still cute

yep, he's still cute. i think maybe he'll be a professional sunbather when he grows up. wolly has decided he can get used to him (he did, afterall adjust to tayloe 5 years ago) and has stopped asking visitors to please take him back to where he came from.
in case anyone cares, lactation consultants at hospitals are, in general, completely useless. i called the one at our hospital today to ask a pretty simple question. she actually said, "well, in lactation school we learned ... "
so i asked, nicely of course, if she had children. you know the answer i think.

7th day

hhheeeeyyyy, i just remembered it's been a full week. we like having the kid around. new photos are on flickr. check it.

what the doctor ordered

"i swam across;
i jumped across for you;
oh all the things you do;
cause you were all yellow"
--Coldplay


T2 has jaundice. "he's pretty yellow and i'm a little concerned," were the doc's exact words, actually. like any level headed, mild-mannered, relaxed new parents we totally panicked. nevermind he's only lost a couple of ounces since birth. nevermind he's alert and happy and sleeping and eating and pooing.
someone (who knows when to be) is CONCERNED.
they took some blood to check the levels of something i can't pronounce and we waited to hear if it was dangerous. super dad took the call later that afternoon. i watched anxiously, trying to read his face. he looked ... really perplexed.
it's my habit upon hearing (or imagining) disconcerning news to immediately play out the worst case scenario in my head. i find it soothing. in my brain i'd called all of our family, put the dog in the kennel, packed a small bag and we were rushing tay to the hospital for a liver transplant. i had it all under control.
tayloe hung up the phone.
"what'd he say," i asked, not sounding at all calm.
"he said to take his clothes off and sit with him in the sun," tayloe said.
here's what i heard: "he told me to dress him up in a clown suit, teach him how to hoola hoop, then take him to venice beach and pawn his skills for cash."
"what?"
apparently the [name i can't pronounce] levels in his blood were quite high and the treatment is sun therapy.
"that's right. sun therapy. you think our health plan will cover it?" tayloe joked as he wisked our little fella outside.
so maybe you've heard about the heat wave that's been suffocating southern california. even the beach, where we live, is a furnace. bodies have been piling up and there isn't a single fan to be bought from here to San Francisco.
"what kind of hokey pokey california cure is this?" i said, close on the heels of my husband and our baby. "is the idea to burn him so bad that red blisters distract us from his yellow skin? if he doesn't burn, and he FOR SURE will, he's going to die of a heat stroke. and if he doesn't die of a heat stroke or get burned, he FOR SURE ABSOLUTELY is going to get wrinkles later in life."
i was a little beside myself, so i continued.
"baby's got sinus problems? sit him out in the fog for 2 days. cradle cap? nothing a few days in palm desert without water won't fix."
tayloe ignored me and sat directly in the hot afternoon sun with our son on his chest. 5 minutes each side then back in the house.
i figited.
saturday we went back to the doctor and learned, er..hem, that the sun therapy was working. his [name i can't pronounce] levels were already down and we're to continue blasting him with UV rays until day 12 of life. luckily we live in a place where the sun shines 364 days a year. oddly, however, it's cloudy today.
our first parenting scare behind us, i decided i love our pediatrician. i love him and trust him and would strap my baby to a rocket and blast him into outer space if that's what the doctor ordered.
in other news, baby tay has a girlfriend. get the scoop on her here.

family portrait

this picture is funny to me because i'm only half there and that's appropriate because last night sometime between 1:30 a.m. and 5 a.m. i was thinking about the photos we've taken and remembered we didn't have any of the three of us and then i heard a noise which sounded like footsteps upstairs, sorta THUMP THUMP THUMP, and i was completely freaked out, especially since we don't have an upstairs so i thought maybe i was hallucinating. and then the dog had a seizure and i yelled for tayloe (big tayloe, not the baby) cause i couldn't do anything with tay in my arms eating and we all got freaked out cause i screamed so loud and i was scared because first i had a spasm in my back and it was dark and i didn't have my contacts in so i couldn't see my hand in front of my face and also because wolly was having issues and i was too tired to do anything about it and now i'm just hoping tonight is better ....... because ...... i ...... could ....... really ........ use ....... the ...... res ...... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

and on the third day

i'm kinda afraid to even recount the events of today for fear it'll never happen again. i'll just say there was a lot of eating and sleeping and very little attitude. there's word for his behavoir and it starts with a g, but i dare not speak it aloud. not yet anyway.
i know there is a lord in heaven and here's how -- we're having a major heat wave, which would have really sent me over the edge if i were still pregnant. my feet would be the size of footballs, and i'd for sure be bitching about it at this very moment.
instead, i'm cool(ish) and hanging with the little buddha above. life is good.

