I don't have a lot of time to write this week, on account of alot of work related things and getting accustomed to the whole rigamarole of having Reid stay at Ms. Mendoza's house. But I wanted to share these two teeth images which we extracted from Reid at great personal harm and with a lot of shouting. Reid's teeth started coming in fairly early, and by his four month visit to the doctor, which yielded all those good percentile numbers about his height and weight, Reid fairly shocked the physician by sporting a pair of lower-incisors, the better to carefully review and then reject any future attempts to deliver non-liquid foods.

But here, despite the suffering we endured after obtaining these two shots, are the Reid-teeth, in all their living glory.

While I am not a regular contributor to the Hardly Born, T requested that I write a quick synopsis of the day care go-home routine. Here goes:

• 4:30, Begin prepping folks in my office that I am leaving at 5. (this often takes more effort than you’d expect).
  
• Fight with traffic.
  
• Arrive at Ms. Mendoza’s any between 5:10 and 5:45 depending on how cooperative folks are in my office and traffic.
  
• Collect Reid and all his dirty things from Ms. Mendoza.
  
• Go home.
  
• Take Reid out of the car and place on porch.
  
• Fumble with keys and release now-neglected dog from her sanctuary in the empty house.
  
• Try to keep dog from jumping on Reid.
  
• Convince dog to down into the yard and use the bathroom.
  
• Put Reid inside house.
  
• Go back out to car retrieve my bag, Reid’s things and mail.
  
• Take Reid out of seat, find full body fleece coat-thing and dress him while trying to keep excited, now-neglected dog from jumping allover the place.
  
• Take Reid, dog, leash, and stroller back outside.
  
• Attempt to get down front porch steps with out dropping Reid or tripping over dog.
  
• Use a bizarre series of movements using one hand and my knee to open stroller while holding baby and trying to keep unleashed, now-neglected dog out of street.
  
• Put Reid in stroller.
  
• Pause for a brief moment to collect myself.
  
• Leash dog.
  
• Walk dog on leash and baby in stroller.
  
• Return home.
  
• Take off Reid’s full-body fleece coat thing.
  
• Put Reid down and listen to him scream while feeding dog (she is very demanding at meal time) and if I am lucky take off my coat and use the bathroom.
  
• 7:00, sit on couch entertaining Reid, try desperately to ignore mess in house and wait for T to come home.
  

I now realize that my only entry to the webblog universe is somewhat whiney, but the reality is that we are exhausted. T has been a saint the last few weeks, getting up most nights for the 3 AM feeding. T has always done better with lack of sleep than I have, but still I can see that he is very tired. In an attempt to make things somewhat easier for him, I try to keep up with the other house things: dinner (mine and T’s), laundry, feeding, house cleaning, baby bath-time, and preparing Reid’s bag and clothes for the next day. I wonder how it is possible for people to raise twins or to be a single mother. No wonder people are waiting longer to have babies or choosing not to have them at all.

I wouldn’t give Reid up for a single second. He has changed our lives in such a truly incredible way that I can’t imagine life without his adorable little smile, but if anyone out there wants to send me a nanny or cleaning lady for Christmas, I’d be happy to accept.

Today marks the end of Reid's second week at day care. He goes to Ms. Leonor Mendoza's house every morning around 8:15 and gets picked up around 5:20. It's strange, because we have spent so much time with him, every once in a while I wonder what he's doing right then, because every second of every day before November 3, I knew, or K knew, but one of us was there.

It's also a little troubling, because the reality is that this is the rest of our life forever. We will wake up, we will get ourselves and our child presentable for a trip to the world outside, and then he will go one place and we will go to other places, and we won't see each other for hours. We won't know what the other is doing any more than I know what you're doing right now. This will be the condition for the next 17 and a half years, and then he will probably go somewhere where we won't know what he's doing ever. (Shudder.)

But the day care world for a little baby isn't that different from the one Reid lived in before. He probably watches Sesame Street, plays with toys, cries some, eats some, sleeps some, and repeats until K shows up. Ms. Mendoza sometimes takes the kids for walks, and her backyard probably has some playspace, though it seems that it is always raining or cold these days...

