you'd think after spending 96 days experiencing all the ups and downs of the neonatal intensive care unit rollercoaster that we'd be a little less apt to freak out when something out of the ordinary happens. well, today something out of the ordinary did happen and we discovered that, in fact, the memories of the nicu can come rushing back, threatening to transform you into - as it was so aptly described by ann leary in An Innocent, a Broad - one of the "weak-willed people with the small brains [who] ran shrieking into the burning wreckage."

this afternoon, kris came home from running some errands and asked how odin had been napping.

i exclaimed. "fine! i haven't heard a peep out of him for hours," as i simultaneously noticed that i had not actually turned on the baby monitor. not terribly alarmed, kris turned on the monitor and went about her daily duties. moments later odin awoke and we discovered that it appeared that he had thrown up a few times.

even though he seemed to be alright, i immediately went into OH-MY-GOD-WHAT-IF-HE-CHOKED-ON-HIS-VOMIT-WHILE-SLEEPING-AND-I-DIDN'T-HEAR-IT-BECAUSE-I-DIDN'T-TURN-ON-THE-MONITOR mode. then he threw up again right as he unloaded an unusually large montrosity that his diapers only barely managed to contain.

he threw up two more times during the diaper change which made it abundantly clear that something was amiss. and things were getting messy; so we gathered our wits and gave him a quick bath as we tried to make sense of what was happening.

wierdly, despite ejecting fluids from all available orifices, odin seemed quite happy to have the unexpected tub time with his rubber ducky.

after the tub, things went from bad to worse as odin vomited 8 times in an hour. and as time passed he went from a passive "spitting up" to a wretching that made it impossible deny that he was vomiting.

at this point, we both realized that we had absolutely no idea what to do. he'd had an egg a few hours prior to his nap and there was definately lots of egg coming up, so our leading theory was was he might be having problems digesting the it; perhaps even, he was having an allergic reaction?

as we debated the merits of calling the pediatrician, he started to get sleepy which was quite odd indeed, since he'd just had a two hour nap. i was brought to the brought to the edge of parental freakout as he started to nod off, only to choke himself awake as he tried to vomit on an empty stomach.

certainly, it was time to call the doctor.

perhaps not surprisingly, the pediatrician didn't think it was very likely that odin was having a life threatening allergic reaction to an egg. no, he thought it was much more likely that he had a case of mild stomach flu and recommened that after odin had stopped vomiting for an hour to start giving him 15 CCs of electrolytes every 15 minutes. if he made it for four hours without an incident, then he could start nursing again. of course, i was relieved to know that i wouldn't have to test my infant cpr skills.

after we started giving him small amounts of gerber liquilytes, odin quickly began acting as if nothing had happened, which is actually a little unsettling because i would think that the effects of stomach flu would last a longer than 3 or 4 hours.

as an interesting aside, it became clear to us that odin loved the liquilytes. i was suprised to see that both it and pedialyte contain sucralose. i'm not saying i think it's provably unsafe, but it still seems wierd to put a n artifical sweetener untested on infants in a product that's meant to be given to sick kids.

while you might be absolutely sick of pictures of odin reading, i'm going to put in a plug for odin's favorite book that you've never read, itty bitty drum, which produced by my brother-in-law who enjoys writing children's books in his spare time.

itty bitty drum hasn't been published, but it should be - it's vibrantly illustrated and the rhymes and repetition make it fun to read.

it really is one of odin's favorites and we read it to him at least once a day along with a new book or two.

and no, smarty pants, my brother-in-law didn't ask me to sing the praises of the book.

is there anything better than relaxing on a comfortable couch with one of your favorite dogs on a slow saturday?

i think not.

amusingly, when i was taking the picture, i repeatedly attempted to get odin to look directly at me, but alas, the television proved to great a force to be reckoned with.

