higher spirits

It was difficult making sense of the world over the last month. Between the massive hurricane that left one of my favorite cities under water and the discovery that my aunt has an advanced stage of stomach cancer....I'm left wondering what gives.

We visited a new temple in the area over the weekend. It is an unusual set up as it contains idols from most of the world religions (Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Christianity) with the notable exception of Islam. Obviously I was not part of that decision, so I have no introspection on the background -- I only found the exclusion odd. And of course the Christian representation is actually of Mary and not Jesus.

Nevertheless, as I'm sitting there, I find myself wondering what set of spiritual values will I be able to instill in Rohan. Though my parents did their best to give me a core set of beliefs, they aren't necessarily how I live my day to day as I've drifted more towards Buddhism. Still I do not wear my religion on my sleeve and foresee a difficult road in the future of conveying religious beliefs to Rohan. Never mind my own difficulties with the subject, but Rohan's mom has a slightly differing set of beliefs.

How do parents with differing beleifs instill any set of values in their kids without trying to teach them both? Is the usual rule of thumb just to let the more religious parent pass on their beliefs?

Ultimately, I want him to make his own choice. A choice based on education and actual understanding of other religions such that he can choose his own path. At the end of the day if he wants to practice all or none, it should be up to him.

first cold

Lucky for the kid, he caught my cold leading into last weekend. Even luckier still is that he has no idea that he can breathe through his nose or how to blow it clean. So...that means every so often while sleeping, he'll struggle to get air and ultimately wakes up and starts crying. So in his parents will come to soothe him and restart the process. Needless to say that the renewed lack of sleep was the key reason for lack of postings on the blog.

As a result...the kid, who could at one point sleep for 6 - 7 hour stretches, now wakes every two to three. Just when L and I were developing a routine around him, he ups and changes things. To be expected I suppose.

The cold has been interesting. It started with him getting scared every time I started coughing my brains out. Then he started acting like he was mimicking my cough -- like it was a form of communication. Turns out it was a predecessor of him developing the same cold. I have to admit that the book from Dr. Sears has been very helpful in identifying his symptoms and things we could do to help him out. The AAP book had some high level information, but Dr. Sears is far more detailed.

From the book, we realized that we need to help the munchkin clean out his nose with the wonderfully popular nose sucker thingy. It isn't hard to imagine why Rohan is afraid of it -- it looks like it could suck out his brains. Actually I wonder how adults would react to their boogers sucked out with a giant bulb...

experimenting with video

Before Rohan was born, we did what everyone does and bought a video camera with the hopes and intent of documenting all of Rohan's life and milestones.

The reality is that we're a picture family. We choose to take more pictures than anything else and have to mentally remind ourselves to capture more on video. The little video recorder built into the digital camera is proving quite useful in a pinch.

The bigger question is distribution. The video camera, while digital, still records to tape. So transferring that to the computer is a bit of a challenge. Beyond that, how do you get it to far flung corners of the world? Lo and behold, google is taking over online content one small step at a time. Google video seemed to be a decent place to stick it and let everyone else see it without mailing out 5mb files every so of often. The first attempt went okay, but for whatever reason, i can't get the special google media player to work on some of my computers.

a tiny love product we don't love

hard to believe given that rohan loves his gymini and used to really like his mobile. Given our history with the brand, we picked up the Takealong Arch since it was one of the first things we saw upon entering the mother ship (Babies R Us).

Looked like a great product and why not give Rohan something to entertain himself during a ride in the seat. Its easy enough to get on and off - two big claws on each end. But the arch is pretty bulky and did a great job of obscuring the kid. Hard to imagine, but the toys are so big, you can't see the kid behind them very easily if you're looking straight in. Plus i think Ro' outgrew it by the time he got it...Kind of like his mobile - around the 1 month mark would have been the best time to give it to him...

Still, a reasonable value at $15 given that the mobile cost $50 and the Gymini $70.

new stuff

We started buying stuff again...not that we ever really took a haitus from it, but just hadn't bought too many noteworthy things.

Since the cloth diaper experiment sort of fizzled...At best Rohan is in a cloth diaper for a couple of hours a day...we needed a better place to put the used disposables. Luckily since the kid doesn't actually poop all that often, the standard trash can has been working pretty well.

Nevertheless, he's going to be eating real foods pretty soon and legend has it that the stink can be pretty severe. After consulting our little library of experts, we settled on the Diaper Champ. Why? cause i hate the gillette razor business model. Give the platform away for free/cheap and keep them coming back for refills -- in this case that being the Diaper Genie.

