Week of Three Doctors

This week Nicholas ended up having three separate visits to doctors. Ick. The end conclusion is that he has an ear infection that won't go away, had a related pink eye, and a virus that is a respiratory version of a cold and can develop into a breathing problem. Yeah, fun.

Monday afternoon when I picked him up from school his right eye was very gunky and I could tell just by looking at the type of gunk that by morning he would clearly have pink eye. I have lost track of how many times he has had pink eye, but it has been at least 4 times, so I can spot the difference between normal gunk and pink eye gunk. Don't ask me to describe it--there is something slightly different about both the consistency and the color.

Anyway, Tuesday morning his eye was still not really pink, but it was definitely worse and since each of the past few times he has had pink eye he has also had an ear infection that he showed no symptoms of, I decided to take him to the doctor's office instead of just wiping his eye and sending him to school (which I could have gotten away with since his eye wasn't pink).

So I made a plan with my mom: I would take him to the earliest appointment I could get, drop him off at their house on my way into work since he couldn't go to school with pinkeye (their house is 35 minutes away, but actually on my way to College Park), and get to office hours only a little late. She would then watch him for the day and bring him up when they came up for dinner that evening (already planned--we were celebrating my dad's birthday). Mom to the rescue. Okay, I can make this work. I got a 9:45 appointment for Nicholas and sent an email to my students (all 240 of them) changing my office hours from 10-1 to 12-3. Not that they come, but between weather and Nicholas illnesses I have had to cancel a bunch already this semester and that just starts to send a bad message.

I only managed to get in to go to the doctor because we were supposed to have an ear check sometime this week since his ear infection from a month ago still hadn't cleared up as of a couple weeks ago. Otherwise since he had no fever they wanted to say it was just pink eye and so to just give him the eye drops and not bring him in and risk infecting everyone else. But I was insistent--he rarely has a fever with an ear infection and doesn't pull on his ears but he almost always has an ear infection with pink eye. We've been through this before. You tell me not to bring him in. I eventually find some way to weasel him in knowing things aren't right, the doctor looks in his ears and gives an exclamation that quite literally once was "oh my God!" Just trust me, people, okay??!!

So we go to the doctor and yep, ear infection and pink eye. The working theory was that it is still a continuation of the pair from whenever this all began a month or 6 weeks ago. The pink eye clears up but because the ear infection doesn't the infected congestion ends up back in his eye and reinfects it. So they prescribe him still another antibiotic and declare that it is time to go see the Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor.

I take the prescription, get in the car, and start the drive to my parents' house. At this point I am pretty frazzled. Going to ENT is the path towards tubes, we can't get his ears to clear up, because he doesn't show symptoms it is very possible his ears have been infected for months on end with no treatment, he has been on antibiotics with few breaks for nearing months at this point. This is all enough to send my brain to bad places. And add to that, the doctor's office was super behind and so I will have to race to drop him off and get to work to make even the revised office hours time. And when in the world am I going to get his prescription filled?!

So I have Joe call to get an ENT appointment, with the goal of Th/F when I don't teach. They won't see him while he is on antibiotics so our choices were 3:45 that afternoon (they had a last minute cancellation and we hadn't yet started the antibiotics for this round) or to wait for 10 days. Despite the logistical headaches, that was an easy choice.

Joe teaches Tuesday afternoons so I had to be back in Baltimore County for a 3:45 appointment. (It is an hour and a half drive each way, keep in mind, and a little longer with the stop by my parents'.) Drop Nicholas off with my mom, race to College Park (without speeding on Rte 1--I've gotten caught by speed cameras three too many times) trying not to go batty when pothole crews had two lanes closed on I-95, have 2 hours of office hours (yet another email to 240 students changing the schedule), race back to my parents' house, throw Nicholas and his stuff in the car, book it up to the doctor's office. We made it--score! And even with 10 minutes to spare.

And then we waited. And waited. And waited. After 75 minutes they finally call us back. Then another 15 minutes and we see the doctor. Any day this long of a wait with a toddler wouldn't be easy, but we had both had a rough day already at that point (including a really bad nap on Nicholas' part) and to say I was hanging by a thread is an understatement.