we've noticed lately that he's increasingly fascinated with the television, which makes me wonder why he finds it so interesting. it's strange to see that after only 237 days, he's so captivated by the television that he'd rather watch it over playing with his toys. i guess it's probably time to be a little more conscientious about turning off the t.v. :-)

there's nothing quite like having an infant son to focus one's mind on weighty questions, such as what it means to be a boy today? the statistics tell part of the unsettling story and there's a growing cadre of theorists who theorize that if you're looking for root causes as to why boys under the age of 18 are responsible for about one-fifth of the violent crime in the u.s., one might look towards how they are taught to express their emotions and relate to others.

why is is that, even today, when evidence exists that newborn boys are generally more emotionally expressive than girls, evidence also seems to indicate that although 2nd grade boys are more emotionally stressed when listening to a crying baby, they're less capable in handling their emotions and attempt to avoid the source of the emotional conflict? ( for now, we'll just assume that's factual since it's cited in the statistics , but no attribution is given for source research. )

raising cain was first published in 1999 and , according the publisher, "...through moving case studies and cutting-edge research Raising Cain paints a portrait of boys systematically steered away from their emotional lives by adults and the peer "culture of cruelty"--boys who receive little encouragement to develop qualities such as compassion, sensitivity, and warmth."

i'm not going to really argue with the merits of the assumptions of the book, with regards to the emotional depths that your average man is capable of reaching and how that might be related to early parental and societal conditioning. i think it's probably safe to say that while it might not be the only root cause of the effects , it's still probably an area of focus which is amenable to much improvement.

i guess whether or not "raising cain" is successful providing remedies to the situation depends on whether or not you think that advice like, "teach your boys that there are many ways to be a man" is really that insightful. and even if there was a modicum of insight in the platitude, what exactly does it mean and how does one actually teach it in a world that doesn't really reinforce the principle?

i mean, what would we do if we succeeded in nurturing the most sensitive and empathetic of boys, only discover that he's had his nose broken on the playground because word got out that he wanted to play dorothy in the wizard of oz?

unrelatedly ( and it might be an overly unfair nit), it appears that "raising cain" and many other books in this genre were written soon after the wildly successful "reviving ophelia" and i can't help but think that "raising cain" was slapdashed together after the pitch was made to the publisher, "you know it'll be like 'reviving ophelia', but for boys, now if we can just find a psychologist or two to fill it with 'moving case studies'...";

so, in the end, "raising cain" does an adequate job of raising important issues, but i certainly wouldn't consider it the final word on the topic.

more...

Boys to men: emotional miseducation
The Focus Shifts to Raising Boys
raising our sons
the emotional life of boys
The Wonder of Boys

allison neckers sent greetings from denver , colorado which i'm guessing is the only city to have turned down the opportunity to host the olympics due to environmental concerns.

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

some have noticed that odin's noggin appears to sporting less hair than usual. it's true. and not only has he lost much of what he had, but the hair that's coming back in looks a lot darker than the reddish hues we were used to seeing. the effect is particularly noticeable on his eyelashes, which were so blonde that they were difficult to photograph.

there's no doubt whose eyelashes odin inherited. mine are long enough that when i was younger, i'd occasionally be accused to using mascara and curling them.

after an edible epicurean adventure, we're returning to a recipe that's guaranteed to stimulate odin's sense of smell - bone soup. sure, most people might call it beef soup and the final product doesn't contain any bones ( one hopes ), but it is made with soup bones and i suspect odin will like my more evocative name over the boring one. so bone soup it is.

the broth for bone soup is prepared by adding a few pounds of meaty, fatty soup bones to a pot of water with an onion, whole celery stalks, bay leaves, black peppercorns and whatever other odds and ends you might have laying around. let simmer overnight and be prepared to have the house gradually become so filled with the smell of the ingredients mixing together that it's not unlikely that you'll awake in a pool of saliva. unless you're a vegitarian, in which case it might be a pool of something else entirely.

after simmering the broth for 12 or 16 or how ever many hours it might be until you can get around to finishing the job, you'll strain out most of the mushy remains of the bones, celery, onion and whatnot, keeping the fragrant bone soup broth.

then it's time to add whatever you want in the final concoction. today we added a pound or two of your favorite meat cut into appropriately sized pieces, peas, carrots, green beans and corn. after simmering for a few more hours and right before you want to eat, add a bag of your favorite brand of egg noodles.

whoila! bone soup!

becky davis was kind enough to send not one but two cards from san jose, california.

we received these after only being in the nicu for about 3 weeks and it really meant a lot to us to see so much support from people we didn't even know.

