Taking The Kid shopping

Max has always been an anti-shopping baby. In a T.J. Maxx store, as inevitable as finding endless racks of P. Diddy hip-hop XXXXL sweatpants, we can count on Max to be sobbing in his stroller. Essentially, he's like me with a shorter fuse. Worse, he's like my dad. Clearly Max's future wife will be buying clothes for him while Max plays space golf, or whatever they do in the future.

But, like Dad, Max reacts differently in different stores. And he was a very good baby in REI. Not in his stroller, by any means, but by adopting a few simple rules we could keep him relatively happy:

(Note: These rules don’t all necessarily apply to Dad.)

1) For God's sake, don't leave him in the car seat with nothing to do.

2) Let him stroll around also.

3) Go ahead, let him eat the shoelaces. Isn’t there some sort of product safety thing that protects him?

4) Max needs to try stuff out too (by "try", I mean, grab, drool on, or eat.)

If you’re near a clothes rack, for God sake, throw some shirt sleeves into his crib. You need to see how they feel, he needs to see how they taste.

5) If the shirt’s a medium, don’t waste time trying it - just buy it already.

If you are willing to devote the 300% higher effort necessary to do these things, life is good.

Delia still longs for a more innocent time when she could just aimlessly spend hours browsing through aisle upon aisle of clothes while her husband got furious. I am actually a little grateful to have him along.

Sleep and Evil Western Parenting

So Max up until now has been a pretty good kid overall. Now that he's able to express happiness, he's much easier and more fun to deal with. Then when he's crying he almost always has a good reason - 90% of the time he's hungry or sleepy, with the other 10% consisting of boredom, overstimulation, needing to poop, teething or needing affection. But the kid's been a horrible sleeper.

Let me, if I may, impress upon the childless how much nighttime feedings suck. Here's a typical night for Delia. To convey the tension, I will use the second person, Brian Williams style:

9:30 PM: Max cries for 10 minutes and goes to sleep. You immediately race to the bathroom, brush your teeth, and jump in bed.
9:45: Umm, there are neglected chores you forgot because you were taking care of Max.
10:30 PM: Chores done. You have precious little time left. Jump into bed and force the adrenaline out of your body.
1:45 AM: You are awoken by a fire alarm-level wail which destroys your completely unrefreshing sleep. Max is hungry. Generally, you can feed him and put him back to bed after 20 minutes, but if you're lucky, he pooped all over himself and you have to turn on the lights to replace his diapers, making the kid wide awake.
1:45 -2:05 AM: Your latest attempt to feed Max lying down doesn't work - he's too fussy. You sit in some uncomfortable position and slowly feel the sleepiness drain from your body.
2:05 AM: Max is out. You are wide awake.
4:00 AM: After lying in bed for an hour attempting to get the PTSD-level screaming out of your memory, 30 minutes of Internet surfing, and another 30 minutes of forcing, in your brain, some stupid sheep to jump a fence, you drift back to sleep.
5:45 AM: The second truck-horn level sobbing kills your beautiful dream. You want very badly to ignore him or perhaps throw him out the window, but even in your semi-hallucinatory state, you remember there are laws against that. However, Max leaves no doubt that, as you deliberate in bed, you are starving a helpless baby to death.
6:00 AM: You fed Max. He gives you a big smile. He wants to play! Buh, no. He's back in the crib. Hey, guess what? By the time you get yourself back to sleep, it's time to start work.

We've adapted the best we can - I generally slept in a separate room, because it's better if only one parent can't sleep than two, and given Delia's about to quit working, it's more important I do well at my job. In return, I came home earlier, did the cooking, and took care of Max until bedtime so Delia could sleep or zombie out. It works - more for me than for Delia - but it certainly could be better. We had a plan that I'd feed Max formula once at night, but he can't stand formula now. By the time he's hungry enough to eat it, he's cried enough to wake Delia up anyway. We also tried rice cereal - again, he won't eat enough to make a difference.

