Silent Nights

Two and a half months now, and we've begun sleep training Mui Mui. What is sleep training, you ask? Mommy learned it from a very thick book with lots of words in small print, called "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child." To sum up the book, sleep training is basically letting your baby cry until they fall asleep. Then they'll get used to not being picked up, and learn to fall asleep on their own. The book advises that sleep training begins after 4 months, but it says if you're a very busy parent, you can begin at two months. Since our toddler keeps us just the right amount of busy to qualify as "very," we began the training a week ago.

It sounds likes such a simple thing to do - let the baby cry until they fall asleep is much easier then pacing the house with her in your arms until she falls asleep. No pins and needles, sore wrists and elbows, back aches, or risking dropping the baby because it's 3 AM and you're falling asleep while standing up. (Just pretend that's in the book and not something I actually experienced.) But when you actually begin sleep training, and hearing your baby cry and scream and wail with more tears than would fill a baby sized sponge, it seems easier to just carry her for just one more hour until she turns into a limp log of pink fuzz and fat in your arms.

After a couple of nights already, she seems to be getting better. First she started falling asleep on her own, usually in an automated swing or vibrating bouncer. Now when she's in her crib, she can cry for ten minutes instead of twenty, but not consistently. But as we learned from sleep training the first one, he now sleeps almost on cue, with no fuss or resistance. The road is hard, but the reward is worth it.

Perhaps it's her holiday gift to us, but last night was the first night she slept for six straight hours. And as I write this entry this Christmas Eve, I would like to wish all you readers out there with our family's rendition of a Christmas classic.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Baby's Firsts (Again)

Needless to say, we've been busy. Two times the babies can mean twice as much fun, four times more work, and half the amount of sleep.

With Mui Mui around, we are reminded again of many of the things we learned the first time around, that we conveniently forgot. I've heard that the painful memories, like childbirth, are actually naturally minimized in the memory, because if people remembered how difficult it is to have a baby, everyone in the world would be a single child. We forgot that newborns don't sleep through the night, have very messy diapers, and can be very loud when they cry.

Mui mui is now six weeks old, which marks a very important milestone. A six week old baby noow sleeps for longer periods than every two hours, so we've just been reminded in the past couple of days how pleasant it is to only have to wake up 2-3 times throughout the night. This means (slightly) easier days for Mommy too, so she can concentrate on the very active 19 month old dinosaur roaming the rooms of our home now, who is eating, growing, and thrashing about for most of the day.

Which leads to a first for Lucasuarus: Yesterday evening, he had his first time out when he refused to eat his dinner.

We ended up sending him to sleep without supper, which is something I've only see done on TV. He woke up exceedingly hungry this morning, of course, so we'll see if he learned his lesson tonight during dinnertime. Oddly, I realized, his time out actually freed us up to do other things, which was rather convenient.

Finding the time to write more is especially challenging during the holidays now, so I hope all you readers had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Our little turkeys are appropriately stuffed, and we're hoping to all get enough sleep to sustain us to the new year.

New Topic

As I mentioned in my last post, we are indeed expecting a new addition to the family. I just figured that i need to keep this blog fresh after 18 months, and what better way than to incorporate a new topic of discussion.

With that said, I'd like to introduce Olivia Song, freshly birthed this past Monday morning, 10/12, at 5:34 AM.She's a little plump at 7 pounds 2 oz., born an ounce heavier than her big brother.

I'm a bit slow thinking right now now to write more, as we were all quickly reminded how new babies have that "must-eat-every-two-hours" rule. Mommy's been extremely tired on a 24 hour basis, while Daddy's been doing double duty during the day watching the original Baby, who is now more appropriately the Big Brother.

The two of them do get along fine so far, which is the most asked question since we've gotten home. We've been trying to get our first Baby used to being around other newborns, but those newborns always get returned to their original owners by the end of the day. But he's yet to exhibit any jealousy so far, and we do our best to spread the attention and hugs equally between babies.

Contraction Reaction

I'm sitting in front of the laptop, recovering from information overload from varying opinions on the whats, whens, and whys of contractions. For all you loyal readers who know me, you already know that Baby is not going to be an only child sometime soon. Seems like it's sooner than we thought, as Mommy is having those pains that hurt enough to keep her from sleeping, and coughing from acid reflux to boot.

What Daddy is trying to figure out is whether the pains are contractions or Braxton Hicks, and neither of us remember anything from this same situation 18 months ago.

What I've pieced together from many inconsistent sources including my own long term memory, which is the most unreliable source of all, are the following facts:

• Contraction pains are in the back, and false labor pains (a.k.a. Braxton Hicks) are in the front
• If they're inconsistent in duration and frequency, they're probably not true contractions yet
• 411 = a way to remember the best time to head to the hospital. 4=contractions less than 4 minutes apart; 1=contractions lasting for one minute; 1=all for at least one hour
• You can't speak a full sentence through true contractions because of the pain

To help with the timing, I found this site called ContractionMaster.com, which is coming in very handy. (Also available as a downloadable application, which is a bit easier than following your wife around with a computer to see when her contractions are beginning and ending.)

