Happy birthday, Alex!

In the wee hours of Sunday, July 3, we welcomed the newest member of our family. A boy! A BOY! I can't think of anything luckier than having one of each. We named him Alexander David, after Sal's grandfather and my father. He is spectacular.


It was a very fast, very intense birth, and I hope to write about it soon while it's still fresh in my memory. But for right now, I think I only have the energy for photos. Many babies are sleepy little blobs in their first hours of life, but Alex was super alert from the start. He loves to gaze up at your face and look around the room, and he even seems to try lifting his head up. He seems so thoughtful and wise! Handsome as hell, too. How did we get TWO kids who look this good right outta the chute?!


He's also gigantic. Clocked in at 9 lbs, 2 oz, which explains why getting him out of my body absolutely clobbered me. It's only a pound and a half more than Mia weighed, but I ASSURE you that makes a significant difference to the whole, ah, "birth experience."


Proud papa and his son!


And here's Alex meeting his sister. Mia has been very excited about this whole thing for months, patting my belly to feel "bee-bee moo?" (baby move) and running around the house clutching his ultrasound pictures. Introducing her to the real deal was unforgettable. When I took him out of the bassinet and sat down to show her, she got a huge grin on her face and put her hand over her mouth. Then she walked up and showered him with kisses.


Now, the unfortunate part: I'm currently writing this from a parent room at the NICU, where Alex has been since early Monday because he has severe jaundice. He will be OK, but this has been a fairly miserable chapter for all involved. It was terrifying to have the visibly alarmed pediatrician enter my room and whisk way the little glass bassinet holding my baby. His bilirubin level was over 22, which is quite high. From what I can tell reading things on the internet (because that's always a good idea, right?) people begin to freak out about "high" bilirubin levels of 13 or 14. A level of 25 or 30 is when they start talking about blood transfusions and other scary things, so we were inching close to that, particularly since bilirubin levels rise in the first few days of a baby's life. In other words, we are grateful and lucky that they began treating it so aggressively so early.

So Alex went to the NICU, where he lays all day and night in one of those little blue-light aquariums. He's naked except for bandages and IVs and monitors all over his body, and a little mask covering the top half of his face. For two days (I think? I have lost all sense of time) I couldn't even hold him. Every time I pulled myself together to go visit him, I would walk in and not even be able to see him through the tears. Then later I feel bad, because I know there are far more woeful stories to come out of a NICU than dumb ol' jaundice. But seeing my son like that and being unable to scoop him up and hold him close is one of the worst feelings I have ever experienced.

However! Things are looking up. Alex's bilirubin levels have dropped to a far less worrisome number - it was 13.1 this morning. He gets to come out of the tank for feedings, so every few hours I get a chance to kiss and cuddle that sweet boy. And yesterday (well, 2 o'clock this morning) I even nursed him for a bit before we switched to a bottle of pumped milk. I also take his temperature and change his diaper (no small feat amid the tangle of wires and tubes) (oh, and yikes, there's a penis! also new diaper-changing territory for this mom.) The most important thing for him right now is to eat and poop, eat and poop, eat and poop, since that's how his body expels the bilirubin. And may I please just say, my son is already a world-class pooper. He pooped on the delivery table, he pooped four times our first night together, and he poops nearly every time I feed him. So he is definitely doing his part to get the hell out of here.

I find it amusing that my last blog post was basically a pep talk to myself over anxieties about introducing a new baby to our already hectic household. But at this moment I'd give anything to only have to worry about sleep, food and entertainment for two-under-2-plus-Chickens! We just have to be very patient. And remind ourselves that in matter of days we will be able to heave a sigh of relief, put this precious boy in a car and bring him home.

Note to self

Here I sit, nine-plus months pregnant. My house is spotless, my toddler just went down for a nap that will likely last a blissful two or three hours, and I am well-rested with not one single to-do to worry about. All is peaceful, easy and well.

And because any day now this simple life will be blown to bits, I wanted to put this moment on the record. A reminder to myself that no matter how difficult the coming year may be, there will come a time and a place where my husband and I both sleep through the night. And go out to a nice dinner. And have kids who can walk around, tell us what's wrong, eat regular food and play together.

This sounds kind of dramatic, but the first year after Mia was born, I deeply feared our life would never feel settled again. But I think we had an unusually hard start to parenthood. The timeline looks something like this: Baby born. Breastfeeding awful. Baby blues like crazy. Breastfeeding improves, but dog goes paralyzed. Expensive and painful spinal surgery. Post-op complications that required dragging an infant to several middle-of-the-night animal ER visits. And oh, look! A colicky baby. Who screamed for weeks on end while mom and dad broke a sweat learning how to manually express the bladder of a handicapped dog. Months of recovery and rehabilitation. Working-mom exhaustion. Nighttime and nap battles that only grew worse until, at baby's 12-month checkup, a pediatrician issued sleep-training instructions to a weary, tearful mom.

