March "Break" - Day 4, Abridged

Standard Time > Daylight Savings Time has made kids crazy. Schedules all screwed up. Nearly lost it on the boys this morning while juggling late start, incoming phone calls and need to rendezvous with parents at Bruce's Mill Conservation Area for Sugarbush Maple Syrup 40th Anniversary Festival.

Lugged kids around for three hours (with my parents' kind help). Ate pancakes with maple syrup, sampled old-fashioned kettle process maple syrup, ate maple sugar candies, bought maple sugar, mapled the maple maple, then mapled to the maple for maple.

Uhh... where was I? Oh yes. Maple.

Tried out snow shoes, drank cedar tea (surprisingly not terrible), cut out maple leafs in upstairs craft room. Pony ride, then horse-drawn carriage ride. Lots of fun. Really. Just tiring.

Kenshin isn't sleeping well these days - may be teething related. This morning he took a single unsupported step, then immediately sat down. Marli is amused at his "head-shaking game" - his Ray Charles imitation has grown from occasional tic to actual "no" response, but also a game. If you shake your head at him, he will respond in kind, then shake his head to prompt you to imitate him. Very cute. He's climbing up and down stairs like a fiend now.

Some random Daigoro vignettes:

While eating corn and perogies at dinner:

Daigoro: "Mommy, what did we kill?"

Marli: "What? What do you mean?"

Daigoro: "What did we kill to get the corn?"

Another, separate occasion - ordering a shamrock shake (yay!) at McDonald's:

Kozure: "One medium shamrock shake, please."

Take out cashier: "That will be three fourteen, please. Second window."

Kozure: "Thanks!"

Daigoro: (pause) "Daddy, that lady sounds like a robot."

One very heart warming bedtime last week:

Daigoro: "Daddy?"

Kozure: "Yes, Daigoro?"

Daigoro: "You're the best daddy in the whole world."

[I didn't make that one up, I swear!]

My parents kindly purchased a season's pass for our family this past Christmas, so we headed to the Toronto Zoo this past Tuesday as well. FROG-ZIBITZ special March break event in honour of the Chinese Calendar Year of the Frog. Frogatorium. 'Nuff said.

Very, very tired now. Stopping with the blogging.

Thank You, Ferber, Wherever You Are

On the November 3-4th long weekend, Marli and I employed the Ferber Method to train Kenshin to sleep through the night without requiring a feeding every three to four hours. For those too rushed to follow the link, you basically let the baby cry for increasingly longer periods of time, until the kid figures out that although he will eventually be comforted, the screaming and the fussing has little to do with it. You go in every 5, then 10, then 20 then 40 minutes (and so on, doubling each time) to comfort the child, but do not pick him up. Eventually the child settles down and sleeps through the night.

It has been astoundingly successful with both our children. We employed the method on Daigoro at eight months and decided that we should have done it months earlier. So, this time, we tried it on Daigoro at just under seven months (for a variety of reasons, including a number of successive mild illnesses, it was ill-timed on his sixth month mark) and it worked even better, in two nights instead of three, as was the case with Daigoro. Kenshin woke up twice in the first night, (once for a prolonged fifty-minute stretch) and only three times (the longest stretch was thirty, the other two times were brief) and has slept through the night since.

It's a little hard on the parents and seems cruel to the child, but the dividends are many, not only for us, but for the grandparents who occasionally have to provide child care. After enjoying uninterrupted sleep several nights in a row for the first time in months, Marli must be feeling much better.

Thank you, Dr. Richard Ferber. I can't recommend this technique enough to other parents who have children who aren't sleeping through the night.

Here be Monsters

Two nights ago, Daigoro woke up crying for Daddy.

I came into the room and comforted him. He's been ill, as has been outlined in other posts, and although he usually sleeps through the night, I imagine his sleep is troubled by his cold.

He looked at me pitifully and said,

"There's a monster over there," pointing at a corner of the room.

I said that I was there to love, protect and teach him, and that monsters are only make-believe. I looked carefully at the corner, in case there was some insect or shape or shadow that might suggest a monster. Nothing.

"I want to sleep with Daddy," he sobbed.

I hesitated. Inviting your child to sleep with you could lead to habits of children joining you in bed every time they are scared at night. Then again, isn't it my role as a parent to comfort my children?

