Road Trip, Phase 1

Our road trip has begun!  First stop is Ohio to visit family and celebrate Thanksgiving.  We decided to make the normally-9-hour drive over two days, given that Zain’s previous long trip in the car was about and hour and a half.  We drove to Akron the first night.  Normally a 5.5 hour trip, it took us about 8 hours with baby-feeding, dog-walking, and parent-stretching stops.  So we figure for the rest of the trip, we’ll take Google Maps’ estimate of trip length and add 50%.  Zain did pretty well on the trip.  We’re learning how to keep him happy when he’s tired of the car seat, including dealing with the sun.  And Shif is learning interesting ways to breastfeed in the back seat in gas station parking lots (I’m not sure she’ll let me take or post a picture, but it’s amusing). 

Zain's first hotel room

Life in the car seat

Binda babysitting

Zain has been a bit difficult to get to sleep lately, but that might be the result of a growth spurt more than anything else.  He’s developed all sorts of new skills in the last week or so.  First, he’s finally gotten his hands somewhat reliably into his mouth.  For the record, thumb first entered mouth in the restroom of a McDonald’s along I-90 in Erie, Pennsylvania.  Since then, he hasn’t been able to get the thumb back there, but his fist makes regular appearances and he slurps away on it.  This is his new favourite hobby.  Second, he’s started to pull to a stand with our help.  For a week or so, he’s been doing “sit-ups” where we hold his hands and he pulls himself up to a sitting position.  But a couple days ago, I was doing this and he just kept going and pushed himself right up to standing.  He loves to stand up and look around.  The view must be so much better from high up. 

Zain’s taken pretty well to all these new environments he’s been in.  Each new place we’re in, we have to assess where to put him to sleep, whether we use the pack ‘n play or co-sleeper or something else, if the room is too dark or too light, if there’s enough outside noise that we need white noise, how much furniture we need to move in order to plug in the monitor, where to take a bath…. 

Trying to escape from the sink bath





Cuddling with Grammy and Josephine

This week has been packed full for Zain with meeting family members and vicariously enjoying a lot of turkey. 

Meeting Grandpa...

... and Grandma Shirley

One of Zain's new favorite people, Cousin Beth

Uncle Anthony

Thanksgiving with Maya and Anthony

Mr. Popular at the family reunion

Ready for Florida

Zain now has a tiny swim diaper!  He's going to fit right in on the Florida beaches with his speedo, potbelly, and man boobs (those courtesy of Mommy's estrogen).  This week we've been busy trying to tie up a million loose ends and prepare for six weeks out of the country.  Little Z's passport has arrived and we are skipping town! 

We knew we would be heading to Ohio for both American Thanksgiving and Christmas and staying for a week or so each time.  It didn't seem to make much sense to drive back to (cold) Toronto just to turn around a few weeks later and head back to Ohio.  So we decided to head south in between the two holidays and have our first family vacation.  If we're going to be in a car with a potentially screaming baby for that long, we might as well go somewhere fun.  So, our courageous and possibly stupid plan is to spend a week meandering down to Florida, spend a week relaxing on the beach, then take a week to meander back.

We're going to do the drive in little bits that hopefully will not irritate the child and bore the adults.  And if the routine of getting up and organized each morning isn't too horribly slow, we hope to see a few sights at each stop, too.  Oh, did I mention we're taking our dog, too? :-)  We're devoting all of Sunday to figuring out how to fit two moms, one boy, and a husky and six weeks' worth of their clothes and gear into a Prius.  Not to mention figuring out what size Zain will be wearing in late December.  This should be a very interesting trip...

Zain photography has taken a back seat to trip prep, but here are a few recent shots.  Zain and parents are doing great.  We've got a little eat-play-sleep structure going that really works for him.  He's much happier - not overtired as often, and much more cheerful because of it.  He's full of smiles, especially in the morning.  It's so much fun to walk into his room after he wakes up and be greeted by a big, gummy smile.

Naked boy swinging

This boy is incredibly kissable

 

Mr. Chatty Patty

Wanted to share a quick mid-week video clip with everyone.  Mr. Zain has become super chatty recently and has LOTS to say!  Mostly he likes to talk to the butterfly and bird decals on the wall by his change table.  He also tries to imitate us and "sings" along when we sing.  We'll spare you a video clip of us singing (!), but here's a cute one where he imitates us saying "bless you"...I could watch this all day...enjoy! :-)

Solo

"Bottle Mommy" is flying solo tonight.  Shif is at an event with her family and I am in charge of the boy.  This is only the third time I've had to manage alone for longer than a dog walk, and the first time I've done his bedtime routine alone.  I've managed to do alright, although things were a lot less coordinated with two hands instead of four.  It may not have been pretty, but the night ended with a cry-less putdown into bed, and that makes me very happy.

