What I know about Charlotte as of October 2013

-- Charlotte thinks humans communicate chiefly through raspberries and shrieks. Under our current schedule, I feed her at night. Most of the time, she's pretty groggy, but by the time I change her diaper, she might blow some raspberries. It's nice that she can be cheerful even right after she wakes in the middle of the night.

The tables turn in the morning. After I've slept in about half as long as I'd prefer, Sarah brings Charlotte onto the bed and points her at me. My daughter spits all over as she says good morning. I do feel a little bad that my wife needs to use our baby as a shield from my grumpiness when she wakes me.

-- Charlotte is surprisingly dexterous. I've mentioned her long fingers before, but it still amazes me how she can use them. She's now picking up little snacks and putting them in her mouth. When we feed her bottles, she often fully extends her arm in the air and looks at her fingers, tilting her hand as if admiring a diamond ring. Then she slowly rotates her hand to look at the front, then the back again. Her specialty, which she learned in the NICU, is grabbing wires and waving them around. During feedings, she'll often pull out my earbuds. I bet some old-schoolers will tell me that's a message.

-- Charlotte gets cabin fever. For those not familiar with the expression, cabin fever, or stir-craziness, is when you can't stand being stuck in your house any longer. Our kid will sit in her Super Activity Play Seat Baby Gundam Mobile Armor for about five seconds before she's sick of it. She loves her Baby Bjorn carrier, and she'll seldom complain on walks.

-- Charlotte loves new faces. She will sit and stare at a stranger quietly for minutes on end. This is very handy in church. Sometimes she's scared by glasses and sunglasses.

-- Charlotte is not easy to impress. With some kids, you throw them in the air or tickle their stomachs a bit and they laugh their heads off. Charlotte laughs for about five seconds, and then she just smiles like she's humoring you. The only times I've ever got her really laughing, she was pretty tired.

--  Charlotte's eyes are currently blue and green. By which I mean one is blue and the other is green. Of course, any predictions about her eye color I make now will end up being completely wrong, but I bet they'll be green or hazel.

UPDATE: Charlotte's trick poops were a result of the Enfamil Gentlease formula the NICU sent us home with. Once we switched to Sam's Club Brand Members' Baby Chow or whatever, her poops got a lot less interesting. She doesn't have blowouts nearly as often as before. Side note: Sarah believes the term "blowout" refers exclusively to baby poop escaping a diaper. Every time she sees an ad for a blowout sale, or hears an anecdote in which a car's tire explodes, she giggles uncontrollably.

Control is mostly (definitely) an illusion.

Silly me. I assumed once I figured life out it wouldn't change again. I could finally rest my weary head and, I don't know, smoke a pipe? But don't worry, it never came to that because I have learned one thing over and over again in life: control is mostly an illusion.

It's a real nice illusion though. Real nice. It's a bit like a low-hanging cloud scuttling around the middle of a mountain range. When I was younger I always had a dream of taking a jar up to those clouds and bringing some of it back with me. It was a tangible goal; I could get a jar, maybe wear a jacket and hike up to the unsuspecting cloud and snaggle some to take home. Then I think I realized that you couldn't catch a cloud in a jar. Well, technically, sure you can, but it just condenses to water droplets. This reminds me of control. You work to get to it, plan for it, but you can never quite have it, just the illusion of it in a wet jar.

I'm not sure why this is a lesson I've had to re-learn so many painful times in life. I thought I'd figured it out on so many different occasions, it's actually quite funny looking back. Silly me. Nothing has brought this lesson home further than marriage and motherhood. I know, I know, these are pretty much the only topics I write about but you have to admit, they're pretty major ones.

She's the best baby. Worth every moment of crying, spit-up and blow-outs.

Six pounds 11 ounces. Small, snoozy and dark-haired. My precious baby girl helped remind me of my jar full of water droplets. She was beautiful, of course, from day one. She had a crazy entry into life and then she demanded I give it all up for her. And I did. Steve did too. I didn't try to control all that much for the first six or eight weeks, but then as I started feeling more myself I started looking for my cloud-catching jar. Boy, oh boy, did that ever backfire. I had to relearn how to feel in control of the simplest aspects of adult life (ie: brushing my teeth or getting to take a shower). I felt completely out of control. Very luckily, I had a superstar husband and family to help remind me that this is how every new mother feels.

Hottest husband? Check.