And there came the turning point. We fixed the sleeping, which made the whole family happier and more rested. We finished up breastfeeding, which freed up TONS of my time both at work and at home. We somehow got ourselves to a place where Mia can ask for a bowl of cereal, and we can give it to her with a spoon (a real adult one!) and a cup of milk (not even a sippy!) and a meal is as easy as that. It's beautiful!

As for Chickenbone, well, he has his good days and his bad days. In fact, he recently spent a few weeks on crate rest because we noticed his back legs were wobbly and dragging a little. It's something we're going to have to be vigilant about for the rest of his life. He may have blown one disk, but he has many more and will always be at risk of further back injury. We are also still expressing his bladder four times a day. I know that is kind of shocking, but you know what? There's lots of stuff we have to do every day. We take showers and do dishes and keep a toddler alive and entertained every single day. This has become just another daily chore. It is what it is.

Most of the time, though, Chickens is a happy dog who brings much joy to our family, and he loves Mia as much as she adores him. In fact, a few weeks ago she decided to keep him company while he was on bedrest.


Mia's other near-constant companion is this Pooh bear. She likes to feed him Cheerios for breakfast.


She used to feed him in her high chair, but we recently acquired this nifty kid-sized table and chair set. Much more civilized.


What a helpful child! She also likes to assist dad with his yardwork.


Here are a few more recent pictures. Trader Joe's is our favorite grocery store because airplanes hang from the ceiling. After Mia "helps" by handing them items from the cart, the cashiers often give her a strip of stickers.


Waiting patiently for a somersault assist.


Father's Day back-yard barbecue. I can't help but crack up when she wears these sunglasses. She just stares back blankly, like, "What's wrong with you, lady?"


Chillaxin' in her lawn chair after a hearty meal.


And here she is on her way out the door to run errands with mom (or "mom-mom," as she has recently started calling me.) It is plain to see that my belly size has graduated from cute-pregnant-lady to freaky-circus-sideshow. Meaning, new baby, that we are awfully ready when you are!

A happy Mother's Day

Even though I also got some lovely presents, my favorite parts about Mother's Day were Sal doing the weekly grocery trip (AND cooking brunch), me napping for nearly two hours, and this:

Mother's Day 2011 from Amy on Vimeo.

p.s. The song is Rachel Coleman's "In a House," one of Mia's favorites. She knows how to sing almost all of it in sign language, just like they do in the Nick Jr. video.

Easter girl

Boy, I love me some then and now pics:

My dad

This is a picture of my dad, taken nearly five years ago in the stairwell of a church. He was waiting for me to come downstairs so he could walk me down the aisle.

Tomorrow is his birthday, as well as the one-month anniversary since he died. I know I have been a terribly absent from this blog for months now, for this reason and many others. But no matter how hard it is to put into words, I really don't feel like I can blow right past this part of my life, so here I am.

Dad's illness came on quite suddenly. He was sick in January, diagnosed with cancer in February, passed away in March. He had pancreatic cancer, which had spread to his liver and stomach. When we realized how serious things were I took two weeks off work, and Mia and I went to New Mexico to spend time with him. I thought we were just going home for some good family times - you know, barbecues, laughs, family photos - before the chemotherapy or the cancer made him too sick for that sort of thing. But he took a terrible turn for the worse on the seventh day of our visit, and four days later he was gone.

I can barely stand to think about how much I love and miss this man, much less put into words. His death just feels ... too big. But there is something I want to write about.

One thing I learned about losing a parent is that folks who have already been through this are invaluable. Much like having a baby, it's one of those things you can't truly understand unless you have experienced it yourself. And as I was trying to calm myself and make travel arrangements, a dear friend who lost her mother eight years ago told me that even in an experience as heartbreaking as this one, there would be "moments of beauty" at the end. And she was right. So here are a few of the memories that, along with the grief, I will carry in my heart.

- The talk my dad had with us three kids the week before he died. He had us all sit down with him in my brother's living room, and he told us how much he loved us. And one by one, he described to each of us exactly why he was so proud of us. He said that if he played even a very small part in making us the people we are today, he considers his life a huge success. My brothers and I are so very, very lucky that we had the chance to hear those words from him.

- My brothers standing at dad's bedside for 12-plus hours at a time on the last two nights of his life. Dying is very hard work, both on the person doing it and the people around them. And my brothers spent two entire nights helping dad adjust his body, bringing his basin when he was ill and then cleaning him up, fixing his pillows and blankets, giving him his pain meds and, at the end, calming him when he woke up in a delirium, often frightened and confused. Those two boys were superhuman, loving and patient, bottling up their fear and sadness so they could put on a brave face for our dad. I will never, ever forget how incredible they were.

