Nothing But Words

Last week, my family came to resemble a gang of Dick Tracey villains: we had Scrape Face (when he was finally almost over his respitory infection, Kai fell flat on his face in the driveway), Blister Butt (in just one night, Eidan developed a bad case of diaper rash), Zombie Mama (since I was sick all week, Maria bore the brunt of the night shift, and Eidan didn’t let her sleep much), and me, Mr. Zonked (I had a nasty flu that had me out of commission for most of the week). On top of all that, Maria’s car was rear-ended while she was driving Kai to school, so she had to deal with the insurance company, body shop, etc.

Neither Maria nor I was thinking very clearly for most of the week, which lead to some amusing snafus. To illustrate an example, I will present you with some facts, and then I’ll tell you how we acted on them:

1. Maria’s car is an automatic, mine is a stick-shift. Maria does not know how to drive my car.
2. On Friday afternoon, Maria’s car had to go to the body shop.
3. At the same time, Kai had to go to his karate class.
4. Afterwards we were having dinner at a friend’s house, and Maria was planning to pick up some beer to bring over.

Maria had a rough day, and watching Kai do his karate lesson was much easier than dealing with the guys at the body shop and fetching beer, so I offered to take care of those errands for her. So she happily drove off with Kai to his karate class, in her car, while I loaded Eidan in my car for a trip to the body shop. As I was putting the key in the ignition, the neurons in my brain stopped misfiring for a moment, and it dawned on me that there was a problem with this plan. I called the karate school and got Maria on the phone: “there’s a flaw in our plan,” I said. “Oh, what is it?,” she said sleepily. … We made quite a pair that day.

When Kai was born in California, four and half years ago, Maria’s folks were living with us. The 5 of us living for two years in a 790 sq. ft. house that was under construction was more challenging than you can imagine (we put an addition on the house that connected at the kitchen), but it had one saving grace: a parent-to-child ratio of 4:1 is really quite good. Now we’re in Philly and Maria’s folks are in Denver, so the parent-to-child ratio is now 2:2, which presents much more of a challenge. But like all parents, we’ll muddle through. As I keep saying, I don’t know how single parents do it.

Eidan is now just over 3 weeks old, and he doesn’t look like he did a week ago. Specifically, he’s fat now. He continues to guzzle milk at an astounding rate. Here’s a picture so you can see (the 2nd picture is Eidan with Maria at our friend’s house Friday night – we managed to get there in the end).

Kai’s hand-foot-mouth disease morphed into an upper respitory infection. He’s on antibiotics now and he’s doing a lot better, but he had a very hard time sleeping for a few nights (which means we didn’t sleep much either). Kai passed it on to me – I’m not doing as badly as he was, but it’s definitely slowing me down. And our sleeping-all-the-time honeymoon with Eidan is over. He won’t sleep for more than a an hour or two at a time now, and he’s becoming a lot fussier, so he’s been running Maria ragged (she’s on duty for most of the night shift, especially since I got sick).

I have a couple draft posts in the works, so you’ll hear from me again soon.

Eidan is two weeks old today, and he continues to spend most of his time sleeping, with occasional breaks for gorging himself. While he still does 2-3 hour naps, he now has this new thing where he’ll eat for a few minutes, then nap for a few minutes, then squeal and grunt like a pig for a few minutes doing you-know-what, and then repeat. For an hour. This is amusing during the day and no fun at all at night.

His grunting really is quite spectacular, especially in conjunction with the faces he makes (he’s not distressed though, he’s just doing his thing). Maria pointed out it’s a good thing he’s not a girl, as it’s not exactly becoming.

An old friend of Maria’s family told us about a meaning of Eidan’s name that Japanese folks from the World War II generation know well: “Go Eidan.” In Japanese, “go” is a modifier indicating high formality. It’s hard to translate this kind of thing into English, but since Eidan’s name means “wise decision,” probably the best way to translate it would be “The Wise Decision.” The phrase refers to the Emperor’s decision to surrender, and end World War II. If I were to choose a name based on historical significance, I probably would have steered clear of this one. But that’s not why we picked his name, so I’ll try not to dwell on it.

Kai came down with hand-foot-mouth disease on Tuesday night, so he’s been home from school all week (apparently it’s been going around at the neighborhood pool, and we had been going there almost every day, with the incredible heat we’ve been having recently). His mouth and throat have been bothering him a lot, so he’s been waking up several times a night as well. I’ve been taking care of him at night while Maria’s been with Eidan. I have no idea how single parents handle these kinds of situations.

