My wife and I love renaissance faires. We go to two or three every year, and we’re all geeky about it. We dress up in (more or less) period appropriate clothes, drink mead, eat turkey legs (calling it ‘goose’ of course, since medieval Europe didn’t have turkeys), and utter the occasional ‘Huzzah!’ at shows.
We were happy to learn that this year, there was a faire being held right here in the Capital Region of New York, the Capital District Renaissance Festival. It was their first year ever, and we just had to go check it out. We gave it a solid ‘B’, which for a first year event is pretty amazing!
It was, by modern ren-faire standards, tiny! Normally, the biggest planning part for a faire is whether your feet are properly prepared for walking ten miles before you start your day. Here, we were able to amble from one side of the faire to the other with a stroller in less than five minutes. However, this was actually a good thing. The whole affair had a certain intimacy to it. By the end of the day, the performers (both stage and wandering, a solid point!) and faire-goers were all familiar to each other, and the vendors took time to strike up conversations with passers-by.
The joust was well done (although it could have used some electronic amplification), and there were some great performers. There were also some this-might-just-be-the-first-time-I’ve-ever-been-on-stage performers (looking at you, ‘fire-manipulator’ dude), but they were adorable, rather than bad. The food tent was a little over-priced, but considering we got a whole day of baby-friendly entertainment for $10 per person, it seemed like a fair trade-off.
All in all, we had a good time. It was close, inexpensive, and fun, and a perfect first time at the faire for our infant son Dashiell, who may have been less than impressed with the shows, but was fascinated by all the shiny stuff!
It was well attended, which we hope means it will come again next year, and we intend to promote it tirelessly next year so it grows and improves!
My wife thinks I’m a bit of a nut, but I can’t help but analyze everything to death. I spend a great deal of time with my baby boy, and while I revel in the experience, there’s a little piece of me deep down that seems to just observe and ponder. While some might find this distracting, it’s provided me with some of the most amazing moments!
When Dashiell was about two months old, I watched him think for the first time! I had him laying on the bed next to me when I noticed him holding up his hand in front of his face. It caught my attention, as his ability to specifically focus on objects was just emerging, so seeing him actually look at his own hand was a pretty wonderful first in its own right. As I watched, he shakily turned the hand back and forth while he looked it over. As his thumb came to be pointed toward his face, his eyes opened wide, and he immediately shoved that thumb directly into his mouth, and sucked on it! That was a bit of a shock, as we had never seen him suck his thumb previously, and had specifically commented on it(another first!).
It wasn’t until after that shock had worn off that my internal observer did the math, and I realized that I had watched him carry out possibly his first ever complex thought process. He observed an object, correlated it with a need he wanted to fulfill, and he implemented a plan to test his theory! I was utterly dumbfounded.
Here’s hoping I’m not just another dopey parent seeing what he wants to see!
We just had another minor life-event for Dashiell. Family came to visit! “The Nebraska Cousins” (and aunt) came to spend a couple of days, meet Dashiell, and experience a few of the sublime pleasures of Upstate New York in summer.
There wasn’t time for any major trips, but we got them some Moxies, went to Hoffman’s Playland, and had a bit of a cookout. Mostly, this is an excuse to post more pictures of my beautiful boy doing things for the first time:
Staying out of the sun
Not excited by the Carousel
Slightly more excited by the carousel
The whole crew on the train
So you want to feed me?
You’re funny!
This weekend, we managed to kill three birds with one stone. We took the camper on it’s Spring shakedown, we sorta attended a friend’s wedding, and we took Dashiell on his first camping trip. It was pretty amazing.
When we were invited to a friend’s wedding, our first question (as it always is, now that we’re parents) was, “Can we bring the baby?” We couldn’t, as it turned out, as the family had scads of children and they understandably had decided that they needed to exclude kids under twelve so as to prevent being overrun. This would normally have meant we just said thanks-but-no-thanks, but at the last second, I had an idea. What if we camped nearby, and I stayed with the baby while Sabrina went to the wedding with another friend who was invited? At least we’d be half there, and I would get some quality time with my boy engaging in one of my favorite activities!
