Reed turned two months old today! We celebrated with his first hike in the woods, which he mostly slept through in his Ergo carrier. Part of me can’t believe he is already this old while another part feels like I’ve known him forever. The past month has been a whirlwind of visitors, but we have the house to ourselves for the rest of the summer. While it’s nice to have company and help, it’s also be nice when it’s just the three of us. My parents were so crazy about Reed that they’re renting a house nearby for three weeks to spend more time with him.

Reed has been growing like a weed. Two weeks ago, we learned that he was in the 75th percentile for height

Adam circa 1971

– which is impressive when you have two shorties for parents. He’s grown 4 inches since he was born
so is 23 and 1/4 inches now. While he eats like crazy, he’s still a pretty lean guy. I’m sure he’ll fill out
soon, though I was never particularly chubby as a baby. I’ve recently seen pics of Adam at this age and he is a chubby version of Reed; it’s really uncanny!

Tummy time or snack time?

Reed’s accomplished so many things this month. Four weeks ago he cracked his first smile and since then he’s been smiling all the time when he’s in a social mood. He’s been cooing a lot and we’re much more clued in to what his various vocalizations mean. He’s started playing with toys — batting at and clutching toys that dangle over him. He’s a whiz at tummy time and has a very strong neck. On Sunday morning he managed to roll himself from his belly onto his back!!! It was a big weekend of firsts since Saturday he also was able to consistently get his thumb in his mouth. He’s still not quite as crazy about it as the pacifier, but he seems to use it more and more each day. He’d been getting it into his mouth on and off for 2 weeks, but he was never able to consistently repeat the feat until now. Good work Reed!!!

I started back at work last week. I’m only working two days per week until mid-August (when Reed is 4 months old) and Adam will be watching him on days that I’m away. It’s difficult to be away from him, but at
least for now he’s with Adam who is so great with him. They have so much fun together and Adam is a really supportive, hands-on dad (and husband). The idea of sending him to daycare really freaks me out, but there really isn’t another good choice for our family.

Lots more to update, but my buddy here seems to want to play, so play we shall.

I came to motherhood having never done so much as changed a diaper. I’d held babies twice in my life and was extremely uncomfortable both times. When Reed was born, I was pretty terrified about picking him up for the first day, and it’s funny to look back on that considering how comfortable I am with him now. Being his mother feels so natural now, as does everything that comes with it. Nothing he does really phases me anymore after dealing with some of his epic diaper blowouts. Well, clipping his nails still terrifies me, but I think I’m going to be forced to do it soon as they’re getting rather long. I tried filing his nails last week and it helped a little bit, but not quite enough. They’re just so tiny!!!

I’m learning a lot more about his cues too. It’s easier for me to tell his “I’m wet” cry from his “I’m hungry” cry now. Some of his cries are still a mystery to me, but I’ve gotten better at calming him down during those times when he doesn’t need something obvious.

I’ve also learned a lot about the mental side of being a mom. I spent way too much time over the past few weeks beating myself up over things and, as a result, being irritable with Adam (I’m sure Adam would use a word other than irritable to describe my behavior, probably a word starting with “B”, but I digress). I was starting to worry that I had post-partum depression, but what I realized was that I was making myself sick and miserable trying to keep doing things that just weren’t working. What I’ve learned is that while a mother should always do what’s best for her child, a big part of that is taking care of herself and not being stressed or miserable. Stress isn’t good for a baby. Yelling isn’t good for a baby. Crying while feeding a baby isn’t good for a baby. After having a good talk with my pediatrician the other day, I’ve made some changes that have resulted in me being much happier and more relaxed. The measure of a mother is not how miserable she is, and I think it took me a little while to realize that. I feel much more able to enjoy Reed now and even Reed seems a lot more relaxed. Happy mommy, happy baby. We like that.