A friend of mine, who already has two kids, sent me this email. His observations are turning out to be very true for us, especially with Kai being sick this week:

The second is more fun, more wonderful, and more exhausting than the first. The stuff that scared you last time will not scare you this time, and the comparison of the baby to the older sibling will make you wonder how the time passed so quickly. The sleep deprivation is (as you know) far more difficult this time. Scheduling is harder too (I use the point that to deal with Child 1, you took all the slack out of your schedule. With child 2, there is no blood left in the turnip. You either do less or sleep less.).

This is a hilarious spoof of all those Ken Burns PBS documentaries: The Old Negro Space Program. It’s also a great demonstration of how you can create a great short film using just still pictures, a few talking heads, Photoshop, and some imagination.

Here are a few more pictures of Eidan. Now that he’s more than a week old he’s moving past the “I was just born” look and you can get a better sense of his features. Kai looked mostly Japanese when he was born – his eyes were not round and his skin and hair were dark. But over time Kai’s skin and hair became lighter and his eyes are mostly round now – you can hardly tell he’s half Japanese. Luckily for him though, he got Maria’s nose.

Eidan has looked mostly Caucasian from the start. Although his eye shape is definitely partly Asian, his skin is white, and it’s looking like he has a Toppa nose. At this point it’s just a little baby nose of course, but it just sticks right out there in a way that Kai’s didn’t when he was a newborn.

Eidan has an insatiable appetite. He had his first checkup yesterday – his pediatrician didn’t believe Maria at first when she said that he can drink 3-4 oz. per feeding (that’s about 3 times normal). But after weighing him, and seeing that he’s gained 3 oz (most babies lose weight right after being born), she was convinced. So he’s now at 6 lbs, 13 oz, and 21 inches.

He’s finally starting to get the whole day vs. night thing. He slept for a 3 hours stretch last night, which may not sound like much, but it’s a big improvement over the past few nights. Yesterday and so far today he’s spending more time awake during the day, which is nice, because from our perspective it’s a lot more fun to play with him at 3pm than 3am.

I’m getting old. We didn’t sleep much when Kai was born either, but back then I could take it. Now I’m just a zombie. Maria is getting even less sleep than me, but she’s handling it much better. Forget post-partum depression – she’s on some kind of post-partum high that’s kept her energized all week. Hopefully Eidan’s night time sleeping will continue to improve before her buzz wears off.

…And a movie too! Like I said in my last post, he’s just a eatin’, sleepin’, poopin’ machine. Usually he’ll wake up just long enough to feed, and then konk out again. He usually only has a few episodes of wakefulness each day where he’s not feeding, and for only about 20 minutes or so. Kai wasn’t like that – he was fairly active from the beginning. My sense from looking at Eidan and comparing him to Kai is that Eidan wasn’t quite as fully developed as Kai before he was born. He’s by no means premature, but maybe just has a week or so of catching up to do before his “spirit fully descends” (I’m quoting my Aunt Tisha there).

Moo!

So far Eidan has done little more than eat, sleep, and poop. He seems to have an extra-large capacity stomach, as he can down 3 oz of milk per feeding, which is quite a bit more than the 1 oz we were told to expect. Maria got hooked up today (literally) with a milk pump, which means I can help out with night-time feedings. The title for this post comes from the pump’s instructions, which also come in Spanish. Some things sound better in other languages, and “breast pump” is definitely one of them. It’s a bit scary to see the machine bellow and churn when it’s turned on. But compared to the pump she used with Kai four years ago, it’s relatively light weight and portable.

Don’t worry, the picture to your right is a cow milker, not Maria’s pump!

My step-sister Steph is the winner of the baby pool! She came closest to the actual date (she guessed 8/9) and she guessed the height correctly.

As the only person to guess the weight exactly right, Maria’s mom is the runner up.

So far Eidan is not like Kai was during his first 48 hours. Kai was amazingly alert from the moment he was born. He had this sort of “just the facts, ma’am” gaze as he started assessing the world around him. Not so with Eidan – during his first day he mostly looked dazed and confused (but you can hardly fault him for that!). Going into his second day, Eidan has showed himself to be more demanding than Kai was – I’d like to eat right now, and I’d like my diaper changed right now. His cries definitely sound more angry than plaintive. He’s also strong – when I hold him he’ll jerk his head and body all around in ways that I don’t recall Kai ever doing. Unfortunately he has night and day backwards – the nurse says it’s because he was born in the morning, which tuckered him out, so he slept all day. He and Maria will come home tomorrow. Here are a couple more pictures for you: