It should’ve been California!

I’m writing this blog to catalogue the history of my life in my daughters’ world so I don’t lose and forget any of our wonderful memories. During vacations, however, we’re working too hard developing memories to find time to get to a computer and write them down. In those instances, I’ll fill one post with multiple entries. This is one of those instances.

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8/16/2008:

So maybe I was a little premature in announcing a change in Tristan’s sleep patterns. She woke up several times a night, in the middle of the night, every night, last week. Worse, my wife continues her practice of always waking me up along with her and Tristan.

Specifically, she asks me to change Tristan’s diaper while she runs off for a little potty time herself, even if all Tristan wants to do is to nurse. I mean, if diaper changing won’t stop the crying, why do I have to be miserable along with everyone, too? One night, however, Tristan didn’t want to feed. She really just needed a diaper change.

Or maybe something else was happening.

Tristan’s crying didn’t abate when I removed the dirty diaper, as it usually does when she’s only complaining about a dirty diaper. And, as I pulled out the cold wipe, I fully expected her crying to intensify when I slathered it across her bottom. Instead, she quieted precipitously.

By this point, she had turned to look at the lamp, which bathed her face in a warm glow. And as I finished the job and taped the fasteners, her eyes closed, her hand, previously raised in a clinched fist, slowly fell and a smile–a BIG smile–spread across her face.

And a little misery was a small price to pay to see that.

8/23/2008:

When I was growing up, my Dad was very much involved in my life.  He read me the Bible through Exodus and taught me Amazing Grace.  He also taught me Chess, Checkers, Backgammon and Monopoly. And when it came to football, baseball, basketball and, even, soccer, he never missed a home game.

He’s a grandparent (“GP”) now, though, and he expects to only have the easy parts.  So he was taken aback when Marcel ordered him to get in line.  Even though I was feeding Tristan a bottle, I tried to save him, and jumped in line behind Marcel but she insisted that all of us–my Mom, my wife and GP–get in line behind her, too.  Defeated, my Dad complied.

We marched out of the den, through the library, the dining room, the kitchen and then all of the way to nursery.  In the nursery, there’s an oval area rug where she sat down, Native American-style, and ordered us to do the same, taken my Dad by surprise, again.  Again, nursing Tristan and all, I tried to take the weight and sit down for the group but, again, Marcel insisted.  Defeated, my Dad compromised and sat on her bed.

As soon as everyone was seated, Marcel started in with the songs.  We sang several rounds of an incomplete “A, B, Cs”. Then we played instruments. Tristan and I had a pillow masquerading as a basketball which Marcel informed the group was a guitar.  My wife, Grandma and GP had “instruments”, as well.  When we were done, Marcel instructed us to put the instruments behind us (surely so we wouldn’t be distracted during the next activity), then we sang new songs.

It became clear to us that Marcel was mimicking her daily experience at fancy daycare.  This revelation filled me with comfort and gratitude that my daughter was being so well nurtured and inspired by the people to whom I entrust her.  This revelation filled my father with something else, altogether: It filled him with a question.

“When do we take a nap?”

Marcel started sleeping through the night at 3 weeks. Even as a new parent, I was shocked by that.

I distinctly remember waking up, seeing the sun high in the sky, feeling rested and wonderful and wondering, “why does this seemed so strange?” Then I remembered why. Every night for the past three weeks, my newborn baby girl had routinely waken me up several times a night and often late enough for me to see the sun rise. Last night, however, she did not wake.

Of course, the next immediate thought was…SIDS!

I jumped out of bed, but kept quiet so as not to unnecessarily wake up my still sleeping wife. “Sweet Jesus,” I prayed it was not necessary. I jumped out of the bed and ran for the co-sleeper but, just before I got there, I hesitated. For the briefest of seconds I considered stealing myself before looking. I plunged ahead, anyway.