The doctor was a very nice man and really good with Nicholas. He was also reassuring that there are still a few hopes before we get to tubes. Granted, his best hope was just that as the weather warms up things will clear up on their own. But he swears this often happens and so this time of year adopts something of a wait and see approach with close monitoring. He thinks that Nicholas has an infection in his nasal passages that just can't get all the way cleared out and so is backing up both his ears and eyes, causing the continued bouts of both pink eye and ear infections. So in addition to the oral antibiotic and the antibiotic eye drop he added a nasal spray to try to open up the nasal passages so that stuff can finally clear out. The image is pretty gross, I know, but it makes some sense and is non-invasive, so I'm hoping that will do it. We're going back in 2 weeks and he'll check on progress.

So Tuesday was pretty crazy. But it all worked out. We got into the ENT. My mom was able to jump in and help out so I didn't have to cancel office hours entirely, we got Nicholas' new prescription filled, and had a new plan. I was exhausted, behind for prep for Wednesday's classes, but cautiously optimistic.

And then this morning Nicholas woke up with a fever. Nothing awful, but definitely a fever. He was cranky and clingy and off all morning. 100.5 when we took his temp. So we called the doctor. I was convinced the new antibiotic wasn't working and his ear infection had gotten worse. And we're supposed to get on a plane first thing Monday morning. Much to my surprise they didn't give Joe crap about bringing Nicholas in. Of course by the time we got in his fever had gone down dramatically, but at that point I was going to have someone look in his ears if I had to break down into tears in the waiting room.

The good news is that the doctor saw progress in his ears. They weren't perfect, but the left ear was "almost cleared up" and the right ear had made some progress and for where we are in the antibiotic cycle the doctor was happy with his ears.

The bad news is that when he listened to Nicholas' breathing just as a matter of course he discovered the reason for the fever. He turned to us and said, "How long has he been breathing like this?" To which I responded, "Like what? I don't notice anything different, so possibly forever. What's wrong?" Apparently he was wheezing. It wasn't bad--as I said, I couldn't even perceive it. But between the breathing and the fever and his magic doctor skills, the doctor decided he has RSV, which is a respiratory virus like a cold but that causes wheezing. Or something like that. A virus version of bronchitis, or in that family. In infants it can be really bad (he said they've been admitting bunches of babies to the hospital for it recently because there is an "epidemic" of it going around), but it is less serious in toddlers.

He tried an asthma treatment on him to see if that would help, but it did absolutely nothing. While it was aggravating to have to fight Nicholas to hold a mask over his face for 5 minutes and have it not help at all, the good thing about this is that it means he doesn't have asthma. Since that didn't work, the doctor basically sent us home with a "If he starts gasping for breath call me and I'll send him to the ER. Otherwise just keep doing what you're doing."

Yeah, that is not what you want to hear. But he seemed totally non-plussed. And said there was no reason for Nicholas not to fly or otherwise to be restricted. That other than keeping an ear on his breathing, to treat it just like a cold.

And I am convinced strep is next since I swear every person in that doctor's office had strep. We didn't let Nicholas touch a thing, but I'm sure it is coming. Ahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!

But, loyal readers, fear not, the little boy is feeling good. He was never warm enough for us to take his temperature after that initial peak this morning and has been full of energy. His appetite was down most of the day, but he scarfed down dinner.

And as evidence that he was feeling good this evening, I present this picture, taken right before bed:

From 2011 March

And, really, aren't those dinosaur pajamas adorable? Welcome Spring!!! And can you fix my baby's ears while you are here?

Saving Daylight, Assuaging Guilt

One of the sadder consequences of our schedule this year has been that Nicholas spends far more time at daycare than I think either Sarah or I really would like, but given the reality of our job situation, that's the way it's going to be until May.  We drop him off most days at 7:30 or a little after (and on my DC day I drop him off at 7:25 and run for a train), and don't pick him up until 5 or later.

I've been doing many of the morning runs, and so I've noticed quite acutely just how early we've been dropping him off the past few weeks as sunrise has gotten later—at this point it's after 7:30.  Which means that when we leave the house, it's still pretty dark, especially on a day like today was, with an overcast sky and rain.  And because of the cycle of the moon, last week it was clear and high in the sky at 7:15-7:30, which only underscored that it felt like I was dropping him off in the middle of the night.

