Biting

Sofi's been biting while nursing for the past few weeks. Our attempts to "punish" the behavior - stop nursing for a while - have been ineffective. Enough's enough: time to wean her.
Since Sofi used to snack on and off all day, this is kind of tough. What we're trying today is everytime she asks for milk (the one sign she knows, and to her it doesn't mean milk-from-a-bottle, it means mommy milk - shame that the one thing she knows how to ask us is going to always be met with denial) we give her food instead. So far, it's been going great, and she's been willing to accept the surrogate. Of course, it's only noon.

Learned to dance before I could walk.

Just like the Abba song!

Well, actually, seems like she's learned both more or less at the same time - she was bouncing to the Black Eyed peas (she has rhythm, I swear!) and from there realized she could take little mincing sidesteps...and then some tiny real steps.

We have steps.

Sleep

I expected I'd be getting full nights of sleep by now. Now that it's been more than a year. But I've been going to bed at 11 or 12, and Sofi gets up at 4 or 5, so no. Overall, total, yes, but that break in the middle. And then I have no energy in the mornings.

And sometimes - like now - I stress out. "If I don't get to sleep soon, I'll only get such-and-such hours of sleep!"

Last few mornings, trying to sleep through the 4 AM crying. Gave up this morning. Sofi wins again.

Which is fine, really, co-sleeping in the morning is a pleasant family feeling.

Screw it. Guess I'll get up and write a blog entry.

Sofi can't get enough cheese

One thing she likes to do lately is feed us - she'll stuff the cheese in our mouths whether we want it or not...

One Year

Haven't written in a while. Brain dump:

Sofi is one year old as of 11/27. I should go back and read through the blog archives. Her grandparents (on my side) were down for Thanksgiving and her birthday - and she seems to hate them. She cries when they hold her; she doesn't play the "giving game" with them - in fact, when she gives me something and I hand it to her grandma she'll immediately snatch it back and give it to me again. If I persist in handing the item off to grandma, she'll start to get upset. Hoping this will pass with more exposure. We'll see them again at Christmas.

She's starting to amass a small collection of toys - nothing compared to her cousin, but more than enough. She likes balls and musical instruments. (One toy, where if you put balls in receptacles it plays music, is a real winner.)

She's starting to show some signs of language - she makes the "milk" sign all the time, now - we think she thinks it means "mommy", because that's who she gets when she makes it. Started giving her cow milk yesterday when she made the sign and noooo that's not what she meant. Words I think I've heard her say include "ball", "book", "turkey", "zoo". We've also taught her how to stick out her tongue and say "ah" - recorded some video footage yesterday of her holding a car adapter like a microphone and singing "ah" into it.

Recording video is a pain, by the way. Unlike photography which is more fire-and-forget, with video you've got to download it and edit it and it's a bit much. I'll record video when she's extremely cute but that's about it. I do somewhat regret the purchase of the camcorder.

This morning, when she was trying to put a baby food lid on a yogurt container and getting a little frustrated that it wasn't working, something occurred to me. I always imagined we start out seeing the world as it really is, and as we get older we grow filters and make abstractions and turn the world into symbols. Like, when we're young, instead of seeing "table", we see this brown wooden platform-and-legs shape with a grainy texture. *The Scientist In The Crib* says this isn't the case, but it didn't really hit home until I saw Sofi trying to put the baby food lid on the yogurt container. It seems like, to her, "baby food container" and "yogurt container" are the same - so why can't she take the lid from one and put it on the other? It's like we're born with the abstractions and it's not until we're older that we start noticing refinements. Which is why at first we draw stick figures and it's not until later that we can draw people with thickness and lighting and so on.

Baby Bach

Baby Bach is like heroin. I've never seen Sofi sit so still for so long with such focus.

One word we're sure she knows the meaning of is "Kiss" - she will kiss us on command, now, although she prefers mommy. Maybe because of my beard.

Hit the zoo on Friday. Whoops - turned out it was Veteran's Day. Crowded. Funny thing about being unemployed, you don't know which days everyone else has off too. Still, after we got through the line outside, it was fine. Sofi seemed to like it, babbling happily as the day wore on.

shake

Sofi's learned to shake her head no.

A natural progression, I guess, from turning her head away when we offer her food...

daylight savings time

Remember when I said that daylight savings time was great because it helped me fit to Sofi's schedule?
Well...
Why can't it be year-round?
Sofi's waking us up at 4:30 AM now...

And the Good News Is...

I haven't forgotten how to surf!

It's been over two years. First there was some construction on my condo that made it a real pain in the ass to get my surfboard down to the car; then it was my daughter. (Daughter + Job + Surfing > Total Available Bandwidth, but Daughter + Surfing < Total Available Bandwidth.)

Only caught four waves today, and they were crappy waves at that, but I caught them, and they were mine, and you can't take that away from me.

And I'm so excited by the news that I've posted it on both my blogs! Since I think most people either read one blog (parents, wife, non-industry friends) or the other (game industry friends) I'm doubling up.

Sounds Like...

A Choking Hazard!

One nice thing about our laminate floors - I can be looking away from Sofi, reading a book or something, and identify by sound that she's somehow got her hands on a choking hazard and is playing with it. (That sounds like one of Cathy's tiny refrigerator magnets! That sounds like one of my six-sided dice!)

Walking

Sofi took a couple of shuffling steps towards mommy today.

My reaction was, "No!!!!"

She's so *cute* when she's crawling.

And if she starts walking I won't be able to call her "floor monster" anymore.

Weird how I can't wait for her to learn to talk and sign but I don't want her to ever walk. Maybe it's because I value brains more than athletics? Or maybe it's just pragmatics: if she can't walk she can't get into as much trouble? Or maybe it's all about the cuteness.

Sofi Likes Pesto

Spaghetti with pesto. She's really chowing it down right now. Mmm, basil, garlic, olive oil. Is that healthy for babies?

I've noticed a pattern lately - if I think what I'm feeding Sofi is kind of gross, (peas, pureed squash) she doesn't like it, and if what I feed her is good (pesto, applesauce, biscuits) then she does.

Which is weird, because when I was her age I didn't like the stuff I like now. Maybe I'm sending her unconscious signals.

