the time], and even variants on the names of our distant relatives the Sealfons), so why not have a confused first name as well? I still think we should just cut to the chase and go with the more exotic Zaq (it works for Shaq...), but here are some brief negatives to the two options.

Cons:

• Zach: Meh thinks it looks like it would be pronounced "Zatch". Some other friends have suggested that Zach is only used as a nickname for Zachariah rather than Zachary.
• Zack: He's a well-known lego maniac (wow, did that ad age poorly or what?). The 'k' also seems more associated with actors and fictional characters than the 'h', at least in the Wikipedia listings.

Not that anyone's going to settle this for poor Zachary, nor that it even really matters all that much until he starts spelling his own name and chooses whether to go for the long or short form, but Meh suggested posting this as a poll question. So we present our very first straw poll (over in the right frame), with perhaps only slightly more meaning than that Iowa thing. Sorry for the hard-to-read colors for days remaining and votes taken; Blogger's colors don't appear to be editable for this control. You can drag/select it to see what it says (the poll expires September 1). Happy voting!

But oh, those summer niii-iiights...

The sleepless ones in particular. Yesterday was our first full day home alone, and it was pouring rain through most of the day. That meant chilling out indoors, actually getting caught up on a few things during Zachary's rare naps, and even watching (well, starting to watch) a movie in the evening while Zachary had his supper. We did get to take a nice walk (Zachary's second) during a rare afternoon sunbreak.

Nighttime has definitely been challenging, as all parents had warned us -- he's often up and fussy for hours at a time, and wants to eat every few hours. Doing the math, this reveals that Meh is able to get roughly .002 minutes of sleep at a time. Don't get me wrong, I'm not doing any kind of Rip Van Winkle action, or even getting more than an hour or two at a time, but it still seems a bit unfair and unbalanced. I've tried to take Zachary into his room and holding/singing to/dancing with him for at least an hour or so per night just to let Meh close her eyes, but even that doesn't always seem like enough.

Today was my first brief day back at work. I know, the coworkers were as surprised as you are. Microsoft has a very generous 1-month paid parental leave (and I've got far too much vacation saved up as well), which I'm planning to utilize as Meh's leave wraps up in a few months. The goal is to get through the new year without day care -- though even then, we're only looking at 1-2 days a week with our schedules. My coworkers were all very supportive and congratulatory, and I was able to get somewhat back up to speed in a partial day of work.

Zachary's first professional photo shoot is at long last posted -- sorry for the delay on getting it on the internet, and huge thanks to our friends Simon and Justine (as well as everyone else who has taken such great pictures of our son!) for the lovely shots. Time to start getting some of these developed to start filling the picture frames and albums. One of the 'push gifts' I got for Meh (and promptly left at home when we headed to the hospital) was actually a specially designed pop-up baby album. (There's a flash movie of some of the pop-ups here.) We're eager to start filling its many pop-up slots with pictures of Zachary!

Empty nest

This morning, all of our remaining out-of-town family (Zachary's great-bubbie, great aunt, great uncle; then grandma, mima, and papa) headed back home. Everyone had all been enormous help during Zachary's early days, and it was somewhat overwhelming for us to return home from airport shuttling (including Meh's first "solo" car ride with Zachary) to an empty house. Since Zachary was in the quiet-alert state, we decided to venture out for our very first stroller tour of the neighborhood. With Korby in tow (clearly positioned behind the stroller to help reflect the dominance order, for whatever good that might do!), we had a nice 45-minute walk around the neighborhood and up past the junior high school (which Zachary might someday attend!). Zachary seemed to enjoy it, looking around for most of the walk until he conked out towards the end.

While the house is now down to the four of us, we still have wonderfully supportive friends who stop by to visit, and generally offer to do everything short of adding an addition to the second story (though I'm thinking some of them might just consider it). Everyone loves Zachary, and he's been doing great with meeting new people, even if he peed on a friend today. Ah well, I guess that's just part of the game!

Yesterday was Zachary's first piece of business mail. Today he received his first junk mail -- an ad for some brand of formula that was describing itself in terms of superiority to some other brand. Oy.

Zachary goes cordless

Mere hours after, er, losing one part at the bris, Zachary dropped another -- the remainder of his umbilical cord (the actual term, somewhat less appealing, is "cord stump") fell off. Onto Meredith's shirt. Ew.

But this marks a bright new day for little Zachary -- a whole world of onesies and other cute outfits that have been patiently waiting in his closet are now opened up to him. Now if he can only wear them more than once before he outgrows them. But thankfully, friends have generously been giving us a wide age range (well, not too wide; I haven't seen any 30" inseam jeans or anything...) of super cute clothing items. Our little boy is going to be such a metrosexual.

