The cure for some fussy bruisers

Isaac had a bad night last night, waking up miserable and needing somebody three times. I maintain my teething theory, but I can't feel even the slightest hint of a molar trying to break through back there. Sigh. To make up some sleep, he didn't get up till after 8 this morning, but apparently that was not enough because there was whine whine whine Would you like some cheese with your whine? all morning long. I tried to get us out the door and to the park, but after about 15 consecutive time-outs it started getting late and the whines increased in volume and duration. And that's just one kid. Remember how I have two? Toward the end of the whine-a-thon the second one was pooped from just existing and joined the whiner chorus. Can Jacob be put to sleep while Isaac is kicking and screaming "MILKY MILKY MILKY!!!" on the floor? Methinks no.

I had had enough. Today is payday, so it was high time for us to pile in the car and blow some of Dada's hard-earned money.

We went to KMart, which accomplished three tasks at once.
1) The drive there put Jacob to sleep. Three hours later, he is still unconscious in his car seat.
2) We picked up some kiddie art supplies (markers, watercolor paints, and paper) I had been thinking about for awhile. Also, inspired by the amazing story of the self-potty-training toddler, we bought our own potty-training gear: a "truck potty" handpicked by the man himself, Pull-Ups (with Buzz Lightyear on 'em!) and Spongebob big-boy underwear. And M&Ms. I think it's time to get a little more involved with the process, because Isaac is obsessed with the Big-Boy potty. While he still gleefully poos in his diaper, whenever he has to go, he leads ME into the bathroom and insists that I perform on the throne ("Mommy, go poo-poo!" he says). He has a separate potty chair, but it just sits in the corner collecting cat hair.
3) Driving always helps Isaac to shut his whine-hole. Especially when accompanied with a shopping trip where we will be buying stuff only for him, and when there will be a slushie for the ride home.

Now, I will not be pushing this potty thing. I just want him to get into it a little more. So, together, we figured out how to install the truck potty.


Did he want to sit on it? Heck, no. But he does think it's cool and liked that it fit on the grown-up potty seat.

Then after we ate lunch and I did the dishes, we played in the kitchen sink with another KMart acquisition, otherwise known as The Coolest Bath Toy in the World.





That was a big hit. I am totally doing the play-in-the-sink thing next time I have to prep for dinner. And it gives me some motivation for scrubbing my sink occasionally.

How to do bedtime stories up right

I pride myself on the insane amount of reading Isaac and I do. When he was in utero, I resolved that we would read so much that it would guarantee him a life of voluntary book-devouring, as I once had when I had any free time at all. I even bought a book that had suggestions on how to read aloud to your kids. I try to be crazy-enthusiastic about it, doing the voices and everything. Isaac really digs it.

But really, how can you compete in the least when "Uncle" Gerard comes to visit? Uncle Gerard, who was on Dada's dissertation committee, is in town to give a talk in Dada's department tomorrow and is staying with us so Dada can talk his ear off and Uncle Gerard can play with our babies. Not only is Uncle Gerard an exciting reader, but he has a British accent. Now I know why Patrick Stewart has an endless supply of narration gigs (Dada wants me to point out the success of Ringo Starr as narrator of early Thomas the Tank Engine episodes). Dude, I don't even want to hear myself read after Uncle Gerard's rendition of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear".

"They breed geniuses!"

An actual quote from Ella's grandma, when Ella's mommy told her about Jacob rolling over.

Today we went to the park after playgroup. This park has an excellent view of (though is not accessible to) a busy highway. Isaac and I like to talk about the vehicles going to and fro. Actual dialogue from today:

Mommy: Isaac, look! It's a big truck!
Isaac: No, mommy. That's a cement mixer.

And it was. We've talked about cement mixers maybe twice in his life, and not in recent memory.

Reason #412 to be jealous of my house and its accompanying plant life

Why deodorize with Lysol when you can use lilacs?



(naturally this arrangement was created by yours truly, this time using only flowering shrubs and trees)

Thank you, sir! May I have another?

Poor Isaac. He hears "no" a lot. There are the million little "Didn't I just tell you not to do that"s that are liberally sprinkled throughout our days. And there are a few things that he does too often and earn him repeated time-outs. He likes to send his arm through the air to accompany "Stop it!" and it frequently lands on me or baby brother. He likes to kick and flail when I'm changing his diaper. Several times, when little Ella has bashfully tried to take a toy from him, he has body-checked her. All these are quite unacceptable, and he gets a time-out for them.