So both our parents are telling us Max should be sleeping through the night. Old-school parenting has a pretty clear solution: Don't let him sleep too much in the day, so he'll be good and tired at bedtime. Put the kid in a separate room, let him cry if he wakes up in the middle of the night, and in a couple days he'll pick up the habit of sleeping through the night. In fact, old-school parents would say, Max might be waking up because the parents are snoring. But new-school parenting rejects this idea. Basically, babies need to be around their parents. They have their own sleep cycle, and some babies won't sleep through the night until they are 1 year old. Any attempts to manipulate this cycle can harm the babies' health and/or psyche. Attachment parenting goes further and says many kids can't sleep on their own or self-soothe until they are several years old, and attempting to push this cycle releases the stress hormone cortisol, interfering with babies' brain development.

@#$@ it. We're tired.

We really don't care anymore if the ancient Ulowangi tribe made sure at least two people were simultaneously hugging a baby at all times until the kid was sixteen. We have jobs. And, really, we noticed that Max's cuteness is directly proportional to how much he let us sleep. If Max could adapt, self-soothe, and sleep through the night, he'll be treated better when he's awake.

Our first step was to move Max to a separate room.

Max's new digs.

I assembled the crib in the new room while Max watched, undoubtedly wondering, "Gosh, I know I sleep in the crib, but how's Mommy going to fit in there with me?" Max got agitated. Then we put him to sleep.

It was probably the worst night Max ever had.

It wasn't too easy on us either. Starting at 2:00 AM, Max started sobbing, only to stop and fall asleep when one of us held him. After waiting about 20 minutes, one of us would lay him gently in the crib, only to watch him struggle and begin sobbing again. It was absolutely heartbreaking. Max was probably frightened out of his mind - no parents to soothe him, strange noises at night, wondering if he'll ever be held again - I'm sure Max felt horrible and so did we.

The next day, we didn't know what to do. Max has been a good kid, and we want to keep him that way. But we have heard and read that Max will only get more resistant to a separate room as he gets older. We decided to try it one more night - Max would probably forget the whole thing (Mom - please don't save this blog! Mom???). Delia would soothe him until 3:00 AM and I would take over after that.

So here's how it went:
9:30 PM: We put Max to bed. He cried for about 10 minutes and passed out. This is roughly normal for him.
2:30 AM: Max wakes up and cries. Delia feeds him. Max goes right back to sleep.
6:00 AM: Max wakes up again.

Pretty anticlimatic, and for us, utterly amazing. We checked up on him several times and just saw peaceful sleeping. Where was the cortisol? This kid adapted incredibly fast.

Unfortunately, he was still waking up every 4 hours, hence putting us back at Square 1. Actually, for me, it was worse - he cried loud enough now to wake me up, and I discovered I can't get myself to sleep again. I'm not too hot at self-soothing, apparently. Again, old-school parenting has an answer: Withhold the nighttime feeding, deal with a nightmarish couple of nights, and watch the kid magically adapt. Could we actually do this?

Could we really withhold food from this kid?

Neither one of us were emotionally prepared to try. But I noticed Max was curled up and struggling at 2:00 am, making me wonder if he was too cold. Delia noted Max fed really well at 2:00 am also, which made me think about how to get him to feed well at 10:00 pm. So we tried a couple ideas out: We put Max in slightly warmer clothing so he doesn't get too cold, and have his last feeding in his bedroom in the dark so he can prepare for the night (hopefully leading to a bigger feeding). We couldn't bring ourselves to skip a feeding, but we decided to at least wait for nighttime crying to last 10 minutes, in the hope he can calm himself to sleep. Here's how Max reacted:

10:15: Max went to sleep.
1:00 AM: No peep from Max. Delia checks to see if he's still alive. She was greeted with light snoring.
4:30 AM: I check up on him. The kid's still asleep.
6:00 AM: Max woke up and greeted me with a smile.

Oh. My. God. What just happened?

