Tag Archives: me

on The Most Awesome Peach and The Revenge of the Squirrels.



we waited with much anticipation, salivating at the thought of enjoying the fruits of our peach tree’s labor. there was to be a humble peachy celebration on the first harvest, three years after planting the mother’s day gift.

i remained ever hopeful that the fruits, picked at their peak of freshness, would break me of my general disdain for peaches, which i developed from eating mushy, mealy canned versions of the fruit in my younger days.

but apparently, the squirrels were watching, and plotting revenge for my having finally, after years of battle, squirrel-proofed our bird feeder which stands near the peach tree. i imagine, after months of milling about under the bird feeder, that they hatched The Plan.

it was perfectly executed. they took a peach here and there through the growing season, making it appear as if they weren’t Too Greedy. and then, just before the peaches reached Perfection, in the span of 48 hours, they cleaned out the tree. dozens and dozens of peaches simply disappeared almost instantly.

we managed to save just a few, and so, i did get to taste a mindblowingly awesome peach which did, in fact, break me of my general disdain for the fruit.

rest assured, squirrels, that i will remember the taste of The Awesome Peachy Goodness as i plot my revenge. this means war.

me, 38 years ago. born 2.5 months premature before neonatal intensive care.



38 years ago, before the advent of neonatal intensive care, if you were born 2.5 months premature you got plopped in an incubator meant for full grown newborns and people hoped for the best. there wasn’t much to done except , perhaps, pray.

if memory serves scholarly articles were written on how doctors managed to save the lives of me and my mother from complications from placenta previa and premature birth.

i believe this photo was taken a few weeks after my birth. i would spend about the first 2.5 months of my life in that incubator.

i weighed about 2 pounds 13 ounces at birth and "they" said i would be a little "slow" from brain damage; a declaration which, of course, has been the source of great amusement and ribbing over the years.

32 years later, i would find myself on the other side of the incubator.

whatever you do, don’t tell theresa marquez.

whatever you do, don't tell theresa marquez.

i went out to organic valley hq to tend to our employee garden and i noticed the plot maintained by theresa marquez, cropp/organic valley’s chief marketing executive, was just bursting with peas.

so, i might have helped myself to a couple hundred.

just kidding, she said they were there for the taking and i was all too happy to take her up on the offer.

she has an astounding garden, and while picking peas i wondered how many chief marketing executives take the time to tend to an employee garden.

my guess is that the answer is none.

the eric update – day 253: the apprentice.

day 253: the apprentice.

so, i’m trying the ol’ bathroom mirror portrait trick, but my grand plans are foiled because instead of being tricked into looking into the camera reflection in the mirror odin was was quite happy to play with the real camera in front of him. i was hoping that he would accidentally hit the shutter button to snap a photo, but mostly he just fiddled with the knobs and mouthed the SLR eyepiece. with a bit more apprenticeship, i’m sure he’ll be be ready to begin the process of taking over as family photographer.

actually, at first the camera was off to the side as i was attempting to get a picture with both of our faces in the frame, but that resulted in multitudes of shots of him lunging for the camera while i precariously balanced him in one hand and the camera in another. so i compromised and put the camera front and center which means you’ll have to wait a little longer for a proper portrait of him and me.

really, i am slightly less camera shy than i appear. but only slightly.

the eric update – day 92: a third gregorian monthly birthday! reflux disappears!

day 92: a third gregorian monthly birthday! I.

it’s hard to believe that it’s not his first not his second but his third gregorian monthly birthday! we celebrated by spending a little quality time on my chest.

amazingly, he’s continuing to gain weight at a stupendous pace and is flying past the 5 pound mark and weighed in at 2,380 grams or about 5 pounds 4 ounces!

day 92: a third gregorian monthly birthday! II.