Our time-outs go like this: upon his committing the unacceptable offense, I say, "Isaac, you're getting a time-out," and either scoop him or ask him to climb into the time-out chair. "One minute," I say, and look at my watch to suggest he must sit still in the chair for one full minute. "Minute's up," I say when I decide he can be done sitting, "let's talk." I remind him why he got his time-out, and tell him why the offensive behavior is so bad. Then I ask him to give me a hug and he is relieved of his time-out chair. I read this whole procedure in a book somewhere, and it seems to work pretty well for us. At the very least, it accomplishes what I think is the most important part for toddler behavior control -- it removes him from the situation that caused the problem in the first place.

We hung out at Ella's house Monday morning, and he got a time-out for body-checking her. A little later, he told her to "STOP IT THAT'S MINE" and reached out in his annoying swatting motion. Without taking a breath this time, HE said "Time-out. One minute!" and looked at me like I was supposed to be doing something. I gave him his requested time-out, trying to keep my laughs under wraps. But Isaac, to this I ask you, my dearest angel: if you know you're doing something wrong, why do it in the first place?

Then today I am changing his diaper and have to remind him for the bazillionth time that I don't want him to kick around because he could hurt me. "I told you" he started, echoing my special tone that starts the ubiquitous "I told you not to do that" phrase. So....then....DON'T DO IT, ya stinker.

Help for those with expendable income

Hi Grandmas! Got some extra cashola burning a hole in your pocket? Check out our new Wish List link section, on the right below "Mommy Links" for some ideas.

What a certain young man has NOT been doing lately

Sunday and Monday were hell, which is part of the reason why I am so excited to be rewarded today with Jacob's latest development (see post below). The kid won't nap. He went from taking guaranteed 2-, 3-, or even 4- hour naps at least twice a day, to taking fifteen-minute naps and then waking up and screaming for hours. Hell-LO, Jake? Is it 'cause you're tired, hon? Maybe?????

He seems most comfortable, unfortunately, when he's being carried. Not just standing still, either. The carrier must be pacing the halls. This is for several hours every day. The latest unofficial bathroom-scale-weighing checks Bruiser, Jr. in at between 15 and 16 pounds. Can you feel how bad my back aches? (On the positive side, I have lost five pounds in the last two weeks thanks to my new weight-training program)

My latest and best-researched theory to explain this sudden shift: for the first time in three years, I started back on The Pill again on Friday. You know this "pill" of which I speak -- the one where I filled my prescription at the grocery store, with one baby screaming strapped to me in the Bjorn and the other jumping up and down in the basket of the grocery cart screaming about how he needs that Cinderella balloon over there, and when the pharmacist handed me my prescription I raised my hands up triumphantly in front of her and said "Yay! No more babies!"

But I digress. At my six-week appointment, my provider suggested that taking this pill would diminish my milk supply. You can imagine how this might affect one so into his food like the Jakester, one who doesn't even poop the curds but keeps them to himself to put towards the construction of future rolls and chins. If this is true, then this whole psycho-cranky Jacob should disappear very soon and my mellow baby #2 should reappear, given that his increased demand should increase my supply. But I could be wrong. It could be my sudden and voracious intake of iced tea. He could be an early teether. He could have allergies to the massive amounts of pollen being released from our mini-botanical-garden of a yard. Or a brain tumor or something equally horrifying! Come on, worry with me.

I guess he'll be walking in a few weeks

As part of his Operation: No More Goo-Ball, Jacob surprised me by rolling over this morning. And over. And over. He did it so much, and so predictably, that I caught his fifth roll on camera. This one took him a bit -- I guess he was getting tired from the effort of moving all those rolls to and fro -- and since my camera has a 45-second limit on movies, I had to piece together two back-to-back movies (hence the mild discontinuity towards the end there). But thanks to my capable laptop and about 15 iterations of Aaron Neville singing Brahm's Lullaby on TV to keep the Isaac occupied... here it is!




Somebody needs to tell this kid he's only 9 weeks old.

