Happy Memorial Day

We went to Danielle and John's house for a fabulous, unusually sunny & warm Memorial Day here in San Francisco. Heather whipped out her bag-o-gardening-tricks, and told Danielle what the mysterious bulbs were in her garden, while I happily dug up dandelions in the upper-terrace section, and Deven and Yogesh snoozed in the shade & sun, respectively.

Last Saturday, we had a nice visit to the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers, where even Heather was impressed with some of the exhibits there. Deven was a doll for the entire visit; which wa a pleasant surprise! And today at the San Francisco Botanical Garden, he was asleep and then super-cute when we got home... things are good.

More photos uploaded - and video (finally) - check 'em out!
- Deven dancing with Grandma

- Fun in bed

- Photos that Heather took

- All the recent videos!

Muir Woods

Heather and I took Deven to his first National Park yesterday, beautiful Muir Woods north of San Francisco. We had a wonderful hike; broke in the jogging stroller that Danielle & John gave us and took a path that said "strollers not recommended" - they were right; but we did it anyway!

I had a nice birthday - had a small party at home on Sunday and a quiet day w/Yogesh, Deven, and Heather at Savor on Monday. Debi stopped by to meet Deven on Tuesday (and brought us yummy Eric's Chinese ...mmm!). Deven has been more interactive (and more fussy) lately - but Auntie Heather has been good about calming him.

Lots of other good photos in the newest album, http://picasaweb.google.com/devenreidsharma/DevenAtHome3.

Growin' like a weed...

They say that "it all goes too fast" with kids and I guess that's right - though some of "it" I wouldn't mind going REALLY fast (the 15-poopy-diapers-per-day; the screaming for no apparent reason...but I digress). Oh, and if you haven't visited the photo site lately, we've uploaded some more. Click here to see them.

Deven has grown up a lot in his first 6 weeks, here are some changes I've noticed:

• His eyes! He keeps those little light-brown eyes open for SO much longer than he used to, and stares at things for ages. He doesn't really interact yet except when nursing (then he's all-eyes on you, whether me with the breast or Yogesh/Grandma with the bottle). He definitely looks at things, and can follow objects if moved slowly in front of him.


• Baby talk. He coos and gurgles - to himself, not with us yet - but he can stay amused for about 5 minutes on his changing table just oohing to himself (this is a very good thing- lets me use the toilet or heat a quick cup of tea without him screeching).


• Neck muscles: He can hold his head up. Not fully, and not for longer than a few seconds, and he still looks like a bobble-head doll when he does it, but he's definitely getting stronger


• Smiles... so far, I haven't been able to confirm a 'social smile' but he definitely amuses himself sometimes and it's funny to watch him look at something unknown, coo & gurgle


• Those muscles! And fat! 9 days ago, my mom put him on his tummy after a bath. He wiggled a bit, but didn't do much else. This time, his legs were kicking wildly (ok, maybe that's just because he'd peed and he didn't like where he was sitting); but he was moving his head and arms and sort of scooted to one side. Very cute, and much stronger than before.


• His clothing size: He's already outgrown the "If Mommy says no, ask Grandma" onesie as well as all the plain Gerber onesies, and a few other outfits and some socks. He was in the top 90th percentile for height at his 1 month checkup; so it's possible his feet are just really big - but he has already outgrown 3 pairs of 'regular' socks and is close to outgrowing 1 pair of super-cute socks with little car-and-airplane rattles that Grandma bought him.


• Sleeping longer at night: While he still wakes at least twice to feed and once for a diaper change, it's a lot better now than when we were in the every-one-to-two hours phase. We're doing a sort of modified "Attachment Parenting" thing and he's sleeping with us (which still terrifies me every time I pull the covers up, but I digress) - but it makes those 3am nursings a lot easier, because I simply adjust baby-to-breast, and drift back off. Only bad part is when he needs a change: Since Yogesh is working and I'm not, I get all the night-doody-duty. Ick.


• He eats! The night of April 5, the nurse swaddled him tightly, and he didn't stir (thus eat) from 9pm - 7am on April 6. Needless to say, that's not healthy for a 1-day old, and he lost 8 oz. overnight. He also was tongue-tied until Dr. Schwanke clipped his little frenulum (no blood! He didn't even wake up!) and kept falling asleep while nursing after only a few minutes. Since nursing wasn't exactly obvious to me either, in the beginning I'd watch the clock like a hawk; and have to start stimulating him after only a few minutes (tickling his chin, putting water or even ice on his feet, etc.) But now? ...Now he gets near a breast and takes it in like a vacuum - so much and so fast, in fact, that he sometime chokes on the milk! This is all good, though. I've been able to pump some bottles, and he's taken those from other people, too.

For proof that I'm starting to figure him out a bit, I can:

• Understand his cries & hear when he needs feeding (ok, sort of). Anyway, I think I'm learning.
  
• Determine when he's got a wet or dirty diaper. He makes these funny arm movements, left-then-right arm, sort of jerky-punching downwards when his diaper's messy. I stand by my earlier comments that disposable diapers stink (literally and figuratively). While I started using cloth for the environmental aspects, I now use them for purely practical reasons: With over 120 changings a week, cloth simply seem to keep the output inside the diaper much better than disposables.