Anyhow, our new life with daycare reminds me oddly of early life in my childhood home with my sisters and mom. K and I get up hours early, sometimes a little earlier if Reid so demandeth. His sleep is better some days, worse others, but he has demonstrated an ability — which hasn't quite mastered — to put himself back to sleep after giving a couple groans of middle-sleep. So on an average night, Reid will go to bed around 9:30, and K and I will creep around our increasingly creaky old house brushing teeth, washing faces, letting out the dog, taking our contact lenses and doing everything else while trying not to wake the boy. By the time we're done with all these operations, it's ten or ten-thirty, and we are (or at least K, for whom sleep is an addictive elixir, is) fully exhausted. Reid wakes up either at 2 or 4, and downs 6 ounces of milk/formula. Sometimes, he wakes up earlier, and, since he's not hungry, K and I debate about how to discourage ourselves from going in to make sure he's okay.

I almost always get up. But we're really trying to sleep train the boy, so no lectures. I'll stop getting up soon.

So we wake up at 6, if the boy hasn't jumped the gun a little already. If he's sleeping, we head downstairs, like ghosts getting ready for our day, silently preparing bottles of formula, taking showers and brushing teeth again. I shower and dress while K eats breakfast and makes lunch for us both. Then Reid awakens, and (hopefully) I'm dressed and I can take him while K showers and dresses. I entertain him, artfully attempting to keep my clothes clean and dry. Then K heads off to work, and I feed Reid, and I begin the frenetic, Jerry Lewis-like preparation for taking Reid to day care and getting myself to work:
pack my bag (lunch, Style section)
pack Reid's bag (clean bottles, extra baby-whatnots)
put bags outside front door (it's very hard to leave with the baby in the carseat and two bags on the shoulders)
put baby gate at top of stairs to prevent dog from eating all the pants and toilet paper in the house
put coat on baby
put hat on baby
put baby in carseat
take hat off baby because placement in carseat has forced hat over his eyes causing him to scream bloody murder
attempt to replace hat on baby without eliciting screams
curse hat under breath
put coat on me
unlock car
put keys in door (to prevent fumbling for keys on porch)
get carrot for now-neglected dog
give dog carrot
close and lock front door
put baby into car
get two bags from porch
put bags in car
go to Ms. Mendoza's house.

Every day. For years to come. I'm tired just thinking about it.

Reid hit the doctor's office Monday for his four months appointment. The big news, of course, was the addition of two tiny little mini-chicklet teeth in the bottom of his mouth. I will endeavor to draw his screaming ire and post a photograph of the little baby incisors in short order.

It feels okay, then, to confirm that Reid is effectively no longer accessing his mother's milk, um, directly. While he enjoys some of the seemingly endless supply of frozen breastmilk, Reid has also met with a formula-dealership, and has arranged a nice little deal. The addition of the formula has had interesting side effects. The gifts he leaves for his caretaking parents in his little pants have transformed into something fierce and dreadful and new. But they only seem to come about twice a day. Also, he has surprisingly bad, chalky breath, like he gobbles Rolaids all day long. Weird.

But it seems that Reid's transition to slowly depleting his stash of frozen breastmilk and otherwise relying on his new best friend the formula hasn't really affected him that much. He still smiles, and he still rewards you at unexpected times with a half-laugh, or a wry sideways grin, and when he does, it's pure gold.

But the trip to the doctor was also rewarding in the world of statistics. He is some kind of tall baby, measuring in now at 26½ inches, which puts him into the 97th percentile for height. He has not gained a ton of weight, instead apparently devoting resources to getting taller. He now weighs 15½ pounds, and he is at something like (I don't remember exactly) the 70th percentile for weight. My son, the percentile conqueror.

The doctor said that he was good in many different ways, and K and I celebrated our successful parenting by acting nervous and jumpy, like junkies. He asked why he touches his ears. The doctor said, "Babies touch their ears." She looked into the ears with a thingamawhatsis and they were fine. We asked if he was supposed to brush his teeth.