Jacob at 2 months

Our littlest O'Neal turned two months old on Wednesday. To say he's gigantic is an understatement. A lady at the grocery store two weeks ago mistook him for a four-month-old. On Thursday I took him to playgroup in some hand-me-down overalls from Ella, ones that Ella wore when she was about 10 months old. Now, Ella is a petite young lass, but still. Jacob is a b-r-u-i-s-e-r. I can't wait to see how he tips the scales at his two-month appointment, which for scheduling reasons won't be happening until May 1.

It's funny, when they're this little, what a difference even a week can make. About two weeks ago, Jacob officially stopped being a total goo-ball. He can turn his head at will to watch whatever captures his interest. When something does catch his eye, he gets really excited and waves his little arms and stomps his little legs like a crazy person, coos or ah-goos, or even smiles. His smile is truly something to behold, and I desperately wish I could catch it on film. When he smiles, he does it with his mouth wide open to show off his pink toothless gums, and his eyes get narrow and crinkled. He looks slightly like a benevolent Jabba the Hut. Unfortunately, when he's in his blissful smiley state he's usually moving around, making it rough to get a good shot. This is the closest I've come yet, and it's embarrassingly blurry and at the fading end of smile:



I did a little better on this movie. He didn't quite make it to full-smile, but you can bask in a hint of the joyous rapture that is the full-smile, and the video also nicely illustrates how excited he gets to hear his mommy babble on at him like a loon:



The other person who really fires him up is his big brother. If he is sitting and fussing and Isaac comes to sit next to him, Jacob will stop whatever fit he was throwing to openly ogle Big Brother. And Big Brother has done wonderfully with him, which deserves its own extended blog post. Isaac likes to give Jacob hugs and kisses, and then likes to praise himself, saying "That's so nice" or "That's so cute" as he has heard the elder O'Neals praise him in these acts before. Here is a video of me watching Jacob watching Isaac, who is playing with his ride-on Thomas. When the song ends, Isaac notices that I am taking a movie of Jacob and comes over to help. In my forceful I'm-filming-this-now-do-your-baby-tricks way, I suggest he should kiss Jacob. Of course, Isaac kisses the Jacob he sees on my camera. As the movie ends, he goes over to kiss the real Jacob, which of course my stupid camera didn't catch. Can you tell I'm in the mood to camera-shop lately?



I am also impressed at how well Jacob tolerates me reading to him. Dada likes to infer that Jacob will be an even bigger genius than his older brother, if that is possible, because of how much he was read to in the womb. Naturally, when I combine his two loves of books and Isaac by reading to the two of them together, he sits so quietly and peacefully for shocking periods of time. He is also starting to be interested in touching and looking at toys, and gets excited when he accidentally swings his Kong-sized arm into something dangling over his bouncy seat.

Right now he is taking 3 naps a day and sleeping pretty well at night. Wednesday night he slept for 6 hours, something Isaac didn't do, ever, until he was 9 or 10 months old. Jacob and I are cosleeping now so as to keep his food supply at the ready when he does wake up, but Dada is going to reclaim his post as the cosleeper with the mommy sometime this weekend when he gets around to reassembling the crib. I must say that, while Dada is nice and all, he doesn't always smell as nice as Jacob. And he definitely hogs a lot more of the bed.

Boys asleep, mommy soon to follow

After keeping Isaac inside most of the day yesterday in my exuberance to make my house into something other than a sty, we spent two glorious hours at the park this morning. Jacob slept in the Bjorn the whole time, and Isaac got to play with a bunch of other little people who were out and about with their mommies, daddies, and grandmas, including our train-playing buddies Carlos and Anthony, who happened to be on this side of town with their mom and grandma. We are having unbridled amounts of fun now that Isaac has completely overcome his phobia of going down slides by himself. He has even conquered the giant twisty slides alone, which makes his mommy so very proud.

Jacob said "mmm-goo" to thank me as I wiped some poo off his butt today. Apparently this is a milestone; it's a good thing I sat down with my What to Expect book this morning so that I would even know that. Funny how I read that thing like a Bible when Isaac was brand-new. This was the first time I had touched it since Jacob came home from the hospital.

