Joyce turns out to be a natural at this mom thing, yet strangely, she's not yet gained the courage of her convictions or to trust her instincts. I'll illustrate with two stories. This afternoon, Juliet became unconsolable around 2pm, crying loudly and arching her back repeatedly. She even went to crying level 2 and 3, which are noticabley louder than default crying. Joyce hands Juliet to me, says that she's not sure what to do, then suggests rocking back and forth to soothe Juliet while she figures out what to do next and starts sterilizing bottles in the bathroom. After five minutes of rocking, Juliet falls asleep in my arms and I can set her down in her crib to sleep (for an extended two-hour nap; I think we ran her a little long this morning). So I look like a hero for my 733t parenting skills, but in fact it's just Joyce's leadership.
The second example was similar: I fell asleep around 5 in the afternoon, and awoke at 7 to Joyce and Linda attempting to console Juliet, with similar failures (not diaper, not food, not dirty; what's left? Answer presumably obvious to those who are already parents). Joyce says that the only thing that gets Juliet to stop crying is picking her up and carrying her around, and that it wears off five minutes after setting her down. A call to our friend Chris tells us that yes, sometimes you just have to keep holding the kids and reassuring them that everything will be OK ("welcome to parenthood, where love replaces sleep"--Cliff Click, the other Cliff in the compiler business). I observe that these symptoms look similar to Juliet being sleepy earlier. Joyce wonders: how can we take Juliet to the restaurant while she's asleep? Which is of course exactly what we end up doing, after I pack her into the Baby Bjorn and settle her to sleep again. She sleeps through dinner in the Bjorn, so I eat her congee (mmm, rice porridge with tasty meaty bits!). Once again, Joyce has the right idea: take Juliet to the restaurant while she's asleep. She just doesn't yet have the courage to assert her ideas. Which is silly--she's great, and she's a natural. I presume this hesitation will disappear very soon.
Juliet does indeed hate being bathed, but I think it's more an extension of hating having her face wiped than being in the bath per se. Putting her into the bath water eliceted nothing more than surprise. Wetting her head with the washcloth got her crying. Heh.
And, I'll be darned, she's at least partly toilet trained. Her health reports said that she had begun toilet training. The rumor was: hold her over the toilet, and make a wooshing noise through your teeth. And she did it! What do they do to these kids to get them to learn such skills?
Thanks to my colleague Mark for pointing out that I can access US sites by running my browser on a US machine. Mark's computer systems fu is greater than mine. And using VNC to the antipodes still feels faster than using DSA (insider work joke: DSA is a remotely managed cluster with horrible lag). :-P
BTW, Brannon, thanks for doing research on formula. The formula from the orphanage says "Nestle Nestogen 2: follow-up formula" on it.
7 comments:
I haven't slept through the night in 8 years.
oh yeah, embrace the crying, it makes them fall asleep faster.
You're doing great, both of you (all three of you).
She needs sleep, food, play, and comfort. Cycle through the four of them; eventually one will work.
Being over-hungry sometimes means a baby gets keyed up and can't focus on eating; being over-stimulated when tired means they can't sleep. And so on.
Notice that Juliet needs to be comforted by you to be happy. This is a good thing. It means you are her Mom and Dad now.
Cliff, just think of it as a four-vector search space you get to wander around in for the next ... well, the rest of your life.
I was never able to fully accept the truth that crying is not a bad thing. An awful lot of babies seem to need to cry just to blow off some steam. Let 'er rip, she'll sleep better. I'm just loving the photos and reports. You should know that they stand up to multiple viewings.
I meant "four dimensional vector space", not "four vector search space". I guess I'm short of sleep. But that's a given, being a parent.
Oh wait, I forgot something important. If Juliet is like Delaney then you can just forget her ever enjoying personal hygene. 9 years later and she still fights getting her hair and face washed. Don't worry, when she's a little older you might actually enjoy annoying her a little on some days.
I agree with anonymouse - sounds like the 3 of you make a great team. Rah! Rah! Rah!
In her first year, our daughter needed a pretty darn regular schedule of morning and afternoon nap. Finding the nap schedule and sticking to it turned out to be as important to avoiding meltdowns as the feeding schedule.
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