Bedtime, Sharing

Our bedtime ritual has settled in at about 1 hour and fifteen minutes. The ritual looks something like this, and usually happens shortly after dinner time:
1. bath (we put the tub that Nick and Catherine gave us in the kitchen sink...it fits in there snugly, and that way we don't have to bend down and kill our backs washing her in the bathtub)
2. dry her off and take her into the nursery, where she nurses--hence the name--while listening to "Bedtime with the Beatles" - a bunch of Beatles hits turned into orchestral lullaby things
3. we turn the lights down about halfway through the CD - barely light enough to read
3a. she sometimes falls asleep during this step, in which case we go straight to step 5
4. I take her and rock her in the rocking chair, in the dark, while a windup Eeyore plays Braham's lullaby.
5. Into the crib: got this whole technique down, where I gradually lower her, and then use my right hand to support her head so I can pull my left hand out from under her neck. She sometimes wakes up in this step, in which case:
6. Gently hold her arms steady - otherwise she flails around and gets upset. If I hold her arms, she'll immediately relax and eventually fall asleep.

One thing we've been noticing lately is that she likes to give us things. Food, pieces of paper. Then she wants those things right back. She's practicing sharing, I guess.

Adventure

Sofi and I went off for our first solo adventure today. Mom wasn't feeling well so I took Sofi to a party in the afternoon. It was just us. She cried a little here and there, but mostly she seemed okay with the mommy-free party. We were only gone for a couple hours, but not a bad first step.

Sick

Sofi didn't used to mind being sick - snot would be running down her face and she'd be as happy as a clam.

Not anymore.

Not happy.

In other news, to distract Sofi from trying to break my keyboard, we found a spare computer keyboard and let her play with that one. It's one of her favorite toys.

New Record

Yesterday Sofi stood up for 33 seconds unassisted.

Yeah Baby

Sofi was very good on the flight back from New York. Probably because Cathy would nurse her whenever she got uppity - we rigged the blankets on the armrests and meal tray to create a kind of tent or shower curtain for modesty.
Right now she's crying, though, because she got used to sleeping with mommy and daddy, and now she's alone in her crib, and I got a spasm in my back trying to soothe her and gave up.
And I will not feel guilty about that, damn it!
Other random milestones: she learned to crawl up stairs; she learned to pull the back off the remote control and take the batteries out; she learned to push the plastic cork in on her pig toy; and she took her first drink from a sippy cup today. (Up until now she just gnawed on the end, not really getting it.)
You know, sometimes she can be trying, but most of the time I just want to gloat. Look what an awesome kid *I* have.

New York, New York

Well, Long Island anyway.
Yesterday we went to the Riverhead Aquarium: it was Sofi's first sighting of live sharks, lobsters, rays, monkeys, humuhumunukuapuaa (I think that's what they were...), emus. It was her first viewing of a piranha feeding frenzy; and mine too. She seemed to really enjoy it. She cried hardly at all, anyhow, and was always looking around interested at stuff. There was one shark tank where she grabbed the railing and didn't want to let go...I think she liked holding the railing more than looking into the tank, though.
Today she learned how to crawl up steps. She knew her mom was somewhere upstairs, and I followed her as she made her way up a whole flight.
While on vacation, we're co-sleeping again. You know, when your wife takes too much of the bed, it's no problem, you just shove her over or hit her with a pillow or whatever, but when your baby takes too much, you're screwed. Not getting a lot of sleep on this vacation.

I did it!

I fixed my enter key.
Whew.

The Fragility of Laptop Keyboards

Sofi just gave me a lesson in this. I thought it was so cute that she was playing with my laptop! (Even cuter is when she plays with the desktop, because she'll switch back and forth between mashing the keyboard and playing with the mouse. It's like she's been watching us and learning. Now why can't she learn sign language? I thought she had learned "more" once...I even posted about it...but haven't seen her reliably reproduce it since then.) The flight to New York was okay: she slept on the way up - slept for a good hour and a half, in fact - was quiet for most of the trip - and then got bored. Cathy didn't get to watch the inflight movie (Mr. and Mrs. Smith) because Sofi demanded her attention. We held her on the way down. If you're wondering why there are no line feeds in this post, it's because that's the key Sofi pulled off my laptop.

The Will to Diaper

Man, sometimes you know you gotta change her diaper, but you just can't quite bring yourself to do it just yet.

Cathy's worse than I am, though: she knows that if she lets it go, I'll break down and do it before she does. It's sort of a game of diaper chicken.

I don't want to be remembered as one of those dads who never changed the diaper...and I'm not around during the day, so Cathy definitely ends up changing a lot more than me in the long run anyhow.

Freakonomics and Mocha

Cathy's been making me these frozen mochas in the morning before I drive to work. They're so good.

Freakonomics is the best parenting book I've ever read. The statistics say that very little we do makes a difference, but that who we are (succesful, educated, book-owning, English speaking, half-Asian couple with a normal birthweight baby) does. Kids can watch all the TV they want, even. They didn't factor in breastfeeding, though...guess we better keep that up, just in case.

For the Record...

Thad's the first person I heard use the term "mimetic desire."

Smart

Sofi got smarter overnight: today she learned the sign for "More"; she also figured out how to work the volume knob on the stereo.

Ok, I'm lying about that second thing. I told Cathy that Sofi worked the volume knob and she said, "Yeah, she does that."

Still, about time on that sign thing. We've been trying for a couple months now. (Ok, we started too soon, I admit it.)

The Ironic Thing Is...

it's the *handle* of the mug that isn't microwave safe, and therefore gets the hottest in the microwave.

Ouch.

Da Da

Sofi just clearly said "Da da", twice! I was thrilled!
Then she said, "Da da da". Then she paused, and added, "Da."

Fence, Cheerios

Just got the Evenflo "Wide Spaces Swing Gate" - and discovered you need to be something of a hardware person to install it.

I'm not a hardware person. I'm a software person. I seem to be missing that segment of y-chromosome that makes most guys handy-men. Reading in the instructions about drilling and stud finding fills me with ennui.

Returning it and getting something plastic that installs itself.

We're having Sofi eat cheerios now. Watching her try to get the cheerio in her mouth is...well...funny. Not laugh out loud funny but definite entertainment. I myself have eaten a whole lot of honey-nut cheerios in my life...but both honey and nuts are potential babykillers, so Sofi gets the plain kind.

