Collin-1 : Rental car-0

Here's an update from Andrea and Collin's trip out to San Francisco. But first a little advice for any future dad's out there: Never, ever, under any circumstances refer to your lactating wife as ol' Bessie. It's not funny, trust me.

Andrea, Collin and Katsumi decided to visit me for a long weekend during my recent 2 week trip to San Francisco. We opted to buy tickets on Southwest non-stop to Oakland rather than use miles and go to SFO with a stop in Dallas. Since this was his first trip - the fewer airports the better. I was obviously not traveling with them, but I hear it went well. Collin didn't mind the airports (he generally likes crowds and commotion), got right on the plane and went to sleep. No problemo.

His pooping schedule has changed over the last several weeks. He used to poop pretty much all the time, but they have gradually spread out. He'll now go 2,3 or even 4 days without letting one go. This is normal (or so they say). This of course means that the volume increases in direct proportion to the delay. What used to comfortably fill a diaper, now runs up his back and leaks everywhere. He let one go on the plane ride out. I told Andrea ahead of time that on a 737 the bathrooms have fold down changing tables. This is true in my experience, but somehow they ended up on a really old one with no table. So the flight attendant suggested that she just change him right there on the floor in the back of the plane where they keep the carts. She did. They got into Oakland around 9PM, got a rental car and headed for my hotel. The rental car company was out of super-mini-sub-compact cars so had to upgrade Andrea to a Volvo S80. Nice car, but didn't they notice the baby - bad move on their part? She made it to the hotel and we all crashed.

The next day Andrea, Collin and Katsumi drove into the city and did some sight seeing. I was working so I'm not sure what they did, but I would guess that it involved a lot of looking for a place to park, looking for vegan food (Katsumi is vegan), pushing Collin around in his stroller, and feeding and changing him. They also stopped by where I was working and I showed them around the site.

The next day was my day off. We went to a great restaurant in Berkeley for breakfast, then headed for golden gate park for a nice walk and to see some museums. Collin did NOT want to go into any of the museums so we admired them from the outside and had a nice walk. Then we headed over to Height/Ashbury for lunch.

I have spent a lot of time in San Francisco over the years. It's a great city and I love it, but if I get a day off, the first thing I want to do is GET OUT OF THE CITY. Drive north across the golden gate and there are mountains, the ocean, redwood forests, the whole wine country. It's great and I'll take that over concrete sidewalks any day. So we went North and found a nice place to see the ocean off of highway 1. It was a nice drive and we stopped to take in the scenery and snap a few photos.

We were about to leave when the bomb went off. The diaper was no match for this. We had no running water, no table, just the back seat of a lovely RENTED Volvo and a disposable changing pad. I volunteered and plopped him down on the nice leather back seat. I pulled off his soaked through clothes and diaper. This is when the back seat pretty much turned into a stinky peanut butter slip-n-slide. Andrea was in the front seat handing me baby wipes and counting down. 10 left, 7 left, etc... It was everywhere. When we were down to 2 left. I had to make a decision. One to get it out of his hair and the other for my hands. We put all the toxic waste in the trunk. Then just put new clothes on him and headed for the hotel. We were done for the day! We originally planned to meet up with a friend for dinner, but everyone was spent and we crashed. We all had to get up at 4AM to get them ready to go. They headed to the airport and I went back to work.

Overall the trip was a big success and we'll try it again for sure. Just not for my next big trip. I'm going to Beijing, Shanghai and Bangalore and will be gone for 18 days. I'd love for them to meet me in Beijing, but 14 hours on a plane with a baby? Nope - not this time!

More containers!