little life

here he is. the sweetest thing i've ever seen. born july 23 at 9:47 p.m., weighing 8 lbs 1 oz and measuring 19 inches long. John Tayloe Emery, Jr.
turns out, i didn't have to give him any lessons in timliness because he let his intentions be known early sunday morning before i even had the chance.
what a wild ride. i'll recount the experience and all it's hilarity sometime soon, but right now i'm just so humbled and amazed at all the kindess that's poured our way. from the neighborhood kids who chalked our driveway with welcome home messages to flowers and phone calls and emails from so many people we love. the last three days have been some of the best of our lives.
flickr has all the latest pics.
the best news is, the car seat worked, although i'll admit it now -- i never bothered to read how you actually strap a kid into the thing. anywho we made it home today without incident around noon.

favorite things

Konichiwa

take me to nantucket, please

rrrwwwaaaarrrr
these things are so cute i want to just eat 'em up.

car seat=rocket science

this is a photo of tayloe trying to install the base of our car seat in the car. it's really to bad you can't hear the swear words or see the beads of sweat on his forehead.
it turns out it's a pretty good idea to have the car seat base installed in the car before the baby's born because most hospitals won't let you leave if you don't. our hospital is catholic and you know how catholics are about rules. i don't need the sisters of charity of leavenworth giving me the preachy preach about child safety the day we take our son home.
so this morning's mission was to get the thing in. noah built an arc and saved all of god's creatures in 40 days. we could install a car seat in 30 minutes, for sure.
tayloe really did try, but the damn thing is like the rubik's cube of baby gear. on top of that, the company rivals george bush in employing scare tactics.
"YOUR CHILD'S SAFETY DEPENDS ON YOU INSTALLING AND USING THIS INFANT RESTRAINT CORRECTLY." that's what the manual says -- just in case you didn't realize before you bought a car seat that your kid is your responsibility.
so tayloe gets it in, kinda.
"why does it move back and forth so easily like that?" i asked.
"i don't know. do you think that's right?" he said.
"uuuummmm," i said.
he picked up the seat and tried to clip it in to the base. it didn't go immediately. so he lifted it again and slammed it down a little harder. still nothing. another slam. slam, slam, slam. slamslamslamslamslamslam.
"no," he said. "this can't be right."
luckily, my husband is a sensible man. pride doesn't get in the way of him stepping aside and letting others solve life's big problems.
"let's get someone else to do it," he said.
20 minutes later, i was on the phone with the police department, which offers free baby seat checks and installation. only, the next one is two wednesdays from now, which (if there is in fact a god) will be too late.
so i called the store where we bought it. they said they'd be happy to install it ... for $27. yes, there's dirty little conspiracy going on here. normally i would have scoffed and made a huge deal about what a rip off that is, but at that point it just needed to be done. i actually had to make an appointment, and i was only able to get in today because there was a cancellation. i'm in the wrong business.
the gentle mexican man assigned to help me looked at what we'd done and scratched his head.
"can you tell me what we did wrong," i asked.
"oh, everything," he said. he had it done, snug and tight, in 5 minutes.
i hope we never have to take it out.
as an aside: it really must be pretty annoying to have a nag taking pictures of you while you're trying to put something together. so i'm going to stop. i promise.

