Hike till you can't hike no more

Its not yet clear if Claire likes hiking or not, but she certainly doesn't complain when we take her out. Yesterday we took her on her second hike, this time to Alum Rock park in San Jose. This is a really nice spot in the East San Jose hills. The park is made up off a nice big valley with a river running through it and is surrounded by mountains (which is actually redundant to say since I've already mentioned it was a valley). There are many miles of hiking trails, some of which cut through the valley and meander near the streams and some of which climb the steep hills on the outskirts of the park. From several points in the park there are nice views of San Jose and the South Bay. Santa Clara County park officials did not pay me to describe the park so you can rest assured this is an accurate assessment of the park. Anyway, we took Claire there yesterday and we hiked for about an hour and a half and attempted to show her the views of the surrounding cities. She may have briefly opened one eye and looked at a clover, but she pretty much slept the whole time we were in the park. She even slept through a somewhat smelly and uncomfortable visit to the public toilet. It should be noted that I discovered yesterday that even though the baby may not be able to use the toilet, if the person carrying the baby needs to use the restroom, you can't simply leave her outside to play with the dirt. Because of this Claire got to experience the dirt and grime of a park men's room for the very first time. I apologized to her for this experience and attempted to explain that the sorry state of the restroom should not be used to form a stereotype that all men are dirty pigs. I figure that if I can start breaking down these gender barriers before they're created in her mind she'll grow up to be a more tolerant individual. I'm actually quite proud of this seemingly inconsequential event as I feel like even though she won't remember this that I've done a service to humanity or at the very least to her husband of the future. That's right little Johnny or Mickey or whatever your name is, you can rest more comfortably in your diaper tonight knowing that little Claire will treat you with more respect and is less likely to curse the male race on the account of you forgetting to properly load the laundry machine. Now with that said, if you are reading this, that doesn't give you an excuse to be a lazy bum and not treat her like a princess. By the time she's old enough to marry you, there will be technology to allow me to watch your every move. And believe me, I'll be watching you like a hawk with extra special super duper glasses.

Claire's First Hike

California is in the middle of a very big drought. The water conservation board is talking about mandatory 20% water cutbacks this year and the Governator has declared the state of California officially in a drought. It is only fitting that all of this is going on during a period in which we received non-stop rain for a couple of weeks. I think we went from 4inches for the season to 10inches and 95% of normal. This doesn't really help much though as this is the 3rd consecutive year we've had below normal rainfall. We need to have something like 130% of normal rainfall this year to end the drought. The reason I bring this up is that Sarah and I have been itching to go out for a hike but the rain has dampened our plans for several weeks. This "cabin fever" as we Californians call it when the temperature barely reaches 60 and the skies cloud over for a few days caused us to go ahead and buy some tickets to visit Hawaii in a couple of months and in the meantime the rain has finally stopped and we've been able to take Claire out hiking. Nothing major just a two mile hike (we tried to make her walk it but she refused) in the Saratoga hills at a lovely place called Villa Montalvo. It was a wonderful time and Claire mainly slept as we carried her up the hills. At the top we met a nice couple who were expecting their own baby in about 4 months. We chatted about babies if you can believe that and then headed back down the mountain. At the bottom we meet a nice couple I'll kindly refer to as the Bizzaro Sivitz's. If you've watched Seinfeld you know what I mean. Anyway, they drove a Silver 2002 Mazda Protege 5 (ours is Black), had a baby boy (ours is a girl), carried her in a sling (we use a bjorn), and their little one was 9-weeks old (ours is almost 6 weeks, which is 9 upside down). After talking with the Bizzaro Sivitz's about an upcoming meeting of the Bay Area Baby Wearer's group we parted ways and of course headed in the opposite direction. We then had a picnic outside of Coffee shop in Saratoga and took Claire to a nice little bamboo patch at the Hakone gardens. After this full day Claire slept for 6 straight hours. A new record for us.