I thought I had seen everything in the baby-container industry. You have slings, baby bjorns, straps, leashes, cradles, pack-n-plays, cribs, swings, backpacks, bassinets and some stuff that doesn't really have a name, but all of them share the primary goal of baby-containment. I recently discovered that I have only scratched the surface of this booming industry! I have a tripped planned to San Francisco next week and will be gone for 2 full weeks. Andrea is planning to bring Collin out to visit and also bring our friend Katsumi along for help. Andrea has also returned to jogging which means she needed a jogging stroller. At last count there are approximately 417,000 different types of strollers priced between $10 and $1000. Really! there are $1000 baby strollers out there that, ummm, have wheels and allow you to push the baby around. After lot's of research we settled on one that, ummm, had wheels and let's us push the baby. We went for the BOB brand and many of you will know why Bob was an INSTANT sell for me. Once we had settled on the Bob Revolution, Andrea found one on Craig's list but it was a lightly used 2006 model. We actually sat down and discussed the pros and cons of a new 2008 model stroller vs. a slightly used 2006 model stroller. Andrea even went over and looked at the 2006 model, but opted for the '08. At that moment I realized that that there was no turning back and that my life (as I knew it a year ago) was over and I was officially a parent. It's a short step from that to AARP.

But anyway, during our research we discovered THE baby container to top all others. Allow me to present the "Hang your baby on the wall while you take care of business in a public bathroom" baby container:


Available at http://mommysentials.com/babykeeperbasic.htm

As a parent, how many times have you been in a public restroom with a baby and thought: "Gee, if I could just hang this baby on the wall next to the soap dispenser I could..." well you get the idea. Now you can!

We are holding off on that one, but Andrea has a stroller. And she has a plane ticket. And she has someone coming along to help. What could go wrong with a baby on a 3 hour plane ride, 2 airports, a rental car, a drive across San Francisco, a hotel and 2 days of fun in the city by the bay? I'll keep you posted.

Paving Miss Daisy

This post is not so much about what Collin has been doing but more about the long-term effects of sleep deprivation. I'll be the first to admit that things are not too bad. I've heard stories about babies that wake up every hour all night. We ARE lucky with his sleeping schedule. He will fall asleep around 10 or 11, sleep until 1 or 2, then sleep again until 4 or 5. The 4 or 5 AM one is the BIG one because that is when Andrea needs to feed him while also pumping. He starts crying, Andrea gently wakes me (with a kick) and asks if I wouldn't mind changing him. I get up and change him while Andrea gets herself hooked up to the milking machine. Then I hand her the baby and she carefully hooks him to one boob while the milking machine is going after the other. I go back to bed, but don't really sleep because I know that in about 20 minutes, they have to be moved back into bed and the milk has to be properly stored in their ever-so-special-bags and frozen in their special milk-freezer. After that, Collin may doze for another hour or 2, may sleep hard until 8 or may not go back to sleep at all. Only he knows and he doesn't tell us ahead of time. This may not sound too bad and really it's not - It's manageable and we are both able to function, but the human body needs 6-8 hours of solid sleep every night and that aint happening! It catches up and may cause a touch of delerium during waking hours.

A few years ago we were given the books THE COMPLETE FARSIDE by Gary Larson. A huge, 2 volume collection of every single Far Side cartoon. It's quite entertaining and I pulled one volume out a few weeks ago and Andrea and I both found ourselves flipping through it whenever we would sit on the couch. This is OK for brief periods of time, but there are over 3000 Far Side cartoons and you should really limit your exposure to a few a day at max. The other night, after making about half way through the 2nd volume, I had a very vivid dream that went something like this: Morgan Freeman is sitting atop one of those big road-paving machines with a huge smile on his face while Miss Daisy is being pulled into the rollers. The caption reads "Paving Miss Daisy". I have not seen that movie in at least 10 years and have no idea where this came from, but in my dream I was convinced that this was THE Far Side cartoon that should have been drawn but never was and Gary himself, whom I've never met, was in the dream and in total agreement. I have no idea what Gary even looks like, but if any of you know him please pass along my dream. Meanwhile I am going to put those books away and take a nap!

UPDATE: After reading this post Andrea told me that, while in college, Gary Larson came to her school and gave a presentation (on exactly WHAT- I have no clue). She said that one of the things that she remembers about his presentation is that he was thankful for having editors to keep him (mostly) out of trouble. One cartoon he submitted, but was ultimately rejected, was of a group of surgeons gathered around an operating table working on a person while a dog was sitting next to the table begging. HA! I think maybe the editors would have shut down the Paving Miss Daisy idea too.