baby daddy

so i've been kinda hard on tayloe lately. when you feel incredibly secure in unconditional love, it's hard not to take a few jabs now and then. trust me, i get my fair share.
add to that the fact that he can be such a deliciously easy target. here's an example: yesterday we were in the kitchen eating grapes. half bored, half curious, i picked one that was a bit undergrown and stuck it in his ear. he squirmed and said with complete seriousness, "see, that's why i never eat grapes. people are always trying to stick them in my orifices." what kind of wife would i be if i didn't formulate a lifetime of jokes from that?
i'm digressing. what i really want to say is that i'm pretty sure tayloe is going to win husband of the year. i'm pretty sure of it because he's done all kinds of stellar things, like hunker down and put the crib together (above) while i sat offering unsolicited advice and taking pictures. also, he went to birth class.
two birth classes, actually. on a sunday.
it is, i'll admit, a little weird to take a class for something your body does naturally. you wouldn't, say, take a class in digesting ... or passing gas. but lots of people recommended it, including our doctor (sucker punch, sucker punch). so let's just say i got a little peer pressured into signing us up.
here's how the morning before session 1 went:
him: what do you want to do today? we can do anything you want.
me: anything after 1 p.m. we have birth class until then.
him: uuuggghhh. (deep breath). ughgggh. do we have to go?
me: i've reminded you everyday for a week. yes.
him: (becomes unbelievably cute and sincere) why don't you take the money we would have spent and go shopping. or get a manicure. or a massage. or let's go out to breakfast and take a drive!
i can't remember the exact dialogue after that, but i think i may have become a bit irrational. anyway, 30 minutes later we weren't exactly talking, but we were in the car and on the way.
in hindsight, it's so easy to see what a terrible idea it was. we arrived fresh from our brawl into a room of six stranger couples who all looked deliriously happy to be there. some couples already had children and were taking the course as a "refresher."
and then there was us: light years from deliriously happy and slowly realizing that we were going to have to talk with these people (or at the very least, pretend like we were listening) about birth. it was like sixth grade sex-ed all over again.
tayloe immediately started searching for the quickest way out and began formulating his plan to leave me there. meanwhile, i hid the car keys in my pants.
the thing is, he didn't leave. from a birth video from 1975 that was frequently paused at the most uncomfortable parts to the teacher's long, graphic and self serving story of her 40-hour labor, he stuck it out.
sure, there were lots of deep breaths and long sighs and horrified looks in my direction. and yes, he said very loudly, "i don't know, but i'm leaving here when it's 1 p.m." when the teacher was talking about getting to the hospital and asked how we'd know when it was time to go.
but he went. and he went back the next week.
i know what you're thinking - he's a glutton for punishment. but look -- homeboy's no fool. he had a plan.
now, a little over a month later, the class has become his red badge of courage. much to my horror, he's shared our experience with friends and strangers alike, sometimes in excruciating detail. recently, his favorite thing is to say loudly in public, "honey, are you dilated?"
it's my payback, i know. lucky for him, my love is unconditional.

tick tock

i'm giving the kid grief for being a slacker, but i remembered today that he isn't officially late. maybe i'm setting my expectations a bit high. afterall, i've hardly ever been on time for anything in my life. so, baby, i'll take it easy on you today and tomorrow and even friday. but from saturday on you're gettin a daily talkin to.
the doctor distracted me today with chatter about how grey is in for men's suits this fall and what a great magazine Esquire is, so i forgot all about slugging him when he told me it is still going to be a little while and he'd see me in his office next week. i guess that means i have 7 more days to practice my sucker punch. too bad for him.
it sounds like i hate my doctor, but really i don't. in fact, if i didn't find him so charming he'd be long dead. who can hate a 60 year old man who (a) knows what colors are in for men in the upcoming season and (b) shamelessly admits it.
this snappy suit above (wrybaby.com) is the funniest thing i've ever seen. for a good laugh, check out the whole collection.
and finally from the files of monty tayloe, who writes in response to the july 16 post, "sleeping beauty": "Next time he's asleep like that, stand over him, throw a bucket of warm water in his face and tell him your water broke. He'll never sleep peaceful again."
dear cousin, that suggestion struck me with such hilarity it's already begun to forumulate as truth and fact in my brain. it's one of the first lies i plan on telling our son.

sleeping beauty

this guy, the one asleep on the couch here, is amazing. he found us this great house and rubs my feet and tells me i'm beautiful and went to birth classes and cooks and puts things together and knows how to fold a cloth diaper three different ways and makes me laugh all the time, every single day. sadly, restless nights and countless pre-dawn trips to the bathroom have made me not as nice. for example, seeing him resting so peacefully and with such ease kinda makes me ... well, want to strangle him.
i am a terrible person.

i really don't care ...

if i never see one of these again.