Bottle Mommy has to work a lot harder than Booby Mommy  :-)

This afternoon, we had a reunion of our prenatal class.  We took the class at Toronto's gay and lesbian community centre, so I refer to the group as "10 babies, 19 mommies."  We've all been following each other on Facebook, but it was our first time meeting all the babies face-to-face.  It was really fun to see all the little ones, share stories, and compare milestones.  The kids range from 4.5 months to 1 month.  Zain was actually the youngest babe in attendance (but not so surprisingly, not the smallest!), so we're really benefiting from seeing what all the others have gone through.  One of the moms set up a little photo studio, so we got some really cute pictures (thanks, Amy!).  

Mr. Bubble

Zain and five of his classmates (well, they were in the class, but they don't know it)

Shif had to leave the reunion early, so Zain and I made our way home ourselves.  This was also my first time out of the house with Zain alone, so I had to figure out the proper sequence of putting on his coat and my coat, when to put on the carrier, how to jam all of Zain's stuff into his diaper backpack while keeping him upright because he had just eaten, and how I was supposed to go to the bathroom.  I managed to do all this successfully, so I strapped him into his carrier and grabbed our little cooler pack of pumped milk.  It was a beautiful night and Zain was awake, so I decided to walk a bit before we hopped on the subway.  We walked up Yonge Street and he was totally mesmerized by all the lit-up shops and restaurants.  Then he fell asleep along the foo-foo Yorkville section of Bloor Street. This is good - we prefer him to be mesmerized by noodle shops and coffeehouses than by Cartier and Prada.  :-)  


Seeing all the little ones today was a reminder of how quickly he's growing up.  Zain fell asleep on my chest tonight for the first time in a long time.  He doesn't like it as much these days and when I'm putting him down now he's usually fighting sleep, so the interaction is a lot less sweet and lovey than it used to be!  It was a lovely feeling to have the little guy back and to feel his little breaths on my neck.  The last time he fell asleep there, his little frogged-up body fit neatly between my chin and my waist.  This time, he felt twice as big! Everyone with kids has warned us "they grow up so fast, so remember these days." I held him as long as I could.
 

The Little Things

Little things excite us.  Shif was telling a friend who has no kids about some of the exciting (to us) milestones Zain has reached, and she realized how we've entered a totally different world.  He's kinda sorta sucking his thumb!  Woo hoo!  He's putting his two hands together intentionally!  Wow!  He's repeatedly touching a toy on purpose!!!!  These things make our day.  The other day Shif saw that, in his jiggly chair, he had accidentally (presumably) pulled Mrs. Frog's pull thing (??) and Mrs. Frog made music. Shif said he didn't seem to have had a eureka moment or anything, so I'm sure it was an accident and he didn't really get it, but we were excited!

Mrs. Frog and her 'pull thing'

Touching a stuffed animal (so momentous, it had to be immediately recorded with the cell phone camera)

Zain had his first immunizations Saturday.  The poor little guy toughed out two shots with a short burst of crying.  But later in the day, one of the injection sites was really bothering him and he let loose with such loud, sad cries that it brought us to tears.  



This weekend we also took a mini-vacation to Shif's mom's house.  We spent three days hanging out with family, and we got some more excellent grandmotherly baby-calming advice.  The trip also let us test our packing and traveling abilities (with baby and dog), since we'll be in the car a lot over the holidays.  And it may have resolved a debate we were having about whether we need to get a roof-top cargo box.  :-)  Nothing is simple with a baby, is it?

More snowsuit

 

Doing sit-ups

 

Zain has an audience for his bath

My cheering section at a 10K

"Mommy ran how slow??"

Telling Mom a story, or airing grievances, we're not sure which

Boy Eaten by Snowsuit

High Needs? Or Just Sleep Deprived??

At risk of ruining the beautiful stretch of 3-days we're on, I'd like to take a moment to admit that perhaps Jen was right.  Yes, take note, because this may be the *only* time you hear me admit that Jen was right and I *may* have been wrong!
For the past several weeks, I've been pretty convinced that we have a high-needs baby.  Every time I said it, Jen would cringe.  She hated it, and refused to admit that our little guy's fussiness crossed the threshold from "easy baby" to "difficult baby".  I, for one, thought she was in denial.

Well, we discovered a great book called "The Baby Whisperer" by Tracy Hogg -- in her book, Tracy teaches you to decipher your baby's cries and facial expressions to figure out exactly what all this "fussiness" is about.  She basically asks you to think of your baby as a foreigner in a new land and treat him/her with appropriate respect and understanding.  As an example she asks you to imagine that you're in a new country where you don't speak the language..you ask where the bathroom is...noone understands you and assumes you want food...so they stick a plate of spaghetti under your nose.  Helpful?  Not really.  This analogy really helped me understand that while I thought I was feeding Zain "on-demand" (if other soothing mechanisms weren't working, I'd put him on the breast which was sure to soothe) it was possible I was just feeding him regardless of what his cry was "asking" for.  Makes sense - why didn't we think of that before??