I paused to think, then responded, "Daigoro, you have to be brave. When you are brave, even make-believe monsters can't hurt you. Can you be brave?"

"Yeah," he said, tentatively.

"I'm glad you can be brave," I said. He still looked uncertain.

"You're not feeling well, so you can come and sleep with me," I said, wondering if I was doing the right thing. Marli and I are sleeping in separate beds until Kenshin can sleep through the night without feeding. Having Daigoro sleep with me wouldn't trouble her.

"Can you carry me?" he asked, looking up at me with teary eyes.

I carried him to my bed and hugged him as he drifted back to sleep. I felt strong and useful, like a parent should. It was nice to sleep with a now-comforted young soul, knowing that you had made that sleep possible.

When had monsters entered into his imagination? Had he seen one on TV? The only monsters in any of the books I've read him were "Where the Wild Things Are", and I read that to him only once - and they're relatively nice monsters. Do children instinctively learn to fear monsters? Why?

Are they summoned up from the depths of our collective unconsciousness, or would a child exposed to no concept of "monster" never fear such things?

As I listened to his breathing slow and become steady, I briefly thought about the monsters of my own life - the uncertainties, fears and doubts which plague me, sometimes daily, sometimes only reappearing once every few years. Recently I've been a little concerned about my health, and for almost the first time in my life, I worry about the possibility that I wouldn't be there for my children.

Here be monsters; but at least I can protect Daigoro from his.

Standing at the Threshold

I have a personal fascination with human memory. One of the aspects of memory which I always find interesting is the capacity for human beings to forget how painful or difficult a particular episode or period was. Which is not to say all memory of the incident or time is completely forgotten, but you never recall fully how painful something is after the fact. For example, I remember that the pain of breaking my collar bone in a biking accident when I was 24 was quite intense, but when I remember the incident, no matter how hard I try, I can't evoke the sensation of pain exactly.

This is a very "good and sensible" thing, if you think about it - people would be collapsing in pain every time they thought of a previous injury. Similarly, women might really think twice about having children a second time around. Perhaps you have injured yourself a second time after receiving a painful injury previously and thought to yourself "oh yeah, that's how that felt." Now imagine that with the pain of childbirth. Nostalgia is a useful (and sometimes dangerous) thing.

Quite aside from physical pain, there is the difficulty of mental or physical stress; which brings me to the main thrust of this post - we're expecting our second child any day now. We're about to go through the whole rigamarole of sleep deprivation, which I touched on in a previous post, all over again. This time, we'll have the added challenge of a toddler.

One co-worker has commented to me that marriage is a change in your life, but relative to having your first child, it is quite minor. He then went on to compare the jump from one child to two as being a seismic shift similar in magnitude.

So here I stand on the threshold of another portal, looking back at the path that has lead me here, and peeking through to the paths beyond. I feel both elated at the ground we have covered so far, and daunted by the unknown terrain ahead.

Daigoro is steadily improving his vocabulary. Every day he seems to be able to apply the correct new word to an object or action. Marli and I find ourselves increasingly unsure if his new discovery is as a result of one of us specifically teaching him or Daigoro just picking the word up on his own. He is growing emotionally as well. This morning I watched with fondness as he lay down beside our cat and stroked it gently. He seemed pleased to be able to interact and be gentle with the cat, to which the cat responded with a few licks and purring. When the cat became a little impatient with Daigoro's attentions, he gave Daigoro a gentle bite, which cat owners will recognize as being playful as well as cautionary in different situations. Instead of reacting fearfully, Daigoro withdrew his hand and said, "kitty, no biting," not angrily, but as a loving parent might chide a wayward child.

Similarly, Daigoro has in weeks past displayed touching moments of empathy; pulling a blanket over a stuffed bear for warmth, wanting to help put a diaper on a baby doll. He almost always reacts positively to images of babies, smiling and pointing with delight. While I'm sure that his reactions will change as a new baby begins to live with us 24/7, I'm also satisfied that he's emotionally well-adjusted enough at the moment that he should be able to adapt well.

We're heading into Easter weekend, a celebration of a great transformation - an unimaginable leap from one state of being to another. A very appropriate time for a second child to be born.

Good Morning, Sunshine!

When you get to the ripe age of thirtysomething, mornings seldom seem to have quite the same sparkle as they did in the salad days of youth. Not that you'd want to eat salad for days, or actually have sparkle-y mornings, but you get the idea.