dog's best friend

all this baby stuff is wearing on wolly. he watched gloomly as we set up the crib and the changing table.
"i'm not sure why i need a bed with bars, but whatever," he told me later.
when our service delivered 80 cloth diapers, he stuck his head inside the bag, pulled it out, wrinkled his nose and sneezed.
our walks have changed drastically. he runs ahead (somewhat inconsiderately if you ask me) while i trudge along behind him, trying to keep my thighs from catching fire.
he's been promoted to watch duty, which means that he's very rarely more than 5 feet from me and must, at all times, be between me and any window or door. he's on high alert when those windows or doors are open. this is exhausting work and requires lots of time awake and staring.
perhaps most inconveniently, our car seat is sitting in a chair in the living room where he likes to perch his paws, look out the window and bark at strangers. now when he hears a noise, he's forced to strain his neck to get a glimpse outside. mostly, all he sees is the same 'ol tree.
then, hot dog! the stroller arrived. at first just another baby accessory in a box, he seemed to almost snear at it. but then, piece by piece, it began to take shape in his brain. it has wheels! it moves! she's taking it outside! i move! she's taking ME outside! i have a new best friend!
and truly, if wolly's going to have a new best friend, i want it to be this stroller. i think every new mother has one thing (aside from the baby and her husband) that she's absolutely bonkers over. one friend of mine went blitz over 400 count crib sheets. me? i went bananas over the bugaboo. i mean, it comes in pink! what's not to love.
after months of anticipation, it arrived yesterday. i spent the better part of the afternoon putting it together, breaking it down, setting it up again, attaching the car seat, putting the canopy up and down and doing wheelies and 360s in the driveway. it's so gorgeous and so functional that i want to snuggle up with it and hug it to death.
i'm second in line, though. wolly's already formed a bond. he and that stroller, they've got plans to see the world.

barkin dogs

i don't really know what to say about the state of my feet. i keep getting pedicures (those poor, poor korean women) hoping to massage, buff and polish the fright away. obviously it's not working.
today's doctor's appointment was un-e-vent-ful. i took the stairs knowing it'd make my blood pressure leap and hoping that from that they'd decide to induce me. i'll have to think of something more clever next week.
yesterday a lady on the street asked me if i was having twins.
later that afternoon, I had the following conversation with the check out clerk at Whole Foods:
HIM: Good Lord, honey, where's your husband?
ME: um, he's ...
HIM (cutting me off and leaning in close, whispers): you are having a girl.
ME: Nope. the baby's a boy
HIM: Oh, I'm sorry.
ME: awkward pause. puzzled look
HIM: if you've been walking often and showering only during the day, you'll have a quick and easy labor.
ME: you're a living fortune cookie
HIM: awkward pause. puzzled look
i've started telling people who ask when my due date is that it's that day. i think it scares them a little and that makes me feel good.

yo yo yo

there's no baby in this house. but when there is, this will be the place to get the latest if you want it. in the meantime, there'll be some pics and some updates and some observations.

the picture above is the latest (and last) ultrasound. it's like looking at one of those "can you see the image in the dots" paintings, but if you stare long enough, you'll see it's his fist. tayloe thinks he's saying, "power to the people, i'm ready to fight the man." i think he's saying, "screw you two, i was sound asleep."

here's an observation: i'm pretty sure the weekly checkups that i have to go to are not for me or the baby. rather, they're so my doctor can accurately plan his golf game around my delivery. i get very little out of these appointments except the following knowledge: (1) one's blood pressure rises when one takes the stairs and (2) our baby hasn't been born yet.

here's the deal with photos. there'll be some here, but you can always check out our collection at my flickr site. go there now and take a peek at tayloe making a wish on his birthday (there are only 36 candles. he's so old there aren't enough in one box to represent his age. braawhwhwhahahahaha.) yes, that's a pudding cake. yes, i made it.

finally, the birthday guesses as i have them are below. some folks are doubled up, so send on those time estimates as well to me via email. tayloe and cathy cooper lipp are already out. they guessed july 10 and 12 respectively (dreamers). bets are $1 and must be sent to winner upon Master XX Emery's arrival. anyone can chime in, just drop me an email.

cle: july 25, 6:45 a.m.
wmt: july 25, 1:25 a.m.
sarah T: july 24, a.m. hours
atn: july 31
tln: aug 2, 2:45 a.m.
pmt: july 26
ctna: july 29
l4: july 22
eaf: july 28
jane: july 28, 2:45 a.m.
tom: aug 4
eliza: aug 2, 3 p.m.
aaa: july 26
gle: july 30
wle: July 20, 7:03 a.m.
mere: aug 3, 3:31 a.m.
mme: aug 1
meb: july 27, p.m. hours
abrenn: july 27, a.m. hours
monty: july 24, p.m. hours
jbooker: july 28, 6:17 p.m.
andy lewis: july 25, 12:30 a.m.
linz: july 21
cindy: the day the doctor decides to induce
g3: "I am betting they will all be wrong and it will be when it will be"