The Strange Psychosis of Infants

Elliot has entered an interesting phase of his emotional development:  psychosis.

Yesterday I got home and gave Hannah some temporary relief from her job, which I've decided is somewhere between 6 and 8 times harder than mine.  I took Elliot into my arms and learned that he was a little crabby.  He was thrusting out his lower lip, telegraphing that he was getting ready to cry.

I wanted to nip this in the bud.  Calming a baby once he's screaming is much harder than just keeping him calm to begin with.  I was unsuccessful, and Elliot started crying.

So I went through the standard toolkit of Elliot-calming tricks (most of which were discovered by Hannah):  making popping sounds with my mouth, giving him a bronx cheer (in case you don't know what that is), blowing on his hair and on his ears.

He was amused by these tricks.  But he was also still tired, and still upset.  So he continued crying.

The effect was strange: in the middle of his screams and cries, he flashed me a smile.  Not a fake smile, the way an adult would do it.  Babies don't know how to fake emotion.   This was a genuine moment of happiness sandwiched between thick slabs of misery.  And yes, it seemed a little psychotic.  We don't bounce back and forth between happy and sad that quickly, and there's something that seems a little crazy about it.  But babies don't play by our rules.

Maybe there's something to be learned here: What's wrong with a moment of happiness when you're depressed?  Or a moment of sadness on a happy occasion?  Embrace it, just like little psychotic infants.

Saturday morning report

Hannah discovered that he has a double toe.  Meaning, he has a chubby big toe, and when he bends it, a little crescent of chub appears underneath.

I will try to get a photo...

After the first ten times, I videoed it

An alternate title for this post: How ADD Was Created.  (HT: Ian Page)

What "night life" means to me now

Multi-tasking

paparazzi

Childbirth Education Class Reunion!

The King of Rock

How do I get these sweet abs sitting on the couch all day?  Two words:  My Adidas.  

I said cutest baby ever, not happiest...

A Reading in Brooklyn

A few weeks ago I participated in a reading series that my friend Jack organizes.  (There's another reading on Jan 30.  Come hear me and other fine writers, including the talented B.C. Edwards.)  It took place in a sophisticated, dimly lit bar in Greenpoint.  People stood at the bar and quaffed their beers, casting jealous glances at the crossed legs of those lucky enough to get couch spots.

I really wanted to Hannah to come hear my piece, which meant that Elliot had to come too.  We  knew that he would never be able to tolerate the full two-hour reading, so she timed her arrival for just before I was scheduled to go on.

Here's roughly how they looked when they arrived:

Since there were a few friends in the audience who knew we'd just had a baby, I thought it would be fun to read something about childbirth.  This was convenient because obstetrics was the most traumatizing rotation I took in medical school, and as everyone knows trauma is the source of all great art.

I chose a passage about the first time I delivered a baby, as a third-year medical student.  The writing shuttled between graphic imagery of the event itself, and my horror that I was being allowed to do this.  It was about ten minutes long, starting with the part where I introduce myself to the laboring woman, and ending with me delivering the baby and barely managing not to drop him.

The first half of the piece was well received.  People laughed where I'd hoped they would, grew somber at the right times.  As I was reaching the climactic finale, I thought "isn't Elliot being well-behaved?"

Here's how the passage ends:

I lean forward and straighten my arms, suspending the child high in the air, level with my face; floating him above his mother’s spongy belly, balancing him precariously on my thin forearms.  I feel like a penitent stretching toward God, like salvation itself depends on this transfer.

And it’s then, there, with God in my thoughts, that the child chooses to let out his first cry.  It bursts from him like he’s been holding his breath for nine months— a resonant staccato, a Harley-Davidson in piccolo, a shrill, cat-like noise, ripped from this tiny naked human— and something cracks in my chest, my eyes start to blur and the tears come spilling out.

Somewhere in the middle of that final sentence, Elliot started crying.

It was like everyone in the bar had gotten an electric shock.  People jumped.  Audible gasps ricocheted off each other.  A swell of murmurs whooshed through the room.  I picked out a voice saying "Oh my God did he plan that?"  For about five seconds there was no point in reading, even though I had the microphone.

People always come up and shake your hand after a reading, but this time there were a particularly large number.  And they seemed to squeeze my hand harder and look me in the eye longer.  I like to think it meant the quality of the writing was especially good that night.  But I know who was really responsible.