Reed’s over 8 pounds now and we have another well baby visit at the pediatrician’s office tomorrow, so we’ll see how he’s progressing. He’s crying a lot less now, seems much more interested in the world around him, and is sleeping so much better. I’ve started pumping breastmilk a bit, and Reed does much better with the bottle in terms of his gas. I do feel sad that breastfeeding just doesn’t seem to be working for him (or at least it’s not making him a very happy camper), but if something else will prevent him from being miserable, I’m willing to make a change. It’s all about him being fed, healthy and happy. And looking over at him in the swing right now, with his eyelids drooping towards sleep, he seems to be all three of those things.

The whole “having a baby” thing has definitely become more real this week. We installed Reed’s carseat bases on Friday and last weekend I packed our bags for the hospital, wrote up my birth plan/preferences (the term birth plan seems ridiculous to me, as it’s clearly something you can’t plan out), and created some checklists for Adam to make sure we have everything ready before we leave for the hospital. While I’m definitely ready to evict Reed from his cozy little home, the whole idea of being a mother still seems so strange and foreign to me. I was never one of those people who always wanted to be a mother. I love kids and have always related well to them (probably better than with adults!), but I never felt that huge desire to be someone’s mom. I also wasn’t totally against having kids either — I probably could have gone either way. It was being married to Adam that made me want to have a family, but it was so much about my love for him and my certainty that he’d be an amazing dad than from some ticking clock/biological desire thing. I feel so much love and protectiveness for Reed already, so I know that bond is there and will be there when he arrives on the scene. It just feels weird to me that I will be someone’s mother and that someone will be completely dependent on me and Adam for everything. I’m sure the first few months will be an intense and stressful time, but I know we’ll get into the swing of things. Having an amazing husband definitely makes me feel more confident in our ability to make it through that adjustment period.

I have absolutely no idea what to expect with the whole birth thing. My mother had fairly short and easy labors with both me and my brother, so I’m really hoping to take after her. There are just so many unknowns and for someone who likes to control for the unknowns in her life, this is going to be an interesting lesson in surrendering to whatever happens. OMG, so NOT my thing!!! My awesome massage therapist is training to be a childbirth educator (for which she has to observe lots of births) and offered to come to my birth for free and provide comfort, massages, etc. I was sorely tempted, since she is really sweet and a very calming presence, but ended up deciding not to. While I know there will be hospital staff coming in and out throughout the whole thing, I feel like this is a very special time for me and Adam as a couple. And I just don’t know if I’d be as comfortable with someone else there the whole time. On the other hand, a friend of mine is looking to pay someone (a doula) to support her during her labor and delivery. And other women want to be surrounded by lots of friends and family when they deliver. Go figure. I guess it’s all about how we view the birth experience. To me, it’s all about me and Adam and our love for each other, and I’m such a private person that I know I’ll only be able to be myself at that time with him. He is a calming presence for me and I know he’s going to be a great support.

I feel like all of this will be a good learning experience for me. I’ve done so many things over the past few years that have scared the living daylights out of me (public speaking, writing a book, teaching, etc.) and all have made me stronger and have led to better and better things. I know this will be the same, but losing control (over my body, my life, etc.) is really terrifying for someone who has difficulty giving up control even over small things. Were I to analyze my behavior over the past months, I’d say my relentless research on baby products and my getting Reed’s nursery just-so is a last-ditch effort at asserting control, but I am fully aware that I will have very limited control over what will happen in my life over the next few years. It scares me, but just like everything else that has scared me over the past few years, I really do welcome the change, because it comes with so many good things too (like a baby!) and I know I’ll be a better person for it.

Just when you think you’re done with the home improvement projects…

This weekend I’m laundering the baby’s linens and newborn and 3-month clothes and putting things in place in the baby’s room. I’m also ordering some shelving and a fridge for the mudroom so we’ll have some extra storage space. Adam’s painting our bedroom, something he’s wanted to do for ages. It’ll be nice having a non-white room and the color we chose is a really soothing blue that should be conducive to relaxation. There’s still a lot to be done, but I’m trying to focus on individual tasks rather than the big picture so I don’t feel overwhelmed.

