Glenn Fleishman Interrogates the Past

Joys of Parenting, 12.30 am Edition

I truly love my boys, and truly love being a parent. It's just neat every day. I have more of a sense of the limits of my patience (I didn't know I had a limit), and the unlimited amount of love I can feel and accept.

Then there's the lack of sleep.

Yesterday, I had one of my best days as a dad. We've been working, Lynn and I, to be able to let her get out of the house for a few uninterrupted hours at a time on the weekend. It probably sounds silly to any experienced parents--anyone with older kids, 3 or more kids, or just more energy--that we're at seven months, and it's still hard for "mom" to have some time to herself. Or maybe that doesn't sound silly at all.

Rex can be pretty easy going, but every weekend there's a cold among one of us

Benjamin

Groundhog's Hour

I slept poorly last night, a combination of a cold that got worse, daytime cold medicine (the ban on pseudophedrine seems to make it impossible to get a decent drowsy medicine), and Rex making a little (not much) noise overnight. At what I thought was 4.30, Rex starts talking, and he needs to get up when it's nearly 5. I'm in slight despair. I think I've slept maybe 4 or 5 hours, and it's an ungodly hour.

I pull the first shift with Rex, because he needs to get a dose of prescription acid medication that has to be in his stomach 30 minutes before food. On a good day, I get up, Lynn sleeps for another half hour (and sometimes through Rex's preparatory "singing" and talking), and entertainment him. I get Lynn up, and if it's really early, I go back to sleep for an hour or so.

Rex

When I Feel Old

When I'm staring at your happy, alert baby, it's 10 pm, and all I want to do is be in bed 30 minutes before, that's when I feel old.

Following two successful nights with Ben and Rex in one bedroom, all heck broke loose last night, by our definition. Lynn and I are both a bit tired, still catching up from, well, the last six months, even as routine settles in. Last night, Rex ate his first solid food (see photo), went down with little grumbling at about 6.45 pm, and we thought all was well. But before we'd even brought Ben into the bedroom an hour later, Rex erupted. Lynn brought Ben in and got him into his bed, and then tried to nurse Rex so he'd fall back asleep. No go.

Lots of bouncing, nursing, switching Rex back to our, darker room (Ben was upset about losing

Benjamin

Merger of Equals

Ben and Rex will sleep tonight, hopefully not For One Night Only! Only! Only!, in the same room. Ben has been asking us for Rex to move in with him for some time. We're on pins and needles, partly because of the getting-them-down part. We think that once they're both asleep, we'll be ok, since both of them typically sleep all night with an overlap.

Ben was taking a nap a few days so hard that after 3 hours (unheard of at this age), I went in to wake him up and it took several minutes of calling his name, and rubbing his back to get him awake! So perhaps he can sleep through the baby in his room in the morning, too. We'll see.

Wish us luck. Rex is nearly 6 months old. Ben, nearly 3 years, 2 months.

Morning: The boys did it! Lynn had to pop in

Benjamin

Pumpkin Huntin'

We went to the South 47 Farm, a neat effort to preserve farmland in the heart of sprawling suburbia, to look at pumpkins and other growing things yesterday morning. They're organic, there's a CSA operated there, and they have some u-pick or u-dig crops. (Flickr photo set)

I dug potatoes.

Ben looked at gourds.

He rode a pretend tractor.

We rode on haybales in a wagon behind a real tractor.

Both boys slept on the way home.

Honestly, Rex was there. Lynn was mostly manhandling him, and I corralled Ben. We came home with swiss chard, six small gourds, one medium pumpkin, some potatoes, and a moderate amount of mud. It poured today, so we're glad we hit it yesterday. We'll be returning soon.

Rex

One Muffin Makes You Smaller, One Muffin Makes You Tall

Who knew a muffin could be such a problem?

I bought two muffins yesterday at a newly relocated gluten-free, wheat-free bakery that's near my office. Delicious, although liquid-sucking: You had to drink constantly while eating it to keep your mouth from sealing shut. One of the problems with gluten-free stuff, sometimes.