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

we're almost certain that odin has begun teething. he doesn't seem to be drooling as much lately ( although not as much drool is still a lot ), but we can see small white spots on his lower gums where one might expect to see his central and lateral incisors appear. presumably the white spots are little baby teeth pushing close to the surface of his gums.

we have a one a plastic teething ring that we keep in the fridge for emergency use which does an adequate but not stupendous job of soothing him; so we thought we try freezing a washcloth and were amazed to find that it was nearly instantaneous effective.

perhaps he liked the changing texture of the washcloth as the ice melted compared to the smooth plastic teether? or maybe he just likes sucking on frozen washcloths.

like me, you might think in this day and age that the technology embedded in baby monitors would be fairly commoditized. much like a toaster, you might expect to pay a little more for a particular brand or advanced toasting features, but the basic components should all work just about the same, right?

wrong.

for our baby shower we registered for safety 1st 900 MHz home connection monitors. much to our dismay we discovered ( after we had thrown away the receipt ) that they are $129 pieces of static spewing junk with microphones that are so insentisitive that you nearly have to have the transmitter sitting on top of your child to pick up anything over the static.

so we went back and purchased the much more affordable sony baby call nursery monitor which is priced at about $40 and puts the safety 1st product to shame. there's virtually no static and it's microphone is so sensitive that we can have it sitting across the room from odin and still hear him shifting around quietly in his bed ( which may or may not be a good thing, depending on how neurotic we're feeling ).

the only downside is that we very occasionally pick up our neighbor's cordless phone calls!

mike and kim were long, lost friends who sent greetings from charlevoix, michigan, which i'll bet you didn't know has 100 females for every 88.7 males.

see, you really do learn something new everyday :-)

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

we're really reaping the benefits of having family members with older children. we don't have to buy anything. whoohooo!

days after getting a box of goodies from my sister, we received even more fun stuff, including this safety 1st bath ring; it has little grippy suction cups on the bottom which makes it easier to keep odin sitting upright in the tub while getting taking a bath. the timing is perfect, because it's getting more difficult than it once was to hold him while washing him, since he's not quite big enough to sit up in the tub all by himself.

we thought it might be prudent to give the bath ring a test run on dry land and discovered that it could apparently also double as odin's favorite new reading chair.

he really does enjoy his orange crinkley book from misscaro ( and here ). i wonder if they make them here in the states. if they do, i've never seen one.

given that we witnessed odin's ever improving grasping and manipulating capabilities yesterday, we probably should have guessed that moments after gently touching the flowers, he'd rip their heads off as he quickly grabbed them in an attempt to bring them towards himself for closer inspection.

lori sent greetings from palm harbor, florida, which is situated on the gulf coast of the sunshine state. she cleverly writes to odin that perhaps when he gets bigger maybe we'll take him to disneyworld.

well, i guess we'll have to now :-)

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

after 124 days the lamaze musical inchworm finds that its dirty tricks are now ineffective when matched against mighty odin.

with each passing day, we notice that odin further develops the skills required to investigate his surroundings. here, the orange patch and the red patch have captured his attention and he's beginning the process pulling the inchworm nearer so that he can have a closer look. at one point it looked as if he were attempting to crawl closer! or maybe he was just falling over :-)

regardless, while we've seen him doing pushups and sitting upright unassisted, we're still quite amazed to see him putting everything together so he can seek out and inquire.

he's enamored with oranges and reds and particularly oranges and reds that make crinkly sounds ( which these particular patches of orange and red in fact do make ); we suspect we can thank misscaro for him drawing the conclusion that fuzzy orange things also make crinkly sounds.

even though it appears that odin might be looking more and more like his mamma, i know with certainty that he's his father's son in at least one respect.