It’s just hard to believe that we’ll soon have a little baby! When I think about the baby, the thing I’m getting most excited about is having the opportunity to teach him things as he grows and watching him learn. He’s going to be coming out into a world he’s never seen before. Everything will be new. It’s sort of like E.T. only cuter and he probably won’t be able to make my bike fly. I can’t wait to watch him experience things for the first time and see his reaction. I can’t wait to show him things and teach him things and watch him take it all in. I know it’ll be a while before he’s really able to explore the world on his own, but even those first few months are just one developmental milestone after another. I can hardly wait.

Still, I have a hard time picturing what life will really be like with a baby. I keep getting these offers to speak, teach, write, etc. and I’m turning everything down (other than ALA Annual since my in-laws live in Chicago) until 2010 becuase I just can’t imagine how it’ll work. Do I really want to fly to California with a 6-month-old? Probably not. I agreed to teach a class for San Jose State starting in January 2010, but it will require a lot of prep work prior to that, and I’m a little nervous. I assume I’ll be able to juggle it all (lots of people seem to manage), but not knowing what my life will be like with a baby makes me a little apprehensive to take on much responsibility beyond my day-job.

Honestly, I have no idea how I’d have made it through this pregnancy without Adam. He’s been such a gem. He’s taken over nearly all of the housework since I’ve been so exhausted. He’s always willing to pick me up food I’m craving or rub my back when I’m feeling uncomfortable. And he’s been there for me emotionally. The other day when I came home from work, I found roses on the table, a sweet card, and a romantic dinner being prepared. When you’re feeling big, uncomfortable and crappy most of the time, having someone make you feel special can make all the difference. No matter how stressful a day I have at work, I always get a smile on my face the minute I turn onto our street because I know I get to spend the rest of the day with Adam. I am so lucky to have him and I hope he knows how much he means to me.

Break’s over. Back to the laundry!

Don't let this happen to you

I’d been painstakingly renovating the entire house getting ready for baby.  One of the last rooms to finish was the guest bathroom, which was really dumpy.

New wallpaper, cabinet hardware, and a coat of paint made a major difference. Or rather it would have.

As I was victoriously applying the very last bit of paint to the cabinets, i heard a faint “drip… drip… drip…”

I looked up & saw the ceiling bowing downward. Not good.  My plumber immediately ran over and stuck an awl into the ceiling.  A comical torrent of water came flooding out of the ceiling all over him, the floor, and my new wallpaper.

All I could do was laugh.

Can’t wait to see how much this is going to cost us…

Actually, it is probably true.  I’ve got dozens of lame excuses, but the reality is I’m just not as expressive as Meredith.  

With a new baby on the way, I think Meredith was hoping it would cause a surge of emotion that would clear my writers block and compel me to write my deepest thoughts in this most public of spaces.

So far, no dice.  I’m really excited about being a dad, but I haven’t felt a great need to talk about it online (maybe that’s a guy thing? or just an Adam thing?)   Besides, there’s no way I could say it as well as Meredith!  Just look at the size and depth of her posts! Incredible.

What has impressed me though is the sheer amount of preparation that it takes to get a house ready for a baby.  Seriously, I had no idea.  I was born in an era where cars didn’t have shoulder-belts and “car seat” meant “milk crate”.  Sticking a knife into an outlet was considered a learning experience… like a pre-school science class or something.

But 2009 is different.  After a quick look around it was obvious that our house was child-unfriendly to the max.  It contained (among other things):  

• Unsecured, heavy,  tippy furniture 
• Highly charged and unstably-placed computer equipment strewn all over the house.
• Weights that were barely adult-friendly, let alone baby-friendly.
• A 13-year old car that blew so much smoke it probably shaved a decade off my life,  and airbags that may or may work.
• No bedroom suitable for a baby.  