I hope we don't jinx this whole thing, but Max followed this up with an 8-hour sleep and a 6.5-hour sleep (I heard him make some noise about 2:00 am, but he went back to sleep without crying.) I actually can't believe I'm typing this. There is hope!

(Update, about a week later - he's still sleeping through the night. Delia's functional the whole day, so we can actually spend some time together. Now that she has energy, I've noticed I have much more free time. I've even been able to watch the Denver Nuggets. Unbelievable.)

30 minutes ago: Max's vacation crib in San Jose (where Delia's parents live).

Improper raising of children

Max shopping in Sacramento.

Max playing poker with Great Uncle Peter.

OK, we're back. Delia's almost healed and is exercising again, we're getting breaks thanks to both sets of grandparents, and Max has received several upgrades. Pretend Max is a month younger for this update and you'll be on top of things.

A couple videos: First, here's a video documenting Max's roll to his side.

Max demonstrating side roll.

And here's a video of Max walking.

Max walking.

You may think the above pictures and video are cute, but we are doing irreparable damage. First, Kaiser nurses told us that assisted walking is bad for Max. As we later learned, everything else we currently do for Max will make him a disease-ridden, deformed sociopath. Sit him up on our lap? It will deform his spine. Hold him upright? It will stop him from developing core muscles. Lie him on his back? He'll develop a flat head and not develop normally. Show him lots of love? He'll become overly dependent and whiney. As we learned, his only hope in a normal life relies on us putting him on his tummy until he screams. (On what might be a possibly related note, my parents recently told us we need to relax more. So, basically, you're saying we're not being ideal parents? That stresses us out! How will Max react to the stress? He's going to be anxiety-ridden!)

Some people we know have been inspirational to me. One of them told me to just put spit on a kid's wound to make him think it's better. So, I asked him, won't he'll lose all trust in you? He replied, "By the time he's old enough to know, he's lost all trust in you anyway." I asked, "But what if he still trusts you? He'll keep putting spit on his wound forever!" He replied, "Builds up his immune system." I will be seeking more advice from him.

By contrast, the nurses at Kaiser are slowly losing their grip on us. When Max went back to breastfeeding, he woke up every 2 hours to feed. This drove Delia insane.

Max at 5:00 am. He was fed and diapered. He was also very awake.

Delia's mom told her she was working when Dan was a baby and was also sleep deprived, so eventually she tried to put Dan on a feeding schedule at night - 4 hours between feedings. Dan was horrible for 2 nights and then, like magic, took to the feeding schedule. This story is very similar to the another dad, who had 6 kids, all of whom were put on a schedule, and all of whom adapted fine after a couple days. But when I asked a Kaiser nurse if Max was old enough for a schedule, she responded, very scared, "But he's hungry!!! How would you like someone to take away your food when you're hungry?" Soon, I heard her speed-dial Child Protective Services. I got a similar reaction from the nurse to another time-tested method to get a baby to sleep longer - dissolve cereal in some milk. Max completely lost his taste in formula, which rendered the idea moot anyway. In any case, we are getting a very strong suspicion that these nurses are not following their advice with their own kids.

First attempt at feeding Max rice cereal mixed with formula. He liked it less with each passing day. We didn't know why until we tried it. Our suprising conclusion: Formula tastes nasty - sort of like a Tang version of milk.

Finally, we came up with a solution. We already knew that Max went to bed far easier on his tummy. We put him on his tummy, he cried and flailed around, which just tired him out, and then he finally passed out after around 5-10 minutes - after which we flipped him on his back. But we soon noticed he slept longer on his tummy. Apparently this is very common with babies, so my generation was put to bed on our stomach. So, we kept Max on his tummy through the night. Yes, this increases the risk of SIDS, but really, given his current sleeping pattern, it might be his only path to survival. And it worked - he slept for progressively longer times for 2 weeks.

Max on tummy.

Then disaster struck.

