bring on the science

There's a scene in American Beauty where the character played by Mena Suvari (Angela), the oversexed high-school cheerleader, explains that she loves all the male attention she gets, even if it is from middle-aged men like Lester, the character played by Kevin Spacey. As she explains to Lester's daughter, who is bothered by her dad's ogling of young Angela, she likes it because "there's nothing worse in life than being ordinary." If you remember this scene, you'll remember that the value judgment in her statement is unmistakable--she hisses more than states this, her distaste for the mediocre complete. It's kind of creepy.

By contrast, in Stan-land average is okay, because, unlike the complicated Angelas, with their high school insecurities and vain wishes, the under-one crowd is merely trying to get on their feet--literally and figuratively. It's about eating, producing dirty diapers, sleeping, and repeating the cycle. If all goes well, growth happens.

Yes, today was the four-week visit with the pediatrician, where, much to our delight, we were given our first taste of the babystats (!!) As if to dramatize the gravity of this moment, Dr. P. called the stat session while the boy received his Hep-B shot, which the staff correctly assumed we didn't want to watch anyway. As he got the shot, we were pulled aside to his office, sat down, and afforded a view of our very first babystat chart. The excitement!

How did young Stan fare? Just fine.

Head: 50th percentile.
Weight: 80th percentile (slow start due to jaundice notwithstanding).
Height: 97th percentile.

If they could measure the softness of his skin, it would be off the charts for sure.

second media appearance

Stancam!

first media appearance

Check out the star.

measuring up

Why are we so obsessed with measuring the babies?

I'm told that in the very near future, our appointments with the pediatrician will include percentile rankings charting Stanley's physical growth. I find this process of measurement fascinating but not quite understandable. Over the years I had heard babystats from other new parents, who usually relayed them with some measure of pride: "David is in the 98th percentile in height for his age," and "so-and-so's weight is in the 95th." Even heads can be measured and compared. I suspect that as parents we selectively share babystats with others--a not so subtle form of early parental bias and an early gesture toward adult worlds of competition. That these measurements help chart my child's health is undeniable, even though I think they also emphasize physical worth too much. And it bugs me that they're reported like the SAT, as if, some how, my child achieved something great in growing or not. My friend's one-year-old, who resembles a freakin' Greek sculpture, was reported to be doing well, percentile-wise, and is also bubbly, kind to animals, and charming. Though I don't know for sure, I bet that Monster Baby is also measuring up. I don't really know what these numbers mean, what their purposes are beyond assuring you that your kid is not going to immediately die (which we need to hear occasionally). The kid grows in front of our eyes; no outside verification seems required.

This little obsession with size and physical measurement isn't just in the discourse of our medical establishment and it's not just about our health. It's built into our rituals, from the small talk (how big? your poor wife!) to snail-mailed baby announcements (can't remember when I last saw one without height and weight) to family conversations that gaze into the crystal ball and speculate about the boy's future in (name the) sport.

The other day we did a little height-check on Stan. He's up 2 inches (10 percent) from his birthday. And when grandma K was in town, she deposited this writer's baby book, which prompted immediate footprint-to-footprint comparison, where we learned that papa had a huge hoof. It was fun to compare. At the same time, it's also the first trappings of our larger culture's sometimes nasty fixation on perfect bodies. Suddenly, a birth announcement looks a little more like a baseball card, and babies less like bundles of love and more like players in a game they didn't ask for. To this, I prefer the sentiment expressed by Loretta Lynn: that God Makes No Mistakes.

Next week is the four-week visit. It's not clear whether or not we'll get to measure Stanley then, but, if we do, I'll be curious. We don't have a scale in the house so I'm wondering about his weight.

grandma time

documentation

The birth of a child unleashes a fit of paperwork, most of which we have completed and some of which is still sitting around in the house somewhere. There are birth certificates to be ordered, social security cards, the medical documentation (including health insurance), and yet-to-be-seen notes from the hospital, just to name a few.

A more interesting form of documentation is also taking shape, and it has a sort of frenzied spirit to it that is partly related to the availability of recording devices around our house. The still images and video we're taking are a part of this. Our average peaked at 30 photos day, which includes contributions of that prolific and well-equipped maker of images, Prince Clementine's grandpa. With grandma just arriving for a visit, we may reach 30 again today! The online StanCam live chats are a big hit with nephews and nieces in the Midwest, and the new and improved iChat video software promises to take the whole instant message /SMS technology to new heights. Seriously fun stuff.

All this documentation is normal--we know that having a child is a community event and sharing is part of it. Moreover, with parts of our families and many friends scattered across these United States, a little Prince Clementine archive makes for an easy and relatively inexpensive way for everyone to keep up. It can also be taken to absurd lengths, though, which is perhaps what C was thinking when, during about the second stage of labor, I mentioned that I had my iPod equipped with an adapter that was ready to record, if she did not object.

For the record, there was an objection, which was sustained.

No recording or replaying of images or sounds can substitute for actual Prince Clementime, of course, but it's fun trying.

New images are posted here.

who is watching me

For awhile, I was confused by the name of the clinic, Planned Parenthood. In my little world, most all parenting has been planned, and as carefully as possible. For the longest time, I didn't know if Planned Parenthood was a scary right wing anti-choice political group, or a clinic devoted to women's health, and particularly sexual and reproductive health care. Thankfully, it's the latter--and a great place for people to seek out doctors and treatments inexpensively and with confidentiality. Planned Parenthood has helped more than one young couple make good choices.

In any case, C and I planned to have Stanley, and were even lucky enough time it for the beginning of the summer when we could take advantage of a few weeks away from teaching.

