Can you see the resemblance?

We’re going to PAX East in a few weeks, and we want to make a Mega Man costume for Dash to wear while we are there. PAX is the Penny Arcade Expo, a gaming convention organized by the two guys that write the Penny Arcade webcomic.

We went to PAX in Seattle two years ago, and it was fantastic. There were workshops, tournaments, concerts, a huge exhibition hall, and tons of games. The best part was that everybody there was so nice. We made a few new friends while waiting in lines, and there were people of all ages in attendance. I have no reservations about taking our baby this year.

For the costume, I’m using a slightly more modern rendering of Mega Man for inspiration.

A. The helmet will be hand made – by me – with fabric and batting. It’s been a while since I’ve sewn anything, so I’ll probably use an existing hat as a base to build off of. The ears will be shaped like donuts with red fabric in the center.

B. The body of the costume will be a plain blue one-piece outfit with long sleeves and long pants. I’m still shopping for a simple, solid color outfit without graphics on it.

C. For the underwear, I will try to find a dark blue onesie, and I will cut off the top and hem the edge. I will likely stitch these bottoms to the light blue pajamas so that there is only one piece of clothing to remove when changing his diaper.

D. On his left hand, he will wear a dark blue glove or mitten.

E. The arm cannon, like the helmet, will be hand made with fabric and batting. It will be made like a puppet, so Dash can stick his arm in one end and flail it around. The details will be simple and stylized – just a strip of yellow fabric down each side and a circle of red fabric in the business end of the gun.

F. I’ll create the appearance of boots by stitching dark blue socks to the feet of the pajamas.

PAX is in two and a half weeks, so I’ll probably be working on the costume this weekend. I’ll be sure to post an update of the result!

Dash has monkey feet, just like his daddy. The gap between his big toe and his second toe is large enough to pinch ankles or grip fingers or climb trees. His legs are strong, too. With a little support from us for balance, he will stand for several seconds before wobbling to the floor.

Here’s a movie montage that I made of several of the videos that I filmed of him rolling over last week. It’s set to the song Weapon Of Choice by Fatboy Slim. The slow-motion clips at the end are so funny!

He still doesn’t cry much, though. In fact, he has started laughing out loud! He smiles almost every time that I look at him, and he laughs when I lift him high in the air and when I bounce him on my leg. Everybody says that they have not seen a happier baby.

We’ve started to notice some repetition in the way that he moves his body – gestures that seem innate to him. For example, he brings his fists up to his mouth when he is especially excited. He takes a deep breath and sighs when he is content. He rubs his eyes when he is tired. He arches his back and stretches his arms above his head when he wakes up. And he sucks on his fist whenever he is laying on his belly.

He is sleeping through the night now, according to all of the baby books. He sleeps for five or six hours, and then he wakes up hungry. We’ve really got the hang of nursing. He latches on instantly, and within a minute, I feel the let-down reflex. There’s no question if he is getting enough milk after learning that he weighed nearly double what he weighed at birth at his two-month check-up. He has also become more efficient at eating, taking half of the time that it took when he was a newborn. But it has never felt like an inconvenience to nurse him, even when it did take thirty minutes every two hours, and I love the obligatory cuddle time.

We have been giving him lots of tummy time, hoping that he will learn how to roll over. Actually, at the time I am writing this in month four, he has just mastered this skill. But I’ll save those details for the next post. In month three, he was holding his head up brilliantly, but he would tire after a few minutes and lay his head down. The exercise was a sure-fire way to get him to go to sleep, though!

Eric and I are still getting out of the house plenty. I’m working nearly 30 hours every week. We go to the rock climbing gym at least twice a week. And we get together with our friends to play games every weekend. Going to the grocery store or to restaurants hasn’t been difficult because Dash is always such a good baby. And now that he’s looking more and more like a little boy and less like an infant, I’m starting to think that I’m ready to have another!

Just one week after Dash was born, we celebrated his first holiday – Thanksgiving! Every year, all of the employees that work at my parents’ company eat lunch together on the day before Thanksgiving. Each person brings a dish to contribute to the meal, and because most of the employees are from Central America, the food is mostly Hispanic. I love it!

