Adventures in Constumery

The holiest day on the toddler calendar has now passed. Our Halloween teetered on the edge of disaster at a few points, but actually turned out quite splendidly.

Credit for this goes almost entirely to Ashley (it's Gabe writing). If it were up to me, we'd probably have skipped the pumpkin, bought a plastic mask at the dollar store, and then just come home and binged on kit-kats from the 7-11. But Ash, being organized and thoughtful, got Halloween going for the family. She carved the pumpkin, organized the trick-or-treating and executed the costume brilliantly.

More on the costume: after some soul-searching, we decided that what Ezra would most like to be in the whole wide world was ... a piece of heavy equipment. So we basically cribbed a design we found online for a crane: painted yellow-box body, cardboard boom, hanging hook, black tape accents and a hardhat to top it off. I fashioned the hook and engineered the counterweight system that prevented the toddler from pitching forward (accomplished by taping butterknives to the back for ballast), but Ash did the rest. It looked great. But I confess that I was skeptical it would last more than five minutes. Sure, it was well-made, but Ezra could demolish a Sherman tank if you gave him a few days.

At the beginning of our trick-or-treating excursion, Ezra momentarily forgot about the candy and took to tearing around the playground with his full gear on. I was certain that the costume wouldn't see even one front porch. But eventually we got him back onto his mission ("Darn it, Ezra, do you know what's at stake here? Candy for the entire family! This is bigger than you, son. This is bigger than all of us!")

Oliver came too, though he spent Halloween mostly curled up in the sling on mama's front. Ezra, though, got the hang of trick-or-treating quickly. When he'd start to flag, we'd pop a "Smartie" in his mouth, which would fuel him for the next several houses. He couldn't really walk up porch

steps (he couldn't see his feet!), so I carried him up those by his arms. The costume was an unmitigated hit with the public. We got so, so many compliments on it. I was escorting Ezra most of the time, so I unjustly soaked up all this praise. Even other little kids were looking on and saying, "Awww, that's so cute!" One guy took our picture and said, "Union, right?" Ezra loved it, didn't want to take it off, and somehow managed not to destroy it all evening.

In other news, Oliver is making robust (if nuanced) progress. He holds his head up very steadily, is continuing to smile more and doing it in response to things instead of randomly. He's begun reaching for toys and batting at them, and he's starting to rock on his hips when lying down -- a precursor to rolling over. He's still sweet as pie -- he has fussy patches, but he can generally be comforted (unlike a certain other Spitzer child at his age). The boys are getting along great. Ezra still likes to kiss him and wants to roughhouse with him, which requires some reining in. But so far our fears about intense sibling rivalry have yet to materialize.

In two weeks we'll change the guard -- Ash will head back to work, and I'll begin my 7 weeks of leave. I hope I will be a wiser dad this time than I was during my leave with Ezra, which I remember fondly but which contained a lot of frustration and tedium. On the other hand, we've been enjoying listening to some audio and watching videos from Ezra's first year, and reliving some of the joy and the fun we had. We're terribly excited to get to go through that again with Oliver, even as Ezra continues to surprise, delight, and occasionally unhinge us with each successive stage.

Much love,

Gabe, Ash, Ez and Ollie

Confession

I (Ash) have to confess something that's going to sound heretical.

I don't think it was really love at first sight with Oliver. I feel like a horrible mom to even put that into words. Especially after everyone kept saying, oh, you think before you have the second baby that you can never love another as much as your first, but then you have the second and you discover, wow, this whole new love for this whole new person. So I expected to feel that instantaneously. But then I didn't feel the same awe when Oliver was placed on my chest right after birth. And those first few days were also different... instead of wanting to spend every second of every day gazing at him and stroking his hair, I also wanted to read a thriller I had just gotten from the library. Maybe it was just exhaustion from parenting Ezra, but I wanted any little moment I could get to myself to just have to myself.

And then - do you remember the flap over Angelina Jolie calling her baby Shiloh a "blob"? (Maybe you don't - I guess not everyone reads supermarket tabloids as avidly as I do.) Well, now I can relate. Especially when you have older kids, the comparison to them makes the baby kind of seem like a blob. When I talked about it with Gabe, he agreed and said Ezra is just this kind of hot white bright shining star - this enormous swirl of energy that makes us laugh (and tear out our hair) and communicates with us all day, and a newborn just sleeps, cries, poops and eats.