Tucson

I finally got around to watching Obama's speech at the Tucson Memorial Service.  (Staying only one week behind the news is actually pretty good for me these days.)   Hannah was out running an errand, and after a bout of crabiness Elliot had fallen asleep on my lap.  So I was free to bounce there on the yoga ball in front of my laptop. 

The first half of the speech I was impressed with, but nothing more than that.  He struck the right tone and told little anecdotes about the victims.  He managed to frown on partisan politics while still mentioning gun safety laws and our inadequate mental health system.  

Then at the end he talked about Christina Taylor Green, the 9 year-old girl who was killed:

Imagine:  here was a young girl who was just becoming aware of our democracy; just beginning to understand the obligations of citizenship; just starting to glimpse the fact that someday she too might play a part in shaping her nation's future.  She had been elected to her student council; she saw public service as something exciting, something hopeful.  She was off to meet her congresswoman, someone she was sure was good and important and might be a role model.  

She saw all this through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted.  I want us to live up to her expectations.  I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it. 

I heard a loud noise, then realized it was the sound of my own sniffle.  It was a warning shot, my body telling me that I was starting to clog up.  I kept watching the speech.  

Christina was given to us on September 11th, 2001, one of 50 babies born that day to be pictured in a book called "Faces of Hope."  On either side of her photo in that book were simple wishes for a child's life.  "I hope you help those in need," read one.  "I hope you know all of the words to the National Anthem and sing it with your hand over your heart.  I hope you jump in rain puddles."  If there are rain puddles in heaven, Christina is jumping in them today. 

And that was it.  I was pushing my wet hand around my face, bouncing on the yoga ball and trying to keep the sounds in, but little urps and eeks kept escaping.  Suddenly Elliot was awake, he knew something was wrong,  he was staring up at me and crying, and he was scared because he didn't know why he was crying.  So I stood up and slung him over my shoulder, and then we're both walking around the living room crying together.

I suspect that this part of parenthood is not going to get easier.  

Talky Talky

Assertions that this is NOT the cutest baby who ever lived can be mailed to 548 Lincoln Place, Brooklyn NY 11238 Attention: Fiction Editor.

the bee whisperer

There aren't many places that Elliot is guaranteed to find contentment.  But one is in his car seat if his bee is with him.  He will sit for many minutes looking at his bee.  And it's a different kind of looking --- he's fascinated by it, he seems to be listening to it.  

The fact that I have three non-fussy photos of him like this should prove the power of this bee.

Happy Three-Month Birthday Elliot!

It's so unfair.   I was the one who asked for leg-warmers this year....

It Tolls for E

Yesterday I was trying to calm Elliot, employing my strategy of last resort, which is the Christmas Tree.    He is fascinated by the tiny lights, and the reflections they make in the shiny ornaments next to them.  (Thinking about it makes me want to go look at the tree myself).

One of my family's traditions is that each son has a silver bell, which he (and only he) is allowed to place on the tree.  This year Hannah's parents, in a lovely act of family solidarity, got Elliot a silver bell of his own.

He's too young to hang it himself, or even know what a bell is.  But he does like to watch shiny objects, a trait he shares with his father, small rodents, and every media corporation in the world.

The next step after looking at the bell is whacking it.  I've been trying to encourage this.  I figure it's a good education for him: he learns that bells make noise only when they move, so it's like a mini-physics lesson.  While also being fun!

So there I am, holding him in front of the bell, and his little arm is moving around trying to whack it.  But as anyone who's ever trimmed a tree knows, when you put a heavy ornament on a thin fir branch it often droops so low that it rests on the branch below it.  Which means that the bell can't move when Elliot whacks it.  Which means no fun sounds.

So what do I do?  I TAKE THE BRANCH IN MY MOUTH.  At the moment, this seems like an completely logical thing to do.  I bite on the branch and raise it, thus lifting the bell free so that Elliot can whack it.

Go for it little guy!  Whack away!  Learn about how bells work!  These encouragements came out pretty garbled since I had a tree branch in my mouth.  But his little arm did seem to spasm back and forth more vigorously.

I'm not going to sugar coat the ending of this story.  I stayed like that for the better part of a minute.  It really seemed like he was trying to hit the bell.  Eventually I twisted my neck sideways so that I could, while still holding the tree branch in my mouth, look at his face.