when covered, his feet have a propensity to, er, sweat. so, i guess it's no suprise that we've discovered that he's much happier without "feet" in his pajammas, since it keeps him from getting sweaty toes.

the jagged edges on his now feetless pajammas make it appear as if he's been taking style lessons from barney rubble.

also, he hates to be covered with a blanket at night. you haven't seen squirming until you've watched odin attempt the get out from under a blanket while half asleep.

certainly i have plenty of evidence that odin is quite generous with his smiles, but i've been noticing that he's showing his serious side perhaps a bit more often.

i wonder when we'll begin discern temperment related facial expressions that will stay with him for a lifetime. will he inherit my infamous ability to give someone The Look? receivers of The Look will know exactly what i'm talking about ;-)

and yes, odin is sporting yet another collegiate t-shirt. auntie m will likely be happy to see that he's finally big enough to fit into his boston college t-shirt.

lillian sent a simple postcard from green bay, wisconsin, which you might not know is the smallest city to have an american football franchise.

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

making good on her promise to send us a toy with a full diatonic scale, we received a box with a bunch of goodies from my sister, including this vtech little smart land 'n sea jamboree. who knew that vtech made stuff other than cordless phones.

it's interesting to see how well different toys are able to hold odin's interest and this one passed with flying colors.

i'll admit to failing to understand the thinking behind the smart land 'n sea jamboree theme what with the keyboard on a boat with animals and a house, but odin seemed quite happy to play with all the objects and seemed particularly dedicated to figuring out how to rip the red roof of the house.

that's right, it's time for another epicurean adventure! and unlike previous adventures, little odin actually gets to enjoy the taste of final product instead of simply smelling the smells, which means if we don't count the rice and barley that we added to his milk to help control his reflux while in the nicu that this - the humble egg - will be his first experience with "real" food.

yes, you read that right. we're feeding him a smidge of egg yolk.

why are we feeding him egg yolk? i'll admit that it seemed a little strange to me, but the yolk is packed with iron and dha (docosahexalnoic acid). and eggs are a relatively common "weaning" food given anytime after an infant is six months old.

while breast milk doesn't contain much iron, iron deficencies are rarely seen in breast fed babies before 6 months because infants are so good at absorbing the small amounts it does contain. but after 6 months the iron stores can begin to diminish, so it's often recommended to find a supplement.

the quick witted in the crowd will notice that we're playing a the Age Adjustment Game. are we starting to think about supplements a little early because odin is 4 months of age in adgusted terms? or are we starting right on time since he's 7 months actual? we decided to err on the side of caution, since it's relatively well established that eggs can do some good without doing harm. of course, we consulted with our pediatrician to see if he thought we were being goofy and he thought it was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

it's important to note that we're only feeding him the yolk and not the "whites" since it's not unknown for infants to have allergic reactions to egg whites and egg whites can actually hinder iron absorbtion, which would defeat the whole purpose of this epicurean adventure.

we boiled the egg produced by a local, organic, range fed hen for 3 or 4 minutes in the hopes of getting a yolk that wasn't hardboiled but not overly runny.

it was a little runnier than i'd hoped, so hopefully we didn't give him a case of salmonella.

i had a hard time remembering that he's never had the experience of operating a spoon, because he's obviously been taking notes at the dinner table! i thought it'd take him a while to get the gist of "food" and how that related to the tool known as a spoon, but once again he proved me wrong.

after he got the first taste of the egg, with admirable acuity, he grapped the spoon and started shoving it in the general direction of his mouth.

a longtime reader follower of odin's adventures sent me an email with a picture of an eating establishments in brussels that she frequents when on business in the area - la chalet d'odin, which is in the hotel bristol stephanie.

it's fun to think of a complete stranger walking by a sign an ocean away while on a business trip deciding to snap a picture to send to odin; naturally we decided we simply must print it out and let him play with it.

for reasons known only to him, he became fascinated with the back of the photo as he was trying to figure out the best way to mangle the print.