So, despite being very comfortable with our deathtrap of a house, this past couple of months I set out to be the best dad possible & make real changes.  

The Nursery
The space formerly known as Adam’s Office.  Needed to clean, paint, add new window treatments (and all the furniture.)  Turned out OK, only took a couple of days to do

Nursery: Before! Blech!

Nursery: After! What a difference some paint & carpet makes.

Adam’s Office

Since my office became the baby’s room, I decided to repurpose part of the downstairs as my new office.

Had to build a wall downstairs to enclose the office

The resulting space needed some help.. it was dingy.

More scrubbing, moving, and painting! And they say pregnancy is easy for a man! (BTW, the color is Behr Restful 400F-4, in case anyone got here from a search engine trying to figure out what it looks like on a real wall.)

 

 

Next step:  Fix up the Bookshelves of Death. That’s for another post.   Man, does my back hurt…

I used to be a child and family therapist and dealt with a lot of families where parenting style (or lack thereof) was the biggest problem. Of course that’s not what they’d initially come to me for, but more often than not, fixing their parenting style was the solution (of course, I did have clients who were truly mentally ill, but so many of them weren’t and really didn’t need to be on meds). I’d hear these stories from parents that their child or children are out of control. When I’d ask about discipline there would either be none or it was all emotionally based (screaming, spanking, etc.). Frequently, when I’d visit them in school, I’d hear from the teachers that the kids were doing well. More often than not, the kids were reacting positively to the structure at school and negatively to the lack of structure at home. When the parents were willing to try new ways of parenting (rather than requesting that I wave my magic wand and “fix” their child), there were usually good results. I remember working with a mom who’d been a victim of domestic violence (and felt extremely depressed and hopeless) to implement the 1-2-3 Magic program with her three sons. It was amazing how much her children’s behavior had changed in just a month, and also, how empowered she felt by having the tools to better manage their behavior. It was hard initially, because she wanted her kids to like her and imposing limits pissed them off, but it was worth that painful early effort in the long-run.

I grew up in a home without a lot of structured discipline and, from what I’ve been told and what I remember, I was very independent and a boundary-pusher. Boundary-pushers need to be confronted with consistency and limits so they can learn to regulate their own behavior. Most kids crave those limits and that structure, even if they don’t know it. This is why I did so well in school — because the rules, consequences and rewards were always extremely clear. I never got in trouble there because I could always see what it would take to get into trouble and would studiously avoid crossing that line. At home, I pushed and pushed because there were no clear boundaries. Sometimes I’d get punished for something while another time I would just get yelled at. Sometimes, I’d get punished and then let off shortly afterward, making the punishment rather pointless in terms of teaching me not to do the same thing again.

I’m not saying my parents did it all wrong. My brother and I are both successful in our chosen fields and in our personal lives, so it’s not as if their way of parenting left us scarred for life. They did a lot of great things that I certainly plan to incorporate into the way I parent. The first and most important thing they did was to read to us from Day 1. Almost all of my earliest childhood memories involve books. I can remember my brother and me laying on my parent’s bed for hours at a time while my mom read Tom Sawyer to us. They instilled in me a love of the written word. My parents also encouraged our creativity in so many different ways — from providing clothes for playing dress-up, to providing a video camera for us to make movies, to attending all of our recitals (both at school and the ones we created at home ourselves), to getting us lessons in whatever creative endeavor we were interested in at the time. With their encouragement, I was writing creatively outside of school by the age of 6 (at which time I remember writing a song which was to be sung by Jem and the Holograms! I believe it was called “Kissing in the Sheets” — ok I was precocious!). Also, when I was a teenager, my parents didn’t play the over-protective card. They let me make my own choices and my own mistakes. And I made plenty of mistakes. But, by the time I went to college, I had a pretty good head on my shoulders and avoided a lot of the mistakes friends of mine were making. Many of my friends who’d been really reigned in by their parents during high school went absolutely wild in college because they’d never had any freedom. I’m a big believer that teens who are trusted by their parents are more likely to do the right thing because of that trust. When someone believes in you, you want to prove them right.

