Monkeyblog

Alison is finally starting to show some pregnancy related symptoms (other than that monkey-filled belly). The circulation in her feet is suffering, and they are swelling pretty badly. I blame poor ergonomics in her office more than I blame the monkey. I've been trying to be a good husband by taking her walking and giving her foot rubs every night (I'm kind of jealous of myself!).

Foot lotion with lavender and witch hazel works pretty well, and we've discovered that the cats REALLY don't like the smell. Such funny faces they make when they smell it. Well, OK, Piper and Chester hate it, but I think Vanna has completely lost her sense of smell. She had no reaction at all to it when she sniffed my fingers, and even threatend to stick her head in the jar.

The good news is that the swelling seems to be the worst of the pregnancy related aches and pains that she's had. She's been AMAZINGLY lucky not to have morning sickness or anything else. Thank goodness!

Bassinets are the current topic of conversation. Daddytypes and others are bemoaning the lack of stylin' bassinets (all seem to be cheesy plastic covered in dust ruffles. Are babies that dusty?). I have to agree. Personally, I think I have the problem solved: Laundry basket, 2 milk crates, some zip screws, and a handful of towels, and voila! One perfectly good bassinet that is no uglier than anything from Target!

Actually Holly (Alison's dad's wife's daughter) is sending down a bassinet on Sunday. We're driving up to Santa Barbara to meet Alison's dad and pick it up. If that fails (Alison is becoming a BIT uncomfortable at this point), we can always fall back on the laundry basket!

I now have independent confirmation that I'm the one that is pregnant! I suspected all this cleaning was a result of hormonal spinoff, and I guess I was right. SimpleDad writes that his wife got the white tornado as well, creating the “The Cleanest Triangle in the World” from nursery to bedroom to bathroom (a different golden triangle?).

With only a couple of weeks to go, I probably won't manage to re-stucco and paint the house (unfortunately), but we should be pretty shiny inside by the time the monkey arrives.

This weekend was spent primarily working on the "white tornado"- getting everything clean enough for the baby. Vanna has occupied the nursery for four years, and it is amazing how much dirt one tiny cat can generate! I've been scrubbing windows, window sills, walls, baseboards, door frames etc., and it is kind of scary just how dirty a sponge can get!

I have friends that cringe at the thought of the monkey being put into that room, but when it comes down to it, there probably isn't a cleaner one! Just how clean does a baby's room need to be anyway? Just think of the good strong immune system she will develop fighting off cat dander! She'll have lungs of steel.

While I had my white tornado on, I scrubbed the bathroom cabinets (which I think we managed to miss when we moved into the house- Yuck!), sorted through the medicine/soap/shampoo/miscellaneous cabinet, washed baby blankets, and installed a baseboard in the bedroom (which has been in the garage for 4 years now waiting for me to get around to it). Whew! Now I just have to do our bedroom, the livingroom, dining room, and breakfast nook, and I can take another nap.

Which was the other main activity of the weekend (napping that is). We've taken to heart that we won't be getting enough sleep for the next year or eighteen, so we're napping every chance we get. I'm not much of a napper, but boy did it feel good this weekend! I think I'm having sympathy exhaustion- or is that just all the cleaning?

A little earlier than expected, and it seems the lanugo wasn't shed. Also it's a male (neutered!). How could we have been so misled?

Obviously, the cats are taking to the nursery just fine. Maybe TOO fine. Keeping them from sleeping on the babies face might be difficult! I still haven't quite decided what to do about Vanna. I don't think she'll handle an eviction quietly (she is hardly ever quiet as it is). I also fear that she will refuse to use the catbox Piper and Chester use, which could be messy. Well, they always say that having a baby is all about poop, so I guess we should expect it.

With so little time to go, I figured I better learn how to install the car seat. The Maxi-Cosi is great! It pops into the car in just a second, and is rock solid once it is in place. There must be something about a European car seat being made for a European car, you think?

We had out "newborn care" class at Kaiser last night, and I don't think we will be going back for any more. I had a fellowship in medical education (curriculum development and research) at UCLA, and I can tell you that the "health educator" for the class certainly didn't. She starts the class with "Any questions?" Duh! If we didn't have questions, we wouldn't be here! We have no clue, that's why we came! It didn't improve much from there. Despite the written "no product endorsement" policy we had clear shills for Dreft and Pampers. We were told things that contradicted information in the "bible" that Kaiser distributes for pregnant women. And we were handed dolls and told to "practice diapering" and holding them, but with no instruction or followup (I could have diapered the wrong end and it would have been fine with the instructor).

I think the classes are really just a way to handle those people that would be endlessly calling with questions that are already answered in written materials. If you've already read the "bible" you are better prepared than the class will make you.

So, that means we get an extra hour of sleep each Tuesday! Hurray!

Now that we have a dresser, and the "nursery" is taking shape, we could finally start washing those piles of baby clothes! Dozens of socks, onesies, sleepers, blankets etc. to be done. The good thing is, baby clothes are small, so you can get a LOT into your fancy front loading high-capacity washer. One load took care of all the clothes. Another most of the spit rags and blankets. The new dresser is already packed!

The Roll-top desk is going to work out nicely as well. The drawers are already holding 708 wipes and 248 diapers (Costco jumbo packs), and it's only about 1/2 full! With the changing pad on top it will work out great, and I can roll down the top to keep it cat free.

Yikes, it's almost like it is really going to happen!

Kaiser offers a whole series of classes for expectant parents. They are meant to be taken spread out over the 9 months before the birth. Well, guess which parents-to-be start Tuesday? Every Tuesday evening, and a couple of Saturdays between now and D-day (due day) we'll be learning important things about newborn care (including "Back to Sleep" I'm sure), Post-partum care, Labor & Delivery, Breastfeeding etc. I'm suddenly thinking I should have shadowed one of our OBGYN rotations!

Normally, we are eager for education, but I've talked to a couple of people who've taken these types of clsses who were sorely disappointed (not to mention bored out of their skulls). There is no accommodation for people who've already read the manual (yes, there is a manual! Kaiser provides "You and Your Baby"- which I've read at least!). Things (I have heard) are taught to the lowest common denominator (something around a 6th grade education). This can be mind numbing, but also highly entertaining when you hear some of the questions people without a clue ask.

But then again, I've already admitted to being a daddy-without-a-clue myself. I'll probably be surprised by how much I learn. As long as it isn't fear-mongering like "What to expect when you are expecting"!

Among the boxes of stuff Alison's mom sent us were a couple of bibs inscribed with "I Love Mommy" and the like. Strangely, there were no "I Love Daddy" bibs, onesies or quilts in the lot. Is she trying to tell me something? There does seem to be much more mommy-centric baby gear than there is for dads (lamented on other daddy blogs like DaddyTypes). I must confess a bit of jealousy.

This isn't to say that there isn't daddy-centric apparel available. I found an absolutely adorable pink cashmere hoodie by Amber Hagen with a "Daddy" heart tattoo on the arm at HD Buttercup. I was all over it, though the $150 price tag was just a little too rich for something the monkey will only wear once or twice!

So, I'm on the prowl for daddygear! If you see something, let me know.

And don't worry, I'll keep my eye out for mommygear as well. Alison won't be left out!

We are getting pretty darn close now, and the closer we get, the more confusing things seem to get. Spent much time yesterday trying to figure out disability/vacation/sick time/FMLA so we can spend as much time bonding with the monkey as we can, and there seems to be differing information in every source we check! Hopefully we'll get it figured out, but I've NEVER had a good experience working with an HR department, so I have little hope for a smooth ride.

We had another visit to Kaiser today, and we are moving into weekly appointments. A little ultrasound shows that the monkey is gorgeous of course, and getting BIG (OK, at least it sounds big to me- over 6 pounds!). It also showed that she is also a defiant teen, refusing to pose for a glamour shot.

We learned a slightly scary lesson that Alison can't be lying on her back anymore- sudden sweats, pain and dizziness during the ultrasound brought back scary memories! Everything went back to normal as soon as she sat up, and she was fine within a minute, but let's not do that again! And a shot of Peet's afterwards didn't hurt!

And when I say pithy, I am using it as a verb, to wit: To sever or destroy the spinal cord of, usually by inserting a needle into the vertebral canal.

As an expectant daddy, there are phrases now that seem to have a similar effect on my central nervous system. Use those magic words, and my eyes glaze and it feels as though my brain has just died a messy death. Deer in the headlights would be an apt description, if somewhat less dramatic (well, not less dramatic for the deer).

What words can do this to a person? Let's try a few!


"Cloth or disposable diapers?" AAAhhh! Brain overload imminent, total shutdown underway! Ask this of someone with a 6 month old, and you will likely get a lengthy tirade about how cloth (or disposable) diapers are miracle cures for acne, and that using disposable (or cloth) will doom your child to the short bus.

