I haven't been mentioning this stuff, because it has the feel of inevitability, but if you're checking this regularly, chances are you want to hear about it so...
He is smiling a lot in the last week, is tracking pretty well, and loves to tense up his whole body so that it seems like he's standing up for very short periods before getting freaked out. But, mostly, he is just generally becoming much more aware of the world around him.
He is, of course, constantly on the lookout for faces while awake. He is also growing quite admirably, outgrowing some of the 0-3 mo clothes at an alarming rate.
The other thing of note is that he very often looks exactly like Ruby did, to the point where I don't think I'd be able to tell which one of them some pictures are without already knowing. I was talking to Walt, who said that Cecil is starting to look more like Aubrey, which I've noticed as well. Interesting, those two started out looking nothing alike and are converging (at least at this very early juncture), whereas we can only assume that Ruby and Lupe look remarkably alike at the same age, yet their appearance will diverge as he develops into himself. I assume, anyway. I just can't imagine him becoming a male copy of Ruby...
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Saturday, April 26, 2008
5 Hours!
Ruby has been calling her little brother Quarter, and it's getting contagious. I think I've heard Natasha, Grnadma Janet and Grandad Walter all slip up and call him Quarter, and I know that I have as well.
Whatever he's called, though, Natasha is thrilled that he is at least showing signs of some good sleep. The night before last he had a "perfect" night, waking up at 12, 2:30, & 5, with solid non-fitfull sleep in between. Even more excitingly, he slept from 9 pm to 2 am last night.
Obviously, he isn't quite to the point of any sort of consistency, but at least he is showing flashes of possibly doing some good sleeping in the not too distant future.
Whatever he's called, though, Natasha is thrilled that he is at least showing signs of some good sleep. The night before last he had a "perfect" night, waking up at 12, 2:30, & 5, with solid non-fitfull sleep in between. Even more excitingly, he slept from 9 pm to 2 am last night.
Obviously, he isn't quite to the point of any sort of consistency, but at least he is showing flashes of possibly doing some good sleeping in the not too distant future.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Phone Camera Pics
My buddy Walt clued me in to how to get the pictures off of my phone and on to the computer the other day, so here they are...
Super cute Ruby outside the library the day I got the new phone
In the hospital, waiting for the little boy to arrive
The first picture I took of him
Ruby sporting Mommy's hat at the Beach Chalet. I'm pretty sure I left my phone on the table, and someone picked it up to snap this pic...
Ruby and Aubrey on the ferry
Super cute Ruby outside the library the day I got the new phone
In the hospital, waiting for the little boy to arrive
The first picture I took of him
Ruby sporting Mommy's hat at the Beach Chalet. I'm pretty sure I left my phone on the table, and someone picked it up to snap this pic...
Ruby and Aubrey on the ferry
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Happiness and Children
Like money, having children does not make us happy. Unlike money, it feels counterintuitive because it goes against the conventional wisdom, the biologically necessary meta-narrative of life and meaning and happiness.
Everybody knows that money doesn't bring happiness. We don't necessarily live our lives as though we know it, but we certainly aren't surprised when the recent field of happiness (or as it's sometimes technically referred to, Subjective Well Being) research gives empirical confirmation of that fact. The research, in this instance, is somewhat reassuring, because it reaffirms a preexisting belief. Simplistically, it shows that increases in income produce corresponding increases in overall happiness up to about the point of the poverty level. Income gains beyond that produce minuscule increases to happiness. But we knew that, right? Of course we did. Everybody knows that money doesn't buy happiness.
Well, what many of us know, but what none of us feels comfortable talking about is that children do not bring happiness, either. This same research shows that having kids actually decreases overall happiness, both generalized overall happiness, such as when people are asked to simply rate their overall life satisfaction, and even more so when time based studies are done, where people are given a timer that goes off every 15 minutes for several days, and are asked to jot down what they are doing and what their satisfaction level is on a predetermined scale. What is particularly surprising is that respondents consistently reported spending time with their children as having amongst the very lowest levels of satisfaction, generally on par with housework, and below such activities as spending time with spouses, friends, and even watching TV.
Yet, somehow we all, as a society and largely as individuals, seem to buy into the myth that children are a source of never-ending joy and satisfaction. How can we all be so wrong? Well, we have to be, don't we? The survival of the species depends upon it. Why we as a species didn't do the more fun and logical thing and develop infancy and overall growth patterns that are more conducive to general happiness will have to left to the evolutionary biologists, but it seems safe to say at this point that we have instead developed a carefully calibrated set of rationalization and denial mechanisms that allow us to delude ourselves and others into believing that children are indeed a source of never-ending joy and satisfaction.
