anZel/Arden

Archive for June, 2006

boot camp graduate

I am proud to announce that I am a sleep-on-command graduate. Our commander and fearless leader anZel provided me with coupons of three hour sleep sessions!

Another thing people tell new parents is that you “sleep” when baby sleeps. That’s another term for sleep-on-command. Let’s say the baby feeds every three hours. If you are lucky, you change, feed and get him to sleep in one hour. You have two precious hours to yourself. “It is recommended” that you sleep NOW. In exactly two hours, you will be changing, feeding and getting him to sleep again.

I don’t know how others (my husband and my mum are among them) are blessed with this sleep-on-command skill. There were many times my mum would help me with the baby and urged me to take a nap in the afternoon. I would lay in bed either thinking I should be with the baby or counting the minutes that were wasted with my eyes open instead of closed. There goes another minute, five minutes, half hour and one hour…until it’s time to get up again. The time I spend in bed was more painful than when I was not. The anxiety of needing to fall asleep RIGHT NOW kept me awake and wired.

With the iron fist of commander anZel, there would be none of that nonsense. Perhaps a lot of sleep deprivation helps as well. I can now sleep in one, two hour, three hour, four hour, eight hour (some day) session. I have graduated!

the invisible pee

BC (before child), I didn’t know what invisible pee was. Let me explain.

When we change anzel’s diaper, 3 out of 5 times we find invisible pee! We would wipe anzel’s bum and put the soiled diaper in the trash can. In a matter of seconds (i really mean seconds), you would find his shirt or the whole counter top wet. There is no experienced CSI agent can explain where and how it comes about!

turning around

anzel has been a little under the weather since Monday. Needless to say, the spirit of the household has gone down a bit. And I have realized I may have turned around with this rewarding thing. Or maybe I have learned to find the rewards in other places.

I have never really been a motherly person (my husband always reminds me that he has one and doesn’t need another). The most motherly thing I did was telling people to take their vitamin C. In the olden days, I was always the one who stick my head in front of my husband with any sign of raised temperature. “I feel hot. Do I have a fever?” The answer was usually “NO”. :-p So I was presently surprised that I could tell anzel had a fever (without using a thermometer) and something wasn’t right with his little body. Perhaps I was just happy that I was right for the first time in a long while.

Because anzel is sick, he has not been eating very well. It can take him a good half hour to finish his regular feeding and with multiple stops in between. After he finished his 3 am feeding, I heard this sound that I dread. It’s the same sound you hear when someone sits on a fart bag. However, it’s not funny at 3 am, after half hour feeding and you are trying to get back to sleep NOW. By the time I finished changing his diaper and onesie (why not peed on the onesie at 3 am while mum was trying to hurry back to sleep?), I am wide awake and he is sound asleep. So I lay right next to this little being. The smell of him is intoxicating (not enough to put me to sleep tho).

anZel’s 2 months update

OMG, can you believe it!? anZel’s two months old today!!! And it’s father’s day

Ok, ok, we’ve been lazy on updating the site and we have had mutliple people scolded us for that.

We have had some pretty good success in training anZel to sleep in his own crib. His feeding schedule is also getting to be very regular now. He feeds every three hours on 12, 3, 6, 9 o’clock, and then the pattern repeats itself.

We have also been able to get him to sleep around 9PM in his own crib through out the night (aside from the feedings). The last night or two he hasn’t been fighting us as much when we put him to bed.

He’s also gotten alot more fun to play with as he’s started coo’ing and making funny noises. He can also make funny faces now (whether knowingly or not, I am not sure.) He can also smile a bit.

anZel in deep thoughts…what’s he contemplating now?

anZel meditating..or is he in deep thoughts again?

anZel the I-am-going-to-kick-your-butt kungfu master…

“Look ma…I got small hands!!”

Grandma Helen’s best capture..anZel smiling…

anZel doing his tummy time exercise…

“hey dad, don’t let go of the bottle, I am still hungry!!”

We hear you…

We hear you world…ok maybe not the world but enough people have bugged us about not posting!

Tomorrow will be anzel’s two month milestone. Like one of our friends says “it has been long but short”. It is so true. The first month was very challenging for all of us (even for veteran mum like Grandma Helen; she has two kids and three grand children). It’s was the kind of challenges which most new parents won’t tell other perspective parents or afraid to. If they did, their kids won’t have any friends to play with at school. You know why? It’s because no one would have kids!

The first month was “what have we gotten ourselves into”, “i think i have lost my marbles…never mind I lost them all”, “YIPPEE he pooped and peed (yes…the output function of another human being has NEVER been such a joyous and celebrated event in this household)” and “oh my goodness…you are still awake”. Another friend mentioned that mums have this “mother’s code” of silence for not telling other mums how hard it is to plunge into motherhood. It is also true and I have decided to break this code and tell it as it is (as our neighbor anne has done for me). After we survived our first month, we questioned our good friends, Will and Linda (they have a two year old), the reasons of not informing us the challenges. They said “we didn’t want to scare you off of parenthood.” We thought they were good friends. You always hear parents say…it’s the most rewarding thing you would ever do. Well, I would like to claim my first reward…some sleep please. That aside, watching anZel smile or do something new does temporarly erase the dark circles under eyes.

Second month feels more like “i think i am getting more sleep (not really)”, “i think I can figure this out” (sometimes) and “i think i can do a lot of things with just one hand (because you are holding the precious cargo on the other and you only have half as much time as before to get done what you need to in a day!)”. It finally sinks in that my new boss, who is only a couple feet tall/long and weights less than 15 lbs, will be the toughest boss I have ever had and I am on call 24×7! The upside is that anzel has started cooing and interacting with us. We are awake enough to laugh and enjoy all the facial expressions that he makes. We also have the good fortune of witnessing him pooped (a joyous event, remember) in his bath water twice. It is definitely more “rewarding”.

User manual

Since bring home the precious cargo, we have been actively learning how he operates. Mostly, we just want to keep him happy, so he doesn’t cry bloody murder and damages our ear drums. At times, we REALLY wish that he comes with a user manual (tho we may not read it like all other manuals we get; it’s good to have some sort of reference) as we are received MILLIONS of mixed information/instructions to make him happy. Feed him, change him and bathe him…this much we get! We do have a single friend who asked if he eats breakfast, lunch and dinner (you know who you are ;-)). We wish it would be that simple.

Feeding
How much should we feed him? Answers: he will let you know when he is full; don’t overfeed him as his stomach is small. How can we overfeed him if he will tell us when he is full??

Zzzs
When does he sleep and how long? Answers: let him sleeps as long as he wants; be sure to feed him every 2 to 3 hours. Which one is more important? Eat or sleep?

At the end, the answers to all these are “go figure it out yourself”. :-p