Face, Books

Cathy says I make a face when I'm feeding Sofi solid food - as the spoon goes in her mouth my lips curl - it's a challenge, you know, trying to get as much food from the spoon to her mouth as possible: it doesn't surprise me I put some kind of gamer face on. I can't seem to stop it.

Sofi's got a new past-time, which is crawling over to the bookshelves and pulling all the books off the bottom shelf. She particularly likes to tear up this old Theodore Sturgeon book - I wouldn't mind, except it has the short story "Need" in it, one of the greatest short stories of all time. I've moved that one to a higher shelf. Sans cover. And sans the last ten pages or so. Still, "Need" is intact.

And, oh God, she's just so freaking cute! Is she really my daughter?

Crib

Now that Sofi can stand up, when I go to get her out of the crib in the morning she's always standing, her arms over the railing, which is nestled in her armpits.
Good thing we lowered the mattress.

Porn

Sofi was playing with the remote and came damn near to ordering "Young Girl Fantasies 2.7" on pay-per-view. I suppose because she's a young girl.
So we have to figure out how this channel blocking stuff works already? At 8 months?

Cancer

The difference between going to a PPO dermatologist vs. a HMO general practicioner for a body check is night and day.

HMO GP: "That doesn't look like anything to worry about."

PPO Dermatologist: "I don't like that at all. Let's treat that."

HMO GP: "You look clear. Your moles aren't raised are strangely shaped, really."

PPO Dermatologist: "You have a lot of dark moles - let's biopsy the scariest looking one. You better come back in a month."

A couple friends at work have been hit with skin cancer lately, so I was motivated to get checked out. That, and, as I mentioned before, I'm trying to prolong my life...since my cholesterol is good, I figure car accidents and skin cancer are the most likely things to kill me right now. So, me, I prefer the catastrophizing money-grubbing PPO to the get-the-Hell-out-of-my-office-I'm-not-making-any-money-off-you HMO. But that's just me.

Cathy Blogs

I could blog about how the tooth and crawling are official and real now, but Cathy's already done it, and she just gave me permission to share her blog: http://paper-cat.blogspot.com/.

I will continue to insist that there was never a clear line between no-tooth and tooth, and there was never a clear line between not-crawling and crawling. At some point we agreed that, yes, she's definitely crawling now, but we're not sure when it crossed over from spastic floor wiggling to actual crawling-type-crawling.

Another "milestone"

I'm not sure about that tooth I mentioned the other day. She was crying yesterday and I got a pretty good luck and I didn't see it anymore.

Today...maybe she's babbling...I think I'm hearing "mamama" and "lalala" but maybe it's just "ah ah ah"...

Again, it seems like there are no milestones, only these gradients, and at some point we arbitrarily draw a line somewhere....

Tooth

I just noticed what I'm 90% sure is a tooth poking out - her lower right incisor, I think. Just a tiny little white dot on her lower gum. I noticed because she bit my finger and I felt something rough. Cathy doesn't believe me. I tried to show her, but Sofi didn't like the "being at the dentist" feeling as I'm holding her head straight and sticking my fingers in her mouth. I'm not sure if it's technically through the gum yet...maybe there's still a thin layer of gum over it. She's remarkably happy for someone who's teething...

Inflection Points

I always assumed there'd be a clear line between stages of childhood development: one day she wouldn't be grabbing, one day she would; one day she wouldn't be crawling, one day she would; one day she wouldn't be babbling, one day she would. I'm beginning to realize these things come on so gradually it's possible to miss them. She got more and more grabby, little by little, and one day we realize she's grabbing all the time...when did that happen.
And on the crawling front, she doesn't crawl exactly, but she makes forward progress by wriggling, like a soldier with his kneecaps shot off crawling up the beach. Sometimes she even gets a leg under her and gets that extra boost, or does a push up. Cathy claims it is crawling, and wrote it down in her journal. "First crawl." I don't know, myself. One day I'll notice that she really is crawling for sure, but I won't be able to pinpoint the exact day it started.
I imagine speech will be the same: did she just say "Hi"? Or was it just a random sound?

Bedtime Ritual

The parenting book I'm reading now is pretty anti-Ferber, and it's guilted me out, so I try to put Sofi to bed easy at night, rather than just dump her in crib and walk away and let her wail.

I've got a whole system - I rock her in the glider chair in the dark while a wind-up Eeyore plays Brahms lullaby. Usually, she nods off before the lullaby is even over, or soon after. Holding her arms still against her body helps. Then it's a process of ever-so-slowly getting her from chair to crib. I let go of her arms. I wait 30 seconds. I adjust my grip so I can carry her. I wait 30 seconds. I stop rocking. I wait 30 seconds. I slowly stand up - she's very sensitive to vertical changes. I take her to the crib and slowly lower her - the hard part. I leave the gate open for this part, so I don't have to lower her too far. Lowering her is much more likely to wake her than the click of raising the gate. Usually she wakes up in the process of trying to lay her down and get my hands out from under her, but usually she nods right off again. Then I slowly raise the gate--the click usually makes her twitch, but she doesn't wake--and make my escape.

Tonight didn't go so easy.

If she wakes up on the dismount, I can usually rock her body, holding her arms against her stomach with one hand and her head with the other hand, and she nods back off again, and I can let go. Not tonight. She woke up and stayed awake. All right, back to the rocking process. This time, after more rocking and final nodding off, as I was lowering into the crib, her pacifier came out, and fell on the floor. Do I find the pacifier or just raise the gate? She didn't wake up, so I go for the gate. Bad idea. The click wakes her, and she notices the missing pacifier. I find it for her but now she's wide awake. She's not crying though. Sometimes we can just leave her in the crib awake and she doesn't complain, so I give that a shot and go for the door. Nope. Cry. So I come back and resume the rocking process again. This time I'm extra-careful, introducing a new step in the process, the "Get a good carrying grip that you can also easily extricate yourself from once she's down" step. The step doesn't wake her. Good. Once she's in the crib, she does wake, but only for a second. I win.

All told, it took from 8:30 to 9:30.

Hope it's not going to be like that every night...

Awww...

Cathy put up more photos.

And the official new food of the week is Trader Joe's Organic Applesauce.

