Penguin love

Yesterday Emmett and I met Augie and Anne at the California Academy of Sciences for a little afternoon animal entertainment. As this was a normal admittance day and not the special member hour it was a little more crowded, but the four of us were able to squeeze to the front right next to the glass in the penguin exhibit. One of the penguins really loved Augie and I was able to get a video of the boys in front of the tank with the interested penguin doing his thing in front of Augie (at one point it looks like the penguin is trying to kiss or eat Augie, I am not sure which). Also in the video you can see Emmett looking over his shoulder at the gathered crowd who were entertained by the penguin being entertained by Augie. One fellow said that the kids should be on television (I don't know why)...instead they make it to youtube:

Lucky number 7

Emmett has been a little cranky of late. Well, there are a number of things that go into this: he is on about day 12 of a runny nose/cold thing that has converted into a cough, he is covered with quarter-sized dry skin patches that look somewhat like ring worm but which the doctor guessed were either contact dermatitis or psoriasis (I might be wrong on the last term...I get eczema and all of those others confused), but the real winner is that he has a new tooth coming in to join the other six that have gotten quite used to life in Emmett's mouth. I guess I have put too much in that sentence so I will elaborate.

Emmett has had a coldish thing for a while with accompanying runny nose. Emmett hates having his nose wiped. I don't like wiping Emmett's nose as Emmett puts his hands to his face to block the nose-wiping which causes his mucous to go onto his sleeves, hands, and cheeks. Andrea doesn't like Emmett going around with mucous all over his face, which is what happens when she is at work. No one is happy. Actually, Emmett is not unhappy about the cold, the cough, or any other nose ailment except when it comes to having his nose wiped. In fact, when we were riding on the bike a few days ago he was forming a large bubble at each nostril with each exhale and I am pretty convinced that he was really enjoying himself.

The spots don't seem to bother him. He has them mostly on his back, arm pits, and elbow pits (the cubital fossa, for those curious---I was, and the doctor was able to name it for me), but they don't seem to be causing him any discomfort or itchiness. The only thing that has been strange is that he has been grabbing at the hair at the back of his head as if trying to pull it out by pulling it over the top of his head. I hope this isn't his way of trying to scratch his back. Now I am worried.

The new tooth has caused some unhappiness in the young one. Teething didn't seem too bad for the previous, but this one has seemed tougher and is taking a long time to do more than just break the surface. Emmett has just been a little whinier than normal, but it is pretty amazing that all it takes is a trip outside for him to forget all of his teething worries.

Other than these three, things have been going well (well, except he woke at 5am yesterday---that is no fun). He has been mostly happy, and it is kind of funny how excited Emmett gets about the little things---for example, water. When Emmett is excited he bounces up and down, and if he has been eating and one of us gets up to get him a glass of water, he gets very excited and starts bouncing around on his chair---I hope he views a fresh glass of water with the same excitement for all of his years. He has actually been drinking pretty well of late, not biting the glass or chewing the water so much and not coughing because it goes down the wrong tube. He also gets excited about certain foods. Tonight it was oranges, and the moment I grabbed the orange out of the fruit bowl he started going nuts and continued to go nuts while I peeled the orange, got the knife, and sat down to take the membranes off of the orange (choking hazzard---he only has six teeth and a little nub of a seventh, remember). I don't know that I had taken the membranes off of each section of orange before, but I now know why I don't do it very often: they are not always that easy to remove; the juice of the orange gets all over my hands, the knife handle, the table, my arms; and the process is very, very slow. What is funny, though, is that you can take a monotonous, semi-loathsome task, add a bouncing, excited near-11-month-old who can't wait for the next freshly-de-membraned orange, and you have a pretty enjoyable evening.