Daigoro is stunningly good-natured in the morning. He's normally quite happy, but in the morning, when you've been woken up by your spouse having the usual late-pregnancy sleep troubles at 2 AM, the cat being annoying at 5 AM and the fruit of your loins calling "Dada?!" at 6:45, his good mood ascends well into the range of "too much, too soon."

It starts the moment he wakes up. I don't know how other toddlers wake up. I imagine it's likely a relatively gradual process. In Daigoro's case, he's seemingly fast asleep one moment, then standing upright a split second later. It's startlingly quick - sort of the reverse of a puppet having its strings cut. Somehow he just leaps into an upright stance without the intermediate "roll over, rub eyes, sit up, stretch, stand slowly" steps that most adults take in between.

Usually the first words out of his mouth are truck-related. I can only hope this does not reflect on his eventual life priorities, because on his current path his guidance counsellor isn't going to have check off more than one or two boxes on the old career path sheet.

"Truck! Firetruck! Car! ... Dada?"

"Yes, Daigoro?"

"Truck! TRUUUUCK!"

We alternate the task of fetching him from his crib. He usually snuggles into our chests as we transfer him, at which point we usually try to extend his momentary docile mood to getting another 15-20 minutes of sleep. At the moment this seems to work about 20% of the time, and Daigoro peacefully naps for another little while. The other 80% of the time, Daigoro wants to play.

If you have brothers and sisters, as I do, you may be familiar with a smaller human being wanting desperately to gain your attention at 7 in the morning. Even if you have, however, you're likely not to have experienced it as an adult, unless you are a parent or babysit sleep-over children. Unless there was a long gap between you and your siblings, you're also likely not to have experienced the delicate aroma of six hour-old baby diaper as a toddler plants his bum solidly on your nose, or the pleasant sensations of a child trodding blithely on your genitalia and sensitive portions of your midsection.

One very nice aspect of this, all kidding aside, is to have a very cuddly and happy little boy sharing the covers with you. He usually has a beaming smile plastered to his face. As grumpy or jaded anyone can be ( I'm not exactly a bear in the morning, really) it's really hard to not feel like smiling yourself.

After rolling over us for a few minutes, or playing peek-a-boo, he usually slides off the bed, tromps to the door and waves a beckoning hand.

" 'mon," he says, which is his current abbreviation for 'come on'. The parental response is usually to groan inwardly (or literally, when it's been a restless night) and try desperately to pretend we didn't hear him.

"Cee-al," he continues insistently, using his toddler's argot for 'cereal'. Cereal is his favourite food at the moment. He'd probably eat nothing but cereal, given the opportunity. As nice as that would be for Nabisco, we do try to vary his diet a little.

After one or two 'mons!, we usually marshal the strength to set him up in his booster seat in the dining room. One of his favourite cereals is the President's Choice 'raisin and bran' cereal, which he can't seem to get enough of. Nature's candy, I suppose. Feeding him that cereal in the morning and changing him in the evening can be an object lesson in the healthy purgative nature of dietary fibre.

After cereal, he'll often ask for "jam". He's cleverly determined that he can lick the jam right off toast if we let him, so toast and jam is usually a supervised affair while the other parent takes a shower or puts on make-up. He waits fairly patiently while we wipe the mess of cereal and jam from his face and hands, then he's down again, usually asking for vehicles of some kind.

A typical hand-off of care takes place while the other parent completes her or his morning ablutions and then it's time to pile him into his clothes for the day and his snowsuit.

Having finished dressing him and ourselves, we head out to the car to take him to his home care provider. He loves to dawdle, inspecting small grains of road salt or huge chunks of ice, crunching on ice-crusted snow or running through the steam billowing out of the clothes dryer vent in the side driveway. At this point, it's usually us coaxing him, but every once in a while I realize what a blessing it is to look forward with such wonder and excitement at the prospect of a new day as he does. To raise a hand and beckon to others, "Come on!"

Who Needs Sleep?