Into the 2nd Month

Well its been a long time since I've posted and for all of you itching to see more cute pictures of Claire I am sorry. In fact it has been so long since I've posted that Claire is talking now. She says things like "goo" and "kai". In addition she seems to be laughing in her sleep as well. Sarah and I like to speculate about what the contents of her dreams. We figure that as a 1 month old she could be dreaming about milk. In her dream she is likely sitting next to a pool of warm milk, wearing a onesie and drinking a warm glass of the white stuff with a little yellow umbrella. The other thing she tends to do in her sleep is grunt. Not sure why she does that, but believe me it sounds more like a 80 year old man than a baby. Anyway, last week we took her in for her 1 month checkup. This was very exciting because not only did Claire tip the scales at a whopping 10lbs 5oz but the doctor also told us we were some of the most mellow parents that he has seen. This seems to be happening a lot to us lately. Friends have commented that we look very comfortable around the baby and strangers have mistooken us for having another child already. The doctor thinks this is a good thing because he believes that mellow parents yield mellow babies. I can't quite place why we come off as so mellow. We definately don't have too many questions for the doctors, but it might also be that as such big time planners (remember this baby was planned 5 years in advance) we are well read on subjects ranging from the dudu (down-up-down-up) swaddle to the differences in a babies stool as she ages. I wonder what the non-mellow parents look like. Do they come in to the office with frazzled hair and shaky hands holding the baby upside down because they don't think the baby is getting enough blood in its head? ... wait strike that, I'm remembering back to the baby classes that and the parents fell into three distinct categories: Comedians, Happy-go-lucky, and just plain Idiots. The comedians, consisting of about 5% of the couples, would made jokes about all the different gizmos used to extract stuck babies from the mommies. I'm guessing most of these couples were outwardly laid back but inwardly scared to bits about having a baby. Another 5%, and the category into which we fell, were the happy-go-lucky parents who just sort of absorbed the material, made light conversation with the others and quietly left the class at the end. Of course, I do admit that while we were practing breathing techniques I couldn't stop laughing and I think at one point the teacher looked at me and wondered if I was actually a 5 year old girl. Anyway, the vast majority of the parents, about 90%, fell into the my IQ can't be higher than my age category. These parents just didn't seem to get simply concepts like passing items around for everyone to see. Remember when you were in Kindergarden and the teacher would bring in something special to show everyone.... If you were in the front row and the teacher handed you the gadget of the day, did you look at it and then simply set it on your desk? Of course not. Somehow you get two adults together, insert a baby into one of them and they forget the basic principles they learned in school. Another concept these parents seemed to lack was the ability to think their questions through before asking them. One parent was so fixated on the fact that newborns are supposed to get a screening test 12 hours after they are born that she actually asked the teacher if the 12 hour clock starts from the time the baby is born or from the time they cut the umbilical cord. For you non-parents out there, the time difference between these two events is somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 seconds.

Bringing Home the Bacon

I officially returned to work this week after an almost 3 week hiatus. As a family man it is important that I take care of my daughter, plan for her future, and bring home the bacon. Actually Sarah continues to bring home the bacon, but she gets her money simply by sitting at home for the next 9 weeks. The nearly insolvent and nearly bankrupt State of California continues to send Sarah maternity checks and none of them have bounced yet! By the way, the term "Bringing home the bacon" is widely believed to come from and old game of catching a greased pig. This used to and from what I hear, continues to be a popular competition at country fairs in which the winner was awarded the pig. This seems practical if you live on a farm, but if I were to catch as greased pig at a fair, I would not be able to bring it home with me. Perhaps they would provide a slaughtering service where I could in the end quite literally bring home the bacon.

Anyway, me going back to work has been a bit of an adjustment for the entire Sivitz family. For starters, I don't get to sleep until noon anymore and as such I only get as much sleep as Claire lets me during the night. Then there is the fact that Sarah and Claire are now home alone. This is hard for her as simply tasks such as eating breakfast or taking a shower are not so easy as the baby doesn't stop having needs just because Sarah wants to clean herself or eat something yummy. We've tried explaining to Claire that without a few minutes for mom to eat, the milk will dry up and she in turn will suffer, but she just sort of gives us a blank stare. Sarah has also expressed that she feels as if she has been reduced to the life of a cow. But I say at least she is a cow in California. Happy cows come from California. Imagine if she was a Wisconsin cow. I don't know much about the emotional states of Wisconsin bound cows but it can't be that great living in -10 degree weather.
Regardless of how you look at Sarah's job as a mother, I'd like to use this forum to first express my gratitude and then to praise her for the excellent job she has done to date. By all measures, she is shaping up to be an excellent mother and I've measured with a yardstick, meterstick, and my foot.
As to the adjustments Claire has had to make now that I'm back at work, its hard to say that their really are any. I'm pretty sure she doesn't miss me when I disappear for the day and I'd say there is a good chance she doesn't realize I'm gone and probably doesn't even realize I exist.