Greens for the little one

I don't think that I have ever really discussed it here, but I really like making Emmett's food and he seems to like eating it. Earlier this evening I returned from Rainbow with what felt like a ton of food and decided to just take care of making some of Emmett's food while I was feeling active. The normal game has been: buy a bunch of one thing (banana squash, say), steam it, food-process it, and freeze it in cubes, then repeat the process another night with the next food. Of late I have gotten tired of all of the dishes I have had to wash so I decided to get smart and just started up the steamer pot, would steam one type of food, cool it in the strainer, and follow the steps above but while cooling would use the already-warm steamer pot to do the next type. I am telling you that this felt like a real stroke of genius (in addition I had made some stock that I had frozen in the ice cube trays earlier so I just rinsed them and added the new stuffs---I may never wash another dish). The picture at left shows the foods that got done tonight: red chard (upper right), kale (lower right), and broccoli/carrot mash-up (left, top and bottom)...and the best part is I didn't clean out the food processor between any of the batches (as evidenced by the broccoli/carrot that snuck into the chard in the upper right-hand corner). It is pretty incredible that making this food is this easy, that it actually tastes good to me, and that it is soooooo cheap (all organic produce and probably 6 dollars spent for food that will last for weeks----there is more in the fridge as I only have two metal ice cube trays).

Born under Bush

Emmett and I got up this morning and headed down to Civic Center where we watched our new president take the oath of office. We met up with Augie and his parents who were also there along with what I would guess was a few thousand people watching it on the big screen right in front of City Hall (Andrea was at school so she had to miss out---well, the school watched the inauguration together so she just missed out on us). I didn't take any pictures (the pictures would have looked like us standing among a bunch of other people so I leave it to the readers' imaginations), but I must say that every time I think of the inauguration I get very happy. I know the word has been overused a ton of late, but I am truly hopeful for our future now---and this means much more when you have brought another life into the world that your generation and the ones before it have so seriously altered. The last eight years have felt like a nightmare politically with things that I really care about (the environment, science, etc.) being ignored or essentially raped in addition the needless wars, broken relationships with other nations, diminished freedoms, etc. for which our departing leader is famous. For me personally this has been a learning experience as I have never quite understood the outpouring of emotion that came when JFK died as, prior to today, the president has not been someone I have felt inspired by or that has seemed motivated to make a difference in our lives. This election, culminating in today's inauguration, has opened my eyes to a different kind of president than I have known and I now feel that I can empathize with those who found similar inspiration 40-some years ago and better understand why they took their loss so hard. I would somehow like to impress upon Emmett as he grows older the idea that a leader can be so much more than what we often end up with, but wonder if he, like me, will only appreciate it if he lives it. Actually, I just remembered my grandfather mentioning to me that his father always seemed so enamored of FDR and (as I recall) he didn't quite get it or didn't have the same appreciation being young during most of his presidency---perhaps he was trying to tell me the same thing I am hoping to tell Emmett. I get it now.

The inauguration was our big event. The only other excitement that I can think of was Emmett's and my bike ride to near the museums in the park where I found a relatively secluded clump of grass and stripped Emmett naked so he could get some sun and air out. I wondered if I would get in trouble or if people would frown on us if I had a naked kid in a public park, but luckily no one came around. Part of the reason for the nakedness is that Emmett is getting a few splotches on his skin and we don't know what they are so I figured the sun would take care of them. We will see as we are probably going to take Emmett in to the doctor at the end of the week (I made the appointment but if the sun cured them we will cancel).

Gorgeous Weekend

We are at the midway point of Andrea's three-day-weekend and it has been a pretty wonderful one with weather in the 70's, sun, and friends. We are back at the house right now after a morning at the Alemany flea market (where Emmett scored a new doll and I a copper sauce pan) and an afternoon in Golden Gate Park with Emmett's two pals, their parents, and Jeff and Luisa. Emmett is an hour-an-a-half into his second nap of the day with the excitement taking it out of him. The picture at left is Augie, Emmett, and Ethan (from left) enjoying their first pretzels (my apologies to Augie for choosing this picture as he was in a great mood all day except this, but the picture looked like they were working on cigars---I owe you, Augie). As a reminder of ages, Ethan is 7 days older than Augie who is 2 days older than Emmett.