Well, you can guess where this is coming from, or perhaps where it's going. It's been a rough couple of weeks for me. It's definitely strange to come to grips with the possibility that the happiness provided by your children may be at best a rationalization, and at worst a willful delusion. I, of course, love my children as much as any parent does, and feel just as much as any other parent that they bring me an immense amount of joy and are a source of never-ending satisfaction. But, I am also willing to admit that the day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute grind of being a parent can be very difficult. That, just perhaps, I have been rationalizing up a storm, and quietly but ever so efficiently deluding myself into a fog of paternalistic ecstasy.
The primary source of difficulty is, of course, the implacable nature of parental responsibility, the unrelenting dependent need. Some moments are difficult, simply in and of themselves. Ruby throwing a fit, or G screaming because he's gassy.
Other moments are similarly fun and fantastic. And, we naturally hold on to those good times, or we couldn't make it through. But, sometimes, regardless of the nature of the individual moments, or series of episodes, the simple fact that these moments and episodes will continue, relentlessly one after the other, with little hope of real respite begins to break your spirit down. A loss of the sense of control, of autonomy, of agency, of choice leads to an inevitable felling of entrapment, imprisonment.
How can anybody hope to live a life filled with happiness if they don't feel as if they can do what they want to do. I feel trapped, as most parents do. No movies, no lingering dinners, no sleeping in on Sunday mornings. More importantly, though, small children rob you of the possibility of both spontaneity and leisure. And this is important because these are hallmarks of freedom. The cold, hard reality is that the responsibility for the care of infants and toddlers ends up feeling like the loss of freedom for those of us who can't afford to buy that freedom in the form of child care.
Most parents will recognize this: for Natasha, she is up every couple of hours all night long, every night, usually with a stretch where he never goes fully back to sleep, so she sleepwallks through the days. For me, on the days I work, I do as much with Ruby as I can as I get ready to go in the morning, then get handed a kid, or two, as soon as I walk in the door after work. Whichever one of us makes dinner, the other one takes care of the kids. We eat in shifts. Ruby will still not sleep completely alone, so the best we can do is have her lay in bed so that she can see me on the couch. While this is better than having to be in bed with her, I still feel stuck, because she freaks out if she can't see me. After G's next feeding, Natasha goes to bed, so I then have him until he gets hungry, which has been about 11pm.
Not a whole lot of down time there, is there?
And that, the loss of freedom (perceived or real), is about as bad as it gets for those of us not worried about or physical well-being. Most of the time, though, we are happy to obscure this pain with the rationalizations and delusions necessary to do so. To buy into the myth, the meta-narrative of parental joy.
Of course, I am constitutionally incapable of unexamined rationalizations of this magnitude. Particularly when I read a bunch of books about happiness research late last year (because I was interested in what implications it may have for economic and social policy). As I said to my friend John, Once you know how a magic trick is done, you can't go back to not knowing.
That doesn't mean, though, that I (or anybody) is doomed to feel the full force of that deprivation of freedom. I had a bit of an epiphany as I lay in bed falling asleep last night; that a large part of the reason we are able to fool ourselves into believing that having a family will confer all of the benefits that it seems like it would in regards to happiness, such as the sense belonging, is that we inevitably see being a part of a family from the perspective of the child, because until we have our own, this is how we all have experienced family. And, from the perspective of the children, being a part of a family does indeed confer those benefits without the attending loss of freedom and other difficulties of being the parent.
So, we think, if we have a family of our own, we'll be able to recapture that sense of security, love, inclusion, belonging we felt as a member of the family of our childhood, only it will be much better because we know all the ways we want it to be different for a family of our own.
Of course, it doesn't work that way. It's nigh impossible to understand the perspective of our parents from the perspective of the kid. I know that I couldn't.
Everybody knows that money doesn't bring happiness. We don't necessarily live our lives as though we know it, but we certainly aren't surprised when the recent field of happiness (or as it's sometimes technically referred to, Subjective Well Being) research gives empirical confirmation of that fact. The research, in this instance, is somewhat reassuring, because it reaffirms a preexisting belief. Simplistically, it shows that increases in income produce corresponding increases in overall happiness up to about the point of the poverty level. Income gains beyond that produce minuscule increases to happiness. But we knew that, right? Of course we did. Everybody knows that money doesn't buy happiness.
Well, what many of us know, but what none of us feels comfortable talking about is that children do not bring happiness, either. This same research shows that having kids actually decreases overall happiness, both generalized overall happiness, such as when people are asked to simply rate their overall life satisfaction, and even more so when time based studies are done, where people are given a timer that goes off every 15 minutes for several days, and are asked to jot down what they are doing and what their satisfaction level is on a predetermined scale. What is particularly surprising is that respondents consistently reported spending time with their children as having amongst the very lowest levels of satisfaction, generally on par with housework, and below such activities as spending time with spouses, friends, and even watching TV.