I've started posting the pictures from Zachary's bris (don't worry, we're focused on the people, and of course the food, rather than the, er, operation!) -- please let me know any that you took, as we'd love to add to the album!

We've also posted more pictures to the album now mis-labelled "first weekend", it's actually his whole first week. Zachary has shown a wide variety of expressions -- I know actual intentional/social smiling is a little ways off, but it's still nice to see his beautiful smile!

Yesterday marked one additional milestone, which we saw in the late evening -- Zachary received his very first piece of actual business mail (not counting cards and gifts, which continue to arrive all of the time -- thanks as always to all of our friends and family for their generosity, as well as their excellent taste in cute clothes and toys!). It was his insurance card -- don't leave home without it. Wow, those Microsoft/Premera folks are quick. I actually stopped to ponder if they even have any checks or balances on this kind of thing, since I just filled out an online form and didn't have to show any proof of anything, though I presume they'd already gotten notifications from the hospital and pediatrician and such. Anyway, Zachary now has something to put in his wallet -- or at least his parents' wallet/purse for the short term. I know, credit cards will be joining it all too soon...

Ignorance is bris

Today was Zachary's eighth day of life by the Jewish calendar and therefore his brit milah. (The Jewish calendar is lunar-solar; Jewish days begin at sundown, so the fact that Zachary was born at 10:12 pm last Wednesday meant that his bris was today.) Though I've been to a few over the years, I never knew much about the traditions, and certainly had never really paid enough attention to know about the various roles. Luckily, our mohel (a local Conservative doctor) was extremely helpful and patient in the planning and explanations of various traditions. He also uses topical anesthetics and novacaine to make it a bit less painful and traumatic for the baby (and perhaps almost as much so for the parents). Zachary's two grandmothers acted as the kvatters (bringing the baby into the ceremony), and his grandfather (papa) was the sondek (who holds the baby during the ceremony). [Trivia: I found it interesting that two of the designated roles aren't even Hebrew words; sondek is Greek and kvatter is Yiddish.]

As the opportunities for actual baby viewing and holding before/after a bris are pretty minimal, I was able to use a bit of my geekiness to help somewhat with that, putting a bunch of photos from our various online albums (including those taken by our friends) onto the Xbox 360, which uses fancy Ken Burns-like panning effects to make them look even a bit fancier. My bubbie was basically placing orders for her favorites from the slideshow, and I think all of the grandparents want it turned into a DVD or something. Now we just need to figure out a soundtrack...

It was so wonderful to be surrounded by so many supportive friends and family. On the family front, my brother, mom and Meh's parents were of course here (Meh's mom spent much of the actual ceremony offering support upstairs with Meh). Wait, let me start over -- as I've been frequently forgetting, all family relationships now reset to reflect Zachary's point of view; this is going to take some getting used to! So his uncle and two grandmothers were there to support him. His great-grandmother (bubbie, who I think is still being called bubbie, or perhaps great-bubbie?), great aunt and great uncle had flown in from Maryland as well, and they were all so supportive and loving.

As far as friends, we had more than thirty in attendance, all of whom were so supportive and warm (not to mention many of them skipping work to join us for the mid-day ceremony) -- it really made the fact that minor surgery was going to happen a bit more bearable and less stressful. Everyone wanted to help out -- two friends catered the entire event spectacularly (we've got an enormous collection of bagels, lox, caprese tomatoes, and couscous to plow through in the next few weeks), others helped us with setup, bringing a few items, shlepping of chairs, and shuttling one of my closest college friends from/to the airport, who himself flew in from Los Angeles just for the day. (I teased him about "pulling a Scott", since my USC course had featured many such Seattle-LA day trips.) He actually ended up acting as the "anesthesiologist", offering Zachary a piece of gauze soaked in sugar water/wine during the ceremony.

True to form, Zachary was quiet (and possibly dozing) during all of the ceremony, only getting a bit fussy long afterwards, when the mohel discussed care and such. Everyone was so supportive and the mood was actually quite happy and joyous, with lots of singing (so many great singers in the room from our various choirs, Meh said she really appreciated hearing the beautiful harmonies from upstairs) and then dancing after the baby naming, with everyone circling and dancing around us and Zachary.