But... the falling in love process is just different. It sneaks up on me - when I take Oliver outside and he opens his round blue eyes so wide and stares mesmerized at the leaves, I can't help but adore him. Or just looking at his roly poly little naked body - so perfectly proportioned (not like the skinny baby that Ezra was), I can't get enough of him. And lately he's started to give us those unexpected baby smiles and I feel like I'm starting to see the person that he'll become. I do feel a bit of impatience - wanting to know who he'll be, what he'll be like - will he like trains and trucks like Ezra, or be obsessed with something completely different? Will he be shy or friendly? Oliver has a little onesie that says, "Just Stay Small." I know a lot of people feel that way, but I can't wait to watch him grow up. I'm sure when I read that in 20 years I'll be telling myself how stupid I was to not savor these days of him being an itsy bitsy baby. So I'm trying to not will the future to come too soon! But it's my impulse.

(10/4/10 Update: This morning, after writing what I did last night, I looked down into Oliver's round eyes and felt two things - deep love and guilt. Sweet little baby, the only reason I could write what I did is because I know now that I love you beyond words and would do anything for you. And this morning, as if to reassure me, he gave me some of the most incredible smiles he's given us yet.)

Fall is here in full force. We went to a really fun apple fest in our neighborhood with Gabe's grad school friend Alisa and managed to offset any healthy benefit of apple-eating by adding caramel, sprinkles and peanuts.

Aunt Sheila and Uncle Perry Schneider (Gabe's aunt and uncle from Arizona) dropped in last weekend and that was wonderful. They read Ezra books and heard all about his plans to become a truck driver AND travel to Neptune. We just wish they lived closer by so we could see them more often. Unfortunately, we didn't take pictures. Schneiders, did you?

And this past weekend our friends Pat, Sarah, Arthur and David Briscoe came to visit. It was so much fun, as always, to see how sweet Arthur (7) and David (5) are to Ezra (they were mildly interested in Oliver, but Ezra is the real attraction at this point). Arthur in particular exhibited remarkable patience as Ezra pointed to every picture on Arthur's pajamas and asked, "What's that?" "Star Wars." "What's that?" "Star Wars." "What's that?" "Star Wars." To top it all off, Ezra had his very first donut. Of course he selected the pink-frosted sprinkle-covered one and spent half an hour licking the frosting off and hunting down every last sprinkle.

Well, I think that's it for now. Next weekend Katy and Noni Gross are coming to visit, then Pop Pop and Grandma Spitzer will come and get their first glimpse of their newest grandson. We're looking forward to seeing so much family.

Love,
Ash, Gabe, Ezra and Oliver

P.S. If you're wondering why Gabe has become such a slacker about posting on this blog, it's because he's also blogging for work these days. His new science show, Clever Apes, is taking up a lot of his time - Check it out!

#2

You might think from the title of this blog entry, that I (Ash) am just going to wax poetic about our second son. That's partially right. But what I really want to talk about is poop. (Ed. - if you're squeamish, you may want to skip the next two paragraphs.)

We're pretty much immersed in the stuff. There was the visit to the pediatrician's office on day 8 of Oliver's life - a volcano of ballpark-mustard-yellow feces started erupting out of his tush while I held his little naked self above the examining table. Just before his big weigh-in! Couldn't he have held it in till after we weighed him? Luckily, Oliver is gaining weight like a pint-sized sumo wrestler and impressed both the nurse and the doc by having already gained back all the weight he lost after birth.

Then I upped the ante at home and switched to cloth diapers. Gabe is playing along so far, while holding his nose, literally. We set up a spray bidet nozzle on our toilet to spray Oliver's excretions off the cloth diapers and into the toilet. This task is - surprise! - something of a drag. We decided we'll keep up the cloth experiment till he starts solid foods and his poops get to be more like Ezra's - pretty gnarly and not something you'd want to spend minutes spraying into the toilet. Although, speaking of Ezra's poops, we're having to come into more contact with those now, too, since we introduced a potty chair. His one and only time pooping on the potty so far actually started on the floor of Oliver's room. Awesome.

In other news... Aunt Lisa came to visit and provided non-stop Ezra care. It's not easy. Playing with him these days takes some creativity and brainpower! It all goes back to one meal not long before Oliver was born when - in an effort to keep Ezra engaged enough to keep eating his food - I invented a story between two bath toys - Elmo and Turtle. Pretty soon, Ezra was begging us as soon as he'd wake up - "Elmo and Turtle say, please?" or "I want Elmo Turtle talk, please!" Now the cast of characters has expanded to include praying mantis and iguana, along with mechanic, doctor, farmer and "regular guy" (figurines that go to his train set... regular guy's reference to poop was inadvertent.) The most popular storyline so far involves space travel and martians, cheese on the moon and avoiding asteroids.