“Who needs sleep?
well you're never gonna get it
Who needs sleep?
tell me what's that for
Who needs sleep?
be happy with what you're getting
There's a guy who's been awake
since the Second World War”

Who Needs Sleep, Barenaked Ladies, from the album “Stunt”

Yesterday, we slept in. Well, we slept longer than we would normally when waking up with Daigoro, whose usual waking time is 6:30 to 6:45 at the moment. I ended up getting up at 7:45. Sleeping in is a luxury that I think childless people don’t generally appreciate. I know I didn’t. Other luxuries you might not appreciate as a toddler-free adult: being able to concentrate on a task on the computer or on your desk without a small 13 kg human plunking him or herself in your lap; being able to leave scissors, markers, medicine and cleaning products anywhere you like; being able to just go out and do something outside the house without a) finding someone to take care of said toddler or b) going through the 10-15 minute ritual of preparing to go outside the house.

We owed the luxury of a morning of extra sleep (my internal clock currently has a unfortunate habit of waking me up at 6:30 even if I want to sleep in, so I currently wake up, go back to sleep, and wake up again a few hours later on these occasions) to the generous offer of my parents to take Daigoro for an evening and the following morning.

Prospective parents, if there is no other reason that you can think of to keep up good relations with your own parents and/or in-laws, this is one you should keep in mind: you will need a break from your child from time to time.

So, thanks to my parents, we had a toddler-free evening and morning. Yay, parents!

Everyone needs different amounts of sleep. I can get by fairly well on about six hours, but I prefer eight. Quality of sleep is important too; I’d rather have six hours of solid, uninterrupted sleep rather than eight hours with one or two episodes of wakefulness. My wife, who has decided to adopt the pseudonym “Marli” for now (it’s a literary reference – more on that later), prefers to have more.

So it came as a bit of a blow to both of us in the weeks and months following Daigoro’s birth that we’d be waking up two or three times in a night. Not that we didn’t expect it, mind you, but expecting and experiencing are two different things. This made for a very unpleasant time for both of us, more so for Marli than for me, since Daigoro was exclusively breast-fed. When he was quite young, Daigoro slept in a basinet in the same room with us. Every so often we’d co-sleep (for the non-parents “have the baby sleep in the bed with the parents”) which was easier in terms of getting the baby to the breast, but harder in terms of space in the bed. Even in a queen-sized bed, a baby can be tricky to accommodate.

I valiantly offered to sleep in the room for as long as I could as a show of solidarity, but Marli quickly pointed out that it was pointless for both parents to be poorly rested just for the purposes of moral support (I was working), so she suggested I sleep on the sofa. I took up the offer guiltily, but not without some relief. If there are some aspects of “hellishness” to parenting, certainly months of sleepless nights range into that territory. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Eraserhead” by David Lynch, the nightmarish wailing of the grotesque “child” in that film comes deliriously close to reality after waking up three or four times in the night for the seventh consecutive night.

Ray Bradbury, one of my favourite science-fiction/fantasy writers, once lyrically described 3 AM as the “midnight of the soul”. Surely I have felt more desperate at 3 AM than at almost any other hour of the day, but never more so in the first five months of Daigoro’s infancy.

After Daigoro had settled his sleep patterns enough that he was only getting up twice a night, we moved him into a crib in the spare bedroom. The deal was that I would get up, get him from the crib and bring him to the bed, where Marli would feed him. If you are keen on zombie films, you will have a good mental picture of my usual gait on those bleak evenings in the spring and summer of 2005. On the plus side, I did develop an excellent ability to walk around in the dark without turning on lights, which I’m sure will come in handy in any potential future careers as cat burglar or celebrity stalker.

Daigoro was feeding every three hours or so, which meant that Marli would give him a feeding just before he went to sleep at 8 PM, another at 11 PM, then again at 2 AM and 5 AM. This became fairly routine as time went on. Eventually, we were able to cut out the 2 AM feeding, and at six months (or was it eight? I can’t honestly remember at the moment), we applied the Ferber method fairly rigorously to allow him to go to sleep on his own and also sleep through the night. It was four days of fairly difficult periods of crying and thrashing (and that was just the parents), but in the end, it was well worth it. Daigoro fell asleep on his own, and largely stayed asleep through the night and has been able to do so ever since.

Looking back, it seems a little wimpy to be complaining today about having to get up at 6:30 in the morning when, for a long period, we were sleeping an average of 4-6 hours a night with at least two interruptions, and often more. The human mind has an amazing capacity to forget adversity. It’s a good thing; we’d probably have a lot fewer parents in the world.

We’re about to do the whole thing over again with Baby #2. I should start banking sleep now.

I need sleep.