Speaking of the naming, the bris is also where you announce a son's hebrew name. Zachary's is is Hallel David. Hallel (הלל , 'praise to G-d') is for both of my grandfathers (whoops, Zachary's paternal great-grandfathers), who were both named Henry. David (דָּוִד , 'beloved') was Zachary's paternal paternal great-grandfather's middle name -- and of course Zachary's own English middle name too. I realized afterwards that Hallel also works well with my own Hebrew name Pesach (פֶּסַח , 'Passover'), since Hallel is a part of the seder (the meal-oriented observance on Passover), and actually the part where most of the singing occurs, so that works for the musical parents too!

Okay, enough Hebrew etymology for the time being. Thank you once again so much to all of our family and friends from near and far who were able to join us at the bris!

The Born Identity

Simon's pictures have started coming through -- we'll have to figure out how best to post them in the next few days, but so gorgeous! We're so lucky to have so many talented photographer friends willing to work with such a fussy model!

Of course babies inherit traits from both parents; all of those fruit fly labs in high school biology taught us that if nothing else. Lately, we've both been noticing bits of each other in Zachary as we start to learn more about his personality. Physically, the hair color seems to be closest to Meh's (though who knows of this will stick -- I myself was seriously a super-fair blond until I was like 9 or 10), the eyelashes are mine, as are the blue eyes (again, if these stick; I know most babies start with blue eyes). Family and friends alike keep saying how much he looks like me, though I'm too clueless to see it. Even Meredith commented that while Zachary and I were sleeping last night, she looked over at me and kept being visually reminded of Zachary.

Personality-wise, we're actually starting to understand some of his attitudes and moods, and to some extent we can even tell from his noises whether he's frustrated (usually a one-off holler), mad (more active crying, though "with intensity", to quote Lost in Translation), gassy/needing to burp (more drawn out whines), etc.

Yesterday we had a lovely visit to the Post Partum Center at Evergreen Hospital, which is only around 10 minutes from our house. The staff there are so helpful and supportive, and perhaps as importantly, they have a shop (what they call a "Baby and Family Boutique") that had a great selection of things that the maternity and baby shops sometimes fail to deliver on -- and are a real shlep from our house to boot. Apparently, getting to leave the store in the bra you've just been fitted for (I'm a guy, I had no idea this is uncommon) is a huge deal.

But beyond the wide selection of paraphernalia for mommy, they had one particularly intriguing item for baby called a Snuggle Nest. Meh admits that it was the name that drew her, but we both saw the potential advantages: rather than having to hover over the pack-n-play at 4 in the morning trying to soothe Zachary, he could be in essentially a mini sleeping area right in our bed. I know the anti-co-sleeping brigade will be after us, but as the Post Partum Center folks said, it seems to work just fine in the rest of the world, the US just needs to get over itself and accept that this is a viable technique. Feels like the American attitude towards soccer or something. Anyway, we tried it out last night and it was hugely successful - I was able to snuggle with Zachary and both of us fell asleep together after one late-night feeding. (Meh later said this was very cute and she wants a picture the next time it happens.) Success!

Today Zachary meets his pediatrician. And if we feel adventurous, we may try our first tour of the neighborhood later on via stroller.

The Zachary Portrait Gallery, Part Deux

As you might have seen in the comments for the last blog posting, lovely pics from our friend Kate (of Fish for Breakfast fame) have been posted here - thanks so much, Kate! And not even using a bounce card!

I've also coalesced a few more grandparent pictures into our at the hospital and first weekend at home collections. Unfortunately, the ImageStation photo site is down for the day for maintenance, so you'll have to wait until 3 am tomorrow PDT (according to them). What kind of photo site can't manage an in-place upgrade and just takes itself down entirely instead? I so want my $3 a year back. :)

For those wondering how Korby has responded to Zachary, he's been mainly indifferent, though he's sniffed him a few times. On the other hand, the presence of the grandparents and other guests has been a boon for his naughty habit of eating things off tables. So far he's gotten:

1. One half of a hamburger bun from our outdoor grilling picnic with Meh's parents
2. Six celebratory cupcakes brought over by our friends (when I told them "the cupcakes are already all gone" by that evening, I think they possibly guessed this)
3. Diapers from the garbage (um, ew.)
4. Kleenex from the garbage.
5. The remaining half of a tasty fruit loaf that our neighbors brought over (impressively grabbed from the formerly impenetrable rear half of the countertop)
6. A bit of stuff from our recycling bin that still had food on it (Art's bad, that's supposed to be cleaned off before it goes to recycling)
7. ...and last night he apparently even made a play for a giant package of bottled water. Silly dog, and so so food focused.

Thankfully, Korby will be going to the happiest place (for dogs) on earth for day care on Thursday, so the bris catering Simon and Justine prepare have at least a fighting chance of, say, being eaten by humans.