We try to be intelligent rational beings about this. We do the research: Energy expenditures, cost analysis, landfill/decomposition rates, wastewater bacteria levels etc. Each, however gives a (marginally?) better result for cloth (or disposable) diapers! Factor in clotheslines and cloth get better, factor in delivery service, and disposables win, factor in time/effort, disposables win, factor in landfill and cloth wins. OK, rational apparently isn't going to help here, so you turn to the irrational- pseudo-science fear mongering, product marketing hype, double-coupons at Ralphs etc. etc. etc. I tell you, pithing starts to sound pretty darn attractive!! One thing I can guarantee your- the baby will poop, and it will be disposed of. Just don't ask me for specifics!

Let's try another one, shall we?

"What will you name her?" Pulse rate rising, vision blurring, ringing in ears.... As I posted earlier, we tried the rational thing, we've swung through the suburbs of irrationality ("No, my mother's great-aunt's sister had that name, so it's an old persons name"), and now we are starting to turn to the lyrical (first/middle name pairs that have a ring to them- not too helpful for tonedeaf daddy!). I'm sure she will have a name (though monkey is sounding pretty good right now!), as it's required to get a Social Security number, but we have 30 days after the birth before we have to fill out those forms, right?

Any others?

"Breast feeding"
"Co-sleeping"
"Regression to the mean"

And Many Many More!

These are the things that keep me awake at night, and make me so unproductive at work these last weeks of the countdown. The good news is, chimps and neanderthals raise children (though, neanderthals may be a bad example, what with extinction and all), so a couple of bright (and humble too!) adults with Master's degrees ought to do just fine. Right? Right? Please?

Or, more precisely, where does the money go on the weekend? Who knew it would be so expensive not even HAVING a monkey yet! Sconces for the nursery, the new dresser, crib linens and rechargeable batteries, cute monkey rattle and socks, vaseline and alcohol (and I don't mean cocktails!). The scary thing is, I think we are being pretty reasonable on acquiring material goods (certainly better than that woman with 7 strollers)!

Time wise, the weekend went pretty quickly too. Finished emptying the nursery, scrubbed the floor twice (amazing how much dirt one little cat can leave!), scrubbed the desk, installed the sconces, assembled a musical mobile (and thus the rechargeable batteries- I think we might be keeping Energizer in business), brought in a bookcase (low one) and filled it with children's books (lots of loot from BookExpo in NY this summer). Even replaced a window that fell out.

I figure I must be getting some hormonal runoff from Alison (does the EPA know about this?). I've been really manic for the last month doing monkey related things (building, cleaning, moving). I can't seem to sit still. I figure these are the same things that keep pregnant women alive while carrying their babies. I just hope the "don't eat your young" hormones rub off as well!

Ikea furniture is always best assembled after 11pm!

We just came back from a Mayan art exhibition/reception with desserts at LACMA called "Lords of Creation: The Origins of Sacred Maya Kingship." A very nice exhibit, worth the visit. Some amazing sculpture, jade, and ceramics.

Now, back to the crib. As mentioned on the monkey's website, Tim and Anissa gave us the Ikea Diktad crib. We picked the crib, reflecting my inherent cheapness. Ikea is great for things that don't need to last a lifetime. The crib is sturdy, not out of place in our house, and converts to a toddler bed.

As always, I decided to start assembling it late after a busy day (mainly scrubbing the monkey's room and shopping for the dresser). The assembly wasn't difficult, but I was seeing crosseyed by the end. And since when does an Ikea product involve so many nails!?

The crib is up though, and I think it will suit the monkey just fine. I'm tempted to practice my router skills (nonexistant) on it and put the monkey's name at the end. If we can ever decide on one!

Now that we have piles of clothing for the monkey (see her website for a list of loot), we needed to find something to store it all in.

Most of the furniture in our house is antique- not Stickley or anything, but solid and functional. We decided a dresser was something that she could use for years, so off we went to Wertz Brothers to find her something. Then the Goldilocks effect set in- it couldn't be too big (or she couldn't use it when small, helping mom us put away clothes), or too small (or she couldn't use it into her teens), not too elaborate, not too plain, not too expensive.

But, as always at Wertz, we found just what we were looking for. Actually, it is almost identical to the one daddy has, but a bit smaller, with nice light drawers that open easily. The only blemish is the hardware on the top drawer has been replaced. However, I've seen the same bakelite handles at Liz's Antique Hardware, so we should be able to replace them.

Now, on to the crib!

Between Alison being a librarian, and me being a packrat, we have WAY too much stuff. Put this into a small 2 bedroom house, add 3 cats (one of which is older than God and has her OWN room), sprinkle in a baby on the way and you get a souffle popping out of the pan (mmmm, souffle...).

So, to relieve some of the building pressure, I decided to empty the garage (of WAY too much stuff), and build a new room to house the library. As the monkey is the driver, I've taken to calling it the monkey house.