But I've learned. I've adapted. Not always gracefully or with any tact, but I'm slowly getting there. I felt so confused for the longest time because I couldn't seem to get back that elusive control I'd so lovingly cultivated before all of this. I was doing all of the same things that brought it before -- why the flip wasn't it working? I'm going to wax quite poetic no,w but I think when I'd climbed the mountain with my jar, I looked out and saw that the mountain had changed, as well as the cloud and the jar I would need. I'm pretty sure that's happened every single time I've felt like "Aha! I've got the secret control formula now!" 

It's never going to be the same as before. That's just a fact of life. Doesn't mean it's a nasty, gross fact, like taxes or death. It can be a really cool, interesting and liberating fact, like you can eat dessert before dinner if you want. Control is an illusion, I'm pretty sure I've never been in control in my life. My jar always comes back with water droplets, not a cloud. But I learn and grow every time I try and find control, and there are things I can control in my ever-changing life. Whom I love (like my hot husband and beautiful baby),  my attitude toward all this change, which at best is grudgingly and at worst is full of tears, and if I want to eat lots of chocolate at 7 a.m. instead of a waffle.

So I'm going to try and remember that even though I can mostly control nothing and life will keep slapping me in the face with the red herring of change, I can control what I learn from it and a few small but really important aspects like love, perspective and chocolate consumption.

Songs to jump-start the space program

Do you miss the space shuttle? I do, and I never thought I'd miss that piece of junk. Looks like I'm not alone -- plenty of musicians sing lonesome songs about space. Here are a few songs to get you thinking about exploring the galaxy.

1. "Intergalactic" by the Beastie Boys
2. "The Year 2000" by the Phenomenauts
3. "Feel So Moon" by Unicorn -- This song is the opening theme to "Space Brothers," an anime about space exploration. The opening sequence alone is worth checking out.


4. "Do You Realize" by the Flaming Lips
5. "Astronaut" by Blitzen Trapper
6. "We Are All Made of Stars" by Moby
7. "Astronaut" by G. Love
8. "What Planet Is This" by the Seatbelts
9. "Lose Control" by Ash -- This song doesn't have any direct link to space, but the sound that plays at the beginning is from a Star Wars TIE fighter and the whole thing generally sounds like The Jetsons on energy pills.
10. "Some Kind of Nature" by the Gorillaz -- Honorable mention to the entire album "Laika Come Home" by Spacemonkeyz vs. Gorillaz.

Steve Kent's 115th Dream

I just woke from a dream which I think may be prophetic. I was at a party where a lot of food was served. Many people I knew from several periods of my life were there, but no one in my family. Every few minutes, my vision and hearing would be overtaken by an ad -- and I'm not just trying out a hyperbolic metaphor. Carefully placed in my surroundings, I'd see professionally produced hallucinations for life insurance, or deli meat or whatever.
I was going to ask whether these ads were normal -- if everyone at the party was having them -- but as soon as I went into ad mode, I couldn't find anyone I felt comfortable asking whether I was normal or having mini-epileptic fits.
The most effective ad by far struck when the little brother of a friend remarked on how much Monroe shocks improve our lives. As he spoke, the Monroe logo appeared below him. I was already inclined to agree with him, but what sealed the deal was when he got into his wheelchair. Which had shock absorbers.

A few other things that happened which may be less prophetic:

• There was a concert before the party. The crowd started moshing a bit, and my brain hit pause and started designing concert stages for maximum mosh safety. When the dream resumed, the band wasn't playing and people were just mingling. At center stage stood a Utah State University podium, painted Aggie blue but with bloody, smeared handprints on it. A buddy from high school said, "I think they should probably put a new coat of paint on this," and I replied, "I think they keep it that way as a warning." (Incidentally, in real life a couple years ago, I went to a concert on the USU campus where a semi-local punk band was playing. A student coordinator told the crowd a dozen times to stop moshing. It was a pretty considerate mosh, so I felt a little bad about wearing steel-toe boots.)
• After the concert, a good friend from middle school asked if he could use my phone. I said yeah, but only if he promised not to laugh. I then produced my flip-phone, and he laughed. It was set to extra user-unfriendly mode, and I showed him how to unlock it. He said, "Ha! No button does what it's supposed to do," and I said, "They do what they're designed to do -- they were just designed by an idiot." Which says a lot about my feelings toward my phone.
• In line for food, a friend started mashing greasy food onto his brand-new T-shirt. Somehow I knew that he had several T-shirts with him and was planning to cycle through them throughout the day. I asked him what he was doing, and he said, "This way, I can be sure to have a shirt with food stains on it this early in the day."

Now I know how Dylan must have felt.