This was the first time that my coworkers got to meet Dash.

For lunch the next day, my parents invited all of Eric’s family to their house to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family. She did this so that Eric and I wouldn’t have to run all over town with a newborn to celebrate Thanksgiving twice. I think there ended up being twenty people there!

Because there were too many people to sit around the table, we had a buffet-style Thanksgiving lunch. I cooked roasted acorn squash, whiskey-glazed carrots, and spicy sweet potatoes. We had way too much food.

The weather that day was gorgeous, so we ate outside…

…and we played with the kids in the backyard.

My sister’s best friend came over for a while. She lives just through the woods, and they have been friends forever. I can’t believe that they are teenagers already!

While Dash was being passed around, Eric and I had a few moments to get away from the party. We sat on the swings where we had our first kiss almost ten years ago. I wonder what my fourteen-year-old self would have thought if she knew that she’d be married and have a baby ten years later!

Just for fun, here’s a picture of Eric and I during our first summer together in the same backyard. Summer of 2000. I was 14 and he was 18.

The next major holiday after Thanksgiving is… my birthday! Eric and I both took the day off of work. We took Dash to the mall, I got my hair cut, we ate lunch at Baker’s Crust, and then we ate sushi and drank sake for dinner. But my favorite part, something we’ve been doing almost every year for my birthday, was going to Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden after dark for the GardenFest of Lights.

We braved the cold and took Dash in his stroller to the Garden. He slept the whole time.

Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden is where Eric proposed to me on my birthday four years earlier. When he guided me to a bench at the Garden this year, I suspected that he might be up to something. Taking a rest on a bench contradicted our plan to rush through the Garden to get out of the cold! So I jokingly asked him, “Are you going to propose to me again?!”

He said yes.

He gave me a ring that matches my wedding band to wear on the other side of my engagement ring!

He had it engraved with “ERN + LN + FAMILY 09-11-17″ – his initials plus my initials and Dash’s birth date (in year-month-day format) – to signify the beginning of our family. It matches the engraving in our wedding bands that reads “ERN + LNW 06-03-11″ – our initials and our wedding date.

Our Christmas celebrations began with another company lunch on Christmas Eve. But instead of eating authentic Hispanic food again, we just ate pizza and fried chicken.

That night, Eric and Dash and I went to my parents’ house for dinner and to exchange gifts. We’ve always exchanged gifts with my family on Christmas Eve because we’re way too busy with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins on Christmas day.

My sister and I were being silly. She’s sixteen and I love her.

One of my favorite gifts that I gave this year was a plastic sleeve filled with tiny photos for my sister. I like giving gifts that I would want to keep for myself, and this one was definitely hard to give away!

I included pictures from some of my favorite memories with her: a camping trip we took last spring, a bluegrass festival that we attended a few years ago, sailing in the Chesapeake Bay, a cruise in the Caribbean, and New York City… so many good times!

After dinner, we played Apples to Apples.

The next morning was Dash’s first Christmas! Eric and I had fun opening his presents and surrounding him with them while he slept in his bouncy seat. We bought for him a bunch of books, a dragon mobile for his crib, a set of ABC flashcards, and a squirrel puppet.

But our day had only just begun. After a leisurely morning at home, we still had to visit Eric’s parents, his brother and his brother’s fiancée who were in town for the holidays, and all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins at my grandparents’ house.

Our first stop was Eric’s parents’ house, where their cat was hiding under the Christmas tree.

This was the first time that Eric’s brother, David, and his brother’s fiancée, Jenn, got to meet Dash. They live in Albany.

We ate French toast for breakfast, and then we exchanged gifts. Dash got loads of stuff!

Later in the afternoon, we went to my grandparents’ house to celebrate Christmas with my side of the family. My mom and my dad and my sister were there…

…and my uncle and his wife were there. They live in San Francisco, and they just got married this year.

…and my aunt and her husband and my cousins were there. We gave each of the kids a betta fish.

…and of course my grandparents were there.