The garage was small to start with, only 16x16 ft or so, and we couldn't fit the car in anyway, so an 8x12ft room for books is a pretty good use of space, if I do say so myself (and I do).

My friend Tim was kind enough to help with hauling and hanging drywall (I could never have handled all the big stuff myself). We managed to haul all the studs, plywood, drywall, insulation etc. in multiple trips in and on the Passat. I love a car that can carry 25 8' 2x4 studs INSIDE!

A couple of weeks of nights and weekends (of course, I put this off until the hottest weeks of summer!), and the room is pretty much finished. Another week of hauling boxes and boxes and boxes of books, and ta-daaaa- we have an extra room! Still need to add insulation in the ceiling, a few patches of drywall at the top, and hang the door though.

Now, a week or so to clean, patch, paint, and decorate the "Nursery" (Yikes!) and we'll be all set for the monkey! She better not be early!

As alluded to on the monkey's home page, we are being somewhat less than successful in choosing a name. Being over-educated, hyper-rational, and VERY geeky, we established a thoroughly scientific method for choosing a monkeyname. The methodology involved:

Downloading and reading the Social Security Administrations top 1000 girls names registered in 2003 and 2004.

Deleting all those that were used by strippers, prostitutes, and porn actresses
Deleting all those that reflected brand names (Lexus, Mercedes, Portia)
Eliminating all the mispelled variants (Just how many ways can you spell Mikayla, Shayanne etc?!)
Eliminating names that were essentially made up in the last decade or so (Madison and Uneek anyone?)
Eliminating all the names that are just ridiculously popular now (Gabriella, Isabella, Olivia, Emily etc.)
Eliminating names that are already in the family (too much history, and too many chances for ticking off the one who's name we didn't use. For the same reason we caution our relatives not to suggest names!).


We then ran the remaining 60 or so names through the AMAZING NameVoyager from the Baby Name Wizard to see how their popularity has grown and fallen over the last century. We wanted to avoid names that were only popular in the time of our grandparents & great-grandparents, and also those that are skyrocketing in popularity (we don't want our monkey to have the same name as seven other girls in all her classes).

This got us down to about 40 or so names.

We sought the expert opinion of several of our friends. Each, of course, came back with about 5 names that they absolutely loved! Yet, of course, each of these top-5 lists were completely different.

Alison and I then attempted a modified Delphi technique where we each independently picked our top 10-15 names from our list, and gee whiz if there was virtually no overlap! There were some similarities (I'd pick Claire, she'd pick Clara etc.), but nothing striking.

Our latest attempt is to find a matched pair for first and middle names- something that has a ring, but isn't too alliterative. Interestingly, we ended up with a number of pairs that included names that weren't on ANY of our previous lists!

It's beginning to look like she will be the monkey well into her teens!

As I mentioned on the monkey's web page, a baby is just a really good excuse to shop. This weekend we did a bit of the ol' shopping, both high and low end.

At the low end, we went to A Plus Kids Store on Fairfax Ave. at Colgate. This is a small store packed with nice overstock type children's clothes. Lots of women of a certain age bickering in Russian adds to the black market feel. Clothes were nice, and prices reasonable (if not spectacular).

For spectacular prices (and not in a good way), you need to go a few blocks up to For Kids Only (Fairfax at Waring). Very nice European designer kid's clothes, at very nice European designer prices (such a cute little princess outfit for only $550). Thankfully they had a large selection at 50% off, which means only $225 for that little outfit! No, I think the monkey will be wearing banana leaves before she wears clothes from this place.

Also at the high end was La Bella Cosa at the Helms Bakery (Venice blvd.). Lots of very chic and pretty clothes and accessories (furniture, linens, blankets, decor) for those with more money than I. Of course, I see lovely things from Under the Nile, which are *almost* kind of affordable (if you call $59 for a blankie "affordable"). I'll be visiting this shop when the sales start!

Whew, it's not easy shopping for a baby that doesn't even exist yet!

Ahh, such a beautiful little monkey she is. I think she has her father's hairline (for the moment at least). That cute little button of a nose couldn't possibly grow into the Lindstrom schnozz could it? For her sake, I hope not!

As part of my exploration of all things trendy for daddies, I've just created the Monkeyblog to document the joys and expenses of having a baby on the way. Monkeyblog is a learning experience for me, and hopefully an enjoyable one for you.

Who is the Monkey? Alison and I are expecting our daughter (the monkey) to arrive in late October. We are new parents, excited, scared, and clueless! She's called the monkey because we, in our fits of hyperrationalism, have developed a complex naming protocol that seems to be asymptotic- we don't seem to be approaching a single name, despite the hundreds we have evaluated. So for now, our little girl-to-be is the monkey.