Maternity leave; holiday season; nursery coming online
A pretty eventful week here in SiliBaby land!
SiliMommy started her maternity leave this week. On her second-to-last day of work, her company held its holiday party. One of the party games was guessing her waistline!
She spent this week being domestic and also getting some rest.
In other news, we finished clearing out SiliBaby's bedroom, and had the nursery furniture delivered yesterday.
Here are pictures of the furniture in its new habitat!
First, as you stand in the doorway to the room, you face the window, under which we placed the dresser:
Turning left, you can see the crib (you can see a bit of it at the left side of the photo above):
Finally, standing next to the dresser (thus, facing the doorway where I stood for the first shot), you can see the changing table:
Someday soon, I'm going to start incorporating YouTube into this blog. At that point, I'll do a 360-degree video pan of the nursery.
(The things beneath the casters, by the way, were styrofoam squares to keep the furniture legs off the carpet until it finished drying; the carpet cleaners had been here early that morning, and the carpet was not yet 100% dry.)
In other news...the doula is scheduled to come for our prenatal consultation on Sunday. During that time, I guess she'll get the lay of our household, and we'll do the various administrative stuff (contract, etc.). We're also going to watch a couple of videos together: one about nursing, and another about how to calm your crying infant (the latter video, called The Happiest Baby on the Block, is the complement to a very-well-regarded book of the same title).
Then, that night, our friend who hosted SiliMommy's baby shower is going to come over with her 1-year-old (and her pugs?) for New Year's Eve.
For the rest of the long holiday weekend (my company's closed for 4 days for the New Year), we'll be unpacking and setting things up: the cosleeper needs to be installed...I badly need to clean my car (even if I didn't need to install a car seat into it)...lots of other stuff to do...
Have a Happy New Year!
SiliDaddy,SiliMommy, SiliFetus, and SiliPug
Of car seats, strollers, and doulas
We made some of our remaining equipment-related decisions in the past couple of days, and acted on them today.
For a car seat, we decided to get a pair of Britax Roundabout car seats (one for each car). I have an appointment with the California Highway Patrol on January 4 to install them. (I tend to suck at this sort of thing, and the cops do thousands of them per year--they're so popular that the service has a monthlong waiting list.) The Britax seats are tested to meet UK safety standards (impact-tested at 60 mph) instead of US standards (30 mph), and every single review I've seen gives them 4.5 or 5 out of 5 stars.
Also, although the seats are expensive, they are "convertible" seats--usable both as baby and toddler seats. So, in the long run, they should save us a bit of money.
For the stroller, we decided to get the Zooper Waltz (2006 model). This is a good time to be buying things like strollers. As with cars, the retailers want to close out their stock from the year ending; changes from year to year tend to be negligible.
Pictures of both items below. Although a second child seems like an insane person's dream right now, we're keeping things somewhat unisex just in case.
Britax Roundabout (Color: "Mist")
Zooper Waltz (Color: "Navy & Beige")
We selected the Zooper based on research done by my best friend, who bought one for his baby girl two years ago, and recommends it heartily. At 17 lbs., it is at the top end of what SiliMommy feels she can wrangle up and down the stairs. (Hopefully, it will live in the car, though.)
We do have one friend who is enthusiastic about the offerings of MacLaren, another high-end stroller manufacturer. In the end, it was kind of a toss-up. (Bottom line: If we don't end up liking the Zooper, we can just return it and get the MacLaren. Blue by American Express gives you 3 months to return something, even if the retailer himself won't accept the return--a great benefit!)
In other news, we decided to hire a postpartum doula. Her role is essentially to support SiliMommy and me to enable us to care for our baby as best as possible. She will come home with us from the hospital and help us get SiliBaby set up in her new digs. This page describes the concept of a postpartum doula much better than I could hope to, so check it out! We're thinking of having her come, on average, three-to-four times a week for the first three weeks of SiliBaby's life.
Would You, Could You with a Goat?