She said, "Teeth?"

It is apparent that Reid's decision to launch his teeth upon the world prior to reaching the four-month mark is impressive. The doctor quickly inspected them, and then looked at us as if to ask, "which one of you is responsible for this?"

"I had teeth at four months," I reply sheepishly.

"Great!" Sighs of relief fill the room. We are to buy the Orajel toothpaste and plastic tooth-rubbing device that fits over a parent's finger. This is a previously unknown piece of baby-related merchandise. We will buy it immediately.

With that, Reid was turned over to a nurse full of needles for some injections, DPT and all that. He screamed like a banshee. K couldn't watch. I held him while one, two, three needles were plunged into his meaty little thighs. It hurt me to the bone. Everything that makes him cry does.

I'm a terrible blogger. I've moved into a newly blasé phase as far as my blogging is concerned, and I'm wondering if it's going to stick, or if I'm going to be able to snap back into the swing of things. We'll have to see.

My time at home with Reid was incredible. I think there is a conception that a mother is somehow closer to her baby than a father is, and since a mother always takes some sort of leave at the beginning of the child's life, I can understand how this takes hold. I encourage any new father to do what I did and proactively seek out a period of time to spend with your new child, learning is rhythms, understanding his needs and moods, and providing everything you can for him. I think it was through this experience that strongest bonds occur, and that is definitely what happened to me.

When Reid was born he was quite jaundiced, which is apparently fairly common in newborns. The treatment is to make sure he eats on schedule and often, and processes bilirubin out of his system. A side effect of the jaundice is lethargy, and that lethargy was the greatest enemy of Reid's recovery, because he just wanted to sleep.

As a result, we supplemented K's breastfeeding with bottlefed breastmilk, because we were concerned that some of the normal early-feeding jitters would interfere with him actually getting food in his stomach and clearing up his jaundice.

All of this is a means of explaining that during my time with Reid we went entirely onto bottlefeeding breastmilk, without any the drama of weaning that we've read about.

K was jealous that I would be home for this month because quite a few developmental landmarks were on the schedule. Reid finally laughed the other day, adding the chuckle to his admirable repetoire of squeals of delight and various other chatty noises. He has rolled halfway round, from his back to his side, and recognizes K and I as important figures in his life, who receive his best smiles and also best shouting.

Reid's trajectory is amazing. Supporting his head fully now, we go out walking in the Baby Bjorn, and Reid has switched to the front-facing setup, allowing him to wander through the Target like a true future consumer, ogling products and admiring advertising. He responds to speech, so if Reid decides he's chatting (his normal so-called speech is a series of long, simple syllables, like a person trying to give directions while undergoing dental surgery), we can extend his little conversations by talking back to him. Tone is all that matters.

He plays, alone or with us, finally reaching out and successfully grabbing onto things. For a while there, Reid kept his hands in tight little fists. He seemed to be constantly threatening people, waving his fists like a frustrated driver in dense traffic. Now he has opened his hands (the better to jam them into his mouth), and he reaches out for toys and noisemakers and carefully examines them, usually including his super-sensitive tongue in the research.

He has also begun teething, which seemed alarming at first because he was hustling right through his early months and moving onto major breakthroughs. The tooth is appearing right in front, and is the catalyst behind an inordinate amount of drool where once there was none. While the tooth has caused some pain, Reid appears to take it in stride, and he has not allowed it to interfere with his prodigious intake of food.

At about four months old, Reid weighs somewhere between 15½ and 16 pounds, though our accuracy is limited by the fact that the one baby-related gewgaw we didn't buy was a baby scale. He has a four-month visit to the doctor scheduled next week, and all new dimensional data will be revealed then.

As you can see from the photo above, for Halloween, Reid was a pumpkin, and just about the cutest damn squash you've ever seen. I've been a bad blogger, but I'll try to be better in the weeks ahead as I report on the next phase in Reid's life, daycare.