For my Nana, I made a book of photos that I took of her garden last summer. Behind her house, she has a garden with two ponds, a gazebo, and hundreds of gorgeous flowers that I don’t know the names of. I like to think that it’s my own secret garden.

Looking back, our holidays were especially busy, and every day was full of activities. But I didn’t mind having so many places to go and people to see. I feel lucky to have all of my family living close by, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I bought Benjamin The Fish on a whim when I bought betta fish for my cousins as Christmas gifts. He was the only orange betta fish at the pet store. Orange is my favorite color, so I had to have him! He lives in a fish bowl on my desk at work because my terrible cats would probably eat him if I brought him home.

Someday, I want a gigantic aquarium with dozens of fish. Benjamin is a good starter fish, though. He’s surprisingly easy to care for. I feed him four pellets every morning, except for on the weekends. And I clean his bowl every other week, which just entails dumping him into the plastic bucket that he lived in at the pet store while I swish out his fish bowl and fill it with fresh water.

Only a few days after I got Benjamin, he built a bubble nest! Male betta fish build bubble nests before mating. When the female betta fish releases eggs, the male fish carries the eggs to his bubble nest to be incubated, and then he chases the female away so that she doesn’t eat the eggs. Brutal!

A few more photos…

The first few months were a whirlwind of holidays. First, Thanksgiving… then my sister’s birthday, my birthday, Christmas, and New Year’s. I assumed that we’d be homebound with a newborn, but it seems like we were constantly away from home attending family parties. Having a baby meant that our attendance was mandatory rather than exempt.

But let me start at the beginning… the day that we brought Dash home from the hospital. He slept a lot, and we didn’t quite know what do to with him other than look at him which was just fine by me. I’d never seen something so precious.

He was a bit jaundiced when we left the hospital. We had to take him to his pediatrician every day to get his bilirubin levels checked. His pediatrician loaned us a biliblanket (which was really just a panel illuminated by UV light that we tucked between his back and his shirt) to zap his bilirubins away. It made him glow like a glow worm.

We gave him his first bath in our kitchen sink when he was ten days old. It took both of us to wash him – one person to hold him because he was so slippery and the other person to scrub him. Dash didn’t like it very much, but he seems to enjoy baths now, so maybe the water was not warm enough. Poor baby!

Breastfeeding was difficult at first. My nipples were chapped and bleeding, my boobs ached, and Dash wanted to eat every two hours. He frequently fell asleep while he was eating, and I even fell asleep while feeding him once or twice. It was a physically exhausting exercise.

I think we figured it out after two weeks, though. I bought some lanolin for my nipples and a heat pad for my boobs, and as Dash got a bit older, he needed to eat less often and became more efficient at each feeding. He weighed a full pound above his birth weight when we took him to his pediatrician for his two-week check-up. Since I am his sole source of food, I considered that a personal achievement!

In addition to taking Dash to his pediatrician several days in a row because of his jaundice, then for his two-week check-up, we also left the house during those early weeks to go to Target and to Cici’s pizza. He didn’t mind being out at all. In fact, he slept the entire time. I think that the snugness of his car seat and the vibrations of movement in the car and in shopping carts put him to sleep.

I returned to work part-time after Dash’s two-week check-up. I work at my parents’ company, and they were more than happy to be able to see their grandson every day. I have flexible hours, a private office, and plenty of help between my mom and two other ladies who work there. It’s a really great situation, and I feel so lucky to be able to work and take care of my baby.

My office is pretty awesome. I have a big window, a Pack ‘n Play with a changing table for Dash, and lots of plants. I also have an orange betta fish named Benjamin (seen in this month’s masthead), but more on him in a later post. Did I mention that my commute is only ten minutes?!

As for me, I recovered from giving birth immediately. Because my labor and delivery wasn’t treated like a major surgery, there was really nothing to recover from. I was out of bed and full of energy just hours after Dash was born, and I had no problem walking up and down the flight of stairs to our condo or leaving the house every day during his first week to visit the pediatrician. I felt indestructible. There was nothing that I couldn’t do.