I have begun reading to SiliBaby! I bought her her very first present from Daddy the other night, the book you see above. Oddly, you can buy this book--containing thirteen stories--for about $25 bucks from Amazon. Or, Amazon will sell you the entire Dr. Seuss collection, fifty-eight books in all, for some $500: about 4x the number of stories for 20x the price!
I thought Dr. Seuss would be good for prenatal reading because it's all written in verse. That is, the meter of the stories provides a cadence which is something extra the baby can listen to/focus on. And one is probably never too young to start getting a handle on meter (a pet preoccupation of mine).
Anyway, SiliBaby's very first stories were, in order: "The Sneetches," "The Cat in the Hat," and (an abridged rendition of) "Dr. Seuss's Sleep Book." "The Sneetches" is the first story I remember my parents reading me. I remember that I especially loved the contraptions, which seems fitting for a future Silicon Daddy. (I seem to remember that I also found the bucketsful of cash intriguing...)
I have no idea if my reading of the "Sleep Book" put SiliFetus to sleep. I do know, however, that SiliMommy--awake at the beginning--was snoring away by the end of the reading. So that's a good sign!
In with the new, out with the old
We finally finished shopping for SiliBaby's bedroom furniture today (I think). We finalized our decision on a crib, a chest of drawers, bedding, and a changing table.
Here they are!
I actually preferred a very nice, alphabet-themed set of bedding. Very educational! SiliMommy, however, clearly wants our child to grow up illiterate, and decided on the bedding you see above.
Hopefully, we'll have much of the crap out of the bedroom by tomorrow. I asked the furniture shop to hold off on delivering the goods until we're ready, which they said was fine with them--we just need to give them a couple of days' notice.
Meanwhile, as SiliMommy wants to repurpose her small bookcase for baby/childcare-related books, I went through my two giant bookcases tonight, in an effort to make space for her books there. I tend to hate getting rid of books, but I've finally arrived at three tests that they have to pass in order to stay with me. The answer to at least one of the following questions must be "yes":
1) If I get rid of the book, will it be hard to replace? (
Atlas Shrugged failed this test. A survey of Chinese intellectual streams over the past two millenia passed it.)
2) Do I seriously see myself reading this book, or wanting to, within the next year or two? (A large, hardcover book on adult ADHD failed this test. Shitheaps of history books--Volumes 2 and 3 of Solzhenitsyn's
Gulag Archipelago and several books on Israeli/Jewish history/theology--passed.)
3) Does the book have great sentimental value to me? (
The World According to Garp passed the test, as did all of my Doonesbury books. Dilbert didn't. Doonesbury played a big role in forming my intellectual, humor, and moral perspectives when I was in junior high school and high school;
Garp was one of the first serious-fiction adult books I read, when I was twelve.)
For the first time, I actually even decided to get rid of a few of my Japanese-language books, including a very large comic-book history of four of the world's major religions. Bottom line: I've had the damn thing since college, and I've never gotten around to reading it. So it's time.)
We also made time, today, to attend the first birthday party of the son of our friend who co-hosted SiliMommy's baby shower. She and he seemed to like
his present, so that was nice.
Furniture and work and stuff
We pretty much finalized our decisions on a crib (Bonavita Clarissa) and strollers (Graco frame + car seat; Zooper Waltz) in the past couple of days. Now, we just have to actually get The Disaster Area That Will Be The Baby's Room ready. I am about 80% mobile now, so I'm able to get more and more stuff done. Next weekend will be very busy, both with preparation and with a social event.
My recovery is coming just in time! SiliMommy looks like she's about to burst, and our shared gut feeling is that she's gonna be early. (Possibly wishful thinking on both our parts, but also, everyone we talk to tells us that--contrary to the wisdom we received in childbirth class--their first came early. Hell, even my dad came early, if memory serves.)
At the same time, we're both so woefully unprepared--my injury really put us behind the 8-ball--that we're really hoping that the baby won't come until she's supposed to. Worst case, though, we'll just keep hitting the most urgent milestones first: Get bassinet and other newborn essentials...finish up the bedroom...install crib and furniture...it's all doable, if not ideal.