Motherhood: Fact or Fiction?

A magical unicorn ride through the fields of gold. Swimming amongst the stars on the backs of dolphins. Dreams about shopping sprees where everything fits and you always look fabulous. These are ways I would NOT describe motherhood.

I love my little poop machine. I wasn't so sure about her for the first month (as described earlier, I felt sure that her real mother would come along and collect her ) but as time's passed, and her little personality starts to shine through, I like her more and more. However, I don't know why I thought magical was synonymous with motherhood. It's not magic friends, it's spit, grit and hard work.

You know how humans are biologically hardwired to perpetuate the species? As a girl, I thought about being pregnant and having babies since I was like 12. It's so natural, yet so unnatural at the same time. Nothing about pregnancy was really magical or normal to me. I was really depressed and physically ill the first three months, cried three or more times a week (often everyday) and if it's so natural why was I so upset about gaining weight and watching my body change?? I really thought it would just be the best not to have a period every month. Well, it's more like having one for nine months.

Then labor and delivery. I was assuming I would be like the women around the world who work through the pain, squat down, have a baby and are in love instantly with the purple mini-human. Nope. Not even close. I thought I was going to pass out from the pain of contractions, and then lose my lunch. It also took that unexpected turn of emergency c-section, which is not natural at all but I'm so grateful it's available.

So then you have a baby. Time for the baby to eat! Breastfeeding was one subject under which I was the most disillusioned. It's not quick, easy or natural. It's a skill you both learn, like some sort of piano concertist or fixed-gear biker. I really thought it was just an easy, natural thing you both intuitively knew how to do. Wrong, wrong and wrong.

I'm trying to strike a tone of realization more than complaint. I am forever grateful to have the chance to carry a new and beautiful baby girl and to have the opportunity of watching her grow and develop. It's amazing! However, it's a far cry from what I assumed was an easy, natural change in a woman's life. I would say not "Easy as childbirth."

Things I've learned about Charlotte

• Charlotte's favorite music is the blues. Specifically blues-rock with heavy beats and loud guitar riffs. How I know this: Once she was fussing, and I played Catfish Blues by Jimi Hendrix and she got very still and quiet and her eyes got big. Later that day, she started fussing again when I listened to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I switched to T Model Ford and she quieted right down. She also likes Led Zeppelin, including (don't tell Sarah) the Immigrant Song.

• Charlotte is capable of trick poops. This is like a trick shot in the circus, where a shooter can throw a deck of cards up in the air and put a bullet specifically through the card you picked (though that sounds dangerous now I think about it). In Charlotte's case, you can wrap her up in a diaper then swaddle her in a blanket then wrap the blanket in Saran Wrap then hold her way out away from you with Inspector Gadget extendo arms and she can still get poop on your shirt. I may be exaggerating slightly, but she does experience diaper containment failure on a regular basis.
• Charlotte likes eating sugar, much to Sarah's chagrin. Before you call social services on us, we found this out in the NICU. While she was on the cooling cap, sometimes the only way to quiet her down was to give her sucrose drops. If you put it on her lips, she would suck her top lip way down into her mouth. If you put it on a pacifier, she would latch on so tight you could probably lift her up by the pacifier if you tried. Which I did not.
• Charlotte has long fingers and is more dexterous than I thought she would be. Exhibit A:

This photo was taken when she was four or five days old.

Wait, Kendall gave the hottest smoochies?

Remember our post, "I give the hottest smoochies"? Now that I'm updating the blog again, I should credit Kendall Pack as Stu's anonymous critic. Click the link above and read it again! It's hilarious!

Kendall Pack, seen here in the middle of an improv sandwich. Photo stolen from Kendall's FB.

Charlotte Kent, born in the futuristic world of 20XX

Fig. 1: Charlotte takes a break from the cool cap to try something different. Taken in the McKay-Dee NICU.

As Sarah mentioned in her post, we had a baby. About a month ago. Now that school is out and I haven't started work yet, I've got a bit more time to update the blog.

Sarah also mentioned that Charlotte had to spend some time in the NICU at the McKay-Dee Hospital in Ogden. Here's what I have to tell people before I tell this story: Charlotte is fine now, and she's done nothing but normal baby stuff except for the first scare she gave us. Sarah is also fine.

The reason for our NICU stay, for those who are curious: Shortly after we arrived at Logan Regional for her delivery, Charlotte's heart rate dropped and they had to get her out via C-section. The doctors aren't sure what caused it -- maybe the umbilical cord was pinched for a while.