Sure, the DG could probably keep in smells better since it seals everything into little sausages, but its bad enough that i'm adding tons of litter to the environment with the diapers, i don't want to wrap each and ever diaper in its own little non-degradable coffin.

indexing

so the web crawlers at the mighty google have indexed this site...that means the little search bar up top will actually pull relevant stuff from this blog.

it also means that any two-bit shyster can add comments to the topics that barely glance the surface of what they are trying to sell. For example, the "payday loans" guy has commented about 5 times in the last week -- i can only guess it is because somewhere in my archives i mentioned that babies are expensive.

hair loss

remarkably...i'm not talking about my own.

For whatever reason, rohan was born with a huge head of hair. Well not a huge head, just lots of hair. Add to the hair on his head was all the body hair that accompanies newborns, lanugo or something, and he looked like a tiny little monkey child.

Anyways, the hair on his body disappeared after a few days -- and luckily enough since i was starting to develop a complex given that he had more body hair than me. But over the last few weeks, more of his head hair has gone the way of the caribbean monk seal.

This too, is "normal." Given that i have another complex about my head hair (i know i'm going bald, i'd just like to know the timeline), it is distressing to see little baby hair strands littering his bed, car seat, and all the other places he plops his head. Luckily he's completely oblivious, but maybe i can use this chance to instill in him a sense that bald is okay.....

lots of fathers....

I've quickly come to the realization that there are lots and lots of fathers (and mothers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, etc) writing about newborn babies. Here are some of my favorites (so far...). Hopefully i won't loose too many of my faithful readers....

daddytypes
pet cobra
because i'm your father
more diapers
metro dad

many of the good blogs seem to be east coast centric. Not that that's a bad thing -- just a slightly different perspective. Arguably, navigating the subway with a baby and stroller is a bit different than finding a parking spot at the local mega mall.

Mr. Dad Conference call

In case you want to speak to someone who knows what they are talking about...i got this care of the Mr. Dad's newsletter
~~~~~~~~
On Thursday September 22, at 7pm in the East, 4pm in the West, Mr. Dad (aka Armin Brott) will be doing a one-hour nationwide conference call to answer your specific parenting questions. It's completely f*ree (all you pay for is the long distance call), and you can ask anything you want. We'll answer as many questions as we can in the one hour call.

Write this number down and call in to participate... 641-792-4100. You'll then be prompted to enter this code to access our special call: 306379#.

neato...

http://www.bemboszoo.com/Bembo.swf

this is the kind of crap i'm probably going to be spending a lot of time looking at on the web with the muchkin once he can use a mouse.

and on the sixth day...

he pooped.

Rohan lasted a full six days before filling his diaper...While he didn't break any records in doing this (the nurses did not seem too alarmed) he did have his parents continually checking. Not surprisingly, Rohan started getting a little "uncomfortable" as time dragged on.

We're still trying to understand why...was it the bjorn? doubtful that it was diet related as that has not changed. Maybe it was just a test of wills....

second round of shots

Rohan withered under the duress of his second set of four successive shots. Coincidentally it was on the same day as his four month birthday. For the most part he did okay...serious amount of crying accompanied by a face turning beet red.

Over the weekend he was pretty irritated, the "how could you let them do that to me again," expression was always on his face. A little feverish here and there, but otherwise okay. By the end of the long weekend, he had actually pulled off his own band-aid. Of course he probably pulled it off more since it was something his hand grabbed hold of than because he thought it was the macho thing to do.

One thing of note...this was our first trip to our new doctor. Unfortunately we did not come back as impressed as we probably should have. Though we had been out to see the facility and it came highly recommended by a number of people, the fact that they still use paper records and an old fashioned balance scale (vs. digital so the kid isn't sitting there naked forever) came as a bit of a surprise. In the end, the doctor was very nice and did assuage our latest concerns while the nurse did a good job jabbing Rohan's legs, so all is okay.

regional differences

Coming across the popvssoda web page recently got me thinking a lot about the regional differences in how we were raised and to a greater extent how we will raise our kids.

I used to call everything "pop" but as i drifted eastward started calling everything soda. I still do now, but to be honest i'm not sure what Rohan will end up calling it. Will he be confused at an early age since i have no idea what to call the fizzy drink? If we continue our nomadic lifestyle, will it help or hinder his development?