We should have seen it coming earlier. But only now are we beginning to understand what happened. First, we placed Max in the center of the crib (see above photo), but we later picked him up, crying, with his head against a crib corner or his arm sticking through the rails. We never saw it happen in real time. The crib didn't seem to be tilted.

A day later, Max's back was wedged against the crib rails. He was on his side.

"Did you put him there?" I asked.
"Nope." Delia replied.

Then we found him on his back.

Now we realize he was moving around the crib like an inchworm. Unfortunately, he has no reverse gear, but when he hits a barrier, he simply cries. To flip over, he tucked his legs under his tummy and fell over. Soon, he was doing it quickly. And hence, the tragedy. No longer does he flail around anymore - just a neat flip to the side, and he has plenty left in the tank for hours of wailing. Gone are our carefree days when we could guarantee Max could go to sleep whenever he was cranky.

Three Sigma?

OK, sorry about the missing blogs - we were really really busy. I am well aware that this blog may brighten your days. Well, now here's something else that may brighten it: Schardenfreude! My first draft was a huge blog that was really whiney, but to summarize, Delia's entire division at Kaiser was laid off on her first day back, she had a fever and chills for a few weeks, and more impressively, a colony of E. Coli bacteria decided to make its home underneath Delia's tailbone, where it grew to the size of a ping pong ball. Delia's been in treatment for a month now, and it's almost better, but we had make an emergency switch of Max to formula while she was under antibiotics (BTW: We found out Max will eat anything if he's hungry enough, thank God..)

Given Delia was so sick, I pretty much took care of Max by himself when I wasn't working. I have no idea how single moms do it. The only bright spots were: 1) Max was almost comotose for the entire week we had him on Similac formula, making him very easy to care for (we switched to some organic formula after we ran out of the Similac, which actually made him more animated), and 2) I survived 2 layoffs in 3 months but not the substantial across-the-board salary cut. During this time, my company asked me to work a 90 hour week if necessary to meet a deadline, making me marvel at the ensuing lack of adrenaline produced.


OK, that's out of the way. I took out the whiney stuff and am giving you some Max highlights.

4/7: Throughout the ordeal, the one person with good spirits was Max. Even if he's mellower, he's continuing to develop as a baby. This morning, at 4:30 AM, I fed him and put him back to bed. He was motionless, but then had a series of loud kicks on the mattress, and went silent again. Then he kicked again. He wouldn't go to sleep. I think I put him to bed too early last night. What's his deal? I changed his diaper and put him back. Same thing. He didn't want any more food. He wasn't crying but he was making plenty of noise to wake up Delia. So I put him on a mattress in our spare room and watched him. He kept up his intermittent kicking. I had no idea what his deal was. Until all the sudden he was on his side. Then he calmed down. That's new - he's been pretty much a beached whale until now. Then he fell on his back and started kicking again. After a while, he rolled on his side, but with just a little more momentum- he rolled over on his stomach! He looked up with a ton of pride. Then he got upset. He just gave himself tummy time. I put him back on his back, and before I knew it he was on his stomach again.

4/7: Delia's off antibiotics. But today is the big unknown. Our plan was to nurse Max once Delia was off antibiotics, and we did everything we could to help that happen - low-flow bottles, Delia pumping the last couple days when Max ate to get her milk supply up - but Delia apparently refused to breastfeed when she was 2 months old and we had no idea if Max would accept breastfeeding again. However, the pediatrician's advice - he'll eat if he's hungry - calmed me down. And thoughout this ordeal, I've noticed Max would eat regardless of the bottle temperature or his position - perhaps he isn't very fussy. We introduced Max to Delia again, and after a bit of astonishment, Max fed without a hitch. So far Max isn't a fussy eater. (Note to self in future: Yes, I know I just jinxed myself. Sorry.) Then Max stared at Delia with wide eyes. I just took a big step back in Max's eyes, which is fine. Since then, Max's intensity has racheted back up - he smiles wider and cries louder. I'm not sure how much is from the better nutrition and how much is due to hunger - Delia's body hasn't caught up to Max's appetite. We probably will have to use a bit of formula over the next few days and phase it out.