But the reality is that I’ll need to tailor my approach to my child. Will he be uber-independent like I was or a “momma’s boy” like my little brother was? If I have a child like myself, I’ll need to work a lot more on setting boundaries and having consistent positive and negative consequences for behaviors. If I have a child like my brother, I’ll need to do a lot more encouraging of his independence, helping him to make his own good choices and not rely on me and Adam so much. If my child doesn’t look to me for guidance in everything he does, I’ll know I’ve done a good job. It’s nice to be needed, and of course a baby needs their parents completely, but I hope to encourage my child to be his own man and make smart decisions for the rest of his life.

More important than anything else is for my child to grow up in an environment full of love, and that’s pretty easy when I’m married to someone I’m even more crazy about now than I was when I first fell in love with him six years ago. My parents fought all the time when I was growing up and it definitely impacted me and my brother negatively. Sometimes people stay in bad marriages “for the kids”, but I don’t believe that children can grow up as healthy if their parents are not happy. I want to raise my child to know what a healthy, loving, affectionate relationship looks like so that he can one day be a great husband himself.

I think you can have all of these ideas set in your head about what sort of a parent you want to be, but the most important thing you can be is flexible and tailor your approach to the child you have (still knowing what sorts of things you want to encourage in your child). When I was a therapist, I never used one treatment model with every client I had. I was always eclectic, tailoring my approach to the individual, their situation and their goals. You can’t decide how to treat someone before you even know them, and I think it’s the case with kids too. So, while I’m glad I’ve given more thought to this than my parents did 31 years ago, I’m definitely ready to be the sort of parent my child needs, whatever that may mean.

The dresser is flimsy. The drawers don’t open well and are unfinished and splintery on the inside. There’s a crack in the back of the dresser which I didn’t see until today since the delivery people brought it in and immediately put it against a wall. But I could have actually lived with all that. The problem came when I tried to attach the Kendall changing table topper to the Kendall dresser. The instructions made it look easy and said all I needed was a Philips head screwdriver. All I had to do was screw two metal plates into pre-drilled holes on each side. So I looked for the holes and found that there were no holes whatsoever on the changing table topper. Nor were there any holes in the back of the dresser. WTF?!?!?

So I called customer service. I was told that they would have pre-drilled the holes in the dresser if I’d ordered the topper and the dresser together. Well, they were all purchased in the same order, so to me that would be the definition of “together”. They said they had no idea why the topper had no holes in it and that it should have them. They said they’d be happy to replace that, but that I’d have to pay to exchange the dresser. They suggested that the best thing I could do is just drill the holes myself into the dresser. I was truly flabbergasted that they weren’t willing to replace it for me for free.

So now I have to drill the holes myself, hoping that this flimsy piece of junk doesn’t fall apart in the process. I am deeply disappointed by the furniture and the customer service response.

The crib I ordered is on backorder and tonight I plan to decide whether to cancel that part of the order completely. We’re planning on putting the baby in the Amby Baby Hammock in our room for the first few months and I guess I’ll just figure out what to do after that. It was really the only crib I liked, but I’m worried that there will be more quality problems with this piece as well. Considering that poor crib quality can kill a child, I’m seriously leaning towards canceling the order.

I had planned to buy a new coffee table since mine seems like a disaster for kids (very pointy edges). I was going to purchase new slip covers for my sofa since they’re getting a bit ratty. I was going to order some cute toy storage. I was going to order it all from Pottery Barn. Not anymore. Not if they were the last furniture seller on Earth.

Pottery Barn, you just lost an extremely loyal customer who likely would have spent tens of thousands of dollars on your furniture over the course of my life. Maybe you should consider putting the same attention to detail into your children’s furniture as you do into your regular PB furniture, because you likely will lose a lot more customers this way.