Every day is still a new first for Zachary (and us)! Yesterday was Zachary's first sponge bath. He thankfully didn't seem to mind it much; this may be a baby who actually likes to get clean. And today will be our first road trip (not counting the ride back from the hospital), and if we feel adventurous, maybe we'll bust out the stroller for a neighborhood walking tour this afternoon.

To Zig or to Zach?

A few more early pictures from the weekend are here (should I be worried that it looks like 5 people have already found and viewed them, even before I sent out the link?) - I'll try to post more from the grandmother cameras later on. And as mentioned yesterday, our friend came by with his super fancy digital SLR and even a bounce card (a shiny white flat surface used to get more natural light onto a subject), so I expect we'll have some lovely pics to share soon.

Last night was another long night with a fussy Zachary. Meredith's parents generously watched him from 9 pm to 1 am, which gave Meh a small sleep window, but he was still up nearly all of the rest of the night in one form or another. They say that babies start off 12-hours off from our schedule (they're most active when the mom is sleeping), but hopefully we can gradually get him onto Pacific time in the next few days/weeks. But he's definitely gaining weight at this point, so at least we know he's getting enough food. Perhaps today we'll venture a stroller tour of the neighborhood and/or a bath in the evening to try to calm and/or tire him out a bit more.

In talking about/to Zachary, we find ourselves (and our families) continuing to occasionally call him Ziggy. My mom reports this never happened with my own pre-birth nickname (Boris - thank goodness that one didn't stick!) I'm starting to wonder if we might actually have an ongoing nickname here rather than just a fetal placeholder. So I pose the question to our readers - he'll definitely be Zachary and likely Zach as well, but what about Ziggy?

Incidentally, we've had two different pediatrician friends quip that apgar scores of 10 (recall that Zachary got a 9 out of 10) are either:
a) Only given by novice pediatricians, or
b) Reserved for the children of laywers.

Ah, how the failures of standardized testing are once again illuminated!

Blogus Interruptus

Lest people think that we're getting hours at a time to wax philosophical and write these blog entries, yesterday's was written in about 9 separate sittings! The timestamp is just when the entry was started.

Today Zachary began to receive visitors, and the demand has been quite large! First, some amazing friends who have slightly more parenting experience than us (their son is heading up towards two years old already - how time flies!) called us up asking if they could come by with bagels. (Side story: Their son had apparently said 'muffins' when they picked them up, and I made a corresponding joke about what on the west coast passes for "bagels" -- though the ones they brought were actually quite excellent and absolutely hit the spot!). In addition to the doughy goodness, they brought cream cheese schmear and emotional support for both new parents.

My brother (now Uncle Brian!) had flown in last night, and he was the next one to arrive, along with our friends Mike and Kate. Our families have been incredibly supportive and helpful -- my mom and Meredith's parents have been running around the Seattle metropolitan area finding various things for the baby and Meredith, and my aunt, uncle, and bubbie are heading in this coming week for the bris as well.

Several other pairs of friends stopped by later in the day as well -- everyone was bringing gifts, whether it be food, fresh berries, a fancy camera to take some stunning pics of Zachary (hope to see ahd share those soon!), or planning to cater the entire brit milah! Also continuing goodwill phone calls from friends across the country (and even in the exotic far-off land of Toronto). We're just so overwhelmed with all of the support. Now if only Zachary would cooperate with somewhat more predictable sleeping patterns! Speaking of which, he's just about down, so time to join him in sleepytime land.

Hope everyone is well!

(Oh, and if you were wondering, today's posting took all day to complete - I think I had to come back to it around twelve times.)

[post completed 8:55 PM]

Starting the standardized testing early

Since Meh and Zachary are both peacefully sleeping at the moment (hooray!), figured I could describe a little more of the hospital experience. Everyone there was absolutely helpful and supportive - never saw people lose their patience (even with stressful things that likely happen hundreds of times a day) or show a 'jaded' view. I was particularly impressed with the night staff, who in addition to helping deliver our baby, helped us through those first and second difficult nights in the hospital. Incidentally, every single room in the maternity suites had that 'mommy and baby snuggling' poster I'd mentioned before from World Breastfeeding Week.

We also saw a parade of specialists with offers (always - never "required") to give the baby vaccines, check the vital signs of both mom and baby, perform free tests for potential issues, offer lactation support (everyone on staff there was trained, and had some great feedback and pointers), and even provide thorough initial pediatric care. (Our pediatrician is thankfully based at a hospital about 10 minutes from our house; Swedish, where we delivered, is closer to 45 minutes or more depending on traffic - am I glad we beat the mess that is the summer's giant I-5 construction project just south of downtown. So since our pediatrician isn't at the hospital where we delivered, their own staff did all of the initial care for Zachary.)

