best day ever

I somehow totally lucked out in life. Not only was Mother's Day the best day ever (thanks again Jeff for treating me like a queen), but yesterday was another best day ever! Asa and I spent the entire day together doing all sorts of random, normally dull things. We went to Bed Bath & Beyond, we went to Starbucks, we went to Rite Aid, we went for a walk ... Nothing out of the ordinary there. But what made it so great was that Asa is really fun, happy person and that makes him a joy to be around.

He may not smile at every stranger or wave bye-bye on command, but the kid has got a sense of humor to rival any one! I sneeze and suddenly he's in fits of laughter that melt my heart and make me laugh too. We dance-walk our way through a shopping plaza singing a song about (you guessed it ...) dance-walking and we're laughing and giggling and I eventually noticed, attracting a lot of attention from strangers, all of them smiling right along with us. We play with blocks, me stacking them, Asa destroying the towers and it's hilarious. He knocks over a book, I read it, he kisses the pages that have fur sewn into them, I laugh, he smiles and tosses another book at me to read.

Everything he does, he does with joy. Maybe babies should tag along to big international meetings to help bring everyone back down to earth and remind us why we're all here. I'm no expert but I think babies could teach most of us a lot about what's important. For Asa it seems to be that love, cuddles, applesauce, sneezes, birds, dogs, music, tickles and toys are the secrets to a happy life. I would think most of that could translate for adults as well.

Anyway, thanks Asa for a perfect Monday.

mother's day

I'd like to wish all the other mother's out there a happy mother's day, I hope yours was as great as mine! Today was the day that I let go of the guilt, for the very first time since Asa was born and it was liberating.

When Asa woke up at 5am and I couldn't nurse him back to sleep, I didn't feel guilty when Jeff got up with him and let me sleep (okay, I felt guilty but I successfully ignored and went back to sleep). When I rolled over nearly two hours later and realized I'd been snoozing all that time, my first instinct wasn't to jump out of bed in a tizzy but instead to roll over, stretch and take in the beautiful day outside the window.

Later, when Asa has pooped his diaper for probably the fifth time today, I didn't feel guilty when Jeff offered to change it yet again. I let him and he didn't give me any crap about it ... please tell me you got that (hit the like button if you did).

Long story short, today was a perfect day. We all took two naps, ate a smoothie, played outside, ate a delicious Indian dinner and I felt like a pampered princess. Thanks Jeff for taking such great care of me, I'm sure I'll be wracked with guilt about it all tomorrow!!

sleep is for sissy's

So as everyone knows, babies keep people up nights and they keep them extremely busy throughout the day as well. We lucked out with our baby, he's always been a "good" sleeper. This means that from day one he tended to sleep 4 ~5 hour stretches overnight. This sounds pretty good if you just focus on the 4 ~ 5 hours of sleep part of the statement. But once you dig a little deeper you'll see why we all still qualified as 'sleep deprived' during this phase.


First of all, a newborn (in our home) doesn't sleep in his own room or even his own bed, he shares a bed with us. Nestled safely between us in a small little nook. We hear every breath, every whimper, every sigh, every rumble of his belly. And we love it. We lay awake just to listen to the music of his body. We drift off to a light slumber and wake up an hour and a half later to a crying baby. We pat his back, we roll him over (yes, we allowed our baby to sleep on his side, and even his stomach), and he drifts back to sleep. An hour later and he's up again, this time for real and I'm nursing him while Jeff is bringing me food to stave off my ravenous appetite (does my body realize it's not pregnant any more?). We change the 13th diaper of the last 24 hours and we're all snuggled back in bed within an hour, drifting back to sleep for perhaps another three hours, maybe four. I, as a nursing mother, wake up soaked in milk two hours before the rest of the crew is awake. I get up, I get towels to sleep on top of, I change my shirt, I pump, I get back in bed and before I know it, we're all awake again to begin the routine once more.

Time passes, the baby grows and he moves into his own room down the hall. Now we sleep with a monitor on, straining our ears for any sign of a problem, and thankfully all we hear are the occasional snores of a congested baby. We're getting 8~10 hours of sleep a night, and its a beautiful thing. Some nights we don't even have to wake up to feed him. On those nights I wake up with aching breasts so large that even Anna Nicole Smith would be jealous. I drag my butt out of bed and to pump. To pass the time I read, I eat, I play sudoku at 3am while my family sleeps. I envy them. I'm back in bed by quarter to 4, asleep by 5:30 (because now for some reason despite my exhaustion, I cannot just fall asleep) and we're all up at 6:15 ready to start the day.

Time marches further on and the baby sleeps 10 hours a night, every night. My breasts have realized their job is nearly done and they allow me to sleep as well. We can go to bed at 8pm if we want to, and we know we'll sleep uninterrupted until at least 4am, sometimes 6am. Now this is a beautiful thing! When the baby does wake up we've got the routine down to a science. I lay in bed, Jeff brings the baby to me, I nurse him laying down, we all fall back asleep and I eventually realize the baby wants his bed and so I deposit him there and return to my own for another hour or two of sleep. It totally works. The daytime exhaustion has become second nature.  I can no longer remember a time when I wasn't tired so it's not even worth mentioning anymore.