• Calm him...a little bit. Yogesh still wins the title of "Baby whisperer" 'round these parts; but I've at least learned a few tricks to keep my sanity. We use a pacifier when necessary (and when he'll keep it in), we sit and bounce on the exercise ball (fabulous trick suggested by fellow Homestylers Ute and Kevin) The latest toy that works wonders is the portable swing - this little $15 Craigslist beauty calms him for at least a few moments if necessary!

Of course, now that I've written this, I'm sure something will change or happen...but I wanted to document the changes for now, anyway.

Happy Mother's Day

A gorgeous day today, and Yogesh and Deven helped made my 1st Mother's Day special by
- Writing me nice cards - 1 from each of them (yes, Deven's was ghost-written by his Daddy)
- Talking to my mom (and dad and sis)
- Taking me to lunch at my favorite restaurant, Savor
- Not fussing too much while I ate (that was Deven's gift - yay!)
- Coming with me to (re)join 24 Hour Fitness - AND letting me get a quick workout in, so the photos of me don't continue to show a double-chin forever
- Letting me take a bath for the first time in I don't know how long, with nice-smelling bath salts (no, the birthing tub during labor doesn't count as a bath)
- And finally, as I burped Deven, he held his little head up, all by himself, for quite a while. He loves looking at his Daada's (Granddad's) paintings, and this was no exception. Quite rewarding to see his little brown eyes focused on the paintings for so long.

Got the nicest Mom's Day prose forwarded from a friend, Kaya - so in the spirit of sharing (as Deven sleeps on my lap), I thought I'd share it again below. First, in the spirit of what she wrote, I want to recount the last Mother's Day I remember with my grandmother, Nunu:

In 1999, before I moved to California, my parents (and uncle & cousins) weren't going to be around for Mother's Day - and my grandmother was available. So, I checked with my dad, and got reservations for us to eat dinner at one of her favorite restaurants, Normandie Farm. The weather was nice that day, thankfully. I got her a nice corsage to wear for the evening, and picked her up on time (for me that's still a feat, but it certainly was then). We had a nice meal, which I paid for (not the norm), and I know we had a nice evening together.
We'd spent a lot of time together before then, going to dinner-and-a-movie together on Saturday nights, where she always insisted on paying (I think she still got a kick out of getting her Senior Discount at the movies). So, for me to pay for the nice dinner was out of the ordinary, but she accepted graciously. I know my parents spent every Mother's Day with her after that, but that was the last one I was there for - she passed away in early 2006, and I still miss her. I wish she could've met Deven. I like to think that she (and my other grandparents) can see him from where ever her spirit is today. Happy Mother's Day!

...and now, on to the nice prose:

All My Babies Are Gone Now
By Anna Quindlen, Newsweek Columnist and Author

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow, but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.

Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach, T. Berry Brazelton, Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education -- all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations -- what they taught me, was that they couldn't really
teach me very much at all.

Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2.

When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow. I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.

Every part of raising children is humbling. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the "Remember-When-Mom-Did" Hall of Fame. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language -- mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, "What did you get wrong?" (She insisted I include that here.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?

But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night.

I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.

Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.

'Bye, Grandma

My Mom left yesterday - and a hole has developed where she was. Deven has fussed more since she left (or is it just that she was so good at soothing him?) and - I swear - he's wet more diapers since she left, too. It's hard being home alone with an infant - I'm sure some women do it with grace and undying patience with their young progeny, but I'm pretty sure I'm not one of them.

Before she left, we had a fun meal on Sunday with friends Sugeet & Sanjeev. Mom made some of her signature salad (cue: Mouth watering) and kept Deven fuss-free during the evening.

I got a TDaP (Tetanus, Diptheria, Pertussis) booser shot today, because our pediatrician said what this website says: "parents (48%-55%), siblings (16%-21%) and nonhousehold close contacts (18%-29%) are important sources of pertussis [whooping cough] transmission to young infants." Even though I'm still breastfeeding; the shot is safer than the disease!

Purple People Eater

In his first act of sharing, Deven has given me thrush - a somewhat common, very painful yeast infection. Treatment uses gentian violet (originally a dye) thus Deven looks like a purple people eater!

Our cat, Mr. Idea, has been the biggest loser in this new-baby phenomena happening here. He's taken to getting VERY friendly and climbing on any lap available. Can you tell he's missing being the cutest animal in the room?

Cost of college: Enough to give you colic!

According to Saving for College, we'll have to save over $300k (that's more than $500/month, every month, for the next 18 years) if we want to fully fund Deven's college at a "reasonable" school. Enough to give a baby colic!

On that note...Deven must already be thinking about this, because he's started to get the late-afternoon 'fussies'. Call it colic, extreme fussiness, inconsolable crying, or just missing Daddy when he doesn't come home early...Deven doesn't seem to like the end of the day. Mylicon doesn't seem to do much, in fact nothing does that we can tell, yet. Crossing my fingers that this doesn't become a regular evening routine.

Took Deven to Natural Resources for a Homestyle Midwifery mom's group today (where he was an angel - it wasn't 5pm yet), and had Deven jump on the scale. 10 lbs! Ok, he had a full diaper, a onesie, and socks on...but he's close to 10 pounds already - that's good, I think.

Finally, uploaded photos from the Baby Shower , our parents' visit last Thanksgiving, and other pre-Deven days. Wanna see what he looked like in utero? Check it out! Off to bed now to see how long I can sleep before the little guy gets hungry...