(One of the challenges is solving the puzzle of where to put everything. Each piece of furniture we want/need to install means relocating something else. Which, in turn, necessitates relocating something else. It's like this big, chain-reaction puzzle. And getting rid of my La-Z-Boy is *not* on the table!)
On the work front, her employer has said that she needs to be onsite three days a week after the baby is born. (Originally, it was two, but this is still a pretty accommodating stance on her boss's part.) Fortunately, my own HR department is okay with my working from home three days a week, as long as it's okay with my boss. (I'll be surprised if he has any objections: we've got one-person offices all over the country.)
If at all possible, we'd really, really like to avoid childcare until she's at least a year old. A friend of ours, though, knows a childcare provider nearby, and says she's awesome, so I think we're going to try to develop a relationship with her, as well. There are bound to be days when SiliMommy and I both have to be on-site at our respective gigs...to paraphrase Tina Fey, "I've got a written committment to work, and only a verbal agreement with the baby."
I plan to finish up any of my shopping from Amazon tonight...my free trial of Amazon Prime runs out on the 7th, and I hate to lose out on all that free shipping. On a separate note, a very lovely heirloom-type gift arrived today for the little one from Grandpa.
Getting a move on!
A slightly eventful couple of days.
We had childbirth class #3 (out of 4) last night. Much of the class was about different choices available for pain management. SiliMommy doesn't have any "If I don't have natural childbirth, I'm not fulfilled in my womanhood" hangups, and so she'll probably just get the epidural when the time comes. I think she's pretty eager to minimize the pain as effectively as possible without endangering the little one.
The instructor took great pains to let us guys know that our spouses/partners are likely to shower us with verbal abuse...
This time, the expectant mothers simulated pain by squeezing an ice cube as hard as they could. I didn't think this sounded too painful, frankly--maybe a little cold--but then I tried it myself. Boy, did it hurt! It feels like you're abrading the hell out of your hand, even though there's no friction taking place, since the ice cube isn't moving. (The instructor said that guys never find this painful, but whatever...if this makes me less of a man, then so be it. It really hurt!)
In other news, this is shaping up to be the first major shopping/preparation weekend. I just went on a small shopping spree at target.com, buying some of the essentials on our checklist. Target's really cool because my credit card offers 6x (!) points back on Target purchases. That's not shabby at all!
(NB:
Consumer Reports has a good, no-frills checklist of newborn essentials, which I think is very helpful. All of the parents I know say that it's easy to go crazy wasting money on all kinds of shit you don't need for the baby, so a trustworthy list is good to have.)
SiliMommy also wants to buy the stuff that she'll be taking to the hospital with her when the time comes: basically the stuff that she'll be packing into her overnight bag.
And, tomorrow, it's off (again) to the baby furniture store, hopefully to pick out a crib and stuff. For the rest of the weekend, we (I)'ll be starting to clear out the second bedroom, as it begins its transformation from home office/storage wasteland to nursery. (I'd attempted to begin the transformation a month ago, and immediately broke my ankle.)
I've also really gotta figure out what to do about a stroller, already. A couple of friends of mine--parents of small children, themselves--have made the point that too elaborate/big/heavy a stroller is going to be very burdensome: the fact that we live on the second floor will make schlepping a heavy stroller a chore, and neither of us has a huge car...I suspect that whatever stroller we end up buying is going to live in one of our cars. I see little point to carrying it upstairs/downstairs all the time when it's really exclusively for downstairs (i.e., outside of our home) use.
In other news, the need to start spending all this money finally got me off my butt to catch up on several months' worth of bookkeeping, and to finally file my expense report for my June trip to Japan. This is the time to clear the financial decks: It's really either now or never.
And still other news, I had a follow-up with the orthopaedist yesterday. He proclaimed himself pleased with my progress, and told me that I should (must) wean myself off the walking boot over the next two weeks. So I'm getting around increasingly well, and with less and less pain.
At any rate, that's pretty much all the news that's fit to print for now. Next update as events warrant!