The boys are fattening on all their Easter candy. More arrived from Grandma O'Neal yesterday, who took it upon herself to introduce Isaac to chocolate of the malted variety. Note how I say "the boyS", as in both of them, because I would be hiding the truth if I didn't mention that Jacob's food is also tainted with lots of Easter chocolate, and a lemon cake I made for Easter dinner -- although these things have gone through a significant amount of processing before they make it to his digestive tract. The ravenous eating has begun for me now that Jacob is *really* plumping up and expects to be fed a decent meal instead of this 1 or 2 oz business. I'm thinking I'll be making cakes on a regular basis now to help myself keep up on the calories. Oh, and won't my mommy be proud? Jacob's got me eating SALAD now. I've eaten a spinach salad almost every day for the past week. And weirdly enough, I suddenly find them yummy. This is a big step for me, trust me.

Look! It's Dada!

Dada has taken a bit of a hiatus from his occasional role as subject of blog-photos to play Mr. Fix-It with our new house. Since we've moved in, he's replaced the pipes that drain the tub, installed flooring in the basement, hung drywall in the basement, painted the basement, pruned trees and shrubs, raked 90% of the leaves out of the backyard, and in general made himself completely worthless for child-care purposes in exchange for his household usefulness. But, in all this, he has occasionally offered his services as a Jacob mattress:







That's Isaac's stuffed rat from IKEA. That picture was infinitely funnier before we caught and terminated three mice in the kitchen over the course of a week.

Somebody hit our yard with the pink stick

We have some junipers and ivy in our yard, as well as a large maple tree in the front and a towering oak tree in the back. Apparently, the previous tenants of our house were major fans of flowering bulbs, trees, and shrubs, because these are the only plants on our property which haven't burst into bloom. We have daffodils and narcissi galore, some hyacinths, a redbud tree, two dogwoods, a gigantic forsythia bush, and a recently discovered lilac bush which is pretending it is a tree. Those are the ones I can identify. We also have some bushes on one side of the house that produce long limbs coated with these cotton-candy-like flowers, as featured in my most recent cut-flower creation:



And there is a tree out front with dark red leaves that is now shimmering with showy magenta flowers. It is surely some kind of fruit tree and its brothers and sisters are all over our neighborhood, but I am clueless as to what it might be. Before spring came out of nowhere, Dada hacked away at some shrubs lining the walk next to our front door; now, where they weren't sawed back, these shrubs are sporting dark pink buds. Here is the view out of our living room window on this particularly fine day:



Love love LOVE our cute, blooming house.

Jacob and the Attack of the Easter Bunny

Easter hit the O'Neal household hard yesterday afternoon, as a steady drizzle of appropriately-themed packages rained down on my boys. Great-Grandma Peetz sent each boy a stuffed bunny and some candy. Isaac enjoyed the candy portion so much that he prompted a phone call to Poison Control when, in his exuberance, he ate a Hershey's Kiss, foil wrapper and all (note to other parents of toddlers -- or dogs!: I was assured that these wrappers are "perfectly safe" to consume). Great-Grandma Ross sent each boy a rubber ducky that displays an impressive, psychedelic light show from within. When Jacob wasn't terribly impressed, Isaac took both duckies under his wing (ha!) and paraded them all around the house. Grandma Ross, out of sheer hatred for Dada and myself, sent Isaac something she knew he would love -- a large animatronic bunny that sings "Here Comes Peter Cottontail" at an extreme volume out of an invisible speaker. He is sleeping with it tonight. Hope you're happy, Meemaw. Always one to play fair, she also sent Jacob a squishy, beady-eye-free bunny of his own to play with. Because Jacob, and not his brother, was awake at the time of package delivery (and because I want you to marvel at his gigantic blue eyes), you get pictures of him with his new bunny:



At the same time, because we were bored and because I want the grandparents to know what Jacob is up to these days, I took a video of him kicking, squirming, foaming at the mouth, and sassing his mom. It didn't turn out to be terribly interesting. He didn't coo or smile for me (both of which he does quite frequently nowadays), making this video for the rabidly insane O'Neal Boys devotees only:

We break from your regular programming for a commercial interruption

As you may have noticed, this blog is draggin' right now. The major culprit behind it all is the impending May 1st deadline for my children's book, diverting my writing activities elsewhere. I'll try my best to blog a picture here or a sentence there but it might be sparse for awhile. My apologies. We'll get back to regular and more consistent tales of The Adventures of Isaac and Jacob shortly.