After reading her descriptions of various typical baby cries and what they mean, and then spending a day really listening to and observing Zain in a mindful fashion for a few seconds before responding when he cried, it became clear to me that he did in fact have very different cries!  So we started making a point to listen to these different cries and respond appropriately.  What we found was that he was sleepy WAAAY more often than we had originally recognized!  And hungry much less often that we had thought!  What we also learned is that he is VERY impatient!  If you don't catch his sleepy cue right away (by the second yawn) - he quickly becomes overtired and runs himself into a crying frenzy.  Same goes for his hungry cry (though this crying fit is easier/quicker to fix!).

For three days now we have been listening very closely for Zain's various cues and responding appropriately to meet his needs as best as we can.  As a result, we've been putting him down for naps more regularly throughout the day.  He has basically gotten himself naturally onto 2.5 hour cycles where he sleeps for about an hour, feeds for 20-30 minutes, plays for 30-45 minutes and then sleeps again.  Gone are the evening fussy periods.  Gone are the long bouts of NFI crying.  And in their place are lots of smiles and giggles!  As a result we get to spend alot more fun and cuddly time with him bonding happily!  Of course if we miss a cue or worse yet miss a nap...watch out!!  Our fussy baby returns with a vengeance (this happened tonite after an interrupted nap - which confirmed for me what's going on and inspired this blog post!).

So Jen, it seems that this time you were right!  Our little guy isn't high-needs after all.  I wouldn't exactly call him "easy" though...perhaps "medium-needs" would be more fitting given his impatience and his need for us to respond QUICK when he asks for something!  Hopefully this trait doesn't carry through into toddler-hood! :-)

Becoming a Little More Canadian

From the management: We're going to start posting on a more regular basis, instead of the once-a-week thing.  I end up composing blog posts in my head on sleepless nights during the week then forgetting everything on Monday.  We promise at least one Zain fix a week (however, those of you who've read my blogs before know that overkill is actually the more likely scenario).  Thanks for reading!

We're making a little progress figuring out the mysteries of Zain.  Nighttime at least has become pretty regular.  He usually just wakes up once for a nice, tidy snack and then is back to sleep.  His mommies thank him for this.  Daytime, on the other hand, is a work in progress.  Shif noted today that he's basically become our little guinea pig.  We're charting his schedule, and we're trying various little experiments on him.  We're trying to find the right combination of eating, playing, and sleeping that produces a happy, satiated, not overstimulated, not understimulated boy.  We don't have it quite down yet, but there's been progress.  

 

We've figured out that he likes to be full of milk.  Especially at night.  So we've basically been stuffing him full before he goes to sleep.  Shif's milk supply has mostly been able to keep up.  She started pumping a few weeks ago, so we usually have a bottle in the fridge that we can give him if he needs a top-up.  He's taken it quite well and hasn't suffered from the dreaded "nipple confusion."  He still loves the booby. 

We did have to resort to supplementing with a little bit of formula a few times last week.  It's been really important to us to follow the "breast is best" mantra since it makes him so much less likely to have allergies and asthma.  Shif unfortunately has those traits to pass on and she also had a lot of food allergies when she was a kid, so we'd like to do what we can to make sure Zain doesn't have the same issues.  But a little formula was better than letting the poor guy starve. He's not a fan of the formula, though.  He drank it, but he was a bit of a diva about its temperature and he made a lot of dramatic faces demonstrating his feelings about this inferior product.  We tried mixing half formula and half breastmilk (we called it "mormula") and it seemed to fool him nicely. 

Obviously getting enough milk

Zain continues to get cuter (our assessment) every day.  He's still super-alert and curious, as he has been since Day 1.  He got a new mobile for his crib this week and he loves it.  

He's also getting more cuddly.  He'll hold onto your shoulder when you carry him.  And he seems to sometimes just want a little cuddle for comfort, which is new.  The other day we were in a store and he started melting down a bit.  I picked him up out of the stroller and held him.  He (seemingly) intentionally just snuggled his little head in under my chin and rested on my chest and calmed down.  It's possible I melted into a little puddle right there in the middle of Babies R Us.  :-) 

We applied for Zain's passport this week.  We'll be heading south of the border for American Thanksgiving in a few weeks.  Zain has a grandpa and grandma and some aunts, uncles, and cousins he needs to meet!  Getting the passport picture was an experience.  The photographer first had me try to hold him up with my hand inside his sweater and Zain sitting on a little box.  She quickly decided to go to Plan B - a piece of white poster board on the floor.  So, in this picture, he's actually lying on the floor, with three adults hovering over him trying to keep him from crying and get him to look at the camera.  It took probably 50 pictures before we got this one.  The passport should be here in a couple weeks and then we're off on a road trip.  

His wardrobe choice was kind of coincidental - they said to have him wear something dark and that's his only dark sweater.  But very appropriate.  We'll have to find something else for his US passport in a few months!

Random Zain:

Best Halloween costume accessory ever - a tiny patient!

Shif teaching me to bathe him solo - washing Z's hair

Demonstrating the "formula face"

Tummy time - getting stronger!

Post on the Way

Those of you have a feed reader probably noticed I accidentally posted my notes-to-self.  :-)  Back tonight or tomorrow with a new post!