Or do kids need the pesticides?

And The Official New Solid Food Of The Week Is...

Banana! Sofi seems to prefer it to rice cereal. Unfortunately, after we give Sofi her mashed-up small portion, neither of us particularly want to eat the rest of the banana, which just goes to waste.

Looking forward to introducing avocado.

Rockstar, Dream

Sometimes being a parent is like having your own personal groupie. The squeals of delight and paroxysms of joy - sometimes when I sing to her - transfer immediate rockstar status. I'm going to miss that when she grows up and realizes I'm not cool.

I dreamed she started walking and talking, all on the same day. And it wasn't just 'mama' and 'dada', it was a bunch of words and the ability to put some of them together to create additional meaning. I guess this means I'm impatient to get on to the next stage, which is weird, because I'm really enjoying having this ticklish groupie.

Time Marches

We tried giving Sofi her first solid food today and she seemed to take to it nicely. Rice cereal. Cathy tasted it later and said, "It's good! It's sweet." Yes, that means she tasted her own breast milk.

Since Sofi's solar powered, I'm much more aware that the days are getting longer than I used to be. "Isn't it dark yet?" and "She's awake already?"

I better go to bed now. She'll probably be up at five. Just have to finish the Blitzkrieg level of Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich.

What's that sound?

Sometimes, when Sofi's been crying for a couple of minutes, and we haven't gone to check on her, Cathy will ask, "What's that sound?"

Funny every time.

Spaghetti, Dream, Angsty Music

Sofi was complaining about being in the Evil Chair so mom picked her up and continued eating dinner. Something we do a lot without even thinking about it. Then Sofi grabbed a handful of mom's spaghetti. Mom gasped in startlement. I started laughing - the image of Sofi with her hand in mom's spaghetti was pretty funny, trust me. Then Sofi started crying. Not clear if it was because mom gasped, I laughed, or the spaghetti sauce was too hot. Her hand looks ok.

Last night I dreamed that a friend who lived in the same hotel as me had a sick baby: the back of the baby's head was this orange cottage-cheesy gunk and the baby had bloodshot eyes. The pediatrician made a house call, and turned out to be none other than Frank Miller, the comic book author who reinvented Daredevil and Batman and created Sin City. Later, after curing the baby, Frank Miller turned into Harlan Ellison and we went out looking for an arcade so we could play the arctic level of Halo 2. Astute readers will note that in real life I don't live in a hotel, Frank Miller is not a pediatrician (nor is he Harlan Ellison), and that there is no arctic level in Halo 2. Dreams. Huh. Interesting to us, boring to everyone else. [Correction: there really is an arctic level in Halo 2. I forgot. Maybe Frank Miller is Harlan Ellison...]

All my music is angsty, and it's been a while since I've listened to any. I gave Nine Inch Nails a whirl yesterday and found that I was having trouble relating to Trent now that I'm a happy family man. Marilyn Manson, on the other hand...who doesn't get a lift out of listening to the rousing choruses of Antichrist Superstar or Irresponsible Hate Anthem? "I wasn't born with enough middle fingers!" Rock.

Scrubs

Dr. Cox's wife: Isn't he an angel?

Dr. Cox (reaching into crib): Yeah.

Kid stirs.

Dr. Cox's wife: He's waking up!

They both duck and hide under crib.

You probably have to be a parent to get it. Cathy and I laughed a long, long time.

Other than that, Scrubs is getting kind of weak? The last two episodes weren't all that.

In other news, Sofi is showing mimetic desire. I'm reading *Mindful Parenting*, and she's grabbing at the pages. I try to give her another book (*Brave New World*, if anybody cares), and at first she's happy with that (although the pages are less resilient - *Mindful Parenting* just crumple, but *Brave New World* tears) but then she wants *Mindful Parenting* again.

Fuck

I should stop swearing in front of Sofi:

a) now

b) before six months

c) before twelve months

d) before two years

e) after two years

f) never

Discuss.

Heritage

I just discovered that swedish pancakes are easier to make than pancake-pancakes. No buttermilk (and no lemon in regular milk for fake buttermilk), no baking soda, no baking powder. My latent swedishness surfaces.

Theory of Slut Clothes

While out walking with Sofi, Cathy and I passed a teenage girl dressed somewhat provocatively.

"Sofi's going to dress like that, you know," Cathy said.

I actually think we're covered, historically:

60s: miniskirt.

70s: Bell-bottoms.

80s: the Madonna look. Underwear outside the clothes.

90s: Nirvana. Flannel. Layers.

00s: Spears, Aguilera. Underwear outside the clothes again, only more so.

So I'm pretty sure slut clothes are an even-numbered decade phenomenon. Sofi will turn 13 in 2017, so she'll be wearing grunge plus plus.

Coming soon: more half-baked theories.

Poison, Smart, Bedtime

A couple days ago I left Sofi on the couch for a moment and when I returned discovered she had somehow gotten ahold of mommy's bottle of Proactive, cap off, and was mouthing the side of the bottle. Some of the Proactive had spurted on the couch. I thought we didn't have to worry about that kind of thing until she was crawling.

Stupid theory for the week: maybe our society becomes so body conscious because we keep telling our babies how cute they are. At a very young age they learn to place an inordinate value on cuteness. No more! I've started telling Sofi she's smart...with very little evidence so far to support that claim. "Who's a smart little baby? Who's a smart little baby?"

I'm the official put-to-bed person in the family. I enjoy this role. I read a story, then cuddle her in the glider chair in the dark while a wind-up stuffed Eeyore plays Brahm's lullaby. Getting her from the chair to the crib is the tricky part. The last two nights I managed to do it without any crying at all. Rock.

New Stuff

Day before yesterday Sofi made a few kissing noises. I was the only witness. Cathy doesn't believe me.

Yesterday she discovered a new, more penetrating cry-squeal thing. A hint of chalkboard, a hint of tires on pavement, a hint of Harvey Keitel acting upset. Ouch. Maybe she's teething? It's getting to be about that time.

Cathy discovered a new way to keep her happy without actually having to carry her around the apartment: strap her into the evil chair, looking out the window. She'll sit like that, content, for at least 20 minutes. Beats putting her in front of the TV.