Isaac's birthday dinner

We really and truly had our hopes up when we bought this house that we could have a party for Isaac this year with our friends' kids his friends. We have a great backyard, a basement, and ample street parking. But life conspired against us. The weather here has been wishy-washy, so relying on the outdoors as an appropriate setting was not smart. Our basement is in need of finishing, and right now Dada is replacing the drywall the old lady and/or someone else cut out of the rumpus-room-to-be part (more on that later), so that is out of the question. We figured this is probably the last year we can get by guilt-free without throwing him a lavish party, so we kept it super-simple. Isaac's "party" was a dinner for 7 -- him, Jacob, Dada, myself, and our buddies Art, Sarah, and Ella -- at everybody's favorite restaurant, Red Robin. This is also becoming a birthday tradition, as we went there with Grandma and Grandpa O'Neal two days before Isaac's first birthday. We loves us some Red Robin. We go there whenever we can and pay way too much for our fancy-schmancy burgers with blue cheese and/or pineapple, mainly because this restaurant is so loud that if one's child was the human equivalent of a freight train the whole fam would still be welcomed. It is a place where my beautiful shouting birthday toddler monkey can be himself, have strangers wish him a happy birthday in song, and receive a free birthday sundae.

Here the birthday boy is captured in a series of pictures taken by Ella's parents on Ella's dad's new SLR camera. (please look away from any of the other pictures on this webpage that were taken with my ghetto-fabulous camera)

Sharing pretzels with Ella:



Opening his present from Ella:



Now it's mom's turn to open his birthday present from Ella, while he reminds everyone of what happened when Ella accidentally let go of her balloon:



It's a Band in a Box by Melissa and Doug! Here is Isaac contributing to the din of Red Robin in his own special way. We beat out some mad tunes on the triangle later:



After dinner our waitress arrived with even more balloons, the requisite Birthday Sundae, and a horde of other servers to serenade our special guy for his special day. He joined in, scat/bebop style. Both Dada and I think he will need little grooming to make him into an excellent front man for a rock band. We think he rather enjoys being the center of attention:











After a fabulous time at Red Robin with our buds, it was time to go home and open the enormous number of presents sent by the Grandmas and Grandpas. In summary, here is Isaac handing Dada a candle from his Melissa & Doug birthday cake (that one is from myself and Dada) over the toy pile:



I am thinking Dada better hurry up and finish that basement so we have some place for all this stuff to GO.

Happy birthday, special guy!

A boundless, blissful bevy of birthday bubbles

Isaac got a bubble machine from Grandma and Grandpa O'Neal for his birthday. Lucky for him, it stopped raining after dinner and we gave it a test drive in the backyard:







I think anyone with a toddler (or dog!) should run out and get this thing. Like now.

Further proof that I do, on occasion, bathe my children

Everybody saw some tub action today. Everybody except Mommy -- the grease from her hair! A renewable energy source! Don't stand to close to her in line at BJ's!

First up was the Mini-Bruiser, who is oft-photographed on this website because he sits so still, but not so often is he photographed when he is so nekkid:






Now do you believe me when I tell you that he is putting the Shaquille back in this O'Neal family? Bask in the rolls and the man boobs! And when he is sitting up, doesn't he look like a Weeble?

At the end of the day came Elder Bruiser's turn, during which we tried out another bathtub art product received for his birthday -- roll-on (and candy-scented!) bathtub body paint. Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa O'Neal! Afterwards as Dada snuggled with Isaac, he asked, "Claire, what are you eating? That smells really yummy." Me: "I'm drinking water. What smells like tasty food is your son."

Yet another reason why we love where Dada works

The "newest [Department] member" was featured in the spring newsletter. Check out page 4.

Birthday festivities thus far...

This morning we went to playgroup. I was so looking forward to it because Isaac could run around like a wild man and play with all his friends, and at the end the kids would all sing 'happy birthday' to him. It instead turned out to be a total disaster, as the church's preschool had taken over our usual playgroup facility for a music class that was age-inappropriate for my young man. He was repeatedly scolded by this hussy music teacher for (gasp!) getting on the stage he is usually allowed to frolic on as much as he likes. So instead of sitting on my widening booty and gossiping with my mommy friends, I had to shadow my toddler the entire time and spend much of playgroup telling him "no" and yanking on his arm to keep him from interfering with their stupid music class. What a great way to start off my precious angel's birthday. As for me, that was difficult enough to accomplish while carrying a sleeping 13- or 14-pound baby, but it got worse. After the preschoolers left and normal playgroup could resume for, like, 15 minutes, Isaac was repeatedly assaulted by this one little turd whose mommy considered herself unable to contain the situation because she was nursing her 8-week-old. This ho-bag even went so far as to suggest that **I** remove her kids hands from the shopping cart he was trying to steal from Isaac. Ahem...just cause your boobie is hard at work doesn't mean your legs are broken, lady. Do you just let your kid set fire to your house at home when you have to nurse your baby? Grrrr. But I digress.