But perhaps the most interesting for me was the standardized testing. We'd learned in our parenting class about the Apgar tests (quick tests used at birth to determine the general health of the baby). I'm pleased to report that Zachary scored 9's (out of 10) on the two immediate post-birth tests, so he's already an all A student! (Well, an A- at least. No pressure or undue expectations going forward.) If you're wondering what he missed, it was apparently the second possible point for 'appearance'. Clearly his pants weren't pressed with crisp enough creases or something. But seriously, I didn't notice any "blue at extremities", so these doctor folks are apparently pretty strict graders.

The strangest/most fascinating test was the hearing test Zachary got on the second day. A nice lady came in, wheeling a cart. She asked if we wanted a hearing test. I started to bring him over and apologize that he'd just fallen asleep and would need to wake up. No need, she said - the test only worked if he was asleep. Wow, this we had to see. There were a few jigsaw puzzle-piece looking things that were covered with a conductive gel and placed on his forehead and above and below his right ear. Then a series of tiny electric leads were hooked up to the puzzle pieces (which I guess had circuitry or other sensing devices embedded in them?). Next, these transparent hollow plastic cylinders were placed over his ears, with more wires leading from them. I was starting to think that we were getting taken by some kook wandering the hospital, but the equipment was just a little too cool for that. Once everything was hooked up, she hit a button on the screen, and the test began (completely silent for us) - his ears were presented with signals, and the sensors detected whether his brain was registering them. He passed with flying colors, and even got this pre-generated "certificate of achievement". Yes, our son excels even in his sleep.

Speaking of which, there was also some serious hospital reading material acquisition for little Zachary - every time someone came in, they practically left us a new phone book-sized pamphlet of data to peruse. When will we be able to actually read it? I think we at least managed to fill out all of the prerequisite paperwork before leaving the hospital, but there are some serious deforestation issues getting caused here.

Whoops, Zachary stirs, time to go make sure everything is okay. More news the next chance we get!

Picture pages

Hi everyone!
Back at home and starting to figure out how things work when there isn't an endless supply of professionals coming through. I think we'll need to do a supply run later on today, and there may be some pieces of furniture I should pick up. So much of this you don't think about until you're actually in the situation and trying to figure out how to keep mommy and baby comfortable.

I've finally posted our first round of pictures - apologies if some are a little dark, I didn't want to bother Zachary with the flash. Though as a friend of mine later pointed out, some doctors think that's a good idea in general:

"From a pediatrician's standpoint, I would not recommend using direct flash in a newborns eyes as the eyes are weak. The muscularture of the eye as well as the nerves of the eye need time to strengthen and develop."

While I think that's somewhat paranoid (and of course, as with everything else, you can find twenty opinions among nineteen pediatricians), I'll still try to avoid the flash. Several friends with fancier cameras have offered to come do photo shoots - we'll have to look into that as we start getting into a rhythm and figuring out Zachary's needs and wants!

More later, but thanks once again to everyone who's been sending us well wishes. One of our neighbors actually drove past as I was unloading Zachary from the car, and came back later to bring us dinner -- how kind and generous of her! Thanks also to all of the wonderful blog comments, e-mails, and phone messages. On that last subject, the answering machine is still blinking menacingly, and I'm somewhat worried about how many messages will be on it when I finally push the play button -- if Zachary gives us a chance, hopefully later on today!

The Little Prince Comes Home

After learning a few more exciting elements to our car seat and getting Meh and Zachary discharged from the hospital, we headed out onto the road. I think we hit every single light, but Zachary seemed to sleep through most of it unphased. (Meh, on the other hand, was feeling a little sick sitting next to him in the back - more of my crazy reckless driving I'm sure.)

Zachary arrived back home at around 1 pm this afternoon to a practically whole new house -- so many wonderful new toys, furniture items, clothing, and baby-related accessories for us (not him, at least yet!) to explore. It's of course so overwhelming (we've already had our first at-home, er, diaper adventure), but we're excited to be starting on this journey. Thanks again to all of our friends for their wonderful well wishes, and we promise to get back to each and every phone call and e-mail if and when Zachary decides to explore this thing called "napping". (He's still working on discovering that element of babyhood.)

Planning must commence now for his first doctor's appointment, some other unexciting but important paperwork, and the upcoming bris (is it tacky to do an Evite to a brit milah?). Will try to post more later, and get those pictures uploaded!

A Son is Born!