at first he attempted at play with the photograph using his fists in the same way that he does when he grasps more bulky objects like the supersized paci or pooh, but he discovered that it would bend and contort and fall out of his hands.

in amazingly short order he learned to use his fingers and to more gently grasp the edges of the picture. this is exactly the kind of fine motor control that's often delayed in micropreemies, but i guess we shouldn't be surprised since we know he's a boy like any other.

it appears as it's been 60 days since my last "is it sleepy time or wakey time?" update and, oh my, how times have changed!

you might recall that two months ago it seemed that odin was headed on the fast track for full nights of sleep in his crib instead of his co-sleeper. well, he's in the crib, but he's slowly slipped from sleeping 3-4 hours a night before waking to only getting 45 minutes to an hour of sleep, which is not very healthy since it disrupts his ability to go into deep REM sleep. and when he wakes up, instead of lulling himself back to sleep, he lets everyone know that he'd really rather prefer a bit of "comfort" nursing before going back to bed. so kris isn't getting any sleep either.

and while he hasn't been sleeping for long periods of time, he at least has been going to sleep quickly at his regular bedtime thanks to the The Four Bees. that is, until recently. a few weeks ago we noticed that it was taking longer and longer for him to go to sleep and he seemed to be having a n increasingly difficult time staying asleep immediately after the bedtime ritual if kris wasn't sitting close at hand.

he's not sick and we know that most of the time he's having trouble sleeping without comfort nursing that he's not hungry, so it seems that odin is developing a classic case of Associating Mamma with Falling Asleep.

so, what to do? while we haven't read every book on infant sleeping, the ones we have read, such as "healthy sleep habits, happy child" and "the no cry sleep solution" recommend that after you reach 4 months (adjusted) in age, it's time to get proactive about creating healthy sleep habits before things get out of control. and while there's not a lot of debate about when to start doing something, there's lots to debate when it comes to what to do. with regards to a case of "Associating Mamma with Falling Asleep" "healthy sleep habits, happy child" recommended plan is along the lines of; 1. close the door at 7 p.m. 2. turn off the baby monitor 3. as long as you're sure the infant isn't hungry or in danger, you let her scream all night long. 4. repeat for several nights. the second night generally considered to be the "worst" night. on the other end of the spectrum you have the procedures and protocols outline in "the no cry sleep solution", in which you engage in an elaborate process of "weaning" the infant from Associating Mamma with Falling Asleep.

we've chosen to go with yet another alternative by modifying "progressive" ferber method, which is much closer to the approach outlined in "the no cry sleep solution", but much less elaborate.

the first plan of attack is to put odin down when he's drowsy, but not asleep so he gets more practice at getting used to putting himself to sleep in his crib. if he "fusses" then we stand nearby to confort him for 2 minutes and then we leave the room for up to 5 minutes. after 5 minutes, if he's still fussing or (gasp!) crying we'll return the to the room for 2-3 minutes and leave again for 5 more minutes. we repeat as necessary, increasing the time we stay out of the room, to 7 minutes and then 10 minutes until two hours has passed at which time he can eat again. phew.

we were amazed at the results. while he does get upset when we leave the room for the first 5 minute period ( usually it takes him a few minutes to figure out we're not around and then a minute or two more to get "worked up" about it. ), he's always been able to put himself to sleep in the following 5 minute period! and coincident with this new approach, the interval he stays asleep at night has increased from 45 minutes to an hour to over 2.5 hours ( and occasionally 4 hours )! via the baby monitor, we've even heard him put himself back to sleep several times each night, which never used to happen. so we're very happy with the initial results, since it hasn't involved too much trauma.

assuming that we continue to see such postive benefits with this approach, we'll work on using similar techniques to gradually get odin's "sleep interval" from 2.5 hours to much more normal 5 hours by increasing the time between nighttime feedings by 15 minutes each week. this week we've already done well, since the baseline was 2 hours between feedings and without doing much of anything beyond putting him to bed differently we've seen his sleep interval jump past that mark. next week the baseline will be 2 hours and 15 minutes. and then 2 hours and 30 minutes and so on and so forth. most "sleep authorities" claim that by 4 months "most" babies are sleeping 5-6 hours uninterrupted, so we have our work cut out for us.