Thin

The mothers in our parenting class are all scary thin. It's like they were wheeled straight into liposuction after delivery before the epidural wore off.

Murder

Jason Della Rocca's latest post reminded me: I accidentally exposed Sofi to her first murder yesterday. Watching *Hard-Boiled*, (the literal Chinese title is supposedly *Hot-handed God of Cops*, according to IMDB), and bottle feeding her at the same time. Trying to keep her head turned away from the screen, but there was an execution in a public library that kind of took me by surprise. Whoops.

Even at four months she likes TV; she twists and squirms aggressively to get a look at the screen.

Wish I'd Known

I wasn't able to figure out when we should switch to a faster nipple for bottle feeding. It's probably somewhere online, but for whatever reason, I was never able to find it.

Tonight we tried switching to a fast nipple just for the hell of it, really. Just to see what would happen.

And what used to take an hour and a half of fussing and complaining took about ten minutes. So that's why she didn't like the bottle. It was too slow!

If only we'd known sooner. With all the parenting classes and books, you'd think this would be part of the curriculum. But no. Had to figure it out for ourselves. Or maybe we were sick that day. Or skipped that chapter.

It almost makes me want to have a second kid, so we can use what we learn with the first...

Streak Over

Sofi cried last night, waking us up multiple times and crying for long enough (over 5 minutes) that Cathy got up and tended to her at 4 AM. Still, it was a 5-night run before that. A record.

Thanks, California

It was mildly bothersome that Sofi liked to sleep from 7:30 to 5. I didn't get to see much of her in the evenings when I got home from work, and then she woke us up early in the morning. Happily, last Sunday, the entire state of California agreed to set their clocks so Sofi's schedule would make a little more sense.

Honorable Mention

So Cathy, against my better judgment, sends my novel and the $100 entrance fee to the Writer's Digest Self-Published Fiction Contest.

The coolest thing about this is it means she believes in me: enough to pay the money (ok, it's our money, but still...), put the thing in an envelope, lick the stamps, walk to the post office. I can keep reminding myself about this whenever I need a boost.

The second coolest thing is I won an Honorable Mention. Which means they'll list me in their magazine and on their website. I'm not sure what their circulation is but I'm sure it's multiple orders of magnitude higher than my blog.

And they gave me a nice little certificate, and a "commentary sheet" that says things like: Plot: 5, Grammar: 4, Character Development: 5. (Grammar 4? What, you guys don't like sentence fragments and parataxis? That's a stylistic choice, man...) And then they say some nice things like "The writing style is quite sophisticated and ambitious...I found the voice to be controlled and confident. From the beginning of the novel, we are presented with a character with complex internal and external conflicts, a clear question/problem that needs to be solved, and a pace and plot structure that delivers a payoff at the end...Calvin and his friends are characters we understand and relate to, and the writing delves so deeply into their character developments that the reader is compelled to empathize with them."

And I get a gift certificate for $50 of Writer's Digest stuff. Hmm...$100 entrance fee, and I get $50 worth of stuff from their storeroom...

Hat Trick

Okay, she did wake up for three minutes last night. But since we didn't actually get out of bed, I'm going to count it as sleep. So that's three in a row. Rock.

Split Personality

A package arrived for me from Amazon.com today. It contained *Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting* and a Punisher graphic novel.

Like to see what the Amazon.com profile on me makes of that...

Two In A Row

Another ten hour sleep last night. Woo!

Sofi's over her cold. I'm not over mine.

New Record

8 PM to 6:45 AM, baby. Ten and three-quarters hours. I slept from around 11 to 5 - waking up at 5 was almost Pavlovian. "Why isn't Sofi crying?" I wondered.

Sofi fusses when I use the computer. Hey, I'm holding you, what more do you want?

Oh well. Gotta go.

The Baby Doesn't Like The Chair

The baby chair is blue plastic, with a padded back. It does not look comfortable. The baby chair straps into the adult chair. The baby straps into the baby chair. We can feed her from this position. I feed her the bottle. Two ounces of nursery water, warmed for twenty seconds in the microwave, four scoops of formula, shaken not stirred. The baby plays with the straps. She tries to hold the bottle, pushes it out of her mouth. She fusses. I return the bottle. She still fusses, bleating around the rubber nipple. I stop giving her the bottle. She still fusses. I unstrap her. I lift her from the chair. The crease at the back of her ankle catches on the plastic lip. She screams. I am ashamed. "That chair is evil," I say to my wife. To the baby's mother. "Is the cut deep?" she asks. "It looks deep," she says. The baby continues screaming as we administer: the soap and water, the neosporin, the band-aid. "What are you doing?" I ask. "Don't touch the band-aid there," I say. The baby screams. "It's okay," my wife says. The baby's mother says. "It's okay." It's not okay. Later it will be okay. Right now the baby is screaming and I am ashamed.

Been reading a lot of flash fiction. It actually didn't go down quite like this. Anyhow, we're all fine now. How are you?

Cooking Interfaces

I do most of the cooking around here these days, almost all of it from *The Best Recipe* and *The Quick Recipe* cookbooks. I'm cooking right now, a high roast butterflied chicken for Easter. I don't give a damn about Easter, but Cathy wanted something semi-special. It smells incredible. But here's the thing: our oven took a cue from the microwave people with its UI. It has a timed bake. I used the timer to cook the chicken halfway, and then turned it, and then set the timer again. What I didn't notice was that, like a microwave, it turned off halfway through. Arg. Honestly, I don't need all the bloatware my oven comes with. It just makes it harder to use.

Anonymous Post

Danielle has disabled anonymous posting so I can't comment on her latest entry.

I've been kicking around the idea of moving out of our condo, oh, for a year or so now. But now I'm scared. What if we end up with Bickerson neighbors?

And, scarier thought, what if we're Bickersons ourselves? Lately we've been arguing and swearing at each other every couple weeks or so...not sure if our neighbors can hear it or not...are we on the road to becoming Bickersons? And looking back on myself as a 15 year old, if I was my father I'd probably have done worse things to myself than throw my stuff all over the front lawn. I probably would have smacked myself around some.

I don't think Danielle reads this blog, anyhow, though.

Missed The Sleep Window

One of these child-sleeping books I've read says that if we don't get to sleep after a certain amount of being tired, a "second wind" kicks in, we start producing epinehprine, and we stay up. This is what causes those "babies get upset when they don't get ot nap" phenomena.