It wasn’t until the second month that my vigor and vitality wore off and the lack of sleep caught up to me.

Two big things happened during his second month. He started interacting with the world and with us, and he got CHUNKY. He grew so much that most of his 0-3 month sized clothes became too tight. When I weighed him at my grandparents’ house two weeks ago, he weighed 13 pounds. That’s almost double what he weighed at birth!

He doesn’t cry very much. His cries during the first month were mild and even amusing, but he started getting loud this month like he means serious business. But when he cries, it’s always for a legitimate reason – his diaper is dirty or he is hungry – and we resolve it immediately. Rarely have we been unable to temper his cries.

Actually, Dash is a very happy baby. He smiles so much! At first, his smiles correlated to pooping and to eating. He was happy because his body felt good. But now he smiles when he sees our faces, when I toss him above my head, when I turn on the musical mobile above his Pack ‘n Play, when the flash on my camera surprises him, when he’s laying naked on the changing table, and sometimes for no apparent reason at all. Probably gas!

Eric and I continued to get out of the house quite a bit this month. With both of our parents, my sister, and my grandparents living nearby, we’ve had more offers for babysitting than we can take advantage of. Dash has been staying with babysitters while Eric and I go out with our friends or when we go climbing at the rock climbing gym where we signed up for a membership last month.

We’ve also taken Dash to restaurants with us numerous times, and he is so well behaved! Initially, I was nervous about taking him to restaurants because what if he started screaming and was inconsolable? What if he needed a diaper change? What if I needed to nurse him?

Luckily, it didn’t take long to figure it all out. Waiters were quick to show us how to set his car seat in an upside-down high chair, and seeing that they didn’t mind accommodating a baby eased my anxiety. Changing his diapers in public restrooms turned out to be no big deal, and feeding him discreetly in the back seat of my car allowed us to be away from home for longer durations. Having a baby hasn’t prevented us from doing anything that we used to do.

Before Dash was born, I read an awful book that portrayed motherhood as so time-consuming and emotionally draining. The mothers in the book lacked personal hygiene and self respect. They were so frazzled! So I am quite pleased with and proud of myself that I’ve not only been able to take a shower and get out of the house every day, I’ve been able to return to work and resume exercising so soon after giving birth. I am awesome.

We are awesome.

The first few hours were uneventful. I called my mom to give her an update on my progress, I ate a popsicle (the only food that I was allowed to eat other than ice chips), and I read a short story by Stephen King. The nurses checked on me periodically, and Eric and I watched the baby’s heartbeat and the pattern of my contractions as they were printed on a monitor next to my bed.

Dash’s heartbeat on the top and my contractions on the bottom.

During those early hours, Eric signed some forms and completed the application for Dashiell’s birth certificate. We decided – rather spontaneously – to change Dash’s middle name from Emmett to Lane. We both liked the name Lane when we were considering baby names, but I expressed concern that Dashiell Lane Newman sounds like Dashiell A. Newman when spoken. After I decided that the A stands for Awesome, I agreed on the name change.

After about three hours had passed, the contractions had established a pattern. They were consistently two minutes apart and they began to feel especially painful.

I refused anesthesia because it can make laboring longer and more difficult, as well as can negatively affect the bonding experience with the baby immediately after it is born. So without an epidural, I distracted myself from the pain by reciting in my head the lyrics to a song that I’d been listening to almost exclusively during the week leading up to this day (Grinderman’s Get It On, if you’re interested). The pain usually subsided before I could finish the first verse, and I savored the few minutes between contractions when I felt repose.

I started feeling exhausted and maybe even a little disoriented from the pain toward the end of the morning. I guess labor was progressing fast because when my cervix was dilated seven centimeters, the nurse called my ob/gyn to let her know that she should hurry to the hospital from her office across the parking lot.

The nurse told me to ignore the urge to push until my ob/gyn arrived. This was not easy. But when my ob/gyn arrived and she told me to start pushing, the pain had become so intense that I wanted to suppress that urge. They had to remind me to breathe between pushes, but then they told me to hold my breath and bear down during each push. It was so confusing!