This is life. Wake up with the sun (or in our case, wake up with the son), change, feed and play with him. Change & feed ourselves. Feed him again, put him down for a quick nap. He wakes up, comfort him, play with him, change him. Feed him. Play with him. Change him. Put him down for a longer nap. Feed yourself. He wakes up, comfort him, play with him. Take the dog for a walk. Feed the baby, play with the baby. Feed yourself. Change the baby, feed the baby, put him to bed. Finish feeding yourself, brush your teeth and off to bed. Life is busy, life is routine, life is the same for so many of us with babies and yet, it's anything but ordinary. Life is truly extraordinary with a baby, and sleep, well sleep is overrated.

snot another ear infection!

Carrying on from our previous conversation, "Snot so Bad" ...

We're back from the doctor again. Asa has his third ear infection since the new year and we've been told our assessment that he is pretty much sick for all but one week a month is just typical. According to our doctor, babies and kids go through a phase of catching between 7 ~12 colds per year for roughly two years. Each cold generally lasts between one to two weeks, so they are sick basically half the year and are either on the mend or on the road to being sick for the other half. This either happens when they are babies and starting daycare as is our case, or when they start playschool as a three year old, or for the hyper-sheltered I suppose it wouldn't start until kindergarten.

So if you missed that small detail, babies are sick about half a year each year for two years. So by the time our son turns two he will have spent half of his life sick with a cold. How f*cked up is that? And on a more selfish note, as his parents, it will mean that we've spent about a year of our life feeling sicker than we have since we were babies ourselves.

At any rate, babies get sick, their parents get sick, and some how we muddle through and learn to laugh at the copious amounts of dried and fresh snot that cover all exposed skin and toys in our home.

sharing is caring

This is a phrase that we said all the time in Japan. I think it's from Sesame Street or something like that but whatever, we brought the lesson into adulthood and taught our Japanese friends the saying. I am proud and pleased to announce that my little boy has officially learned this lesson as well.

This morning at daycare, for the first time ever, Asa didn't seem to want me to set him down. As soon as his butt hit the floor he turned to me, arms raised, warble in his voice, asking me to pick him back up. I did. Twice. But each time I tried to set him down again he complained. And then, bless her little heart, Audrey, a tiny, adorable little one year old came toddling over with a soft stuffed doggie and handed it to Asa and I. She shared with him and it touched my heart. And then, to my great pleasure, Asa handed his toy to Audrey, returning the favor and saying thank you in the most selfless and sweetest of ways.

Seeing the two of them sharing, Audrey trying to soothe an upset baby (and mommy, I'm not gonna lie, the parting was hard on me too) with a stuffed toy, and Asa, thanking her and being soothed by her kind nature ... Well it was straight out of Disney. All that was missing was the little blue bird singing his happy song on our shoulder.

So thank you Audrey, for making our morning brighter.

And PS - Kate & William, congrats on the wedding! The dress was beautiful!

Cheerios, God's gift to Mom's

What is it about kids and Cheerios? Is it universal or is it an American thing? If Cheerios were the size of doughnuts would they still love them? If they were crispy like a potato chip how would that affect their popularity? What if we made them purple? Or if they smelled like Swiss Cheese? What is it about the Cheerio that has made it the perfect baby food? And did the inventor know what she was doing at the time? Huh, maybe that's where that phrase, "Necessity is the mother of invention" came from. A desperate mother, worn down from being the sole source of food for her infant devotes hours of experimentation in the kitchen to find an alternative to the breast ... and voila, the Cheerio is born! Thank you nameless mother of the past for your stroke of pure, edible genius! Asa thanks you too!

snot that bad

Asa has a cold. Again. It had been about two weeks since he fully recovered from his previous cold so I guess I should have expected that he come down with something again soon. In our house I'd say we average one cold per month, with each cold lasting one to two weeks. So in any given four week period we have at least one week of misery, one week of health and two weeks of the in between stage.

Months ago, before he had caught his first cold, I was dreading it. What would we do for a sick baby? How do we blow his nose? What if his fever is too high? What if he starts wheezing? Or gets whooping cough? Or typhoid fever? Or rubella? Silly first time mommy, overreacting, what were you thinking? He got his first cold and it was so sad and pathetic but we all made it through with flying colors (snot of yellow and green) and not a hint of deadly disease (thank you God).

Now here we are, on our I don't know, 7th cold, and it's old hat. The snot runs like water from a fountain. The cough gags him and his little face turns red from the effort of hacking. He sneezes mouthfuls of food all over us. I have a thin layer of dried snot and food smeared over my neck and chest. He runs a fever and wants to cuddle with us until the Tylenol (thank you God and Science for inventing acetaminophen) kicks in. And then, a few days later, all we're left with is some snot and a case of the snuggles.

Well that and a sick mommy and daddy who can barely muster the energy to take care of themselves much less a baby who is nearing full strength and is interested in climbing stairs, banging on flat screen tv's and dvd players, and sticking his finger into the test socket for our carbon monoxide alarm.

People keep telling me its a blessing to get it all over with now because once Asa is in his school he'll never miss a day, having been exposed to all this so young. I guess they are right but in the meantime, pass me a tissue my nose is running.