In other words, from my perspective the end of daylight savings cannot come too soon, as it will grant a bit of respite from feeling like we're leaving him at daycare quite so long.  Even if it won't actually change the actual amount of time he spends there, it'll at least make me feel better ... until December, when it'll be depressingly dark again.

Labor and Delivery, Part II

Okay.  So it's 2:30 a.m., we've each slept about an hour, and we're watching Friends.  Oh, and the contractions have basically stopped.

We decided we would go ahead and go back outside for a few more laps around the parking lot.  The contractions came back, at least a little bit, and then would subside, and then came back again.  It was now nearly 5 a.m., and no longer dark out.  We decided that it was time to go to the hospital and find out what was going on, because we're just not good at waiting and not knowing things.

It was a drive I'd visualized a number of times in the previous few months.  I thought about it during the trip to each of the last several doctor's appointments, since the practice's office was part of the hospital complex.  And I thought about it on the way to and from work, since the routes overlapped a bit.  And oddly, I'd always assumed a middle-of-the-night drive: no traffic, dark out.  I'm not sure whether I absorbed too much culture, or that I remember my parents leaving for the hospital at 2 a.m. when my baby brother was born (I was 12 at the time).  In any event, that five minutes was about the only period of any length during the entire process that went about how I imagined it.

Alright, so we're at the hospital.  We're calm.  We're nervous.  We're freaking out because the labor can't decide whether it wants to proceed or not.  When we got upstairs to the evaluation room, the midwife on duty examined Sarah and determined that she was just shy of the threshold where they keep you, but thought we were close enough.  She called our doctor, who asked that we stay there and wait for her to arrive.  So we ended up sitting in the evaluation room for several hours.  We were exhausted at this point, we both were hungry, Sarah was getting a little dehydrated, Peanut was all sorts of discombobulated and not behaving properly for the montiors.  And then the doctor came in and told us to go home.  She cautioned us before she examined Sarah that this particular midwife is known for being overenthusiastic in her estimates of labor progression.  Then she sent us home to rest and wait, and to come back when "you can't stand it anymore."

So at 9:30, in the midst of a bright, sunny day, we headed home.  It was a very odd experience.  We thought we'd be leaving with a baby.  We'd been there through sunrise, so all of a sudden the day had started (though it was Memorial Day, so everything was rather quiet).

Most of that day (Monday, May 25) was quiet.  Sarah had some contractions, but nothing particularly intense.  We tried to sleep for a few hours in the morning.  We played some games.

While we were napping, we missed the only phone call that could possibly distract us that day.  Two weeks earlier, some of you may recall, our car had been stolen while parked near campus.  We had assumed it was gone for good (Civics are the most stolen car in America, and it's because they have very interchangeable parts), and went out and bought a new (to us) car.  But during our nap, the Baltimore police called to let us know that they'd found our car!  [ed.: "Found" may imply that the police were "looking" for the car, when we suspect that someone saw the car parked in front of their house with no license plates and informed the police of a suspicious vehicle.]  Because it was Memorial Day, I could not get anyone on the phone back to confirm what was going on, and it would take an awful lot of work to actually get the car back (another story for another time), and we didn't know if it was drivable, but it was good news about the car!

Maybe Peanut sensed our happiness, because it was not long thereafter that Sarah's contractions picked up in intensity.  Now, as I mentioned yesterday, her labor had not been textbook.  Instead of the contractions starting at 15 minutes apart and getting progressively closer, they'd been about 2-3 minutes apart for over 24 hours.  So with the increase in intensity the contractions actually slowed down, but now they were real.  By 6pm, after another round of prep and the first half-hour of Back to the Future, we were back on our way to the hospital.

From here things seemed to go really fast.  They took us upstairs.  The nurses didn't believe that Sarah would stay, because she looked too calm.  Then the midwife did an exam and they were amazed that she wasn't screaming bloody murder based on how far along things were.  They checked Sarah in.  The anesthesiologist did the epidural, after which Sarah wasn't in much pain.  At about 9 p.m., the doctor came in and said she would check in again at midnight.  We tried to rest with the lights down.  Because of the medicine, we were both able to a little bit.  Finally, we realized we couldn't sleep, and put on bad television.  As I recall, we ended up watching part of Leno's last week on the Tonight Show, with Mel Gibson trying to do a redemption interview after his divorce.

