10 Pounds

Ian is growing. He is almost ten pounds. Or he is ten pounds if you don't mind counting clothes and diapers.

There is an interesting store here in Houston called A Woman's Work (I might be a little off on that name). It specializes in breast feeding products, but also has just about anything else a parent might need for a newborn. They are very serious about their breast feeding at this place. So serious, in fact, that they have a newborn scale that is free to the public. I guess you are probably supposed to be a customer to use it, but I don't think it is a requirement. At first it seemed odd to me that they have a scale. Why not just go to your doctor if you want to know how much your kid weighs? Then Betsy explained the true reason for the scale.

When a woman is concerned that she is not producing enough milk, she can weigh her baby before and after feeding. Then she will know exactly how much the baby is eating. Now, this raises a question that I think is obvious, is she going to feed at the store? I guess because it is a breast feeding focused store, this wouldn't be a problem. Still, who wants to sit in a store and breast feed? I understand doing it if you are out and your child needs to eat. No problem. But at this store, apparently, parents affirmatively go there to breast feed. Interesting.

There is another issue with this process. There seems to be a basic misunderstanding here between liquid and dry ounces. A liquid ounce is typically what is used when you measure milk or formula or whatever you are using. A dry ounce is obviously what is measured when you weigh your baby. The two are not directly correlated at all. In fact, to get from one to the other, you would need to know the density of the liquid and do some pretty complicated calculations that left my brain the minute I got through my physics class in high school. So these people's calculations do not tell them how many ounces of milk their child is getting in a feeding.

Another issue this brings up is why do we measure baby's weight in pounds and ounces? Why not just say the baby weighs 9.5 pounds instead of 9 pounds 8 ounces. You will never find a normal scale that shows weight this way, so why is this special measurement saved only for babies?

Anyway, that was a very long way of saying that Betsy took Ian to the store yesterday to see how much he weighs (not to see if she is producing enough milk) and he weighs almost 10 pounds now!

Picture Time

After painstakingly copying completely nonsensical URLs, I was able to get a link to Betsy's Kodak albums. Thanks for making this unnecessarily difficult, Kodak. I don't know if the links are static. I have a feeling they aren't and I will have to update this post once in a while. We will see.

The links will be permanently in the right column, but they are also below. Enjoy!

First set of pictures

Second set of pictures

Wow

Wow, we had a serious couple of days. When we first got home from the hospital, we had no idea what we were doing. We were up all night and all day. Unfortunately, Ian had his nights and days a little confused. We didn't take advantage of the daytime sleeping because everything was so new. I went back to work after that first week, which wasn't really a week since Ian did not come home until Friday evening. It was more like a weekend.

We had a nanny come for two weeks to help out at night. Things went smoothly, we got a reasonable amount of sleep, and we learned a lot about how to take care of Ian.

Now that we are completely on our own, we really had to figure things out. It's not the new, wow we have a baby anymore. Now it's, ok, we have a baby ... how exactly are we going to survive. For me, it means trying to come home from work a little earlier and sleeping a lot less. For Betsy it means constant work. We got Ian in a pretty good eating and sleeping rhythm -- at least we thought we did.

On Saturday, Ian decided he was done sleeping. He didn't sleep more than about 30 minutes at a time starting Saturday night and lasting until Monday. Wow. Keeping a baby entertained for that many hours straight is a lot of work. Amazing. I was a zombie Monday at work and I wasn't even the one who stayed up all night with him on Sunday.

He seems to have figured out how to sleep again. Phew. Let's hope he stays on top of this sleep thing because other than Sunday, he has been the best kid ever!

Privacy

So writing this blog has brought up several issues about privacy. First, I have not written in a journal of any sort in years. When I have written in a journal, it was usually stuff that I didn't really want others to read. Writing for the public is very different. It's a little odd. It's even more odd writing this blog because pretty much everyone reading it, at least everyone that I know who is reading it, I personally know.

Ok, so I know everyone visiting the blog, but the categories of people reading makes things even more difficult. I have friends, family, and work friends reading. Betsy has her friends and family reading too. Eventually Ian might have friends reading the blog -- will blogs still be around when Ian and his friends are reading? Are there things I should say or shouldn't say to avoid embarrassing him one day? Are there pictures or videos that I should or shouldn't post? Will this blog be used against him at his Bar Mitzvah?

I have been reading some other blogs about kids lately. There are a lot of dads out there writing blogs these days. Most of them are much better writers than I am and spend a lot more time on their blogs. Some of these guys post 5 or 10 times a day. Of course, they tend to be stay at home dads or have jobs they can do from home. I would guess some of them are professional writers getting paid by advertising on their blogs or for writing other things during the day.