After I read this, I noticed that it seems to be true of me. Was very sleepy around 9 tonight - decided to watch Scrubs - and was then awake. And then Sofi woke up, and I tended to her, and now I'm more awake.

Drat.

Lifespan

I've decided to prolong my life.
Mark tells me that happens when you have kids.
Maybe that's it - or maybe it's that I'm 35, half of our Biblical three-score-and-ten, and I'm suddenly realizing, "Holy crap! The cup's half empty."
Or maybe it's a sudden self-reprogramming. My PE coach in seventh grade told us exercise would not prolong our lives. "We have a certain genetic lifespan built in," he said. "You reach it and it's over. All exercise can do is make the years you've got better." I don't know why, but I believed him and continued more-or-less believing him up until a while ago, despite the big piles of research that suggest the contrary. One day I noticed that I believed something incorrect, and here I am.
So after a brief spate of research - research being typing various keywords into Google and seeing what I come up with - I've got my new life extension plan:
1) More antioxidant foods. I'm shocked to learn that taking vitamin supplements doesn't seem to work. At least there's no evidence that it does. So there goes my plan of eating crap food but taking lots of vitamins. So: strawberries and bluberries on cereal or for desert; skipping the Friday bagel days at work and continuing with my multi-grain cereal; eat a lot of the free fruit they have in the kitchen at work; green tea instead of coffee; red beans or broccoli or red onions with dinner; boom! Antioxidant city.
2) Less sleep. Correlation isn't causation, I know, but studies have shown that those who get six to seven hours sleep a night live longer. Can't hurt, right? Unless I get cranky. Ok, I probably won't attempt this until Sofi's sleeping more consistently.
3) Exercise. Time to break out DDR again. Question: do I buy a new Playstation or do I get the Xbox version? Decisions...
4) Vitamin C. Even though studies *haven't* shown, can Nobel prize winner Linus Pauling be wrong?

Mortality

So Mark Nau found a mortality table, pretty much just like I was describing way back when. So here's the top 3 causes of baby death:
1) congenital abnormality
2) motor vehicle accident
3) HOMICIDE
Which is actually kind of encouraging - it means as long as my car seat's installed correctly, and I resist the urge to kill my own young, Sofi's got a real good chance of seeing 2.
Interestingly, SIDS isn't even in the top 10. Maybe that's because SIDS education is so prevalent these days...or maybe it's because SIDS was never really that big a deal...?

Side note: flying with kids is easier than flying without them: you get on the plane first, they give you an extra seat if one's available, they're all really nice. If you're flying and don't have a kid, you may want to rent one.

Airplane

I was pretty intimidated taking Sofi on her first flight - what do we do with the infant seat, how do we get it in the cab then on the plane, what if she cries, all that. Turned out it went pretty smoothly, and the baby got us preferred treatment from the flight attendants. One thing I'd do differently is first stow my bags in the overhead compartments, then buckle in the child seat. Ended up walking halfway down the plane to find a place to stow our bag, realized it was too big and then had to swim upstream with the oversize bag in hand and have the attendant check it.
We're flying back on a Sunday, so this time around I don't expect them to have extra free seats. Oh well.

Yay

Cathy finally caved and agreed we needed to let Sofi cry it out, mostly because it's gotten to the point where sometimes almost nothing we do gets her to calm down. So, two nights ago, we put her in her own room (using a bassinet because I didn't have time to disassemble and reassemble the crib after work, before her bedtime) and we did the "check on her every five minutes thing". I guess the idea there is you're continually reassuring her you still exist, even though you're not picking her up or anything. We'd re-insert the pacifier and pet her and shh her, but wouldn't pick her up or feed her. She cried for 45 minutes the first time, then around 20 minutes two hours later, then 10 minutes two hours after that.
I thought we were in trouble - she spits the pacifier out, she gets upset, she starts crying - I was afraid the pacifier had become a drug, and that until we'd weaned her from the pacifier we'd be getting up every couple of hours to put it back in again.
But last night we put her to bed (I moved the crib to the nursery - it wasn't as big a deal as I was dreading - although I did have to take it almost completely apart again, at least I didn't have to assemble the shelf or attach the springs again) and she slept the whole night! I'm actually pretty blown away. Maybe when we were co-sleeping we were waking her up with our tossing and turning. Maybe the strange blackout we had around 7:30 last night somehow calmed her down (it suddenly got very quiet, a quiet I hadn't heard in Los Angeles...ever). Maybe after the bassinet her crib seemed wonderful.
Hope she does it again tonight.
This would have been an opportunity for me to get some much needed sleep - the last week or so has been like another mini-crunch - but no, like an idiot I found myself playing Escape Velocity: Nova until 3 AM. More on that in my other blog.

Co-Sleeping Problem

It's 4 AM, and I've been edged out of bed by Sofi, and I don't dare try to slide her back to the middle, because what if she wakes up again and resumes the half-hour crying jag she started at 2:30? (It was a bad one, folks. Normally she'll fuss a little around 3 and we'll pop the pacifier back in and she'll go right back to sleep, but with this one nothing seemed to help. And of course Cathy and I started snapping at each other as our various attempts to calm her down didn't work. We did manage, finally, with me jiggling and Cathy shhhing and manning the pacifier. Teamwork!)
We're taking her up to Oakland next week, to see her grandparents and so I can go to the GDC. After that, we'll try to break her of the co-sleeping habit.
Cathy's posted more photos -- http://tinyurl.com/4ffd4 -- from the brunch after Rich & Wendy & Joey's baptism. As you can tell, we spent more time taking photos of Sofia than mingling. We never were too social.

We're Big Band-Wagoners

According to http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html, the names Sofia and Sophia shot up in popularity since the year 2000. Like shot right the hell up. Crazy up. Because of Sofia Coppola, maybe? Hey, who wouldn't want their daughter to turn out like Sofia Coppola? And we thought we were so different and cutting edge; we thought the name Sofia would stand out. Turns out it's the "Sarah" of the new millenium.