we didn’t have any cake on hand for his birthday, but we did have a little reglan which seems to be doing a good job of controlling his reflux. if fact, it’s doing such a great job that his doctor’s don’t think that he’s going to need surgery! that’s right, just four days ago it seemed inevitable that he’d need some sort of surgery, but today his doctors said that he’s doing so much better that he’ll likely not need any surgery afterall. oddly, they don’t even want to do another upper GI to see if the volume at which he starts to reflux has changed, since it seemed to be such an important number to everyone.

his progress has been truly remarkable, especially over the past couple of days. he’s pretty much completely stopped spitting up and blowing milk out his nose and, more importantly, his blood oxygen and heartrate levels have greatly stabilized. last week, even when he wasn’t spitting up, his heartrate would oscillate up and down, varying by as much as 40 beats per minute; the variations in his heartrate were caused by milk entering his esopagus and stimlulating his vagus nerve which helps to control how fast the heart is beating. in the past few days, these variations have greatly decreased and occasionally they’ll disappear entirely after an hour has passed after feeding.

so was it the reglan? the rice? the weight gains? the time taken to get acclimated to the new environment and recover the ROP surgery? who knows – maybe all the above. it’s hard to describe the feeling of having something like severe reflux just dispappear. poof. will it come back, if he gets stressed out after coming home? i guess we’ll find out soon, since there really aren’t too many reasons left for us to be in the nicu!

the eric update – day 90: five pounds! infant massage. another bath.

while flickr has been having issues, i’ve been getting behind on posting updates. so for now, i’ll just post the super abridged version and maybe i’ll get around to posting the longer version when time permits. you can see annotated photos from the day here.

  • 5 pounds (2280 grams)! woohoo! he’s as heavy as a bag of sugar! weight gain despite reflux is a good thing.
  • infant massage. we’ve been giving him more massages lately to help keep the gas moving along. infant massage has also been shown to have all sorts of other benefits, so it’s a good thing to do regardless ( indeed, the nurses at the old nicu gave eric regular massages, but they don’t seem to think it’s as important at the new nicu ).
  • yet another bath. you can’t have too many bath pictures can you? no, you can’t, especially when you’re giving a bath to a baby swaddled in cloth diapers. it’s cute. honest

laaaater:

day 90: five pounds!

5 pounds (2280 grams)! woohoo! he’s as heavy as a bag of sugar! weight gain despite reflux is a good thing.

day 90: another bath?!@ I.

hmmmm. can you tell he’s hungry? putting a web cloth diaper on him worked so well, that we decided to go all out and swaddle him completely, only unwrapping the parts that we needed to wash when we needed to. bath times go a lot smoother now.

day 90: another bath?!@ II.

yeah, he’s hungry, but he’s pacified temporarily by the supersized paci. i imagine that he’s looking at me thinking, “i’m going to remember this when i’m 16.”

day 90: another bath?!@ III.

time to be dried off by pops. my hands still look purty large next to his head.

day 90: infant massage. I.

we’ve been giving him more massages lately to help keep the gas moving along. infant massage has also been shown to have all sorts of other benefits, so it’s a good thing to do regardless ( indeed, the nurses at the old nicu gave eric regular massages, but they don’t seem to think it’s as important at the new nicu ).

we’re following the techniques described in Infant Massage: A Handbook for Loving Parents. i’m not an infant massage expert, but it seems like a good book.

day 90: infant massage. II.

little odin loves to have his feet massaged. being in the nicu is tough work and after a long day, he thinks it’s just grand it you spend a little extra time on his feet.

day 90: infant massage. III.

don’t forget to massage the arm and hand! he’s strong and likes to flex his muscles in an effort to impress the nurses.

day 90: infant massage. IV.

this move is called “paddling the waves” or something like that. but really it should be called “letting out the gas”. the rice makes him less gassy than the barley, but since he’s still not supposed to even be born for two more weeks, any solid stuff is rough on his gastrointestinal tract. so we spend extra time getting the gas out.

day 90: infant massage: V.

after the bath and massage, he’s more eager than ever to show us that he doesn’t need any help keeping the supersized paci in his mouth.

day 90: infant massage.  VI.

the final step of a good massage, of course, is getting to sleep in your most comfortable ‘jammies.