The last few days have been filled with a number of rides for Emmett and I, with Andrea coming along when she is not working. On Friday afternoon I took Emmett to his first ever drum circle at hippy hill at the edge of Sharon Meadow. I have to admit that even though I have stayed away from drum circles for all of my life, I kind of enjoyed sitting to watch---and it was pretty great for Emmett as he did his bobbing dance (soon to appear in video form here) and was entranced by the people spinning, wildly dancing, etc. I am not saying that we are going to be going out and buying the Grateful Dead back catalogue or anything, but it was a pretty fun time---once we found a spot that wasn't filled with the smell of petchouli incence or this smoke that had a tinge of skunk smell to it.

Oh...I forgot that Jeff, Emmett and I rode to the park on Friday afternoon so that Jeff and I could throw disc golf discs back and forth while Emmett played in the grass and mud. Emmett was really good entertaining himself for some time and finishing the time with dirtied hands and knees. Saturday was another ride to the park, but this time with Ma as well. We didn't get down there until near sundown, so the light was low, but I got one picture of Andrea and Emmett playing in the sun (note that I learned on a visit to the playground in the background this week that that playground is thought to be the oldest public children's playground in the nation, created in the 1887---who knew). It is off of the phone camera and it makes it look really foggy, but it wasn't foggy.

That is it...lots of playing in the sun and enjoying the weather. Can't complain at all about 70 degree weather in the second week of January.

Everyone should be so lucky

Bath time last night...

Membership has its privileges

Today we rode the bike to the California Academy of Sciences for their morning member hour where only members are admitted. We have done this once before and it was great as we had many of the exhibits all to ourselves. Today we just visited the penguins and looked at one of the big aquariums, but it was pretty great to just let Emmett "walk" along the edge of the tanks and have the penguins come up to him to check him out from the other side of the glass. Pretty good stuff.

Making San Francisco Smaller

Over the weekend the new kid seat for the bike came in. I knew that it wasn't going to work with a bike I had, so I did a little research on Craigslist and found a bike that would work in redding for 50 bucks (my brother was to come down this weekend from Redding, so I knew this would work, too). Darin delivered the bike on Friday and he and I put the seat together while Emmett took his morning nap on Saturday, then Darin, Emmett and I took it out for our first ride. It held up pretty good, Emmett spent much of the ride yelling (I believe a happy yell and am sure it wasn't a scared-to-death yell). Darin took the picture to the left of our first trip mid-ride.

The whole reason I wanted to have a bike seat was so Emmett and I can go to places that are distant in the city and not have to rely on bus transfers which often lead to long trips. This is especially important as Emmett typically has about 3.5 hours of waking time between naps these days. For example, Emmett and I were going to the song/story time in the Mission a few months ago (pre-teaching), but it often took 45 minutes each way and a bit of rushing to catch the correct buses. Today was our first trip there without relying on public transit and the bike worked wonderfully. We made it from our house to the Mission branch of the library (about 3 miles) in 15 minutes or so and got to enjoy some outside time together in each direction.

The only problems I have so far is that it is a pretty tight fit between his seat and mine which makes standing at a stop a little difficult. Another problem is that the new bike has top mounted shifters which sees as toys and he keeps sneaking the bike into a different gear when I am not looking. I have taken to riding around with my thumb in a position to keep him from changing gears, but hopefully he will lose interest in doing this sometime soon.

Emmett passes first test

Getting some smarts

Today Emmett was playing in the living room and Malcolm was watching from the couch at a safe distance from E's reaching arms. For a while Emmett tried to get Malcolm then went on to other objects, but a few minutes later I asked him "where's the kitty?" and he got this excited look on his face turned around and went back to trying to attack Malcolm. I think this is the first sign of a word/object relation for him---a intelligence skill that the cat does not have, so perhaps we are reaching the point where Emmett will be smarter than Malcolm.

Noises

Emmett is picking up more and more letter sounds. Recent additions are 'g' and 'k'. Also, Emmett has grown more excited at the sight of Malcolm. Malcolm has interpreted this new level excitement as his signal to move away as soon as Emmett approaches. Yesterday we were saying the word "kitty" again and again to Emmett while he was staring at Malcolm and he said what we were both convinced was the word kitty. No repeat performances, so we will have to wait and see if Emmett, wanting to preserve both Andrea's and my fragile egos, has decided to make Malcolm the first one he calls to by name.