At 12:30 the doctor came back, took one look and said, "time to push!"

[ed.: Gory details here.]

Then, at 1:31 a.m., Nicholas arrived, screaming his little head off.  I don't think he stopped until they wheeled him out of the room an hour later for his bath.

From Nicholas Is Born

The Labor and Delivery Story, Part I

With Nicholas's birthday coming up, I've been reading over our posts from last year around the time he was born.  In doing so, I realized that we never told The Story, or, What Happened the Day (and Two Days Before) Nicholas Was Born.

So, to set some context.  The due date for Peanut was May 22, a Friday, which came and went with no excitement whatsoever (so little, in fact, that we managed not to mention it on the blog).  That Sunday, Sarah woke up and thought her stomach felt funny, but couldn't quite place why.  So we went to church, then to our friend Eddie's for an already planned brunch.  Towards mid-afternoon, Sarah noticed while resting her hand on her belly that it was tensing up in rhythmic waves at relatively predictable intervals.  Hmmm, we thought.  So we timed it, to see if it might be real.  And sure enough, the tensing up lasted about 30 seconds, and occurred every two to three minutes.  Holy cow, we thought, Peanut might actually be on his way!  (Though of course publicly we still referred to "its way.")  On the other hand, this was not "textbook" early labor, which involves contractions every fifteen minutes or so.  But we just hoped that would speed things up; this was back in our naïve pre-parenting stage, you see.

We had already arranged to play games and have dinner with Sarah's parents, and we went ahead and told them to come up.  Every book, every mother, every class instructed us that early labor is characterized by three things: pain, anxiety, and boredom at the slow passage of time.  Might as well play Ticket to Ride, right?  Sarah at this point was uncomfortable but not in pain, and the social time made life move a little quicker through the evening hours.

Once Sarah's parents left, we figured we should get things set to go for the hospital for when the time came, so we did our final preparations of bags and snacks (for me), the kinds of things we couldn't have packed earlier because we used them frequently.  It was a nice evening, so we headed outside to walk, both because it helped Sarah feel better as things progressed, and because walking is supposed to help things progress.  We were very grateful that we'd decided to leave the city, because we felt no worries wandering our complex's parking lot at 10pm (or 11pm, or midnight ...), or the parking lot of the small office park next door.  I have no idea how far we walked that night (May 24 to 25), but we spent hours doing laps, then coming back inside.  As the night went on, the contractions got more intense.  At some point (maybe 9pm or so?) we called the doctor to check in, and she told us to come in "when you're starting to have to really work through" the contractions.  She also said she thought she would see us that night, in large part because the contraction timing was already at a place where you'd normally go to the hospital.

At some point we decided to try to sleep a little while, maybe at like 11:30, but I don't think either of us fell asleep for more than a few minutes at a time between then and 1am.  Sarah woke up with somewhat more intense contractions, we went walking again, and then decided it was time to think about heading to the hospital.  We went back inside and took showers (not knowing when we'd get the chance again).  I had something to eat, since I was allowed and am generally a pansy about these things (Sarah acquiesced because she'd rather be jealous of watching me eat than have to deal with a cranky father-to-be).  We put on an episode of Friends as we did our final final prep (using the counter on the DVD player to track contractions) and steeled ourselves for what was about to happen.

Sometime around the ten-minute mark the contractions began to subside.

[Stay tuned for the rest of the story tomorrow, including the surprise ending!]

Internalizing Danger

So because of our frequent (and sometimes only) commenter Rob, I ended up reading a series of posts on another blog about kids and "stranger danger".  The author's main point:

There's this attitude in this country that any man who is interested in or talking to children is a child molester. I think that this is as dangerous an idea as the idea that all women are objects/sluts/etc. It is as destructive as the idea that all Arabs are terrorists. It is not a prejudice that I think should be taken lightly

Instead, she suggests that we "start parenting from a point of logic and sanity, instead of parenting out of fear."

First of all, amen.