Perhaps because I was so worried, or maybe just because the blood had rushed out of my head as I had raised up, but I couldn’t immediately discern Marcel’s state. She just laid there, still as a statute of an angel. The sight made me catch my breath, but I leaned in further and, as if on cue, she sighed.

And so did I.

Maybe it was because of the fright, but probably because of the previous weeks’ sleep deprivation, I so very much appreciated Marcel’s new found trick.

Maybe it was because I grew to depend on it, or maybe because no one should be so lucky, but Tristan did not start sleeping through the night at three weeks. My newest, newborn baby girl waited until this week, our seventh week of living in her world.

And that’s damn good, too.

In the book “The Happiest Baby,” Harvey Karp, M.D. reveals his technique for quieting fussy babies. Our delivery hospital taught us this trick at a class for new parents prior to my big girl Marcel’s birth. Essentially, you recreate the womb by tightly swaddling the baby in a blanket, rocking the baby in your arms and shushing or otherwise recreating the white noise of the mother’s heartbeat which echoes throughout the womb.

This technique worked like magic on Marcel and, if you did it long enough, you not only quieted her but also got her to fall asleep. The only problem was that shushing gets boring pretty quick so I switched to a song.

The first songs that came to mind, I’m afraid to admit, we’re fraternity songs. Even I agree that these weren’t appropriate for a newborn girl. Thus, I searched for true lullabies.

I tried great classics like “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, “Rock-a-Bye Baby”, “Summertime”, “Frere Jacques” and “Hush Little Baby.” These were songs that I always enjoyed as a child but none were perfect for the task at hand because they were all so short! Who ever got a baby to sleep with just these little ditties?!?

Eventually, however, I came to “Amazing Grace”, the first gospel song that my father ever taught me. It has tons of verses. Eventually, I developed my own version that incorporated three verses and used the famous first verse like a chorus. Often, by the time I concluded the last verse of this version, Marcel was asleep. So I felt very prepared for Tristan.

Unfortunately, when I started singing it to Tristan, I realized that I didn’t want to sing this song anymore. Apparently, I had sung my fill of it. The result was noise that couldn’t possibly soothe my baby girl Tristan. I began to worry that Tristan wouldn’t be a happy baby, at all. It didn’t help that she seemed to cry quicker and longer than Marcel ever did. Then, last week, I hit the nadir.

Just as I had sat down to my desk at work, I had to rush back home to give my wife my set of our car keys. She couldn’t find hers and, without a car, couldn’t take Marcel to school and Tristan to her appointment with the Pediatrician. I got home, gave my wife the keys and, to save me some of the time I had just given her, my wife agreed to give me a ride back to work.

Even though we were all now back on track by this point, it was tough car ride. I was stressed because I was now late for a hectic day of work, my wife was stressed because she was late getting the kids to their appointments, and Marcel was stressed because she was going to lose her family just as she began to hope for a day at home with everybody. Then Tristan started crying.

Karp’s technique wouldn’t have been much help at this point because it takes time and time was what we didn’t have plus Tristan was probably crying from hunger, anyway. Still, it was a sharply pointed reminder that I hadn’t yet figured out how to make my baby girl the happiest baby girl and that left me not happy, at all. That was the nadir part.

Then my wife said, “Put on the Gypsy Kings.”

She had told me that Tristan liked the Gypsy Kings but I thought that was crazy. It’s good music, but it ain’t no lullaby. The Gypsy Kings album that we have makes me think of a restaurant, after hours, with all the tables pushed to the side so that drunk men can enjoy the dancing of reminiscing women and even drunker men.

I suspected that if this album had any calming affect at all on Tristan, it was more like the affect speed has on ADD children, revving her up to the point of exhaustion. In this particular instance, I worried that since Tristan was just getting started, we would have a lot screaming and crying before we got any calming.

But as the guitars began playing, Tristan’s cries began to sputter. And before I could close my gapping maw, her cries had died out, altogether. And thus, my wife proved that she could teach Karp a thing or two about making her babies happy.