Some good things: First, Delia was wondering if she should quit her job anyway. Second, thanks to our intimate bottle knowledge, travel became much easier - we'll store breastmilk when we go out and use formula in a pinch. Max hates breastfeeding if Delia's wearing one of those covers in public, but he's fine with a bottle. Finally, the high intensity lifestyle got me to focus more. I read at least part of "Getting Things Done" and must say it has useful tips. I found time to buy and install a dishwasher, fix a leak in a pipe fitting in the dishwasher I put in, assemble a bookcase, re-fix the leak in the pipe fitting, cook a couple times, get the bike ready again, re-fix a leak in the pipe fitting, install a showerhead and re-fix a leak in the pipe fitting.

Where are the photos? The camera's somewhere else and Max is starting to cry, so they'll wait, but gosh, they are coming and they will even be in full color.

3 months old

Apparently winter came and went.

Max just had his 3-month birthday. As of this writing, here's a summary of our accomplishments.


1) Max is still alive. Given the parents' incompetence and his 2:30 AM crying fits, this is a significant accomplishment.

2) Delia is still alive.

3) Max is much bigger. I look at his height and weight charts, and he really isn't that far off average, but for some reason he seems to be bigger than any of the other babies around here. Delia goes to a weekly mom's group meeting held by a nurse, and everyone puts their baby on a scale seeing if baby added a few ounces. Then Max comes in. The nurse calls him "the fat one" and puts his big butt on the scale. He usually gains anywhere from half a pound to a pound. His appetite has been ridiculous - he'll feed fully and get hungry again in an hour.

4) Max is a different baby now, and his changes are amazing. Sometimes it feels like he goes to sleep and wakes up with a software upgrade.

I won't bore you with the milestones he's supposed to hit, but I will say this: When we say he hits his milestone depends a lot on how alert the we are in catching the behavior, and also how, I guess, generous we are in saying he hit the milestone. And I think I'm a pretty generous grader.

The reason is I believe Max's actions are a lot less random than they look. Some time ago, when we put toys near Max's arms, his arms would move around wildly. Dan (Delia's brother) thought his arm movements were random, and to show this, he took a toy away and watched Max's arms. Max still flailed around (Dan was right) but started crying (Hmmmm...) So the next day, we put the toy up and Max's arms flailed around again. But we moved the toy this time and noticed his arm movements recentering themselves around the toy. Then, amazingly, one of us noticed him grabbing the toy. This is the Max equivalent of me grabbing a fly in midair with chopsticks. A few weeks later, the toys bring out well-positioned swipes.

So with that in mind, here are some other random movements we've noticed in the last few days:

I wanted Max to laugh (the baby book says he should have a laugh around now), so when he was smiling, I told him a humorous antecdote of Kafka and Gandhi discussing struggle. Max didn't respond very well (perhaps I didn't describe the insect succinctly) so I decided to make some fart noises with my lips. No, I did not include a video. So Max's mouth opened into a wide smile and he started making sounds like he was breathing hard: Hehhhh......Hehhhhh...Hehhhhh....Delia thinks it was a laugh. I think it probably was too, but it was very cute anyway.

Max likes to kick out with his legs when he's sitting. So I held him under his arms and lifted him to standing. When I do this, he likes to push down on his legs. Now for a while he cried when I did this, but about a week ago he started loving it. Then, a couple days later, while I did this, he lifted up his left leg. Then he gently put it down in front of his right leg. What...? Then Max lifted up his right leg and put it in front of his left, the whole time with a huge grin.

Just a second, buddy! He can't even push from his tummy yet. But I looked up this behavior and found it was a reflex - some babies have it at birth. Reflex or not, I took this kid out on the town last night (mom was sick) and before I knew it, Max was on a table trying to walk while throngs of women were adoring him.