I remember being surrounded by people, even though my husband was the only family member that I allowed to be in the room with me. There were at least three nurses in the room in addition to my ob/gyn and Eric – the labor and delivery nurse, a student nurse who was observing the labor, and a nurse from the nursery who was preparing the heat lamp and other items that Dash would need immediately after being born.

When my ob/gyn told me that I needed to push just one more time, I didn’t believe her. Later, Eric told me that I gave her attitude. I thought that she was trying to encourage me by convincing me that it was almost over. I had no idea how long to expect to be pushing – for all I knew, it could be hours – and I wanted to take a break, catch my breath, and restore my composure.

Sensing that I was struggling, my ob/gyn told me to reach down to touch Dash’s hair when she saw his head crowning. Feeling his head for the first time provided me with the motivation that I needed to keep pushing. And anyway, there was no going back at this point.

Eric was standing directly to my right and he was holding my hand. Among the chorus of voices that were coaching me through the pushing, his was the only one that didn’t sound distant and detached. I could hear him loud and clear, so his voice is the sound that I focused on during those last few pushes.

Fortunately, it turned out that my ob/gyn wasn’t kidding about “one more push”. Dash’s head was out, and my ob/gyn told me to stop pushing to give the muscle a chance to stretch slowly and prevent tearing, but at that point I physically couldn’t stop pushing! The rest of Dash’s body slipped out instantly.

She laid Dash on my chest, and the agonizing and excruciating pain that had me screaming and moaning for over an hour was instantly gone. Instead, it was replaced by an extreme wave of euphoria.

Just minutes after Dash was born.

Dashiell Lane Newman was born after only five hours of what was a remarkably simple labor with no complications. I felt full of energy and happiness when my ob/gyn placed Dash on my chest. He was naked, screaming, and covered with blood and gunk, but I didn’t care. I wrapped my arms around him and touched my face to the top of his head. I was in love.

After Eric cut the umbilical cord, the nurse took Dash off my chest so that he could be weighed and measured, and I immediately craved cookies. I was ravenous because I was not allowed to eat before being induced.

When the nurse returned him to me, I was able to breastfeed him and hold him for about an hour before they took him to the nursery. Two at a time – due to a rule the hospital implemented to prevent the spread of the swine flu – our family and friends who had been waiting in the lobby were permitted to visit. After all of the visitors left and less than two hours after giving birth, I was out of bed and walking around. I felt amazing.

After reading so many books and blogs that depicted labor and delivery as terrifying, I worried that giving birth would be such an unpleasant experience that I would be discouraged from doing it again. Fortunately, my labor was not only short and manageable, but the rewarding feeling of accomplishment that I felt when it was over was so fulfilling that I am eager to experience it again.

But when my due date came and went and my ob/gyn scheduled an induction for a week later, I started to worry. All of the books and blogs that I read warned that many inductions are premature and result in emergency c-sections. I wanted Dash to be born when he was ready, and I wanted him to have a natural birth with minimal medical intervention.

So we had one week to try to induce labor naturally. Hoping to avoid the risks associated with being induced at the hospital, I tried everything: eating lots of spicy food, taking a warm bath, and going for long walks. It rained all week, so we had to walk at the mall and at other stores. One night, while we were at Costco, my contractions got down to four minutes apart despite walking around. My husband started to worry that I was in labor and hurried us to the check-out counter. Just as we left the store in the pouring rain… the contractions went away.

It finally stopped raining on the day before my scheduled induction, so Eric and I went to Maymont Park with a picnic lunch. We walked around nearly the whole park, stopping to watch some of the animals along the way. We saw a peacock wandering freely around the petting zoo and a black bear pacing hungrily by the gate to his cage. When we reached the buffalo, the sun had started to set and we sat on a bench for a few minutes before leaving. One of the buffalo wandered over to us from the other side of his field and we named him Benjamin.

The path we walked at Maymont Park and some of the animals we saw.

But like my previous efforts, walking around the park didn’t cause me to go into labor either. So we prepared ourselves to go to the hospital the next morning for the induction.

To be continued…