here's to hoping that there's more sleeping the next "sleep" update :-)

odin's musical education began early when it was clear that he enjoyed kicking out the jams in the nicu and now he gets to listen to even more tunes with his ipod mini when he's not incorrectly practicing the diatonic scale.

so i guess that it's no surprise that i've noticed that he really seems to like studiously studying my movements while playing The Greatest Acoustic Guitar Of All Time.

is it just me or does he look as if he's getting ready to practice his strum with his right hand?

perhaps in the not too distant future i'll recruit him for session work for the snowdeal show ® podcast.

for the musically inclined, the guitar is tuned to a modified open g tuning, CGDGBD.

johanna and adam sent this postcard of times square in new york city.

the movie theatre playing crooklyn and the picture of a much-younger-than-today jay leno date the photograph at around 1994, which means it was taken right around the time that rudy giuliani started the times square "redevelopment project" which transformed the square into the tourist friendly area that exists today.

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

flickr is one year old! which means, i guess, that they grow'd up along with odin.


you'll notice that he discovered for the first time that balloons are fun to lick. i'd like to know what sort of super balloon material they found to make this particular balloon because it's the same one we bought on day 62 to celebrate his second month birthday.

rebecca sent a nice postcard with a psalm and a photo of her backyard in cleveland, ohio.

she also sent a postcard from pittsburgh and if i'm not mistaken i have at least one or two more in the stack from her.

so when you think that the world is filled with selfishness, just remember that there are people like rebecca who are more than willing to keep strangers smiling with their kindness.

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

while there were days not too long ago that we were afraid that odin would be attached to his supersized paci for a very, very longt time, these days he's much more interesting in showing off his new ability to grasp and manipulate objects with two hands than he is in putting it in his mouth.

in fact, he'll usually only keep pacified with the paci for a few minutes before he'll let you know that it really doesn't do much for him anymore.

it's fun to look through all the supersized paci photos to get an interesting way to calibrate his growth.

auntie m sent a postcard of mount washington in new hampshire which is the highest peak in the the northeastern united states.

mount washington is known for having some of the worst weather in the world ( in 1934 a record setting 231 mph (372 km/h) wind speed was measured on the top of the mountain ) and i remember when we climbed/drove up the mountain when we were kids, i thought i was going to get blown off the side of the mountain.

someday, we definately plan on taking odin on his own adventure up the mountain.

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

today we picked a book at random from odin's new reading list which kris picked up at the library because she liked the title, "Blue Bowl Down: An Appalachian Rhyme" and lo and behold but it's a lullabye about the wonders of one his recent epicurean adventures - making sourdough!

certainly he's lived the lullabye:

"Shake the flour, little baby. Scoop a handful from the bin. / Shake it out and stir it in."

what a funny coincidence.

allison robinson send greetings with a simple command from merced. california.

i think odin took the admonition seriously.

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

now, i know he's not really walking. and since he's only just recently got the hang of sitting unassisted and hasn't even begun to show the slightest inclination to crawl, i don't expect him to start walking anytime soon.

but today he started to do something new when we played the "stands and smiles" game - he started taking what look quite a bit like steps. although i'm "leading" him a little, he really was lifting his leg up, bending it at the knee and moving it forward.

he's definately been doing what his pediatrician confusingly named step reflex for quite some time, but that's just pushing against something with his feet and not this complex, coordinated, lift-leg-bend-knee-move-foot-forward action.

i can't seem to find any walking milestones resources that reference this pre-walking behavior, so maybe i'm making much ado over nothing, but it sure seemed exciting to us!

oh. and i really do walk around with my pants "cuffed" like that, so mock me silently if you must. somehow i've acquired an obsessive behavior where i simply cannot stand it when the cuffs of my pants touch the floor, hence the cuffs. of course, uncuffed pants are acceptable when wearing slippers or shoes.