Hi folks,

Sorry again that we continue to be unable to post directly; Swedish even blocks upload access to our photo album. Such is life. And speaking of life, our new one has arrived! Here are the vital stats:

Zachary David Selfon [Hebrew name withheld, pending the brit milah] was born last night! His vital stats:

Born 8/8/07, 10:12 PM
7 lbs 8.4 oz
20” length
13.5” circumference around head
13.25” circumference around chest
.398 lifetime batting average [Okay, the last one I just made up – and no, I’m not pressuring him to follow his dad into professional sports. Or something.]

No, we don’t know his collar size or inseam, though based on those circumferences, you’d think they were measuring for hats and suits… Anyway, a huge special thanks to all of the friends who’ve e-mailed and called to wish us well, and to Simon and Justine for posting our blog entries for us remotely while we’re at Swedish. Yay! We’ll hopefully have many more details in the next few days (I believe we get to go home from the hospital tomorrow), including more pics. [5 PM]

A Hospitalin’ We Shall Go

One thing I’d forgotten to check (not that this was particularly high on the priority list!) was if the hospital had internet access, so our friends could immediately (or at least shortly after the phone calls to family) get any news. Thankfully, they do indeed have a wireless network set up. Unfortunately, it’s also partially-screened access; the nurse called out Ebay as a known blocked site (to keep people from trying to buy crap while they’re sedated?), but apparently Blogspot is as well, so this will be offline blogging at its finest. I’ll try to post them all when things settle back down, or else get someone to post them for us.

At 8:08 am this morning (yes, I’m keeping a log of the day’s events), we were pleasantly woken up by a friendly phone call asking “Are you ready to have a birthday party today?” What a nice way for the Swedish birthing center to let us know that we were welcome to come in at our convenience! So at 8:08 am and ten seconds, we were at the hospital. I’m kidding, it was actually at 9:01 am that we got in the car and headed over, leaving Meh’s parents to entertain Korby for the next few days. We’d pre-packed our bags (though of course I forgot a few things, more on that in a bit), and the traffic gods cooperated with a smooth commute into Seattle.

We arrived, parked, went up to the birthing suites, and were introduced to our wonderful nurse Elaine, and Room 547, our home for the next day or so. (Note: They move new mothers once they and their babies are stable and looking healthy. We almost had some surprise visitors a few hours ago who didn’t know that. Whoops.) The next few hours involved getting set up with an oxytocin drip (used to induce), which almost immediately started labor, and Meh being incredibly and increasingly brave with the difficult and escalating labor process. I really can’t even pretend to imagine how it was for her, and all I could do was try to comfort her and just be there to lend a hand/arm/shoulder to lean on. There was rocking chair action, the jacuzzi tub, standing/walking/swaying, and of course a bit of laying in the bed.

By mid-afternoon, coping techniques and pain medication just weren’t doing enough, and we decided to get an epidural. (Side story: The anesthesiologist, who was also very nice and friendly, told this joke – “They figured out a way to allow men to experience childbirth along with the women. The first man to try the technique was in the hospital alongside his wife during labor, and kept saying how it really wasn’t so bad. When they came home from the hospital, they found the postman dead on the doorstep.” Ba-dum-bum.) The epidural made a world of difference (Meh described her feet as ‘warm and cozy’ afterwards, though she retained enough feeling to know what was going on, just not the pain), and Meh was able to alternate between snoozing, chatting, and even a few quick games of cards. Ziggy continued along, usually oblivious, but occasionally dipping his/her (hm, by the time this is posted, perhaps we won’t need the gender neutral bits!) heartbeat in response to Meh’s positioning. As the evening progressed, our regular doctor said good night and introduced us to her on-call associate, who was also very friendly, patient, and good with explanations for the baby’s status. And that’s where we sit right now, gradually getting further along and ready to hopefully meet our baby later tonight or early tomorrow. That’s the status for now, hopefully more to tell later! [6:40 PM]

Membership has its privileges

This is excellent -- a good friend caught this parking lot image while shopping at the Metropolitan Market (a Seattle-area upscale grocer competing with Whole Foods). *Now* we find out about this! Add it to the list of other pregnancy perks:

• Occasional (though disappointingly rare?) offers to allow Meh to cut in long bathroom lines
• The very civilized (sorry, civilised) offers to give up seats on the London Underground (subway)
• Super tasty non-alcoholic drink alternatives to those fancy wines at The Herbfarm
• ...and people fleeing from seats even remotely nearby when Meh looked for a place to sit at the airport while waiting for her parents' luggage to unload on Saturday. (Seriously, I think one or two people even broke into a run.)