5) It's never too early to get embarrassing photos of Max! We will need them when we meet Max's first girlfriend. Umm, Max, will you ever let us see who you're dating? Please? Max?

Embarrassing photo #1: Max in blue Panda Bear outfit. Note to Max: I would never, never, never, have put this on you. I was not around when this tragedy happened. There was no male in the room to protect you. But the photo is still useful nonetheless.

Embarrassing photo #2: Max's mullet.

Finally, it's April 5 and I finally finished his 3-month old thing. We've been much busier than we planned. Maybe we'll talk about this later.

Jay Cutler Face

Max impersonating Bronco Quarterback Jay Cutler.

Max is becoming more fun to be around - when he's happy he'll smile at everyone he sees - and he communicates better (or maybe we listen better) so we can differentiate between his moods. And when we do something wrong - feed him when he wants a diaper change, put him to bed when he wants to play - he gives us Jay Cutler Face.

Some background here: Jay Cutler is the quarterback for my hometown football team, the Denver Broncos. (Note to Romanian readers: This is American football, not the strange one where you bounce balls on your head.) Jay Cutler wants to be traded, and he wants every media outlet that exists to know. Perhaps you've read the story in Romania. He has said he felt betrayed after learning his coach discussed trading him, and was not happy when the coach said no one is untradeable. So, to summarize, he wants a trade because he's afraid he'll be traded. If that logic isn't watertight enough, we'll go further. He's afraid that his coach will blindside him with a trade that will send him packing to another city. However, the football team that will acquire his services will have to give the Broncos their own players, thereby blindsiding these players in a trade that will send them packing to Denver. Apparently Jay Cutler will then will trust his new team more than his current one.

Back to Max: Every day gives us plenty of opportunities to photograph Max's Jay Cutler face. But why is his face cut off in the headline photo? The answer is that Jay Cutler face is harder to capture than the Yeti.

He was not happy when we put him to bed last night - he rarely is - which gives us plenty of opportunities to capture Jay Cutler face. But here's how a few of them turned out:

3 failed attempts to capture Jay Cutler face.

To me, he looks more like he's about to be sucked into a flying saucer. Where did his fussiness go? That's when I tried pointing the camera at me and activating it. At this moment, a brilliant high-wattage orange spotlight shot from the camera, temporarily hypnotizing me. I think it's some red eye reduction thingie. Now I know why I can't get Jay Cutler Face on camera, and for that matter, why I can't get any expression except a "What the @#$ is that light?" look.

BTW, in all fairness to Max, he is now adorable as much as he is angry. Here's a photo I just shot as I'm typing the blog. I even captured a smile. Let's see Jay Cutler try this face!

Max was in the middle of a very difficult thumb sucking attempt. His right arm wasn't cooperating, so he used his left hand to force his right hand in his mouth. Smiling was accomplished by rubbing his head.

Max is awake on a hike!

Max as seen by Todd while hiking.

Delia and I have been able to hike almost every week - it's nice to have a hobby that Max didn't interrupt. However, I was always a bit disappointed that Max slept through his hikes. He's missing out on such good scenery...

Max in typical hike pose.

Then, one magical hike near Bridgeport (reputed to be the longest single-span wooden covered bridge in the United States) Max woke up!


And quickly degenerated.

Nothing soothed the kid. I spent the last hour of the hike carrying him on his side (it was the only position out of the 112 I tried that worked), singing "Sounds of Silence" while his back was completely arched backwards so his dinner-plate-sized eyes could be overloaded with images.




The coda to this hike was I got the worst neck kink in my life. I spent the next day on the couch frozen and staring up at the ceiling.

BTW, I finally started uploading photos. On the left side of the blog, look at "MAX PHOTOS" and click on the links below. I'm too lazy to organize them by theme so they're grouped by the month they were taken. Continuing with the laziness theme, I also didn't label any of them. Feel free to make up whatever story you wish about them.