We found an RV resort about a half-hour away from the wedding called Pine Acres. Despite it’s cemetery-like name, the place was pretty amazing. Camping; private lake with swimming, fishing, and dog-beaches; canoe, kayak, and peddle-boat rentals (some of the peddle-boats so big they actually have water-slides on them); pool, hot tub, and splash park; basketball, volleyball and tennis courts; mini-golf and a 2500 sq ft bouncy-house. At $85 per night for 3 adults and a child, it was kinda ridiculous!
A torrential downpour (like I saw in Southeast Asia, but in Upstate New York, in May. Don’t tell me our climate isn’t changing!) delayed our departure for almost two hours, so we got to the campground after dark. Wandering an unfamiliar campground in the dark, in two inches of squishy mud, while maneuvering two tons of camper was less than fun, but with a couple of employees’ help, we managed to find our spot, get backed in, make our hookups, and settle in by about 11 PM. We had no idea what we would find in the morning, because we hadn’t yet seen anything, and frankly, we were a little concerned.
Morning came awfully early. Despite numerous wake-up attempts by daddy, and a consolidation from bassinet to bed, neither Mommy nor baby were impressed with 7 AM.
Finally, we peeked outside, to this view: As you can see, that’s our private dock on the lake right there. Sadly, we had to share our inlet on the lake with five other campsites, so… Seriously?!?!? We had a PRIVATE DOCK! When was the last time you got *more* than they mention in the brochure?
We explored a little, then ate breakfast at the general store. Conveniently, since the camper didn’t have hot water (I did mention this was a shakedown-cruise!), the showers were right behind the general store. They were hot and clean, which I suppose is all you could really ask of them! By the time wandering, breakfast, and showers were done, it was time for the ladies to head for the wedding, and the men to hit the dusty trail. Dashiell saddled up on my chest, and we went and saw the world!
Looking Back From Our Dock
Unimpressed By The Dock
The Lake
The Neighbors
The Neighborhood
The Beach
The Wilds
A bouncy house bigger than your house?!?!?
Pool/Splashpark/Playground
Ready to watch the sunset with daddy
Sunset
I suppose we’ve reached a bit of a milestone in our infant son’s life. Our first national holiday together! Memorial Day may not be the biggest such event, but it turned out pretty awesome nonetheless…
At the last minute, I got an invite to see a friend’s band at a local venue. Normally, this wouldn’t have been a “let’s bring baby” event for us, but this particular band is an acoustic duo that plays covers from the last thirty years, and they happened to be playing at Hofbrau, a improbably on-the-nose looking Bavarian Chalet on Warner Lake. Then, even more last minute, we discovered that a bunch of of our friends a) had never experienced the sublime joy of a visit to Moxie’s gourmet ice cream stand (which opens Memorial Day weekend) and b) unexpectedly had their plans fall through for the holiday.
So, as if by magic, we had a plan! The team assembled at our place at 1 PM, and headed off to Moxie’s. We were the very first patrons of the holiday, and got our amazing frozen treats almost immediately on arrival. We sat in the sun, talked, and enjoyed. Dashiell even had his first taste of real food (if you count melted ice cream as food). He was sadly unimpressed, but we assume that his infant taste buds simply haven’t had time to develop an appreciation for the finer things yet…
Once we were done with ice cream, we saddled up once again for the hour drive to Warner Lake. The clouds disappeared, and the drive was a beautiful, leisurely meander through the woods and farmlands of the Helderberg Escarpment. Hofbrau is as inviting as advertised, an amazing replica of a Bavarian chalet in the middle of nowhere, perched at the edge of a beautiful little lake. The menu was a *slight* disappointment, having only one actual German food on it, but it made up for this lack with at least one passable German beer (Warsteiner) and the spectacular and unique culinary innovation of wrapping all of their hot sandwiches and burgers in potato dough before deep-frying them!
We sat on the deck in the warm Spring sun, looking out over the lake, listening to awesome live music, drinking beer, and eating sinfully good food. We ran into more friends, and chatted for hours. We spent the entire afternoon and a good chunk of the evening out there, and Dashiell was a perfect angel, mostly sleeping and occasionally opening his eyes just long enough to charm the pants off anyone nearby.
All-in-all, an idyllic, almost storybook day.
Yesterday, Dashiell had his two-month checkup. It was a raging success, to everyone but a rather annoyed Dashiell!