I ate one of these dark chocolate muffins and brought the other home to Lynn. Unfortunately, they must have use a super-caffeinated chocolate source. The other ingredients were pretty simple, like brown rice syrup and garbanzo flour.

Not only did Lynn and I have trouble getting to sleep, but Rex awoke at about 11 pm after sleeping four hours and was wired like a college student hopped up on Jolt cola. Lynn fed him. Didn't help. Then we realized that feeding him could make it worse if it were the caffeine. We defrosted some frozen milk. He drank all

Benjamin

MonoFail

[Letter sent to head of the Seattle Monorail and director of operations]

My wife and I live in Seattle, and we had put off taking our 3-year-old on the monorail until there had been a good unbroken period of good service. Today, with my brother-in-law in town, we took our older son, my brother-in-law, and our 3-month-old on a trip from Seattle Center to Westlake Center.

On the return trip, we waited for 30 minutes for a train without any explanation. My wife finally went to the payment booth and asked what was up. The attendant explained that one of the trains had broken down and it would be 25 minutes before the next arrived.

My wife explained to the attendant that she might make an announcement. There was apparently no one else in authority present. The attendant, a non-native speaker, made two very quiet, inaudible announcements. We walked around

Benjamin

Outnumbered, Lynn Takes to Blogging; Power Outages

Like a rock against which the ocean slams for eons, finally wearing it down to a nubbin, pebbles, and sand, so, too, has Lynn finally taken up blogging after years of me doing so. Lynn is a marvelous writer, which I say not just because I'm married to her (although her email to me in our early dating demonstrated her considerable store of wit, charm, and intelligence). With three Fleishmans in the house, if Lynn is ever going to get a word in edgewise, she needs a forum.

In other news, power was fluctuating all over last night. At about 11.30 pm, when I had just managed to drop off, the power went out, silencing the "rain music" we use to help Rex sleep, turning off the A/C (which was mostly working as a fan), and turning off my CPAP. I got up and looked around through various

Rex

Nathan Lane or Rex Fleishman?

This linked photo is no longer available.

Nathan Lane or Rex Fleishman?

Rex

Rex a Bit Happier

We're still fighting the reflux, and he can be rather unhappy when it hits, but we're seeing some strategy pay off. Although we're about to switch from Prilosec to Prevacid, as the two drugs use a different way of activating the same mechanism (turning down the volume on production of acid at the protein pump level). In any case, we're seeing more smiles at times, and he slept a crazy long 10 1/2 hours last night. This is a photo Lynn took earlier this day; things went south after this, but it was a nice happy time.

Rex

Baby Blues

Our littler boy is still suffering from the effects of acid reflux. We're about to switch to a third medication that might reduce his stomach's acid production, and starting the process of consulting with a pediatric gastroenterologist. In short, the last week has been fairly miserable. He still sleeps well for a good hunk of the night, but his days are mostly unhappy, and his daytime napping poor. We're not quite at wit's end, but the family's nerves are frayed.

Fortunately, some good advice in the last couple of days about Mylanta and changing the current drug's dose seemed to help this afternoon, when he took a nice long nap, woke briefly to nurse without his usual mid-nursing wail, and then went right back down, probably for the rest of the night.

It's likely that we're on the right track now. Rex turns eight weeks old on Thursday, and we're

Benjamin

Reflux Redux and a Hat Cake

Lynn and I have been wrestling with Rex's reflux. Rex is growing apace and is not a spit-up-y baby, but, like his big brother Ben, he has acid reflux (known as GERD among the cognoscenti). The reflux means that certain positions make him uncomfortable, that he starts wailing and thrashing his legs while nursing, and that burping can make him unhappy. It leaves him with acid breath, too. With Ben, once we had it all figured out with the help of our pediatrician and our post-partum doula, Zantac took care of the problem. He stayed on it well into his second year of life.

Rex is a harder nut to crack. We started him on Zantac a couple of weeks ago, but it had only an initial effect, which soon wore off. Lynn tried eliminating dairy for a week, too, as that can be a reflux contributor. She's pretty careful