Cluster Feeding

The doctor tells us that while babies are experiencing growth spurts - they cluster feed. And, around the sixth week of life, many babies experience growth spurts. Thus, as Elliot shares many traits with many babies, he's cluster feeding. It has a weird sound to it - cluster feeding. But, that's what he's doing. For the last couple of days, about every hour, he hungers for the boob. Now, I've heard about insatiable breast men, but this is ridiculous.

The good thing is that all of his cluster feeding has paid off - he's been growing like a little knot weed. Little Elliot Kahlil is now 25 inches long and a whopping 13 pounds, 2 ounces. In just six weeks, he's added about two-thirds of his starting weight. Wow. He seems like a prime candidate for the South Beach diet. He should be sweatin' to the oldies with Richard Simmons, or at least dining with Jenny Craig. But, instead, he continues to cluster feed - 'chompin at the tit' you might say.

Actually last night was a good night. We thought, because he just returned from the doctor and received four shots - that's right four little pricks in his little legs, and a blood test on top of that - that he would be a royal mess last night. And, to our surprise - quite pleasantly - he was in a great mood and slept for a record five hours. Maybe it was the tylenol we gave him, or maybe that shot of morphine I slipped into his drink (in baby terms, wine I slipped into Justeen), but he slept well. And so did parents.

So we've been taking lots of pictures, but I haven't been able to keep up with the blog as much I'd like. I apologize about the week between posts, but I hope to pick up the pace now that my semester is coming to end. I give you several pics from the last week. And as Elliot spends more and more time awake, in what we've taken to calling 'happyland,' we hope to have more opportunites for eyes-wide-open pics.

I'll leave you with the lyrics for the song I sing to him when he's about to get fussy. If you want to sing along at home, just insert any generic jazzy groove.

"So when you feel like you want to fuss,
Just turn around and get on the bus...

To happyland...to happyland...it's happyland!"


Elliot and Izzy have a little thing going. Here they are hamming it up for the camera.



And here's the little guy with his favorite stuffed toys. What a rock star!

Waking Up is Hard to Do

Almost more difficult than falling asleep, waking up poses its own challenges. Elliot can sometimes spend ten minutes transitioning from a deep sleep to waking life. These transition minutes can be quite difficult for the little guy as he stretches all his muscles and bends his body in every way imaginable. I'm not convinced that there is too much of a cognitive distinction between these two states - waking and sleeping - but it would seem that there is a rather extreme physical disjunction that he contends with as he drifts back and forth between them each day. Speaking as an onlooker, I enjoy this process quite a bit. When he's in what I'll call a "slaking" state, he's very fun to be around. When I talk to him he seems to respond with extreme expressions. This supplies oodles of amusement for his motion picture starved parents. So imagine that I'm talking to him and I say, "Elliot, the Democrats might take the White House in 2008"


And then I say, "But Bush will be in office for another three years."


And then, just as urgently as he struggled to fight his way out of his slaking state, he falls back into a deep sleep. And Izzy, always an accomodating sibling, joins him.

Passover Elliot

The bean had his first two passover seders - and he slept right through each of them. We hope that as he gets older he takes a little more interest in what's going on. It's been a very busy week - two seders in a row have kept baby and parents running around town. On Wednesday, we went to Karen's house (Justeen's colleague) for a lovely seder meal, and on Thursday we drove up to Salem to go to Rob's seder (Eric's colleague). Both nights were great - interesting, inspiring, and passionate. But, again, our son slept straight through. I find myself apologizing for his rude behaviour. He's meeting all these new people, and sleeping through the introductions. How does he expect to network if he can't even stay awake?

It's Saturday morning and we're about to go work in the community garden. I wouldn't put it past him to sleep through the work day. This is why communism doesn't work - because people like Elliot shirk their duties. Why, he's sleeping now - sitting in his neglect-o-matic, facing the window - looking peaceful. I mean, he should be studying, right? There are pre-school entrance exams to take, records to break, intramural sports to play. His constant sleeping is making it difficult for us to program his life.

I suppose we'll have to accept him for who he is - a beautiful, sleepy, poopy, baby boy. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Pics from Grandparents

Here are some pics that my parents took during their last visit. Notice how they photoshoped away Elliot's blemishes. Now that's love.

Pics of Dad

So, we discovered that I looked a lot like Elliot when I was a tyke. Here's me at six weeks old.

Grandparent visit

It's been quite some time since the last post. There are a number of reasons for this pause in service. One, lack of sleep and reality of work has caught up with me, and two, my desire to take pictures of our little boy was reduced by his unfortunate skin condition. And to be honest, I also lost the AC adaptor to my camera, so the thing ran out of batteries. All those things combined produced the perfect storm of photographic inactivity. While problem number one is still in full force, you'll be happy to know that problem number two is clearing up, and problem number three was solved yesterday when I looked in the big bag of apparently useless technologies I keep in the closet.

Now on to the topic of the post. My parents, Elliot's grandparents came to town this weekend from Los Angeles. They were thrilled to see the little bean, and dare I say, the little bean was thrilled to see them. He performed all of his important biological functions for them and even added a few more for prosperity's sake. What a good boy.

We were quite active this weekend. We went out to eat three times, and took a trip to the New England Aquarium. Elliot was impressed by the penguins and jellyfish. Everything else bored him to sleep. And to be honest, most of the time in the jellyfish exhibit, he just stared at Justeen's boob. I'm trying to expose the boy to culture, but all he seems to think about are breasts - the original pornography. I wonder how the republicans feel about that.

And now for the pics:

Here's Elliot after he found out he grew three inches since his last doctor's visit.



And here he is hanging with his grandmother. She doesn't like this photo, but because of the problems posted above, it's one of the only shots I have of them together. I don't think it's so bad - so it goes to the blog.


Justeen looks like she's being ordered to smile by rebel soldiers. And Elliot looks like his calling his buddies for help. It's quite a disturbing image - but this blog is about "telling the truth" and that's just what I'm doing.

Speaking of truth, here's the little man in his favorite knit hat made by his great grandmother shirley. He loves this hat. I know that because he hasn't spit up on it yet. I know what you're thinking - it's hard to spit up on a hat, but you don't know the power of my son's power to purge as I do. It's very possible...all too possible.