Two months is the magic number for immunization, it seems, as no other point in the schedule has more simultaneous vaccines. We knew this going in, so given my still-insanely-powerful urge to kill whatever makes my baby cry, I was informed by my wife that I wouldn’t be attending. By all reports, my boy handled the whole thing like the warrior my testosterone-fueled fantasies of his super-being status predicted he would!
He came home somewhat perforated, and in a rather foul mood, but otherwise perfect. His checkup couldn’t have gone better. [Note: the remainder of this might sound a bit like bragging, because, you know, it is!] His responses are exactly where the doctors want them. He is so strong that the doctor used the word “amazing”. He’s able to keep his head upright for several seconds at a time entirely on his own, which is apparently appropriate for babies twice his age.
Most importantly, in one month, his length and weight have jumped from the third percentile to the twenty-fifth. This is hugely happy news, given the concerns we had about health issues with him starting out so tiny! It looks like we were right about his insanely increased feeding meaning he was having an extended growth spurt.
Our boy, much to his constantly-drunk-dry mother’s alarm, doubled his weight in two months. Just to put that in perspective, if he were to continue at that rate, by his first birthday he’d weigh 320 pounds, and by his tenth, he’d weigh 5.8 quintillion pounds (5.76×10^18, for you nerdy types), or about 30,000 times as massive as Mount Everest. Needless to say, we’re hoping things slow down a bit soon, but we’ll be happy if this keeps up until he’s above the fiftieth percentile!
All in all, a good day. Our boy is healthy, well on his way to normal height and weight, and at least partially protected from the worst diseases that could do him harm (just Measles/Mumps/Rubella left, which you have to wait until one year for…)
Oh, and just in case you’re about to start squalling at me about how we’re risking autism etc. by vaccinating our child, you aren’t welcome here, you ignorant, dangerous mental defect!
And on that note, here’s your gratuitous baby-pic posting of my amazing, beautiful boy, who’s changed so much in the first two months, I despair of remembering what he looked like without all these pictures!
At 2 Days:
At 1 Week:
At 1 Month:
At 7 Weeks:
At 8 Weeks:
For the first six weeks of his life, our son spent every moment in close physical proximity to one or both of us. He didn’t really have a ‘schedule’ because he slept when-and-wherever it pleased him as we lugged him around. During the day, he was either carried, worn, or in a bassinet in the room with us. At night, his bassinet was literally in our bed, much to our spines’, hips’, and shoulders’ dismay. Last week, because it has to happen eventually and because our health was starting to suffer, that all began to change.
It was time for the crib! For the first few days, we followed the ‘schedule’ we had all along, which is to say that baby went to bed after whatever feeding we were last conscious for. Given his recent growth spurt, that meant putting him down anywhere from 11 PM to 2 AM. Honestly, this stage wasn’t too bad! The first night, we got him asleep, put him down, he slept for two hours straight before needing a feed, and then got another three or four right after. By the fourth night, once we got him down he was sleeping for at least three and as many as six hours in a row in his crib.
Stage one was so immediately successful that we decided to move directly to stage two, ‘The Schedule’. We read about 1000 articles on how to make it happen, picked a reasonably easy to achieve bedtime (10 PM), and implemented the plan! Well, we tried to implement the plan. Well, in retrospect, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we blundered blindly through our own mistakes for a few days, thinking we had a plan. We decided immediately that ‘Ferberizing’ wasn’t for us, as a) there’s some science to support that the method can cause anxiety and dietary problems later in life, and b) listening to our child squall for even five minutes without going to him is enough give us nervous breakdowns. Therefore, the ‘plan’ was to put him down at ten, as sleepy as we could get him but with his eyes still open, and then go to comfort him every time he fussed until he finally settled in.
Needless to say, if I haven’t foreshadowed it well enough, this plan was not particularly well received, and has been heaped with criticism by its primary recipient. Now that we have our boy on a ‘schedule’, he effectively gets to sleep in the same time period he did before, only now, that achievement is preceded by between one and four hours of a constant, grinding cycle of ‘sleep for five minutes, then scream for twenty, then sleep for five minutes, then scream for twenty, rinse-and-repeat’, the ‘scream’ part of each cycle taking place mostly in the arms of one or both parents. We do not live in a peaceful house right now. The dogs are beginning to join in…
Well, at least we’re getting lots of exercise, running up and down stairs all evening, every evening!