Are there other undocumented perks of pregnancy we missed out on? Besides being able to peruse cute baby stores without having to pretend it's for a niece or nephew, of course. Or if there are good young baby perks we should know about, please let us know! I know Microsoft sends along a care package (of course featuring a tiny little MS-logoed onesie among other things - can dorkiness possibly start at an earlier age?), but we'd love to hear any other tips or recommendations.

In other news, check it out, yet another medical opinion reversal -- this from the good researchers at our very own University of Washington. (Granted, I'm not sure how many doctors really endorsed parking your child in front of Baby Einstein videos for hours on end to begin with, but still...)

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1650352,00.html?cnn=yes

the research team found that with every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants learned six to eight fewer new vocabulary words than babies who never watched the videos.

I still say even the name of the video series is misleading, unless they're thinking they'll train your baby to drop out of high school and become a patent clerk? Then again, Albert Einstein apparently had speech difficulties early in life, so perhaps these videos are more on target than we think...

The date is set! Well, sort of.

"You can't be pregnant forever," commented our day-by-day baby development book. (These post-full-term paragraphs are pretty lame.) Today that came into focus just a little bit more, with our one-week-past-term visit to the doctor.

The doctor appointment was a bit of a marathon session, clocking in at around 2 and a half hours (I know, only slightly shorter than a Lord of the Rings film). We got to find out more about Ziggy's current status, which is happy and very active!

After visiting with our doctor, we got stuck in an air traffic control delay waiting for their fancy new ultrasound machine to be freed up. Our doctor has been very excited and proud of it; apparently it makes julienned fries, though when I inquired, there's no "post to YouTube" button on there. Not yet at least; maybe my suggestion will make it into the next model?

Anyway, the ultrasound was a little hard to see since Ziggy is now at full term. We actually got a printout and still can't tell quite what it is that we're looking at. Care to venture a guess? (Yes, the original is indeed that dark.) But back on the live-image screen, Ziggy was clearly moving his/her head around quite actively, and even looked to be sucking his/her thumb (apparently starting dad's bad habit pretty early on). Everything was looking good and healthy.

Next we were moved to a room where they could monitor both the baby's heartbeat and Meredith's status on one seismograph-looking printout machine. Ziggy happily chugged away in the 120s with a few spikes (that's apparently what they were looking for) before s/he went to sleep. Meanwhile, Meh's readings had a few spikes of their own with some braxton hicks squeezing, nicely spaced out. Eventually we were able to get Ziggy to wake back up and do a few more variable heartbeat things to make the doc happy that s/he is responsive and healthy. It was interesting to see such "old" technology as a long printout; I'd think they'd be all digital now so you could just scroll back and do statistical analysis to figure out if Ziggy as a stock ticker item would be a good blue chip investment (though regardless of what the financial advisors might say, we're buying!).

So, that wrapped up that. Based on our conversation with the doctor, we're scheduling to induce on Wednesday. So the baby might come then, if not:

a) Sooner (if things happen tomorrow), or
b) Later (if they induce and things take a while, or if the hospital's maternity ward schedule fills up and they elect to reschedule us for the next day)

That's about the status from here for now. We've been enjoying our time with Meh's parents, with lots of good food (tasty Italian for dinner this evening), watching movies, and light activities around the city. Of course, we'll let you all know if any other news occurs; Meh is getting e-mails saying "Well, I know you simply must have had the baby by now." Don't these folks follow our rambling, long-winded, blow-by-blow, day-by-day blog descriptions? :)

Ziggy can you hear me...

Intermittently throughout the pregnancy, we've been keeping a sort of audio journal - beyond capturing all of Ziggy's heartbeat recordings, we occasionally 'self-interview' about what we're hoping for, expecting, nervous about, etc. I'm not entirely sure what to do with these journals - whether to turn them into a CD/podcast for Ziggy to hear at some later age, or just keep as an audio diary for Meh and myself? I guess we'll sort that out later.

Multiple friends had been telling us for weeks that we just had to see Knocked Up. Luckily it's still playing at a theater or two here, so after a hefty but delicious breakfast (with portions typically scaled for at least two meals if not three) at the "world-renowned" Brown Bag (Meh's mom says it's been featured on the Food Network), we headed over to the local mall/movie theater. Most of the trailers were disappointing, but the movie itself was a lot of fun. It was great to see a reunion of virtually all of the 'freaks' from Freaks and Geeks (Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, and even the now Spiderman-famous James Franco; F&G producer/Michigander Paul Feig had a bit part as well). And certain pregnancy truths were really funny and timely. Perhaps the birth scene [oh, did I give away a plot point? Tough!] was a bit too timely and perhaps, er, graphic, but it was all really fun and a good way to spend an afternoon. Oh, and bonus points to them for some excellently humorous Jewish jokes and even a moderately obscure joke reference to Matisyahu.