Now, I tend to agree with the sentiment.  I do think there is in parenting circles today (God, the prudent academic in me is gagging on the broad generalizations, but whatever) a rush to identify and eliminate risks.  Hence we get recalls of cribs that can injure a baby when not put together properly, warnings to be hypervigilant for potential food allergies, and on and on.  Do all of these have a degree of worthwhile caution?  Absolutely.  Does Nicholas eat the occasional strawberry or piece of chocolate?  Yep.  Call Child Protective Services right away!

In painting all adult men with the broad brushstroke of "danger," I would argue we actually make it more difficult for children (adults, too) to figure out just who is and is not dangerous.  If we eliminate all nuance from the discussion, children have no skill set from which to draw to calculate much of anything about the people they encounter.  (And speaking of generalizations, boy could I go to town on a loss of nuance in society.  But this blog is about Nicholas, childhood, and parenting, so enough about that.)  It would seem much better, then, to develop a comfort around people who are extremely safe (family and close friends), and give Nicholas the means to figure out for himself how to trust neighbors, how to decide how much to trust strangers he encounters.

And I ended up commenting on one of the posts, because the discussion turned to how this woman's husband felt that he couldn't be open with kids around because of this very danger.  I must admit that I share that feeling as well, and it makes me sad.  It also reminds me of my grandfather.  Here was a man who lived to have fun with kids.  He was the kind of person who could see a five-year-old with an ice cream cone, walk up, take a bite of the ice cream from the kid, and have the kid laughing in stitches.  So maybe he posed a public health risk if he had a cold, but the point is that he never once seemed to think about whether kids would find him threatening.  Now maybe some of that ease came from knowing him later in life (being a grandfather probably helps in knowing how to appear innocuous and fun), but from what I've heard, that's what he was always like.  But how would he behave today?  Would he have mall security escorting him from the food court for talking to a little girl and making faces at her?

The point is, if I even have one, that I have some of those genes that allow me to interact with people and to want to interact with kids (not nearly as many—I would never even contemplate crashing a wedding in East Asia, let alone do it).  But I don't interact with kids I don't know.  Now, you might ask just how much that kid at the next table at Red Robin loses because I don't smile back when he looks over.  In the grand scheme of his day, probably not all that much.  But on the other hand, it's the little things.  If society has made the two of us mutually nervous to extend what should be common courtesy, that makes the world just a little bit less fun, a little bit more sad, a little bit too protected.  Multiplied over dozens of interactions, kids learn not to trust anyone, and that can't be good for any of us.

A Little Feverish

This week, we've learned that taking care of a sick baby is hard work.

On Thursday, we got a call from the day care center to come pick up Nicholas because he had a bit of a fever and was not acting like himself.  When the teacher put him down for his morning nap, he screamed and cried, and as she put it, "he never cries!"  So I went to get him (Sarah had student meetings all afternoon) and as soon as I took him from the teacher, he put his head on my shoulder.

Fire alarms went off in my head.  He never snuggles.

Of course, he also looked terrible, pale, drawn.  He was totally lethargic.

When we got home, I put on some TV, and just let him sit in my lap.  After a dose of Tylenol, he fell asleep there for a nap, which he hasn't done since he was about four weeks old.

Anyway, so he has had a mild fever since Thursday, running in the range of 100-102 degrees when the medicine wears off.  So nothing good, but not so bad that the doctor wants to see him (that's at 104 degrees of four days, so if he's still feverish on Monday, in we go).  He hasn't had any other symptoms, so it's not entirely clear what's wrong, but babies get fevers, and it's the body's way of trying to deal with something that when it can't figure out what else to do.  Could be the tooth he's getting, could be a virus, could be roseola ... well, what's your guess?  It's as good as ours.

He's been doing pretty well considering.  Except for Thursday when it first hit, he's been in relatively good spirits, and as long as we manage his fever with Tylenol or Motrin, he's been playing and having a good time.  And today he was down to 98.1, though the medicine may have still been in effect, but that means it's at least working really well, and his hands felt cool instead of hot and clammy.  So maybe, maybe a little progress.

And here's hoping he'll be back to normal tomorrow so we can take him to daycare (where he'd rather be) than the doctor on Monday morning.

The Lindbergh/Baby Conundrum

In May 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly the Atlantic solo, taking 33½ hours to fly from Roosevelt Field outside New York City to Le Bourget in Paris.  He had with him on his trip sandwiches, water, a compass, and an awful lot of gasoline.  He had to fly through sleet, ice, and fog, and saw the sun set twice on his trip, awake the entire time.  He had no idea if or when he would see land again after he left Newfoundland behind.