My recent experiences as a new father have brought me to become interested in a concept in psychology called Ego Depletion. There’s a fair amount of scientific evidence backing up the idea that your ability to exert self-control/willpower is contingent on the use of some depletable resource in your brain. If, over a period of time, you exercise your will in a concentrated fashion, your ability to continue to do so diminishes. The longer or more intense the use, the faster and more completely your self-control suffers.
This effect explains why people “break down on the stand” in cross-examinations. It also explains why people on “reality” TV shows, who know full well they are being watched and will be judged by millions, still often say or do the meanest, stupidest things to each other with no thought for the consequences. In my opinion, one’s capacity for ego depletion probably also explains most of the difference between introverts and extroverts; Consider the effort expended in concentration and maintaining appearances when “schmoozing” at a party, and how that effort can leave even the *most* extroverted feeling emotionally exhausted. Then, consider how one would feel in that situation if their “ego reserve” was significantly smaller than a social butterfly’s!
This is kind of a scary concept, when you think about it. No matter how good a person you are, no matter how disciplined a person you are, you always know there’s a little bit of monster in you. Most of us, when annoyed by someone, feel an urge to say something hurtful or brusque. Likewise, words spoken in anger often urge a person to commit violence. We have urges to take what we want, do what we want, take pleasure in others’ pain, and so on. Most of the time, we resist these urges, but what if?
What if we get caught up in a long argument? What if we, through random chance, experience a whole bunch of mishaps all in a row, each requiring intense decision-making or control of the urge to curse and/or yell? What if we have to sit with a cranky baby for ten straight hours? What if we find ourselves in a difficult situation after experiencing these things? Does the monster get out, whether we want it to or not?
I can tell you this from experience. Caring for a cranky baby requires constant attention, troubleshooting, and physical engagement. Ten minutes caring for a cranky baby is a stressful situation. Forty-five minutes caring for a cranky baby makes you want to cry right along with him. Two hours caring for a cranky baby makes you want to scream, punch things, and curse the gods. Ten hours in, especially at four in the morning, you are literally a blubbering lump, collapsed in the corner. Just for a moment, think about the momentary urges you might feel in that situation. Now consider that that situation is perfectly designed to produce ego depletion. As a father, it scares me shitless!
There is good news, though. Some studies show that you can achieve “ego replenishment” through feeling positive emotions. They’ve used surprise gifts, comedy videos, and feel-good pep-talks, all of which tend to diminish the effect. I myself have discovered that even a brief meditation can significantly rebuild my ability to exert will in ego depleting situations like taking care of an inconsolable infant son by myself for the better part of a day. The irony? To achieve any of these improvements, you need to still have the self-control (and available time) to go looking for them in the first place…
Sabrina and I have joked for years about how we’re going to write a book about dog ownership, entitled, “No! Don’t Eat That!” Since having a baby, we’ve of course been joking about how we’re going to have to write a “new baby” book (ironically, also entitled, “No! Don’t Eat That!”), because all the stuff people told us to prepare for has nothing to do with what we’re actually dealing with!
Today, I learned that my boy, who we already knew could roll himself over over on his own at three weeks, despite all the information that says that’s a three month thing (FYI, this isn’t a humblebrag, you *really* don’t want your newborn to be able to roll over. Really!), has another previously unknown power. At six weeks, he actually has the ability to simultaneously roll over on his side, pull his legs up to his chest, kick away the wipe that was covering him, and urinate!
I am attempting to invent a name for this maneuver, but it has so far eluded me. I’m thinking something like the ‘Holy Fuck! You Just Pissed On Two Walls, a Shelf, a Changing Table, A Diaper Genie, A Hamper, A Garbage Can, The Wood Floor, The Carpet, Several Toys, And Your Father’s Face (And Arm, And Chest, And Pants) In Under Two Seconds!’ maneuver, but it seems a bit wordy.
Whatever we end up naming it, it is certainly as, if not more impressive than his previous, critically acclaimed invention, the ‘Watch Me Pee, Crap, And Vomit At The Same Time, Then Kick Both Fouled Diapers Against The Wall’ maneuver…