Since Charlotte went without oxygen for a few minutes, her pediatrician wanted to send her to Ogden for brain-cooling therapy. (For some of the science and statistics behind the therapy, here's an article from Shirley Wang at the Wall Street Journal. The story told in the article is very similar to ours.)

They flew Charlotte to Ogden and put her in an open-air incubator. A machine chilled water and ran it through a cap on her head. Unlike the therapy mentioned in the WSJ article, Charlotte didn't have a cooling blanket -- only the cap. The open air cooled the rest of her body and slowed her metabolism, while the cap cooled her brain.

When I arrived in Ogden, seeing Charlotte was a huge relief. I'd been crying my guts out on the freeway, alone, because Sarah wouldn't be released until the next day. I kept worrying and wondering what was happening to her. Would there be more unexpected alarms? Would they need to put her back on a respirator? In the NICU, I still felt anxious, but at least I could see Charlotte and if anything went wrong, I'd know it. Her limbs had been purple and grey right after birth, but now they were a reassuring peach color. And it makes me sound like a complete man-child (see fig. 2) to admit, but the blue of her cooling cap reminded me of Mega Man's helmet, and that helped me picture her as a little fighter.

Fig. 2: From Hark! A Vagrant! by Kate Beaton. www.harkavagrant.com

She wore the cooling cap for 72 hours. She would shiver and cry, and then they'd have to sedate her to keep her temperature from rising. The C-section, the NICU and the cooling cap were incredibly stressful, but we feel blessed to have had access to them.

Sarah holds Charlotte's hand in the NICU. This was Charlotte's actual cooling cap. You can see the color  over her ear. There's a white insulating cap over the blue one.

A Farewell to Pregnancy

I can't lie, I wasn't broken up about not being pregnant any more. I tried to enjoy the 10 months (because 40 weeks = 10 months in reality) as much as I could. I tried not to freak out about my changing body, emotional upheavals and lack of wit. I tried to remember that I WANTED this, that it wouldn't last forever and that Steve still loved the blubbering, balloon-shaped crazy woman I often became. But as the days and weeks roll forward from March 28th, I get to relish in the return of me.

My beautiful hunger monster wasn't born the way I had imagined. We went to the hospital at 3 p.m. and she was born at 4:12 p.m. via emergency c-section. I've never had any type of surgery before. The closest thing I'd ever had done was having my wisdom teeth out. I was wiggin' out.

In the following week, Steve and I went through a myriad of emotional, spiritual and physical ups and downs. I had surgery, we were down in Ogden and Charlotte was in the NICU. She's a normal, growing baby girl now but I was so overwhelmed in those first days – it was like living someone else's life for a while. But, almost more crazy than the way she was born is how she has, unknowingly and with no ill will I'm sure, made our lives all about her.

I think listing a few of the thoughts I had about her BEFORE she was here will set up her non-hostile takeover of our lives:

– I was praying and hoping for a calm, happy and SLEEPY baby. I need sleep. I can hear so many people saying "Well so do I. Everyone does, stupid." No, no, no... What I mean to say is I NEED SLEEP. I've had struggles with anxiety and depression for years but one of the best preventative measures and remedies is sleep. Consistent, mostly uninterrupted sleep. So I was hoping she was sleepy and that somehow no one would get bludgeoned by a crazy she-demon.

– I have always assumed that the moment your baby is born, your heart cracks open and creates a new chamber labelled "my sweet angel baby." Not so. Not even close. First of all, I didn't get to see her for an hour after she was born, then I held her for about 20 minutes and didn't hold her again for three days. Not a great start to bonding. Then it was the ultimate surreal experience when I did see her – to think she was MY baby, like, she came out of my body where she'd been growing for months. I'm still pretty new to the idea that I am a mother and sometimes I still wait for the real mom to come in and say she's back from shopping and I can go home. It's really weird. I love her, for sure, but it's like entering the lottery, talking it up for months and months and then standing with a check in your hands saying "What do we do now"?

– When I was younger, I just assumed six was the magic number of children. My mom had six kids, so obviously that was the best number. My aunts had families of four and six, respectively, and lots of my friends came from families of four, five, six or more. It was the magical time of having big families, I think. Well, the magic is gone. I knew I wanted to have Charlotte, I really felt like I should be pregnant, but let me tell you that the more I was pregnant, the closer I got to actually having my own baby the more I realized that the wheel of family planning had been mistakenly set absurdly high all of those years and dialed back to a reasonable one.