There are a lot of different theories out there on children's privacy. The most extreme of these dad bloggers won't post photos of their kids online. I haven't read all of them carefully enough to know, but I would bet some of them won't even mention their kids' names. I guess I have broken all of the rules. Then again, I don't have thousands of people reading my blog like some of these writers do. I am pretty confident that no one other than friends and family will ever know this blog exists.

So, photos and videos and details about Ian's life will continue to be posted right here.

Here is your photo for making it through this post. Screw privacy...

Video Part 2

I figured out how to post the video. Now that didn't take too long, did it?

Video

Having a baby means it's time to start doing all kinds of things I wouldn't normally do. For example, 3 AM feedings. Wouldn't normally do that. Not something any normal human being chooses to do. But, this post isn't really about that. No, the thing I am doing now is videotaping.

Now, people had video cameras when I was growing up, but they were pretty few and far between. And, they were huge. I remember video-cameras that look like something they tape TV shows with. The brick cell phone had nothing on these things. My family was not a video family. In fact, we were pretty late adopters of the VCR. This is all a little surprising considering my mom actually grew up with movie cameras. She still has her old films somewhere in the attic, although we don't have anything to play them on.

Home videos have changed a lot since my mom was a kid. It has changed a lot since I was a kid. Our super-cool new camcorder doesn't even use tapes. It just has a hard drive that records the video. I am guessing the editing has changed a lot too. Gone are the days of a razor-blade and tape to edit the film. Now I get to use my MacBook the way it is actually meant to be used. Of course, all is not as easy as it sounds. First I have to get the video from my camera to my computer. Then I have to convert it to a format that works with the software on my MacBook. Finally, I get to edit. Now, I have two programs for editing. One comes with the computer and is pretty scaled down, but easy to use. The other, we got inexpensively when Betsy was a student, but it is a pretty serious full-function editing tool. I started with the full-function tool. That was a mistake. Way too complicated. Once I imported some video, I had no idea how to do anything. The instruction book is far too big.

Next I tried, the easy editing tool that comes with the MacBook. Ah, Mac simplicity at work. iMovie let me do everything I wanted to do. So, I made my first video of Ian complete with music from a musician Betsy and I really like. Finally, I had to figure out how to export it in a format that people could view on their computers. Good times. Way to waste about 4 hours on a Saturday morning.

I still have to figure out where and how to post the video so people can see it. I don't want to put it somewhere public like youtube, so it might take a while to find the right place. In the meantime, if you want to see the video, email me or Betsy and we will send a copy to you.

As always, here is your picture of the week as a reward for reading this far:

The Bris

Ian became a Jew on Tuesday. Way to go Ian. It's interesting that the Bris is an important public celebration. I mean, I get it in some respects. Everyone gets to come see the new 8 day old baby. Everyone can congratulate the parents and dote on the baby and in modern times, bring various stuffed animals and other brightly colored play toys. Believe me, the parents love that part of it. Those first 8 days without some of the essential baby stuff feels like forever.

But when you get down to it, this whole thing is about a minor surgical procedure. Removal of the foreskin no less. Really, a public celebration?

We took the non-traditional approach to the ceremony. We had Ian, his two grandfathers, and me up in his nursery for the snipping half of what is known as the snip and snack in Betsy's family. Betsy's dad took the important role of holding Ian still during the process. This has a technical Hebrew term, but I don't remember what it is and I am sure spell check wouldn't help me much even if I could remember the term. My dad and I sort of hid behind a piece of paper so we wouldn't have to watch too much. Now, I have watched the snip before, but somehow it is very different when it is your own son. I did not need to nor want to watch.

After the private ceremony, we came downstairs and explained the ceremony to our largely non-Jewish crowd. It was a nice little ceremony. Both of our immediate families had reading parts. Typically letting a Goldberg know in advance that they have a public speaking role is a bad idea, so it was a little surprise. That turned into several minutes of laughter and incomprehensible prayer. You can't win em all.

Here is a picture of the happy family at the Bris. Notice Ian is doing pretty well considering what he just want through. See you at the Bar Mitzvah.



Other than the Bris, life is relatively mellow. Ian eats, sleeps, poops, pees, and cries. That's about all there is to it. We would prefer that he learn how to sleep at night, but he does most of his sleeping during the day. Great.

Today Ian was introduced to a play mat. This was his first significant outside stimulation. He seemed to get it, although he is probably way too young. But he did kick some animals with his feet and stare into the mirror looking at another blurry little baby. He now thinks we are two timing him.

Sorry for the delay in updating, I will try to be a little more active on the blog from here on out.

One last picture to reward you for reading this much.