First night failure

Last night was Andrea's full first night away from Emmett. Tomorrow Emmett will turn 10 months, so that is quite a few consecutive nights. Andrea left around 10am, and didn't return until after 3pm today, so for 29 hours ours was an all-male house. The trick for her absence was going to be milk feedings. For the past few months Emmett has been going to Andrea's school for feedings so he hasn't needed a bottle for some time. Andrea had prepared a store of milk for this occasion in the freezer and I had to just make sure and manage the supply while she was gone. Emmett fed pretty well on the bottle, but just before his afternoon nap he was pretty pooped and didn't finish a bottle. I should mention here my defrosting practice: I heat about 2 cups of water to 150ish, put the container of frozen milk in it for a little while, and feed the kid. Now, as any mother who goes through the hassle of pumping stores of milk will tell you, pumped milk is valued slightly higher than gold, so when Emmett couldn't finish the bottle due to tiredness I (knowing I shouldn't be doing this) decided to keep the remaining part of the bottle in the refrigerator since Emmett would probably only sleep for 1 hour or so and since the bacteria that could cause problems probably wouldn't make much progress in colonizing the bottle in that time in the cold refrigerator. I am pretty sure this was the wrong choice.

Emmett woke, I gave him the bottle, took him for a long walk, fed him, bathed him, and put him to bed by 7pm and everything seemed hunky dory. At about 9:30 I heard him cry a little and go back to sleep. Then a few minutes later he did the same thing. I checked him on the monitor (the best investment we have made in raising this kid) and saw that there was a huge patch of what looked like vomit next to Emmett's head. I went into his room to find one of the saddest scenes I have seen in some time with Emmett trying to find a way to position himself to sleep with a pool of vomit all over the sheet, his sleep sack, and his head. I felt so horrible for him and he was so sad---not crying really but just confused and whining. Holding him in my arms he felt so weak and lifeless, and was a far different baby than the one I had put to bed a few hours previously. As I worked to clean him up, his body would convulse every few minutes as another wave of nausea hit him, he would be unable to breathe, and after it passed he would go limp in my arms and would wimper a little bit. This pattern continued with longer stretches between the nausea spells (which quickly turned to dry heaves), and as they intermissions stretched longer he was able to sleep a little in my arms between. By about 11:15 it had all passed and he slept on top of my chest. Finally at 12:30 I put him into bed and watched him until 1am when I was convinced that he was okay, then I went to bed, too.

At 4:00 he was up and was crying. I had spent much of the night trying to decide the course of action for getting him hydrated and fed once again and figured since he had slept so long with no vomiting that I would give him a couple of sips of water and then watch for a reaction. I did this, took him for a pre-dawn walk, and he kept it all down. I returned to the house for an increased dose of water and headed out for a longer walk. The whole time it was easy to tell that he wasn't feeling so hot, but he would look at me and smile every once-in-a-while and it made it seem like we were making progress. We continued this process until 7:00 (I think I gave him a cracker, too), and by that time he was drinking more water out of a cup than I have seen---actual continuous gulps of water with none spilling out the sides. I put him down for a nap and then debated whether I should try giving him more of the frozen milk. I figured already that the odds were pretty good that it was the twice-used bottle that had done it, but there was a little worry that it was some other food item that I had given him. When he woke, I gave him the milk (in a cup, no less, and he drank it right up), moved on to solids, and didn't look back. He made it through the day a little whinier than normal but in pretty good spirits.

It was funny that while he was really sick there was a part of me that kind of liked the sick Emmett as he would lay into me or continually try to climb up my leg if I sat him down on the floor. It felt like, for once, I was more than just the delivery guy who takes him to his mom for feedings and, secretly, I hoped that my being there in his time of need would raise me a little closer to the pedestal he keeps his mother on. We will see. He definitely was at his happiest today the moment his mom got home.

Back for the new year

Yesterday Andrea, Emmett and I returned from our Oregon vacation (the reason for the two week lapse in posts---I tried on my phone once but it was too much trouble). It was a very nice trip with Emmett getting to spend time with the majority of his nearest relations. We landed in Portland two weeks ago tomorrow on one of the last flights to land at PDX before they canceled a huge number of flights due to the quickly accumulating snow in the greater portland area. We spent just over a week at Andrea's sister's house with her fam (husband and son), Andrea's parents, and my brother. Most of the time we were in the house as the snow got up to the 15"-ish level and Portland's few snow plows played catchup until the rain and 50 degree weather came the following Saturday to quickly do what the snow plows couldn't.

Andrea and I were pretty paranoid about the whole sleeping situation before we left on the trip---Andrea even posted a request for suggestions we composed to her mothers' email group to solicit recommendations. We were worried as we had been around kids around Emmett's age who really struggle when required to sleep in new locales; especially in the same room as their parents. In the end we lost considerably more sleep worrying about the situation than we did while on vacation. I can only think of two nights during our whole 10-plus-day trip where Emmett woke during the night crying, and those two times he was able to settle himself without any intervention from us. The only thing that we made sure to do (and that was recommended in the responses to the email we composed) was to position the crib in a manner that he couldn't wake and see us. We ran into no troubles the whole time.

Emmett was on his best behavior the whole time at his aunt's house. I think he only cried two times the whole time he was there, however he picked up a new, very high pitched scream which, unfortunately, was not a one-time thing. I took a video of him doing it tonight at dinner which shows a wonderful crescendo. Charming.


We spent a lot of time playing pinochle while we were at Andrea's sister's, and the picture at left shows my brother tutoring a young Emmett on the finer points of double-deck. Cards were not Emmett's only field of study on the trip, though, as he also reached a couple of other milestones on the trip. The first, shown in the video below, is the wave. Yes, I know that everyone has seen a person wave before, but I like the stoic facial expression juxtaposed with his mother's excitement at his success. The second is he is picking up clapping after a tutoring session with his great-grandma. The third is that he improved actual crawling (vs. worming along the ground). Exciting times.


I wanted to throw in the picture to the left as it kills me. A little explanation: Tyler (Emmett's cousin, pictured at left) and Emmett each got a musical toy for Christmas and this picture has each playing with their respective new toys. The thing that I find funny, though, is that they look like very young electronic musicians---especially with Tyler gripping his microphone and emmett hunched over his synth. Yep, funny only to a father.


Though it wasn't a Christmas present, the gift I was most excited for for Emmett was the new helmet we got him so he can start riding the bike with me (I just won a bike seat on eBay this evening, so we will be ready to roll next week). He is actually really good with the helmet and doesn't complain about it being on around the house. Oh, and the picture also brings up another milestone: Emmett has eaten a couple of full bananas right out of the peel without having them broken up for him.

The second part of the trip was spent on the Oregon coast (Lincoln City). My mom and grandma drove up and the five of us rented a house overlooking the ocean for four nights (this is where the clapping tutorial took place). The weather cooperated nicely as we were predicted to have four days of rain but ended up having nearly dry days the entire time we were there. The visit there was very nice, too, except that Emmett was a little grumpy as he had another 102+ fever. It is strange as he showed no other sign of illness either time that he had a little fever (except the grumpiness). Perhaps it is teething, but the fever seems high for that. Who knows? The fever is gone now, though.

Again, Emmett slept well on this portion of the trip (even with his fever). The time at the beach was relaxing at Emmett seemed to enjoy walking on the beach in the carrier just as much as he does anywhere else.

This is getting way too long, but the other thing I might mention is the actual traveling. Emmett was great on the flight to portland falling asleep in Andrea's lap early in on the flight. It was funny as Andrea and I were both watching him as he awoke and he had his groggy face on, then he looked up, saw both of us staring down on him and got excited, acting like having us there when he woke up was the best surprise in the world. On the way back he was a little grumpier (fever?) but slept on Andrea once again. The most exciting part for me was that I took him to the Portland airport bathroom to change him, found that his diaper was still dry, walked him over to the urinal, and he peed in the airport urinal. I think people thought I was pretty crazy, but no one commented.