Social Butterfly

At two weeks babies don't really do that much yet. They can't really focus their eyes or their attention but parents still search for ways to improve their kids development so that they will have a higher IQ later in life. Some parents try Mozart in the crib and some try reading stories. Our approach was to teach her some social lessons. She is currently an only child so we thought it would be a good idea to take her out to meet some other kids her own age. We thought about taking her to the park, but its been raining cats, dogs, fish, and all kinds of other animals all weekend so we couldn't really do that. Instead we invited over some good friends (I'll call them Steve and Victoria) and their 4 month old daughter. We'll call her Sophia for the purposes of this blog. Anyway, we got these two lovely ladies together and well, to be honest not much happened.. They didn't actually even look at each other. The only thing that did happen was a small fight in which Sophia exerted her "I'm the big girl on the block attitude" and smacked Claire across the face. It probably wasn't intentional because we sat these two ladies (each with very little control of their own limbs) right next to each other, but deep down I'm thinking Claire probably holds a grudge and may take it out on her new "friend" later in life. Or better, maybe we'll teach her the virtues of friendship and forgiveness and she will simply buy a pony for Sophia.

2 Weeks and Going Strong

Well Claire is officially 2 weeks old today. We went in for her 2 week checkup and the pediatrician informed us we are doing an excellent job as parents. You might ask how our pediatrician would know that we are good parents based on just giving Claire a checkup. The metric she uses isn't the number of (or lack of) bruises on the babies body, but her weight gain. If the baby is gaining weight the doctor gives a big gold star to the parents. In fact, our baby has gained so much weight that we got a gold star and a couple of lollipops. Apparently feeding the baby is a sign of good parents. This one fact alone might help explain why 2/3 of the American population is overweight. If new parents continue to hear things like "You are the perfect parents because your daughter is gaining weight. Keep feeding her and keep it up" then of course we're going to end up with 200 lb six year olds having heart attacks. Anyway, I digress. At this checkup, Claire weighed in at a whopping 8lb. 13oz. I think a graphic is best used in this situation:

Aside from telling us about how great we are, the doctor also talked about how great Claire is. She used words like "perfect" and "beautiful" on many occasions. I'm not sure if she just says this to all parents so they feel better about themselves and their baby or if we really do have the perfect baby. Speaking of perfection, one way we keep our baby perfect is by putting gloves on her hands. We do this to prevent her from scratching herself. Any parent would know this is standard practice, but to those of you non-parents there are many surprising normal things that babies do and while at the doctors office we received a list of these. Here are just a few highlights:

Quivering of the Jaws and Legs --- This took us a while to get used to. At first glance you'd think the baby was really cold, but when she is still doing this wearing a winter jacket sitting directly underneath a heat lamp and sweating, you quickly realize this is not a sign of her being cold. (Update: Sarah informs me that babies don't sweat)

Whitish coating on the tongue --- This is just because the milk gets stuck on the babies tongue but is sometimes a sign of a more serious problem known as thrush. In our case, our baby just has a milk tongue.

Hiccups all the time --- Claire gets hiccups at least a couple of times a day. Hiccups are a sign of a good feeding. It looks like it would be very painful, as her whole body shakes. But the doctor says it doesn't hurt our perfect child.

The other big news is that Claire received her first official piece of mail. She now has a walled sized health insurance card stating that Great West will cover her health expenses assuming she can come up with the copay amount. The only problem with this is that she doesn't yet have a wallet. It seems a little early to get her one though so we might wait a few weeks.

Big News

We had a baby! No really, we did. 8lbs. 4oz, etc., etc..... This would have been big news a couple of weeks ago, but exciting news just isn't exciting once everyone knows it. A couple of months ago, a group of economists announced we were in a recession. Noone really paid attention to this since a majority of us figured it out about 6 months earlier. So how about some fresh news! News so hot that the ink hasn't dried on the bits yet. News that will make you want to climb to the tallest building in your respective city and yell it from the top of your lungs. News that would push the stimulus plan to the second page.... Drumroll please.......


Claire's Umbilical Cord Stump Has Fallen Off!!!!! That last vestage of her 9 months in the womb, shriveled and gone. It was scary at first, seeing the scab lying motionless on her diaper. My initial reaction was that a spider had crawled into her outfit or a hard crusty piece of fecal matter had escaped her diaper.. Alas it was the stump. This is her first official step in growing up. The first noticeable change in her life, and for this reason, the biggest news since her birth. I guarnatee she doesn't care about the state of the economy or the stability of the middle-east, to her this is BIG.