When we got home I fixed Isaac his favorite lunch of french toast with blueberries, and then we feasted on the much-discussed "birday cake" for dessert, though for Isaac it was less about the cake, a delicious carrot cake which I made from scratch last night at 2:30 (!!), than about the frosting, which was made by my homegirl Betty C:



After that business he was so dirty I plopped him in the bath. This was also so he could play with one present we let him open this morning, some bathtub crayons from Grandma and Grandpa Ross. He screamed at me when I made him get out of the bathtub:



His royal birthday highness is napping now, but more pictures will come. We must also document the opening of the gigantic present pile from both Grandmas and Grandpas, who should buy stock in the US Postal Service, and the "birthday party" we are having tonight -- a dinner at Red Robin with friends, replete with birthday singing and sundae.

Isaac's birth story, continued

The first part of Isaac's birth story is recorded here, and includes, among other things, the recounting of how Dada and I stopped for lattes on the way to the hospital. This is because we lived in Seattle and that is just what you DO.

Isaac's birth story, Chapter 2: Three Hours of Hell and the Resultant Squid Baby
At around 9 in the morning, April 5, 2004, I was admitted to the hospital for a "confirmed" water breakage and hooked up to pitocin. At the time I was around 4 cm dilated. To help my labor along, I carted my whale-like self, resplendent in my hospital gown and hooked up to an IV pole, up and down the halls of the L&D ward. After two or more hours of doing this, people started making comments about how well I was doing for someone in labor. Yes, I thought, this wasn't too bad. Some contractions here and there, but they really weren't that intense. By lunchtime I had walked myself to the point of 6 cm dilation, but I wasn't feeling bad at all, a little hungry even, and the lunch lady came around with a scrumptious roast beef sandwich. I almost stopped to remember from our useless labor class that it was against hospital policy for me to eat anything while in labor, but I was starving and it was there. Surely it had been ordained that, for some reason, I was allowed.

By now I was a little tired and more than a little bored with these weenie contractions. I decided it was time for me to get started on an epidural. I had this strange notion that I needed to avoid the full-on epidural because I wanted to be able to move and do all those fun "natural" birthing things like bouncing on balls and such. I got a "walking" epidural, which took the edge off the contractions, but didn't really do too much.

Funny how, after my insistence that I wanted to move around, I became very fond of lying around in bed, especially when resident after resident came by and told me I hadn't dilated any more. Hours went by, and nothing. They inserted this horribly uncomfortable, and as it turned out, completely unnecessary pressure catheter into my uterus to measure my contractions more accurately. Still, no progress at all. I watched too many cycles of Headline News, and was disappointed that my son was going to be born on April 5th. The ticker, which usually boasts how today is this or that celebrity's birthday, spoke only of death and dismemberment. On April 5th, it told me, Kurt Cobain committed suicide. On April 5th, Sam Walton, founder of everybody's favorite megastructure WalMart, died. On April 5th, Howard Hughes, famed aviator and my future benefactor, also kicked the bucket. Death, death, death on this day, and my baby's life would forever be tainted with its stench.

At around 8 p.m., the shift changed and I was suddenly entrusted to a new resident, a fiesty young black lady named Dr. Piggett. Dr. Piggett examined me, reiterated that I had had no progress whatsoever, that she was going to up my pitocin in a killer way, and that if I hadn't done anything in the next hour we were going to talk C-section. At 9 p.m. Dr. Piggett checked me and nothing had happened. However, this time she told me she "was going to be a little rough" on me, and kept feeling around my cervix going "that is way too soft to be your baby's head." She went at me with an amnio-hook and, sure enough, there came a disgusting abundance of fluid from me, the patient who cried wolf about her water breaking. It felt so weird that I laughed, and as I did my stomach muscles caused this huge gush to alter its trajectory such that I almost squirted Dr. Piggett with my copious amounts of amniotic fluid. She told Dada that, while she had seen many disgusting things in her time, that definitely took the cake.

Almost immediately my contractions became unbearable, to the point that my coping mechanism was basically thrashing around in my hospital bed like a caged animal. The roast beef sandwich I ate before? My stomach had kept it in holding, and chose this point to make me chuck it up, almost completely undigested. My walking epidural suddenly became useful; I didn't have to sit still for the delightful anesthesiologist to place an epidural, and when I pleaded with her to give me some better drugs she quickly complied. Turns out the reason it was so bad was that I dilated the rest of the way in an hour, and then I was ready to push. Dr. Piggett was so excited; "You'll see your baby today!" she told me.

What did she know? Not much. I was pretty tired from dealing with this business all day already, and apparently either I was a really crappy pusher or my baby's birth was being hindered by my boy-sized and untravelled hips. Also, the epidural they gave me completely wiped out my contractions such that I really couldn't tell when I was supposed to be pushing. Luckily, I had an excellent squad there to cheer me on, as feeble as my efforts were; my darling O.B. arrived off her shift from a downtown hospital and stayed with me throughout the pushing phase, and so did Dada, repeatedly lifting my leg and counting to 10 and occasionally fetching a cold washcloth for my forehead, never complaining a bit.

It took three hours to push Isaac out. Have you ever done three hours' worth of sit-ups? I don't recommend it. For whatever reason, my O.B. kept telling me she could see his head. "He has blond hair!" she said. This started about a half-hour into pushing, which made me think I was nearly done -- how demoralized I was that I wasn't. After about an hour and a half, I told my O.B. that I couldn't do it anymore (SHHHHH: secretly hoping that she might whisk me off into the OR and cut him out!). She and the labor nurse laughed at me. From the labor nurse: "Honey, you're the only one who can." As Isaac came further and further down, the room started to fill with people. There were probably upwards of 10, maybe 15 present for Isaac's birth, not including myself, Dada, and Isaac. I was a little delirious, but Dada tells me that, as Isaac began to crown, the God of Obstetrics (an attending who works at the University of Washington Medical Center and wrote THE book for obstetrical medicine that everyone learned from at one time or another) showed up at the business end of me, delivered Isaac, and left. Dr. Piggett later told Dada that this guy doesn't deliver many babies, but that I happened to be at the right stage at the right time for him to come in and give his blessing to mine.

As Isaac's head came out, Dada happened to peek down to look. He says he saw this elongated head, full of wet hair, and remembered thinking it was rather small...but that it kept coming and coming and coming and oh my god THERE are the eyes?? When I finally pushed Isaac out and they held him up, his noggin looked, no joke, like the eponymous character from the movie Alien. It was completely elongated from his long trip down the birth canal (though in less than an hour it sproinged back to normal-human shape). They placed him on me and gave him a good rub-down and he cried. And I cried. It was 1:30 in the morning on Tuesday, April 6th. I remember looking down at him and simultaneously thinking two things: "Wow, he is so cute!" and "They are going to let me take him home?!?? I know nothing about babies."

Later that day I watched Headline News again. This time, the ticker did have a celebrity birthday to report. My son shares a birthday with Merle Haggard, and thus I know that his birth on April 6th was truly meant to be.

Uncle Chrissy's last day in photos

Because pictures are faster than blogging a thousand words.

At White Clay Creek State Park, Bjorning Jacob in the sun:







At the local park with the whole family, preventing Isaac from exploring drainage pipes:







Climbing on play equipment with the Elder Munchie...



...which leaves Dada free to Bjorn the Jakester!





Walking home with Dada and Jacob:



And, at the end of the day, putting a fussy, squish-faced Jacob to sleep:





Thanks so much for coming, Uncle Chrissy! We had such a blast.

"Don't objectify my mommy!"

From the 'Out of the Mouths of Babes' Files:

Yesterday we were all hanging out in the living room watching TV, and Dada casually reached over to place his hand on my thigh, giving it a friendly little rub. Nothing more than PG-rated touching, I swear. Horrified, Isaac grabbed Dada's hand and threw it away from my leg, saying, "Stop it! That's not a toy!"