I thought of Lindbergh this evening because, frankly, my situation isn't nearly so bad.  Sarah left for Philadelphia this morning to present a paper at a conference and will return tomorrow evening, so I'm in charge of Nicholas the whole time (about 36 hours).  We already had a babysitter for the afternoon so I could get some work done, and Grandma Kathleen is coming up tomorrow afternoon to help out with things.  We have a pretty good stock of food, and Target and the grocery store are only ten minutes away.

The reason why the comparison is one I find useful is because for some reason I still get a little anxious about having complete charge of Nicholas for multiple days.  Now, I'm with him for long stretches all the time—several days a week, as a matter of fact.  But I still find certain things mysterious (perhaps because I'm a dad, who knows?).  There are things that make sense for me not to know, like how Sarah operates the middle-of-the-night feedings.  And each time Sarah has gone away, and the one time I took Nicholas on a trip by myself, I've fretted about the overnight period.  Will I hear him wake up?  Will I be able to put together a bottle fast enough that he goes right back to sleep?  And the ever-terrifying: what do I do if ... I don't know what to do?!?!

And so it's helpful to me to have a reminder that I know what I'm doing (though ask me tomorrow how the 3am feeding went), and that Nicholas trusts me, which is perhaps the most important thing, and that he's not so mommy-centered that he can't make it two days without her (sorry, dear, but it's true).  Plus, unlike Lindbergh, I have help, ample food (cookies!), and am charting familiar territory, both metaphorically and geographically.  So having a compass might not even help that much.  Unless it was a metaphorical one that sensed when Nicholas was about to wake up in the middle of the night and would automatically feed him.  Now that would be a compass I could use (not to mention Sarah).

Alea iacta est

Nicholas is now enrolled for day care, beginning on February 2, two days a week.  Please provide moral support and encouragement in the comments for a very shaky and nervous mommy who's having a little withdrawal crisis.

[Ed.: Title translation: "The die is cast," reportedly attributed to Caesar as he crossed the Rubicon, bringing his army into the territory of Italy (a major no-no in Roman tradition) to overthrow the consulate.  In other words, there's no going back now.]

History Lesson

I realized this week that it's almost exactly a year since we found out that the baby was a reality, went to the doctor and got it confirmed, and scheduled a first appointment with an obstetrician. Yes, it's also when we began our diabolical plot to hide that fact from everyone for several weeks until we got past the danger zone. But everyone found out, right?

At that point, we knew nothing (sometimes now we feel like we know less). We scoured books and blogs. We studied the week-by-week analyses on obsessive parenting websites. We got very excited. We got anxious and nervous. We counted pennies. We counted weeks. We read more books. "We" tried to get certain people to eat more fruits and vegetables.

And we had no idea how much our lives were about to be turned upside down.

Oh, one other note: Peanut wouldn't get its name until several weeks later. For the first few weeks, we just referred to "Baby." But that seemed silly, and we didn't at that point know the gender (that would be a later diabolical plot), so it was hard to come up with some other moniker. Then we went for the first sonogram (at 9 weeks) and saw this photo:

From Peanut's Blog

At that point in development, a baby is 50% head and 50% body, with a little indent between them. You know, like a peanut. So we decided that was a good name for the baby in utero. And I think we both imagined it would be a good nickname for a little girl until she turned 5 or 6, but oh well (I just feel bad for Cashew and Macadamia). We love Nicholas anyway. And he's not the same person as Peanut.

The Battle of Baby Einstein

Before Nicholas was born (that is, when he was still Peanut), Sarah and I discussed whether we would allow him to watch television as a baby. There are several schools of thought on the question. On one side is the Baby Einstein company, which markets DVDs for infants and toddlers to watch, usually hand puppets and baby toys with a soundtrack of Mozart or Beethoven tunes. The theory is that listening to quality music and watching these "educational" videos will help your child's development (or else!). We know that at a minimum they keep children calm, from having seen them with our friends' children. And, frankly, the videos are mesmerizing. It's hard not to get sucked in. Which leads me to the other side, which includes researchers who have recently argued that these kinds of programs either provide absolutely no benefit, or that they hinder children's language development. Plus, as I said, the programs are mesmerizing. I watch them and zone out. I'm not sure I want Nicholas's growing brain to do that for very long.