Anyway, I received a comment that I should stop talking about poop, vomit, and umbilical cord stumps and focus on the fact that she is a sweet, cute little baby. This is true. She does poop, she does vomit, and parts of her body are falling off, but she is the cutest little girl I've ever known. No offense to anyone else out there, but she is my little princess and that earns her the distinction of the cutest girl ever. (Sarah doesn't count in this equation because I didn't know her when she was a girl)... So yes, I'll focus on the cute moments for a second. My favorite is perhaps right after she eats. It is amazing how a few milliliters of milk can change a baby from a crying, fussy little brat into a perfect angel. After Claire eats she does this thing with her head where she wiggles it around a little and coos at the same time. It is her perfect, cathartic moment. Another cute thing she does is stretching. This seemingly simple feat is not something I expected a baby to do. Whenever she wakes up, she clenches her fists high above her head, kicks out her feat and arches her back. It is quite amazing actually and I'm sure I'll experience many more of these moments in the future.. That is if I don't drop her first... Sarah has this fear that I'm going to hurt her baby. This I believe is a natural motherly intinct. Hamster fathers left alone with their newborn children will actually eat their young and because of things like this mothers have evolved to be very protective of their offspring. According to Sarah, I have almost dropped the baby on several occasions, I have nearly thrown her at Sarah during a father to mother handoff, and I have nearly sat on her little one. I can't really deny these accusations, and I'll admit I need to be more careful. Afterall, I don't want mom going all praying mantis on me.

Projectiles

I've had the priviledge over the years to experience children of many different ages making projectiles. I've seen a nine year old make a very nice paper airplane and use it as a projectile, I've seen countless two year olds throw food across the room just to spite their parents or to draw some attention to themselves. I've also seen babies vomit up perfectly good milk just after their mother went through all the work to "prepare" it. However, I wouldn't generally call this type of vomit a projectile. Most of the time a little bit will dribble out onto the shirt of an unexpecting parent or onto a nearby cuddly blanket. Just last night I had my first experience with baby projectile vomit. Claire, Sarah, and I were sitting on the couch enjoying a nice "quiet" evening. (Quiet, means the TV was off, but we had to yell to hear each other over the sound of our screaming banshee.) Claire had just finished her dinner and as she always does after dining on mother's milk, she had a drugged look in her eye. Then without warning she vomitted. Projectile vomitted. It must have gone about a two feet. Two feet is a long way for a 9 day old baby. Two feet is the entire length of her body. She completed missed the burp rag and the vomit landed directly on my shirt. A few years ago this would have disgusted me, but as a father it makes me proud. I look at this as an opportunity to rave at how wonderful my daughter is and to brag to the world that she can vomit with the best of them.

3 Generations of Sivitzs

Outsmarting a Baby

Claire is now 6 days old and we've been home from the hospital for 4 of those 6 days. Things are changing rapidly. Mom is changing rapidly into a feeding machine. I think Sarah's father put it best when Claire was crying in the living room and Sarah was sleeping in her bed. After we couldn't get the baby to stop crying I went and got Sarah from the bedroom and upon showing up in the living room, her father said to me "Oh, I see you've brought the food". The baby is also changing rapidly. At first it was just the fact that she would open her eyes or cry at different pitches, but now she is even lifting her head up a bit and with her eyes open she even gives us the appearance that she is looking at us when we speak to her. This is undoubtedly not true though as all the baby books (there are a lot of them) say that the baby can't focus more than 6 inches away when they are first born. However, I have a hard time believing that anyone could prove that. Anyway, the most rapid changes that have occured since the baby was born is the baby's fecal matter. Often referred to as poopy, dung, #2, or taking a dump by others, we have seen her fecal matter change from a very dark green tar-like substance (the mecconium stool) to a very bright yellow runny substance. The best way to describe it is that when she was first born it was as if she was excreeeting a darker version of Slimer's (from Ghostbusters) goo and is now excreeting Cottage Cheese that has been mixed with curry powder. As the fecal matter has changed, I too have changed. The first time I saw her poop sitting in her pants I was disgusted and scared. It looked like such a mess I thought there is no way I'd ever be able to clean it up. I quickly realized there wasn't a smell and settled in for an extensive wiping session which constited of me using nearly an entire package of baby wipes. Since then I have gotten used to the sites and sounds associated with my daughter's movements and I can even boast on several occasions being able to fully clean her up with one single baby wipe. The one thing I still haven't gotten used to is the fact that she often, very often actually, will go to the bathroom while I'm changing her. This includes both #1 and #2 and sometimes these occur simultaneously. After a day or two of letting the extra matter escape onto the surface I was changing her on, I thought I'd gotten a bit smart, the quicker I did it, the less likely she'd be able to go again. This worked, but she inevitably would go in another 5 minutes or so. Then I decided that my haste was making more waste and I started cleaning her diaper slowly. I'd wipe her up, but I took my time putting on the new diaper. This proved effective as she soiled her already soiled diaper and I didn't have to change her again immediately. Alas, I had outsmarted the baby... Or not. I think Claire quickly adapted to my new scheme and did something I never thought was possible. 3 consecutive dumps. 2 in her old diaper (since I was waiting) and one in her new. I guess you can't outsmart a newborn.

We're doing it without the Nurses

Well, we are at home. No nurses, no more food in bed, no more nusery to watch the baby at night... I'll finish this post later... but for now, here are some photos: