This is gonna be a long one.

We have a great kid.  No doubt.  And people say parenting is hard.  And it is.  But Landen has become particularly difficult in the last week or two, even above and beyond typical baby fussiness (according to our pediatrician.)  Since birth, he has had a total of three nights where he slept soundly (aside from feedings.)  Almost every night, he hits a period (usually around 10pm – 2am) where he is super cranky and often inconsolable.  This is likely colic, which, as many people, is not fun.  Here is a picture to offset the colic-talk.

Sleeping, one of Landen’s two moods

Aside from the colic, though, he is often inconsolable in the middle of the night (and other times during the day, but not as often), and we’d noticed he’d thrown up a few times.  The doctor thinks it could be acid reflux.  As Bryan put it, “Geez, Derek, how’d you give birth to a stressed-out baby?”  But he kinda is.  The steps to prevent this are 1) sleeping on a slight decline, 2) having him upright for 1/2 hour after each feeding, and 3) medicine.  In the past few days, he’s been feeding every hour and a half.  Do the math there; we’re not sleeping much.  Which bites the wank when I have to work 8 hours at 8am.  Thankfully, Ash’s friend Erin came by last week to take some of the pressure off and do some of those 4am sit-ins.  Here are a couple of shots of her.  She rocks our proverbial socks.

She’s the one who isn’t 4 weeks old

But without an extra hand, it involves us getting up.  Which is especially hard for me.  The books I’ve read clearly state that the baby will be soothed more by the mom’s voice.  It’s true.  I have a very hard time calming him down when he’s irate.  I try 100 different positions, and none of them seem to do much good.  Sometimes, I’ll get him to calm down, but only for about 5 minutes, and then he’s off again.  And when this is happening, Ash isn’t getting any sleep either.  So we’re both highly stressed, cranky, and pretty misreable.  We try to keep the smooches in there – it’s a nice reminder.  In fact, we even took the first good photo of the family.

The soon-to-be Sonderfan Family

And it’s not like he’s never happy.  He is.  But perspective is the thing.  Ask a mother who has a 20 year old what he was like as a baby, and I doubt they’ll remember these nights too much in particular.  They’ll talk about his first steps or the fact that he hiccups like an Irishman at midnight (Landen does.)  But ask a parent who’s had a cumulative sum of 10 hours of sleep during the week, and the answer won’t be so good.  At least mine isn’t.  Ash seems to have far more patience for this.  I don’t know, I guess I’m just having trouble adjusting.  Perhaps here is why Ash is so more complacent:

I’ve been informed Sudoku makes a good sunblock

I think if work weren’t so busy this week, I wouldn’t be so itchy.  We’ve been blasted, and it’s actually going to get worse next week for me (my OTHER department’s new quarter starts up, which doubles my workload.)  I feel like Jiffy talking about his job, now.  Fortunately, the good moments are making it totally worthwhile.  Ash and I can talk about things that we disagree on without throwing things at each other.  That’s such a reassuring, welcome sign.  And I did get to spend some quality father/son playtime yesterday – I even took a video with my camera, hopefully Ash will upload that to Youtube soon.  You’ll all squeal at his adorableness.  Here was a pic from that playtime.

His first smile-ish?

Eh, enough of my emo post.  Landen is doing just fine, despite some little snafus along the way.  But what child in the history of time didn’t have these little issues?  Now, here’s some people specific pictures.  Cromwell, this goes to show that my son doesn’t have any bones either.

And Jaymar, you’ve gone on record a couple of times as calling my son “handsome” and even a future model.  Well, if this doesn’t land him on a cover of GQ, nothing will.

Swoon, ladies, swoon!

Anyhow, this also said there will be a CONTEST!  That’s right, it’s CONTEST TIME!  I have a small prize in mind for this one, so it should be fun.  And it’s a CAPTION contest!  Give the following picture your best caption and you will be nominated.  If you don’t want to post it publicly, you can submit your caption by clicking here.  Anyway, here’s the picture, enjoy!

There’s been some unexpected recent talk about funeral plans – don’t worry, nothing actually immediate – more just general talk.  There seems to be a fairly strong consensus about a cremation – I guess everyone has their reasons.  But I realized how I want to go.

I want to be packed in snow and rolled down a mountain.  Towards a village.

What he lacks in sleeping habits he makes up in adorableness.

Since he’s asleep here, I can only imagine it was during the daytime

Get… yer… mitts… offa me!

So serene

Landen being assimilated by the plastic, leafy Borg

OMG

The good news is that Landen is finally starting to adhere to something of a schedule.  The bad news is that his schedule seems to include a period from around 10pm until about 2am where he is very not asleep, and makes sure that we aren’t either.

Being a parent, I needn’t press upon, is pretty stinkin’ cool.  Especially when your baby is as generally awesome and s’darnedcute as ours.  To back up my point:

He is a budding pirate, spending much of his awake time with only one eye open

Anyhow, I think part of what has new parents flustered is the unpredictability.  I think if he was a terror every single night, you just grow used to it.  Landen works in such mysterious ways.  Two nights in a row, he slept like a log, waking up for feedings and then right back to bed.  Then the next two nights, he was awake until 7am, and he didn’t want to be awake alone.  Those were not fun nights.  The next night started out the same, then around 2am, he was out for the night.

Last night we put him in his crib, and he slept for 3 hour bursts, ate, and immediately fell back asleep.  There’s just no telling what he’ll do.  He’s been cranky all evening, so here’s hoping for omens.

One of the few sheets he didn’t immediately besmirch

He has developed an uncanny knack for timing.  When changing him, he would wait until I had the old diaper off him, then would pee (or worse.)  This isn’t uncommon, as the new air sensation could trigger his pee reflex.  So I wised up, I put a 2nd diaper under him, so when the first one went away, there’d be nowhere for him to befoul but the 2nd diaper.  Then he realized if he leans back, he can pee on just about whatever he wants.  So dad got even smarter.  I would “cup” the diaper around him or place a baby wipe over him, so there’s nowhere for anything to go.  Except when I pull it off and go to throw it out, WHOOSH.  I swear, this kid has got me all scouted out.  But with a face like this, how could you be mad at him?

TOUCHDOWN

I’m unofficially going back to work for a day tomorrow to sort of catch up.  This is not good.  When I was getting to sleep around 4 or 5 and getting up once in the interim, it wasn’t too bad because I could sleep until 10 or 11 (I usually stay up late with him, and Ash wakes up early.)  But having to get up at 8?  Yeesh, let’s see how that goes.  Then it’s full time work Monday.

I like black and white sometimes

Landen is truly amazing.  We are lucky. And did I mention head-spinningly adorable?

Can’t you see him being an explorer someday?

We haven’t given much of an update as to what’s happening.  Well, we had our first pediatric visit, and all is well.  We had a number of concerns (because we’re humans) but they are apparently all ‘normal.’  In fact, Landen is progressing quite well.  He had lost only 6 oz from day one (which is good) and had already gained four of them back.  His slight jaundice seems to be staying stable if not going away, which is also super.  Since mama’s milk is coming in (yes, expect TMI in the near future), Landen’s bowels were in overdrive.  Again, nothing to worry about.  He’s been peeing more too.  All in all, things are good.  Okay okay, fine, a picture.  Here’s another one from the hospital that I don’t know why I didn’t post.

So precious it hurts!

As for the sleep, which is really the question everyone is asking, we can’t really complain.  That’s not to say we’ve had an uninterrupted night yet.  Far from it – Landen is a night owl for sure.  He sleeps most of the day and then is bouncy at night (which is common for a few weeks.)  He’s pretty unruly from around midnight until about 6 am, but it’s better than it seems.  We divy up the chores evenly, and since I go to bed late and she rises early, we’re still managing about 3-5 hours of sleep a night, which I hear is well above average.  And naps, plenty of naps.

Even glasses need naps too

Ash’s family has been clutch, making dinners and visiting often.  Family friends even get down and dirty with the diaper changes.  I know an awful lot of people who’ll gladly hold him, play with him, and sing to him.  Not many who will change a poopy diaper.  We salute you.  Speaking of saluting, this one’s for Doug.

Live long and poop, sir

We’re gonna try our first bath today.  We probably should have done one sooner, but with him spending 90% of his time swaddled in a practically airtight wrap, dirt has a problem penetrating.  Add to that the fact that swaddling is one of my legitimate skills, and that we wipe him down with disinfectant wipes every nine minutes, I think it’s okay.

Ash is doing really well.  She commented how she felt ‘human’ for the first time today.  Not to say 100%, but less pain, less swelling, less general girly bleh.  Mind you, 20 minutes of just cleaning up put her off her feet.  I’m extremely glad I have an uber-cool boss who’s giving me time off.  I think she needs it more than anyone.

I leave you with a pic that makes me giggle every time I see it.

Landen’s aim is impeccable, but alas, his parachute failed to open

Back home, safe and sound.  Landen’s been sleeping most of the day, which probably means he’ll be doing an almost comically shrill cry all night.  Let’s hope for a better night than last night.

Here’s some photos.

The calm before the storm

Ain’t he precious and alien-monkeyesque?

That is correct, his newborn hats didn’t fit him the day we put them on

Only 2 days old, and he can already do the Batusi

The happy family at home

Landen Elliot Sonderfan.

Go tell everyone else – I’m tired of the telephone.

11:12am, January 5, 2009.  Ashley birthed a 7lb 10oz masterpiece, measuring a sturdy 20″ long.  His name is to be determined (we haven’t slept in two days and that’s not the ideal situation for naming a baby.)  We’ll get back to you all with that.  It’s probably not Elizabeth.

Both mom and baby are extremely healthy.  And mom and dad are extremely tired.

More to come.

Our OB is not on call tomorrow, and we do not want any other doctor delivering our baby, she is too awesome.  A testament to that – she calls us up this morning with one of those “Hey, I really thought I would have seen you by now” kind of calls.  But she alerted us that she isn’t in tomorrow.  She is offering the strip the membranes, which is basically the first non-really-invasive step to inducing (she can’t really induce since we haven’t crossed the magical 39 week mark, when the lungs are guaranteed healthy).  We’re going in now to do that.

It could be today.  Or it could be April for all we know.  This baby is as stubborn as his parents.