It's all very charming, except... in the past couple of days, he has unleashed Demon-Ezra. Full-blown tantrums with tears and shrieks that occur multiple times AN HOUR. Gabe just looked at me shellshocked tonight and said, So I guess this is just how our lives are going to be, huh? We're not sure if it's him acting out because of Oliver being here, or just a rite of passage in turning 2, or that he's truly had a psychotic break. But we're scrambling to order some books on discipline.

Luckily, Oliver is as sweet as can be. He's now put on 2 1/2 pounds since birth and is awake more often and noticing us and the world a little more. He has a fussy period that strikes at about 4 am every morning for a couple of hours, and that's not fun, but we've decided to keep him anyway.

Love,
Ash, Gabe, Ezra and Oliver

Oliver lives!

In case you were wondering, no, Ash is not 10 days overdue. I presume this is common knowledge by now, but our beautiful son Oliver Neal Spitzer was born August 16, at 9:53pm! Here are the specs: Weight - 6 lbs 14 oz (a bruiser, by Spitzer standards); length - 19.5 inches; hair - plentiful, dark; disposition - placid.

Much has happened in the last 9 days, so I'm afraid I'll just have to gloss the highlights. Labor came on on Monday around 2pm, with mild contractions. Just 2 hours later, they had ramped up considerably, and we were on our way to the hospital (compared to last time, when we labored at home for a good 8 hours before heading out!). When we arrived, we learned that things were well underway.

Then followed about 3 hours of exceedingly hard work, with only incremental progress. To speed things along, our midwife encouraged us to get in the shower. This was awkward at first, but within a few minutes it was wonderful. The hot water relaxed Ashley, made her seem almost serene, and seemed to restore her energy. And wouldn't you know, after about 15 minutes, her water broke and labor kicked into turbo mode. After an absurd interlude of trying to get ourselves out of the shower, with the nurses weirdly insisting on protecting my (Gabe's) modesty, Ash was pushing with a mighty effort. Another 30 minutes, and Oliver Neal was born.

Ash displayed, as I knew she would, incredible strength and determination that day. She was able to reach deep into her reservoirs for each contraction, well after any normal human being would have been reduced to rubble. It is an awesome thing to watch someone you know better than anyone show such a stunning side of herself. Once again, she did it with no drugs, no epidural. I was and am proud and inspired.

Then we hit one minor hiccup: one of Oliver's blood cultures came back positive, meaning he could potentially have a blood infection. These can be, as innumerable doctors and nurses told us, "very serious." So on the day we were to be discharged (Ashley's birthday, no less!) we were sent down to the neonatal intensive care unit for a battery of tests and treatments. It was a frightening moment, after believe that Oliver was healthy and thriving. To make a long and agonizing story short, this turned out to be a false positive -- the result of a contaminated sample, not an infection. Oliver is healthy as a horse, and we finally escaped on Friday.

That meant at last we could stage the long-anticipated meeting of Oliver and his older brother. This went blessedly smoothly. Ezra kissed him on the forehead first thing, and has continued to shower "baby brother" with kisses in the days since. He says "I love Oliver!" (though I suspect it may be as much to solicit our approving reactions as it is an expression of genuine feeling).

It doesn't hurt that we've had a gaggle of relatives (Noni, Mickey, Katy, Uncle Josh, etc.) and friends here, who have been wonderful about doting on Ezra at least as much as the baby ... and plying him with gifts of course. The real test will begin this weekend, when it's just the four of us and competition for scarce attention will begin.

Lots more to say, but not a lot of energy to say it right now. So we'll leave you with these pics and the promise of many more to follow. Thank you all for your good thoughts and warm words.

Love,

Gabe, Ash, Ez and Ollie

All's Quiet on the Uterine Front

Well folks, not a lot to report yet. Today is officially Moose's due date, and while we've had a few minor rumblings, they seem to have subsided and birth does not seem imminent. We honestly were counting on him arriving early, as Ezra did, so we're kind of on pins and needles at this point. Tomorrow does seem like a definite possibility. Noni and Katy -- i.e. our babysitter and doula -- arrived yesterday.

Ash continues to exhibit superhuman strength and spirit, practically never complaining even though there is an impatient person pressing hard on her pee area 24-7. We even managed to entertain this morning, with Mara, Nate and young Mikaela joining us for brunch. Ezra and Mikaela legitimately played together -- probably the most cooperative play I've ever seen Ezra engage in. It was most gratifying.