But sometimes it's tempting. Now that Nicholas is three months old, he spends quite a bit of time awake. Sometimes too much, as we've detailed at other points. But even when it's fine for him to be up and doing things, it's created quite the dilemma for us. As it turns out, we're just not that entertaining. To be sure, we can make it a little while--half an hour or forty minutes playing with him, showing him toys, singing to/with him, pacing around the apartment. Eventually, though, Nicholas just gets bored. The only thing that will calm him down, it seems, is sitting in front of the television for a few minutes.

We figured this out by accident, when I was pacing with him one evening several weeks ago, and stopped in front of the TV for a few moments to check in on a baseball game. Nicholas immediately stopped crying, and sat enraptured. Walking through Target yesterday afternoon with Nicholas in a stroller, I noticed he was craning his neck to look at the big-screen TVs as we walked past them.

And so we find ourselves in a parenting conundrum. Do we let him watch TV in order to gain some peace and quiet for ourselves (and maybe even time to take care of chores or making dinner)? Or do we stick to our ideals and our prenatal commitment not to let him watch television as a baby, even if it's hard and makes more work for us? I think just from writing this that we'd probably prefer the latter, but that the former will make an appearance every now and again.

Shifting Standards of Danger

This blog post seems too rich not to share. It's from a historian's blog that I frequent, and reveals some of the most, um, interesting marketing techniques used by companies in the 1950s. And by companies, I mean the ones who sell cigarettes and soda. For instance, she uncovered a print ad in which 7UP explains why it has "the youngest customers in the business," and accompanies the text with a drawing of a 9-month-old drinking 7UP from a glass bottle.

Needless to say, these kinds of ads would not go over well in today's Babies 'R' Us.

The Mysteries of Motherhood

Sarah left this morning for a well-deserved overnight trip to the beach with a friend, her first trip away from Nicholas for more than a few hours. That means that I'm in charge here at the Casa de Peanut. So far so good -- only one brief trip to the mall to induce a nap (for Nicholas, not Daddy), and he's still sleeping! When he wakes up he'll be hungry, so I should make this snappy.

Now, I consider myself a pretty involved father. I change lots of diapers, I do one feeding a day from a bottle, and I'm super cognizant of time, so I keep pretty good track of Nicholas's schedule. Even so, with Sarah gone, I feel like I'm flying without a net, so to speak, just a little bit. It may just be because I literally don't have my safety net (i.e., Sarah), but it also seems like there are certain things I just don't understand about their relationship and how they work. One thing I know for sure that I don't know is how the mid-night feedings work, since Sarah (blessedly) lets me sleep through those. On the other hand, I've also noticed that he acts differently when he's with each of us, so I'm sure there are some things about my relationship with him that Sarah finds mystifying.

Anyway, I guess this is a long way of saying that you might see a post tomorrow afternoon from Sarah in which she describes finding Nicholas and me on the couch in our underwear, sitting in a puddle of our own drool, with a West Wing DVD or baseball game on the TV. Actually, that last part sounds nice.

Car Saga

I'll give you the end of the story first: I drove home tonight frightened that I, like my father had done 25 years ago, would total a new car on the drive home from the dealership. I can't print what was said when the car arrived on a flatbed tow truck, but let's just say my mother wasn't particularly concerned with my father's well-being at that moment.

Anyway, with that as preface, we have purchased a car. It's a 2006 Accord, with under 26,000 miles on it. About the only fault with it is that it has an automatic transmission instead of a manual. We both enjoy driving stick-shift, and so this is rather disappointing, but the car is really quite nice in every way, and we didn't want to wear ourselves out searching (potentially in vain) for a manual Accord.

Even so, we're pretty exhausted. We've spent much of the past two days car shopping, hopping from one dealer to the next, and dealing with all manner of bad salesmen. From the one who insisted that we could get a car seat into a 2-door coupe, to the one who thought we'd spend more on a Ford than a brand-new Accord, we have seen just about everything. But we're done.

As long as we can get loan paperwork signed with our bank before labor starts. Tick-tock, tick-tock ...