Literary Backscratching

Neil Plakcy gave me a good review and linked to http://www.dionysusloggedout.com so it's time for some quid pro quo. His novel's been published by a real actual publisher, unlike yours truly. Or - will be published - according to Amazon it's not out yet. The book, Mahu, is the best gay detective novel I've ever read. Okay, it's the only gay detective novel I've ever read, but it's good. It starts with a bang, when the still-closeted detective violates his own principles because he doesn't want to be outed, and as it goes it smashes the Will & Grace stereotypes of what gay guys are supposed to be like. Here's his website: http://www.mahubooks.com.

Nu-q-lar

So we're not supposed to microwave formula. Both Dr. Spock and Tracy Hogg say it doesn't matter anyway - "studies have shown" that infants have no preference between warm and cold formula. Well, all I can say, is that Sofi was more and more reluctant to take the bottle. (See previous post about feeding her in the bathroom because of its calming influence.) Then I started nuking her formula. Now it's easy. (In fact, I was able to watch multiple episodes of The Tick--illegally downloaded, since that's the only way you can get access to the glory that is The Tick--"Where, *indeed?*"--while feeding her over the last couple of days.)

Of course, to be truly scientific, I'd have to do the double-baseline: skip the nuking and see if she goes back to her crying ways. But once I've got something that works I'm loath to fuck with it.

But hey, I take precautions:
* 4 oz of formula get 20 seconds of nuking.
* Nipple off while nuking so no pressure builds.
* Shake after nuking to make sure there are no hotspots.
* Test on my wrist - after 20 seconds, it still feels cool, but not cold.

How's She Doing?

If anybody's wondering what happened while we were at the doctor's office instead of the playdate, Doctor D. thinks everything's fine and suggested that Cathy stop eating chocolate. (Ouch.) But then Sofi coughed. So we took her to get her chest x-rayed. And Dr. D. looked at the x-ray. And everything's still fine. We're all fine here. How are you?

Shower Curtain

Sofi loves the shower curtain in our bathroom. It's white, with black abstract near-stick-figure animals printed on it. Every fifth animal so is boldly filled in with a near primary color. I think Sofi also likes the loud hum of the bathroom fans. Point being, if she's crying, carrying her into the bathroom is a near-miraculous way to calm her. In fact, yesterday, I discovered that it's easier to feed her the bottle (she's coming to hate bottle feedings...and she used to be so good about them...) if I do it sitting on the toilet with her in my lap, looking at the pretty curtain.
Maybe when she grows up bathrooms will give her mysterious comfort and she won't even know why...
Unless she reads this blog, anyhow.

Chess

My chess ranking is coming back to where it was.
I'm not sure if this is because I'm getting my mind back, or if - like someone recovering from a stroke - I'm just compensating for the damage.

Update

Sofi smiles when I bicycle her legs; she also smiles when I act like a retard. Am I manipulating her or is she manipulating me? ("Act like a retard and I'll smile for you, dad!") She learned to shriek a week or so ago: there is no withstanding the awesome power.
Getting used to the idea of being the #2 parent. If Sofi had a sibling I'd never admit to them that I had a favorite; Sofi can't even speak and she's already made it clear that mom's number one around here.
This made me day, though: somebody I don't even know gave my novel a five star review. "If I can reach just one person it's worth it." Well, no, not really. But it helps.

I'm The First Person In History To Try California Paid Family Leave

Or at least that's what it seems like - I took six weeks off of work, with the understanding that the government would reimburse me for half of my salary during that time. That's how Activision's HR department explained it to me, anyhow. Actually trying to collect on this seems to be impossible: they need the birth certificate, which the City of Los Angeles won't give me for another three months, or the "Hospital Birth Record", a document that Cedars-Sinai seems to have never heard of. And if I don't have this paperwork to them soon, they will deny my claim, although later I will apparently be able to appeal that denial.
Even though Sofi has medical insurance and a social security card, the Paid Family Leave people don't believe she exists.
On the bright side, the guy at Paid Family Leave who explained to me that they can't pay me, he has a very nice telephone manner. His name's Richard. Hey, he doesn't set the policy.

Poo

Still haven't gotten used to using the word "poo" or "poop". I prefer "feces", "shit", "caca", and sometimes..."ass foam."

Four AM

Yeah, Sofi woke me up at three-something with a little fussing and now I'm wide awake for whatever reason.

Hey, where is everybody? I tell you, I stop blogging for a couple weeks and now that I'm back not a single comment? I went back to work, people, I can't spend all my time blogging for you anymore.

Random anecdotes:

After Sofi was born, my chess rating dropped 150 points. What that means is the pre-Sofi Jamie would beat me at chess something like 7 out of 8 games. Mark Nau warned me that babies make you stupid. Here's empirical proof.

A couple weekends ago I decided it was time for Sofi to quit sleeping in our room and make a nursery. I moved the crib halfway, realized it wouldn't fit through the door of the future nursery to be, moved it back to the bedroom and spent the rest of the day watching Babylon 5...constantly interrupted by baby needs, of course. Maybe I'll try again next month.

Funny

Michael Vance AKA "m to the vizzah" AKA "m" is a friend and coworker. He has one daughter, Rebecca, and one wife, Judith. Judith's blog is funnier than mine.

Eight Weeks

Sofi's eight weeks old as of yesterday, and, new record: she went from eleven to seven between feedings last night! Woo!
On the other hand, lately she's been not happy about sleeping in the crib. I read in *Sleeping Through The Night* that co-sleeping can lead to sleep problems later but right now it seems to help her sleep longer.
Let's see, other milestones: we've heard her laugh, we think; she can sort of rub her eyes, sometimes (not sure if she's doing it on purpose or not).
The formula trick, by the way, did seem to help; she started going four-five hours between feedings after a tanking up of formula. BUT...last night we didn't give her any...so we've failed to reject the null hypothesis. (I'm not sure I ever noticed until now that phrase I learned in statistics class is actually a triple negative. Awesome.)

Something Else The Breast Nazis Don't Tell You

Formula makes babies sleep longer. Discovered this reading *Sleeping Through The Night*. And anecdotally, we gave Sofi 4 oz of formula around noon yesterday; at 5 she was in a near-coma. Going to try an experiment, where we give her the formula later, so the coma happens at night. Maybe we'll get a good four hours of straight sleep! I'll let you know how it goes.