Ezra, meanwhile, remains dimly aware that big changes are afoot. He's having a lot of fun in the meantime, including a new interest in song:

His evolving language skills are opening windows into his developing mind. A week or two ago, I was sitting on the reclining chair (a very generous anniversary gift from Ashley!), and he lifted my shirt a little and pointed to my bellybutton. "Baby in there?" he queried. "No, only mommy has a baby in her belly." "What's in there?" "What do you think is in there?" He paused a moment and thought. Then he smiled. "Dreams! Dreams in there!" I was, and am, stunned. Who's to say he's wrong?

We intend to rekindle the blog fires soon, including updates on labor and birth. So stay tuned for the latest, and wish us luck!

Much love,

Gabe, Ash, Ez and Moose

Portrait of a (Very) Young Man

We went in for a last ultrasound a few weeks ago (32 weeks gestational age). All looked fine, we were told. Moose is in the 38th percentile, sizewise, which means he's a bit smaller than average, but that's not a shocker, considering both Gabe and I were small babies and Ezra is downright puny. Also, I don't hold much stock in their ability to forecast. The ultrasound tech remembered us from my last pregnancy, when she did an ultrasound a week before Ezra was born and pronounced that he weighed 6 lbs 8 oz. A week later, when he arrived on the scene, he was 5 lbs 4 oz. This time when we saw her, she said, "Oops. I sure got that one wrong."

Gabe couldn't stop looking at the pics and was a bit weirded out - he says he sees himself in Moose... both the nose and the lips. What do you think? To me, he looks like Ezra when Ezra's sleeping. Just one more month till due date!

Love,
Ash

Almost 2!

(A quick technical note: Google seems to be experiencing a hiccup, or a ploy, involving blog video and Firefox. If you use Firefox and have trouble seeing the video below, try using Google Chrome or Microsoft Internet Explorer. -ed.)

Ezra turns two in three weeks, and in five weeks (maybe fewer) we'll be the parents of TWO children! All of this is kind of hard to comprehend. But ready or not, here we come... into a new reality. I (mom) have no idea what Ezra understands, but I do worry what it will be like for him having to share our attention. I'm getting ready for him to ask us when we're going to take the baby back to the hospital... or catch him trying to dump the baby in the garbage can, or something. Judging from his disdain for the baby doll Eliot (Spitzer) that we got for him, I'm not really anticipating a huge surge of fraternal love, at least not at first. Any ideas on how to smooth the way?

Sorry for the utter neglect of this blog. We've been busy with our non-blogging life. Visits from both sets of grandparents, and then our friends Lea, Jack and baby Zoe from Alaska... wet, watery runs through the fountain at Millennium Park to escape the 90-degree heat... and then a week-long trip to Martha's Vineyard for a big Gross-Hughes family powwow. One lesson learned - if you bring lots of tiny trucks on the airplane when you're very pregnant and flying with a toddler, tie strings on them or something so you don't have to keep bending over, squashing the one in utero and defying physics, to pick them up when the kid drops them.

We were sad Gabe couldn't make the trip with us. He stayed home to keep toiling away and hoarding vacation days for a paternity leave. But we had a really fun time - Ezra had his first AND second ice cream cones, went to the beach ("go in the water! look for whales!"), hunted bugs and discovered my uncle Thru's collection of toy trucks that are half a century old but somehow still work - unlike the plastic pieces of you know what that break the instant you get them nowadays.

And sorry to break it to Gabe, but the thing Ezra seems to have missed most in Chicago while we were away is his older friend Oscar's house. Until last week, three-and-a-half-year-old Oscar lived downstairs in our building. He has a train set that's out of this world, plus a truck set that rivals Thru's. At random intervals pretty much every day we were away, Ezra would cry out plaintively, "Oscar's house! Oscar's house! Play with trains there! Play with trucks!" Gabe would call on the phone and I'd say, "Ezra, want to talk to Daddy?" and the first thing out of his mouth was, "Oscar's house!" By the end of the trip he was saying, "Back in Chicago? Oscar's house?" Meanwhile Oscar and his parents have moved to another place in the neighborhood. He doesn't really get this when we explain it to him. He just says, "Oscar's house? Maybe later?" We're planning to expand Ezra's own train set in time for the baby's arrival, but I fear it still won't have the allure of O.H.

Well, it's getting late and this is long enough! I'll have to post a Picasa album because there's way too many good pictures than can fit in a blog post.

Love,
Ash, Gabe, Ez and Moose