He was watching the TV.  

Chub

This one is already a hit on Facebook:

Stuff to Say

Swing Kid

There's really nothing to see here.  Assuming you're a heartless Grinch.

Another video of Elliot doing nothing

Elliot's Turn-Ons and Turn-Offs

Turn-Ons

1. Boob

2. Pooping

3. Cameron singing Journey or Boy George

Turn-Offs

1. Pooping

2. Things That Move Too Slowly

3. Things That Move Too Quickly

4. Shadows

5. Noises

6. Quiet

7. Clothes That Are Too Tight

8. Clothes That Are Too Loose

9. Evil Spirits

10. Good Spirits

11. Darkness

12. Light

13. Cars

14. People

15. That

16. That

17. I don’t know what that is, but That.

Cry Cry Revolution

We've all heard about Shaken Baby Syndrome.  But shaking babies isn't just a way to tear your baby's middle meningeal artery... It's also a way to get him to sleep!

New research has shown that putting on a Black Eyed Peas song and spinning around the room throws off your baby's sense of equilibrium.  There's some more stuff about the cochlea and hair cells, but you're not really interested and neither am I.  The point is, dance! And be rewarded with a quiet sleeping baby.

Here's the catch:  you better be a good dancer.  Swaying side to side will not do the job.  If you want to trigger the hair cell-cochlea thing I glossed over, there have to be a lot of random changes in the speed and direction of your movement.  In other words, you better be funky.

Think of it this way:  when you have a baby, it comes with a free dancing tester.  And if you fail the test, you'll get plenty more chances to try to pass.

Learning to Use a Spoon Pt 3

I wish I had a video of Ian impersonating Elliot as he eats. Elliot, as you may have observed in previous videos, sometimes does this weird thing when he eats.  If someone is feeding him, he holds his arms out to the side and waggles his hands at the wrists.  It's hard to describe, but Ian does a  pretty damn good impersonation of it.

Drum time

Never too early to learn the white man's overbite

Eyes Wide Shut

Here’s how it happens.  Elliot cries in my arms.  I sing him to sleep.  I hold him for a while, and eventually (after five minutes or several hours) he starts to wake up.   There’s a noise, or something happens and I have to shift positions, and he just opens his eyes.  

Now, this isn’t the waking where he snuffles his little face into my chest with his eyes closed.  That’s an entirely different type of waking up.  That one can be miserable, with him going directly from sleep to crabby with nothing in between. 

No, the type of waking up I’m talking about now is the exact opposite. I’ll be holding him in my arms (well, holding him in one arm, really, with the other arm poised for steadying like second string safety ready to come off the bench), bouncing along to whatever silly tune I’m singing (most recently I got him to sleep with Bruce Springsteen’s classic “Thunder Road”). 

And I’ll look down and his eyes will be open.  

It shocks me.  He’s looking at me so peacefully, it’s like he’s trying to spy on me unawares, and he’s succeeding.  

But I don’t want him to wake up.  So I close my eyes. 

The thin parenting vine upon which my little grape is perched has communicated to me that infants who see their parents sleeping are more likely to go back to sleep.  You’re supposed to close your eyes so they think it’s time to sleep.  

So I close my eyes.  But behind my lids I can’t help it, I see his perfect little face, the adorable blue eyes, the plump cheeks softer than silk, the long lashes flapping innocently, and I want to look at it again.  So I crack my eyes open, and hey guess what the little bugger has taken my advice and closed his own eyes.  So I can look at him with impunity. 

But only for a few seconds.  Because then Elliot cracks his eyes open to see if I’m really asleep.  Okay, I may be projecting.  But I swear, it really does seem like he’s doing what I’m doing --- checking to see if I’m really asleep or just faking. 

So I quickly slam my eyes shut.  Can’t let the little bugger catch me in the act.  

And when I open them again, he’s also in the process of opening his.  Through squinty slits we catch each others’ eyes.  Is that guilt I see in his face?  It’s certainly in mine.  

Eventually, obviously, he just wakes up.  Did I really think I could convince him I was asleep?  After all, I was holding him in my arms, standing upright in a brightly lit living room. He’s 10 weeks old, but he’s not an idiot.