Tomorrow is our +1 week doctor's appointment - we should have a better idea of where Ziggy is "station"-wise as well as how s/he is doing afterwards.

Major life events aren't limited to pending babies; today was the wedding of our good friend who officiated as the rabbi at our own wedding a little more than four years ago. I caught some practially live pictures live (well, I would've caught them live if I'd been sitting at a computer at the time) from a friend's iPhone on the scene. (Yes, I think he was sending pictures just to play with his new toy, or perhaps to justify the hefty monthly phone rate? :) Anyway, she was a beautiful bride, the celebration looked wonderful, and we're so sorry that we had to miss the big day. Mazel tov to both Rachel and Joshua!

No news will be good news

From several separate conversations yesterday, it sounds like our blog has quite an active following at the moment; there must be some big news coming in the next few days or something. :) Anyway, just a quick warning that if/when things do start to happen, the best indicator may be the site going silent -- I'm not sure if the hospital has a wireless network, or if there will be time in general to post news, though we'll certainly try! Hm, I guess that redoubles the pressure to keep coming up with clever things to talk about more or less daily in the meantime.

Incidentally, the other day we'd posted about family and friends calling to check in, and us having no big news for them. Some friends interpreted that to mean "don't call", which was certainly not the intention - we'd still love to hear from you and catch up before things start to get hectic. And it's perfectly okay to leave a message too; in the last few weeks we've been getting an ever-increasing number of hang-ups on our machine, so either people are feeling like they don't want to bug us, or the baby-related telemarketers are descending already.

Meh's parents arrive later today. It will be nice having family around to offer support and keep us company during the last few days, as well as helping coordinate and assist with all of the stuff we'll inevitably be trying to figure out afterwards. There really is a serious amount of new terminology and gadgetry relating to parenthood; I'm not sure I'll be able to compartmentalize it all, and I'm half expecting to start inadvertently talking about desitin (the diaper rash ointment that apparently has its own full website?!?) while at the podium at a video game conference.

Last night we watched a movie about a rather dysfunctional and disturbing family dynamic (Meh indicated that the original book, apparently a somewhat embellished "memoir", is far more messed up). I keep thinking that however Meh and I act around our baby, that will be their 'norm' and primary source of socialization for the first few years. So much pressure to not be too weird, although Running With Scissors set a pretty high standard there that I think we'll be able to stay under.

Breakin' the blog...

Proving once more that my programming skills are woefully inadequate, the blog's countdown/up timer at right went all wonky once we rolled over to August. Whoops, so much for testing the thing. Anyway, it's fixed for now, at least sort of.

Today was another doctor visit -- all is well, with Ziggy in the 130-140+ BPM range. As we're into full term territory, we'll be visiting the doc again on Monday (if nothing eventful happens before then), at which time she can take a closer look at Ziggy's progress with a fetal monitor and other gadget goodies.

Incidentally, demonstrating once more that every hour, day, and week of the year is allocated to some kind of motivational awareness event, happy World Breastfeeding Week! (August 1-7) Yes, while walking to a lunch in Bellevue, I saw a large banner hanging from the hospital overlooking the freeway, proclaiming the event. Apparently it celebrates the 1990 signing of the "Innocenti Declaration", which sounds to me like a Harry Potter spell name, and reads like, well, like the kind of document that would be signed at a World Health Organization event. There are WBW kits, t-shirts, onesies, bookmarks, and even an excellent door-hanging do-not-disturb sign (to the right). This is all goodness and helps promote visibility of another best-for-baby medical opinion flip flop in the last 20-30 years (see also: in what orientation the baby should sleep, foods/drinks during pregnancy, medication during labor, etc.)

Just a minor rant about a few billboards around Seattle we've seen, which offer somewhat more judgmental messages about both breastfeeding and circumcision. While billboards are fine for promoting and selling products (well, maybe except that Zune campaign that neither said 'Zune' anywhere on the sign, nor mentioned what the device actually did), the parenting ones seem a little more Big Brother-ish, creepy, and antagonizing. It's fine to cite the positives or to offer assistance resources, but it seems less appropriate to make blanket and potentially guilt/stress-inducing judgments. We've had friends struggle with medical and comfort issues (for baby and mother alike), and a stark billboard doesn't seem to do anything positive here. I say stick with good messages that actually carry some reasonable information, like the one for WBW.

There, that's the end of my rant for today -- I'm going to go drink some formula now. Kidding!