- My dad raising his hand weakly to wave at Mia the day before he died. It was the last piece of "him" I ever saw. I didn't even know he was awake - he had seemed mostly unconscious all morning. But when I picked Mia up and stood by his bed, she began exclaiming "Pa! Pa!" I turned to look at him, and his crumpled hand was waving around in front of his face. His eyes weren't even open, but he found the strength to wave at his granddaughter. God, he loved that little girl.

- The one moment of regret I ever saw on my dad's face, when he and I had a few minutes alone together in his hospital room a couple of days before he died. When I was trying to tell him how much I would miss him, I collapsed crying on his chest, a familiar place where I had been comforted and loved countless times before. Then I told him how much Mia loved him. And he got a wistful, faraway look and said, "Man, I wish I was gonna be here..." That was it. It was only wobbly moment I ever saw in the man who spent his final weeks on earth comforting us.

- The night of the memorial service, after the guests had left my brother's house, my brothers, Sal and I got out dad's bottle of terribly cheap scotch and had a toast to him. It was all smiles and love and laughter. Then the guys went out to the front porch to gather around the fire pit and smoke dad's cigars, Swisher Sweets. The smell of that cigar smoke creeping into the house filled and broke my heart all at once.

Dad, I will miss you forever.

Why, world? Why?!?!

We filmed the most hilarious video of Mia this weekend.

Fresh out of the bathtub, she was prancing around the house wearing only a fuzzy kitty-cat hoodie towel draped over her head. She beamed at the camera as she darted here and there, her little paunchy belly sticking out as the pink terrycloth waved in the breeze behind her. She busied herself collecting a remote control and a couple of stuffed animals to bring over to Chickens, who was laying in his bed looking rather unnerved about the entire thing.

I thought it would be funny to share on the blog, so I went to upload the video. But the moment I named the file something like "naked kitty cat," I paused. And I thought of a question I will no doubt ask myself thousands of times in the next 20 years.

What about the perverts?

I realized I wasn't sure if this kind of thing is allowed. Posting naked pictures of your baby online? Is that a no-no?

So I turned to my online moms group, and I posed the question to them. They were unanimous in their opinion that, no, this isn't something you ought to do nowadays. But their reasoning absolutely floored me.

Maybe you already knew this, but I certainly did not: Evidently the real danger isn't perverts at all. The danger is that you, the parent, might be mistaken for a pervert and have your kids taken away from you for something as innocent as a bathtub picture.

They shared a story about two Arizona parents who took bathtub photos of their kids while on vacation. When a Walmart employee processing the film saw them and notified authorities, Child Protective Services took the three daughters away for a month. Another story is going on right this minute: A dad in California took his laptop in for service, and among his thousands of family photos were a several his unclothed kids playing in a bathtub and on the couch. A computer technician reported them to the sheriff's office, and seven months later the two kids are still in foster care, separated from their parents and from each other.

I don't even know what else to say about this. Except that it's a cryin' shame you'll never be able to admire the absolute perfection that is my baby's adorable little tushie, and that if this laptop ever goes on the fritz, we'll just have to back over it with the car and buy a new one. And that I am aghast that there is SOMETHING SCARIER THAN REAL, LIVE PERVS.

One on the way

I'm getting sick of the fact that nobody is updating this blog, so I have decided to do it myself. Thankfully, I have news to report! See that wee little person up there floating in space? That's our new baby. It's supposed to come out and meet us in late June.

So far it has been a fine pregnancy. I'm 17 weeks along with a nice round belly and few complaints. In fact, I frequently forget that I'm pregnant. A few weeks ago when I was feeling a little sniffly, I proudly exclaimed to Sal how happy I am that I can take Nyquil again. He looked perplexed, so I explained that since I'm not breastfeeding anymore, I FINALLY have my whole body all to myself and can down whatever medicines I want! So he goes, "Yeah, but pregnant women can't take Nyquil." "Yeah, I KNOW," I said impatiently, "but... "

Oh. Right.

I'm sure the ease of this pregnancy has something to do with the fact that I spend so much time chasing down a 14-month-old toddler. A toddler who is frequently chasing down the gimpy dog while waving her Pooh bear wildly in the air and bellowing at the top of her lungs. With all that going on, who has time to notice every twinge and ache and wave of nausea? (OK, I did notice the nausea. But that's all gone now.)

It's also nice to feel like we only have one or things to do to get ready, as opposed to one or two million. Since we didn't know Mia was a girl until she was born, we have plenty of gender-neutral baby clothes (we won't be finding out this time, either). We have a lovely bedroom for it to sleep in (we're even throwing in a noisy but adoreable roommate!) and two parents who have been nicely seasoned. I'm also hoping for a maternity leave that is blissfully free of animal emergency rooms and spinal surgeries and paralyzed dogs who weep in the night. Oh, wouldn't that be WONDERFUL??!! Fingers crossed, everyone!