Charlotte after a bath.

I am currently living day to day, not knowing when I'll be doing anything, barely able to plan trips to the doctor, the store or even outside of my house. Steve and I are tired, happy, frustrated, blessed, worried and in love all at once. It's the craziest and most time-consuming adventure I've ever started, but I know that we were supposed to have our baby bundle of joy. I try and remember that feeling of assurance when she's crying because she had a blow-out that barely missed the opposite wall and I haven't showered in a month (which is a lie, but I feel it sometimes).

Obligatory cat post

Shortly after the creation of this blog, I promised you cats. I'm sorry we got so far behind, but we'll make up for it now. Here are some cats and their real cat problems.

King Mars, seen here in a file photo from 2010, obsessed over the recycling. "You can't put that pizza box in there," he would tell his roommates. "It's got cheese and stuff on it. They'll have to throw it away and you're wasting valuable time and resources. Scrape the cheese off and wash the box with vinegar using a magic sponge." King Mars disappeared three months ago. His roommates say they don't need help searching for him.

Last March, Tessercat was struck by lightning down by the Old Mill fishing hole, and now he thinks he can speak to plants. He's on his way to visit his friend Magron the Benevolent, who is a tulip bulb.

This is Marlvolio. He worries about his wife and kids sometimes. Other times he worries about violence and poverty in Africa. Most of the time, though, he sees shiny objects or bits of string and can't look away.

Linda found out her husband is a hitman working for the Cat Mafia. She's afraid to confront him about it, but she doesn't want him endangering their son Meatball. When she sees him lick himself or shred up the screen door, he's the same old Mr. Socks, and she can't understand how someone so normal could lead such a dangerous life. He makes a nice salary, though, and the longer Linda eats Fancy Feline Souffle with Salmon Filet cat food, the less she thinks about her husband's job.

Dating advice is for suckers

The Utah Statesman is starting a staff blog about dating. There's only one post so far, and it's mine. It would fit well in this blog, but alas, you'll just have to read it on the Statesman site. We've got some good posts coming, though -- and hopefully one titled, "How #DateTavin ruined my love life."

Keep Calm and Carry On

I really like that mantra. I've only recently heard of it (although I've confusedly seen all sorts of stupid rewrites that I'm sure someone thinks are clever) and Steve explained it was used by the British government during WWII on encouragement posters. It must have worked because the country didn't tear itself apart as far as I know.

When living life you sometimes get hit by the reality of big decisions you've made, such as: marriage, pregnancy, paying bills, attending school or pretending to be an adult. By hit I mean your heart may race, you lose precious hours of sleep and you devote countless hours of time/energy to worry, "What the what am I doing?"

When I was first married (like first few days and weeks – I'm still first married, really), I thought I had to do things in a certain way so that I could be a successful married person. Have a schedule, be in charge of house things, be REALLY productive, have awesome meals that I just magically knew how to cook, all sorts of ridicules stuff like that. After a few breakdowns and loving words of comfort from Steve, I realized that I could pretty much keep on being me, living life, but now with my awesome hot best friend to give me the hottest smoochies. This was fortuitous, because I was gearing up for a big freak-out with all my silly notions of myself being married.

Fast forward to a few days ago. I'm pregnant and starting to worry about being a mother again. I have been regaled again and again by every mother within 15 miles of me about how "Your life will never be the same," "You'll be busy all the time" and "You'll join the living dead club of mothers who never sleep," and such sentiments of that nature. I very much dislike (hate) when I think or perceive that others are trying to tell me how MY life is going to be, but I was letting it get to me. They're right,  I thought, it's all over now. I'll have to devote my life to Charlotte, stop exercising, eat out of cans and wear mu-mus...
But wait! I'm in charge here. I'm still going to be me, living life, but now with my super hot best friend Steve and a cuddly baby girl named Charlotte. This is going to be awesome. 

So I'm fond of the phrase "Keep Calm and Carry On" because it's exactly how I try to live my life. I trick myself into thinking everything is going to be different and I'll never get to do what I need to when another phase of my life starts. This, however, has NEVER happened. If it's important enough to me, I do it. If it isn't I don't and I start doing something else. I like being 23, married, pregnant and adult-like. It's awesome. My life only happens one day at a time and I can do anything for a day.

Steve gave our brother-in-law a shirt saying "Now Panic and Freak Out" (one of the witty rewrites) for Christmas last year, and though funny, I'm going to try and do the exact opposite of that. Although I think a shirt with both sayings on it might just sum up how I react in real time.