Yet, somehow we all, as a society and largely as individuals, seem to buy into the myth that children are a source of never-ending joy and satisfaction. How can we all be so wrong? Well, we have to be, don't we? The survival of the species depends upon it. Why we as a species didn't do the more fun and logical thing and develop infancy and overall growth patterns that are more conducive to general happiness will have to left to the evolutionary biologists, but it seems safe to say at this point that we have instead developed a carefully calibrated set of rationalization and denial mechanisms that allow us to delude ourselves and others into believing that children are indeed a source of never-ending joy and satisfaction.
Well, you can guess where this is coming from, or perhaps where it's going. It's been a rough couple of weeks for me. It's definitely strange to come to grips with the possibility that the happiness provided by your children may be at best a rationalization, and at worst a willful delusion. I, of course, love my children as much as any parent does, and feel just as much as any other parent that they bring me an immense amount of joy and are a source of never-ending satisfaction. But, I am also willing to admit that the day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute grind of being a parent can be very difficult. That, just perhaps, I have been rationalizing up a storm, and quietly but ever so efficiently deluding myself into a fog of paternalistic ecstasy.
The primary source of difficulty is, of course, the implacable nature of parental responsibility, the unrelenting dependent need. Some moments are difficult, simply in and of themselves. Ruby throwing a fit, or G screaming because he's gassy.
Other moments are similarly fun and fantastic. And, we naturally hold on to those good times, or we couldn't make it through. But, sometimes, regardless of the nature of the individual moments, or series of episodes, the simple fact that these moments and episodes will continue, relentlessly one after the other, with little hope of real respite begins to break your spirit down. A loss of the sense of control, of autonomy, of agency, of choice leads to an inevitable felling of entrapment, imprisonment.
How can anybody hope to live a life filled with happiness if they don't feel as if they can do what they want to do. I feel trapped, as most parents do. No movies, no lingering dinners, no sleeping in on Sunday mornings. More importantly, though, small children rob you of the possibility of both spontaneity and leisure. And this is important because these are hallmarks of freedom. The cold, hard reality is that the responsibility for the care of infants and toddlers ends up feeling like the loss of freedom for those of us who can't afford to buy that freedom in the form of child care.
Most parents will recognize this: for Natasha, she is up every couple of hours all night long, every night, usually with a stretch where he never goes fully back to sleep, so she sleepwallks through the days. For me, on the days I work, I do as much with Ruby as I can as I get ready to go in the morning, then get handed a kid, or two, as soon as I walk in the door after work. Whichever one of us makes dinner, the other one takes care of the kids. We eat in shifts. Ruby will still not sleep completely alone, so the best we can do is have her lay in bed so that she can see me on the couch. While this is better than having to be in bed with her, I still feel stuck, because she freaks out if she can't see me. After G's next feeding, Natasha goes to bed, so I then have him until he gets hungry, which has been about 11pm.
Not a whole lot of down time there, is there?
And that, the loss of freedom (perceived or real), is about as bad as it gets for those of us not worried about or physical well-being. Most of the time, though, we are happy to obscure this pain with the rationalizations and delusions necessary to do so. To buy into the myth, the meta-narrative of parental joy.
Of course, I am constitutionally incapable of unexamined rationalizations of this magnitude. Particularly when I read a bunch of books about happiness research late last year (because I was interested in what implications it may have for economic and social policy). As I said to my friend John, Once you know how a magic trick is done, you can't go back to not knowing.
That doesn't mean, though, that I (or anybody) is doomed to feel the full force of that deprivation of freedom. I had a bit of an epiphany as I lay in bed falling asleep last night; that a large part of the reason we are able to fool ourselves into believing that having a family will confer all of the benefits that it seems like it would in regards to happiness, such as the sense belonging, is that we inevitably see being a part of a family from the perspective of the child, because until we have our own, this is how we all have experienced family. And, from the perspective of the children, being a part of a family does indeed confer those benefits without the attending loss of freedom and other difficulties of being the parent.
So, we think, if we have a family of our own, we'll be able to recapture that sense of security, love, inclusion, belonging we felt as a member of the family of our childhood, only it will be much better because we know all the ways we want it to be different for a family of our own.
Of course, it doesn't work that way. It's nigh impossible to understand the perspective of our parents from the perspective of the kid. I know that I couldn't.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Lakers!
Admittedly, this picture is a bit over a year old, but it's the only one I have right now. I know I've been a bit remiss, but, well, we have a newborn. Natasha's parents, Janet & Walter, flew in yesterday, and Janet spent most of the evening fending off anyone who looked like they might want to take Lupe out of her arms. I assume the next couple of weeks will much, much more of the same.
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