Recant

What I said about Ferber a week ago: I've relented. I was weak. I only did it for one morning and then stopped. Cathy never did approve. We're back to being baby slaves, jumping at the first sound of distress. Last night, it felt like it was practically hourly. And I wasn't technically a Ferber baby, either: although mom and dad started skipping my midnight feed after I was just a month old, they did try (although they failed) to soothe me while I cried for the lost meal. They didn't just leave me to cry it out on my own.

So there it is: I'm a bad person, I neglected my baby, and possibly caused her brain damage if you believe what some of the websites say about crying babies.

Oh yeah, and those products I didn't like in my first post? Now we actually use the boppy and the bouncer. (We don't typically use the 'bounce' feature of the bouncer, it's really just a convenient chair, but still.) Shows what I know.

Breast Nazis

I wanted our baby to be breastmilk only, mostly because of second hand, possibly apocryphal things I had heard long ago about the Nestle company killing babies with free samples of formula. The idea is formula is like crack: once a baby tries it, she'll never go back to the boring old breast. The way I heard the story about Nestle was that they'd have a free sample of formula and then never eat from the breast again. (Googling around for it just now I came across this, which makes it sound like the Nestle company is not as evil as I was led to believe.)
So, when we were starving our baby with breastfeeding, I came off high and mighty. "We'd really rather not use any formula," I said. (BTW, I hadn't done the math right and didn't realize just how much weight our baby had lost - I thought it was under 10% but really it was over 15. If we were metric I wouldn't have made the mistake...) Our pediatrician ignored me and gave Sofi some right then and there, and gave us instructions to supplement and to figure out how to actually breastfeed so the baby gets some.
In order to solve our problem we had to pump breast milk. Pumping breast milk is one of the strangest things I've ever seen, like something out of some kind of science fiction S&M movie directed by David Cronenberg. There's nothing natural about it, and it's bizarre how we have to go through this unnatural act in order to finally accomplish something that's supposedly natural. Breastfeeding is cheaper than formula but after what we've spent on pumps and cushions and consultants we may give formula a run for its money.
We also had to use formula. And guess what? Our baby did not take to it like crack. In fact, the first time we tried to give her formula, we couldn't get her to figure out how to drink from the bottle. (Side product-endorsement note: Playtex nipples worked better for our baby than Avent.) When we finally did get her to drink from the bottle, we had no problem getting her to go back to the breast. Right now, we bottle feed her a couple times a day, usually from pumped breast milk but not always, and the rest of the time its breast feeding. I figure she gets about six ounces from the bottle and the remaining eighteen or so from the breast each day.
Which means, thanks to our pediatrician, and despite breast nazis like Dr. Spock and crowd, we've accidentally stumbled on a best-of-both-worlds scenario. Sofi's getting all the nutritional and health advantages of breastfeeding, plus I get to feed Sofi too, plus when Cathy doesn't feel like breastfeeding she doesn't have to, plus we can have babysitters, plus Cathy isn't chained to the baby.

Parenting Class

We went to a parenting class last night, for babies 0 - 6 months. The class was about two minutes of instruction and an hour of singing to our babies. I found the whole thing kind of freaky and disturbing and lame. I think one of two things are going on here:
* I've always wanted to be "cool", too-cool-for-school, the kind of guy who cultivates an "I'm bored with everything" attitude. Campfire songs are lame, organized social events are lame, everything's lame. Now that I'm a father, maybe this is a part of me I have to kill.
* Maybe it really was lame. I looked around: of the twenty or so babies in the class, maybe one or two seemed to enjoy and respond to being sung to. It's as if even the babies thought it was lame. Hey, who knows? Maybe we become too-cool-for-school as a sort of reaction to all this toucy-feely pap we're fed as children.
What's going on here? I'm some kind of pro-Ferber anti-singing parent? Maybe I should change the name of this blog to fathercurmudgeon.

Gas, Food, Diaper

"If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? Maybe, if they screamed all the time for no apparent reason." - Jack Handy

A couple of weeks ago I thought we lucked out and got one of those easy babies. She was sleeping five, six hours at a stretch at night, and seemed happy and content during the day. Alas, it was not to last. Lately she'll wake up in under an hour, for whatever reason: gas, food, diaper, "I just want to be held", and seemingly for no reason at all.

Dr. Spock says that when a baby cries we should attend to her: at this stage in her life she needs to be reassured that the world is a safe place. Dr. Ferber - recently made popular in *Meet the Fockers* - says we should let the baby cry, weather the extinction burst (behaviorism term: increase in a behavior when the reinforcing stimuli is removed), because we have been creating the crying ourselves by reinforcing it. Dr. Karp says calm for the first three months, then the rules change.

I wanted to be a follower of Dr. Spock and Karp, I really did, but it's just too exhausting. Plus, I was a Ferber baby, and if it was good enough for me, it's good enough for Sofi. (Although my dad says he still feels guilty about doing it that way.) She's crying right now. And here I am, writing a blog entry instead of attending to her.

Ah, there, she stopped. Self soothing! Yay Ferber.

Nap When Your Baby Naps?

We woke Sofi up for New Year's so we could get a photo of Sofi's first New Year and after a feeding it seemed like she was going to fall right back asleep but - NO! Three hours later she was ready for her next feeding without managing to drift off once, and I stayed up trying to calm and soothe her. At three I handed her off to her mother (who had been sleeping in the guest room) and managed to get some sleep myself. While she was up, I started reading *Sleeping Through The Night*, a gift from my brother and sister-in-law that says that in the first six weeks you really can't control when your baby is going to sleep or not, and the best thing to do is to nap when your baby naps.
I just can't do it. I've tried several times now. Even though I'm very tired, I lie down and try to nap. This last time, just now, I tried counting prime numbers. I made it into the hundreds and realized I didn't know my over-ten multiplication well enough to go any further. So I started going over my over-ten times tables in my head. I hear the neighbors walking overhead. I start stressing: I better get to sleep soon, or the baby's going to wake up before I drift off. I'm like the overtired child who can't get to sleep because she's upset that she's so tired. Eventually I gave up, got up, and wrote this blog entry.
One thing Cathy and I do that does work is spell each other: every couple nights one of us will let the other sleep in the guest room while they do all the baby-tending. So we manage to get a good night sleep out of every four or five.