But eventually, school starts. What was our plan for child care? We had lived comfortably in that enviable category, "double income, no kids" (DINKS) for years, and we liked it. We also wanted kids. One good alternative for people in our position is to have one parent stay at home. Though we have pondered that option, it's never been that attractive to us. We like our incomes, and our careers are really just beginning, so we wanted to hang onto the momentum we've built, and avoid the difficulties of re-entering the workforce after a hiatus. Neither of us wanted to stay at home full-time with Stan pants, though we have acquaintances who make that work and make it work well. There are obvious sacrifices in deciding to hang onto two jobs. We weighed those against another popular alternative, full-time daycare, which around here runs about $800 to $1200 monthly.

The surprising resolution to the childcare dilemma came in the form of grandparents. A third alternative. Shortly after we found out we were expecting, we began a conversation with C's parents, which started as something of a lark (you should come stay here for the summer!) and steadily evolved---maybe a short-term lease on a place here, perhaps some extended visits, etc. Eventually, we were shopping area real estate and having serious talks about whether or not we wanted the grandparents to move here. YES. Yes, all four of us thought that it would work, and we tried to be honest about potential drawbacks. Still, yes. More shopping, a house purchase, the moving van ... and now Stanley has four adults to look after him (to dote on him is more like it).

We're not sure about how things will work out once his parents are back to school full-time, and we realize that our setup is neither possible nor desirable for most parents--C's parents just retired and were willing to move, for example. But, for now, Stan has excellent care. In planning and plotting our move from DINKs to parents we discovered that luck, logic, and a lot of love were all needed to start the adventure.

more cuteness, picture form

Click here.

sibling rivalry

The perfect dog in this house preceded the perfect baby by a couple of years. Buford came to us from Georgia where he was at one time an orphan in the university vet clinic. Though he has always been a well-behaved guy around strangers, we had no reason to expect that he would automatically adjust to the new edition. He's also a bulky 80+ pounds.

Turns out he loves the baby, even if he has to compete for attention sometimes. Stanley is also usually busy feeding or sleeping or otherwise not even around the boof. Things may change in the toddler stage, but apparently, many pets are like this, and accommodate babies just fine.

We'd post pictures of Buford licking Stanley but we're afraid the combined cuteness of that particular image would crack the screen on any computer monitor where it is viewed.

consumer madness

It's no secret that babies need a lot of stuff, and this can be daunting for expecting parents. Have you checked out the cost of a nice breast pump lately? Swung by Babies -R- Us and perused cribs?

Early on, a friend lent us a copy of Baby Bargains, which promised to reduce our first year expenses by about 30 percent. The book, along with C's ingenuity and her dad's love of yard sales, yielded a series of slightly smarter purchases that paved the way for Prince Clementine's arrival at home--a mint condition Graco Pack 'n Play found on Craigslist, a sturdy and clean high chair, backup everything for the grandparents' house. Who knows if we've saved 30 percent, but shopping for baby things, especially new baby things, was eye-opening. It comes with a little hitch, though. The baby industry loves to make us fear for the safety of our child as a way to motivate expecting parents to buy the latest and greatest. Some of these fear appeals are legitimate, of course, but I suspect that few parents need to be taught to fear for their child's health and well being. Baby product ads tap into what most parents already feel--an overwhelming desire to do the best they can by their kids.

Sometimes going to yard sales was really fun, like the day we found the above basketball warmup suit at a local middle-school's massive parking-lot bonanza. I was so excited when I saw it, I didn't even realize until later that it's probably not going to fit until about 2011.

Oh well, it was only a buck.

day six

He's still perfect. In fact, he's even MORE perfect today because the phototherapy machine is a thing of the past. The breastfeeding is coming along swimmingly, his jaundice is receding, and he regained the pound he lost in the few days after coming home. So, we are pumped because it was tough going around the tube to change the diaper.

Thanks for all of the emails and well wishes in the past few days. Please accept this e-rose from our garden as a token of thanks!

More pics of Prince Clementine are here.

glow-boy

Having a child is awesome in all of the ways you would think--the thrill of new life, the joy, cuteness, happiness and love. New babies smell nice and they make unbelievably precious noises, which is awesome. And maybe the older meanings of awesome come into play here, too. Awesome, as in, respectful of the complexity and wonder of the world around us. Seeing the Rocky Mountains for the first time is awesome not just because they are beautiful but because their sheer size puts our humanity and our egos into perspective.

All of this by way of explaining why our son is glowing. No worries--he has a little jaundice and that's pretty common in newborns. He is glowing because he has a phototherapy wrap around his mid-section, which warms and turns back the excessive production of bilirubin out of his liver. The treatment is designed to reduce the yellow skin color that is a symptom of jaundice--and no, Grandma Pat, he is not just yellow because he has Asian ancestors. :) He'll be on the machine for another day or so, and this morning a nurse will be visiting the house to check his progress. We think he's already improving.

What the picture does not show is how connecting Stanley to the phototherapy machine turns him into a little cyborg. Imagine a projector that shoots images onto a big screen, and then imagine what would happen if all that light were shot instead through a small tube and into a thin, plastic, transparent fiber-optic strip. We route this tube from the light-machine up through the snaps of his onesie and into the strip, and, voila, he receives the warmth and light he needs.

So, for now, he's half Stan-the-man, half machine, and he glows a Gatorade-blue.

It's pretty awesome.

coming home day

Today we brought Stanley home after a short recovery in the hospital and many visits from many helpers. The hospital staff was amazing, but leaving felt a little like leaving a different kind of institution: in today's security environment, all the babies are given ankle surveillance (a baby lojack) with ID information to match mom and dad's wristbands. No stealing this baby, no way, no how.

If you're wondering about the middle name Erasmus ("beloved"), you can get decent overview of this 15th century Dutch theologian/rhetorician/philosopher here. We're dorks.

And we still can't seem to take enough photos of our little boy.