While we try to figure this out, here's a little preview of what's to come:

Little Bandit

Baby has this little device called a Snack Trap. It's a cup with a trap door for dry snacks, where you can easily put snacks in and pull them out, but they won't fall out of the cup if it ever gets upended. Within this cup lies the source of Baby's energy: Pepperidge Farm Goldfish.

Legend has it that one day, a tiny thief roamed the land, and the people closest to him called him Little Bandit. Little Bandit's goal between his naps was to fill his round little belly. On one fateful day, Little Bandit saw his quarry in an unattended diaper bag. Knowing his nemesis, the All Seeing Mommy was preoccupied with menial chores, Little Bandit did what he did best, and snuck his chubby fingers into the diaper bag to fish out his own Holy Grail with trap door, swimming with precious Goldfish. When Little Bandit heard the All Seeing Mommy's footsteps growing louder, his instinct told him to stuff his prize back in the bag, as Mommy's untrained skills would not be able to detect such a stealthy deed. But the All Seeing Mommy knows and sees all, which is the only reason that I am able to tell you this story now. And to this day, Mommy has been the only person to ever catch the Little Bandit in the very act that earned him his name.

Be weary of your own Little Bandits, as you can see that training begins at a very early age, so be sure to mind your belongings and snacks around them.

The latest advancements in high speed photography allowed this rare glimpse of the Little Bandit in action.

Know Your Body

Once a baby passes the one year mark, the monthly visits to the pediatrician dwindle down to less frequent visits, to about every 3-6 months. At each of the visits, the doctor always asks us how Baby is doing in terms of milestones, like if he's sitting up by himself, crawling, babbling, or whatever it is babies do when they're supposed to. And we can always say, very proudly, "Of course he does, silly doctor!"

At the 15 month check up, the doctor finally stumped us. The first question was, "Does he speak more than two words?" He can say "ma ma" and "ba ba" (which means "Daddy"), but not really anything else. So two out of three isn't bad, right?And if he doesn't know the difference in meaning between those two words that sound coincidentally similar, does it count? OK, ask us another question, because we're sure he's excelled to a mutant degree in some other area of development... "Can he identify his body parts?" And we confidently replied, "Uh... Silly doctor... um... no." How were we supposed to know that we were supposed to teach him to identify his body parts? We've been teaching him different foods and drinks, toys and books, but not body parts! He's a Baby, not a doctor! He's not pre-med. Nobody told us we needed to teach him body parts now!

As a result, we have now placed him on a strict educational regimen to learn his anatomy. I've documented our progress so far...

Where's your head?

Where's your teeth?

Where's your derrière?

Where's your... pants??

OK, we have a few more months to make some progress...

Water Baby

Swimming was never a strong ability in me, as people would often expect it would be, being that I gre up walking distance from the Coney Island beaches. My mom did enroll me in swim classes at the Y when I was a little boy, but I remember missing the last lesson, which was probably the most important one: how to tread water, i.e. how to survive in a pool of water greater than 5 feet. Ironically, I think I missed the last lesson because we left for a tropical family vacation where I couldn't go in the water because I missed the last lesson.

I know swimming is a very important skill, so I'm determined to make sure my offspring pick this skill up when they're young. Luckily, Auntie's got a big pool, and a whole family of strong swimmers. So while Mommy and Daddy went on a tropical vacation, Baby stayed with pool-equipped family, and Auntie and Uncle were able to introduce Baby to a body of water bigger than his bathtub.

When Baby becomes "Young Child," Daddy (and maybe Mommy) will enroll in Family Swim Classes, so we can all learn to swim at the same time, like those dolphin families I see on those nature shows. At least, that was my intention. After some research I found there seems to be no such thing as "Family Swim Classes;" there are classes for either the child or the parent, but not both. That's probably better off, so my child won't embarrass me when I'm still learning to tread water and he starts taking laps around me. The closest thing I came across was at the New York Y, and although they call it "Parent/Child Swim Classes," it's actually about getting the child comfortable in the water, and at the same time getting the parent comfortable about their child getting comfortable in the water.

I found a couple of interesting sites: InfantSwim.com, and InfantAquatics.com, that both promote "survival swimming," for infants from 6 months of age. I had no idea a baby could swim before they could walk, but check this link out for some pretty amazing pictures and a must-see video at this link. And I thought dolphins were smart.

For now, I'll probably just get some water wings or something similar for Baby, since the closest he's going to get to water is usually his bathtub, or the garden hose.