Views from the Fu's

Sick Baby, or How Vaccinations May Cause Baby Diseases

Miles was nearly ailment-free until he hit 11.5 months, and since then it's been onslaught after onslaught of weird baby diseases.

Rashes, fevers, croup, flesh-eating bacteria, etc. Ew. Most recently he's been fighting a case of Roseola, in which a baby gets a high fever for a few days, then the fever goes away, then he gets a gross rash.

Here's the disease illustrated, courtesy of Google Health. The best part of this disease is the irritability that comes as part of it. Miles whined non-stop all weekend. It's like you want to have only nice and soothing thoughts for your sick baby, but secretly (or publicly) you want to throw him out a window because he's following you around the house whining ceaselessly and nothing you can do makes him feel better.

I've been doing some thinking about sick babies lately, much to the amusement of our pediatrician, and I've come to the possibly obvious conclusion that the MORE Miles goes to the doctor, the more he gets sick. There are a couple possible explanations for this correlation.

1) The doctors can actually diagnose things like chronic irritability, so what used to be just an annoyance is now a treatable disease (kind of like ADHD).

2) Since there are SICK kids at the doctor's office, Miles gets SICK when he goes to the doctors' by playing with their disgusting germ-infested toys and sucking on half-chewed pretzels off the dirty-ass waiting room floor. (I got caught up in Glenn Close's fabulous portrayal of Cruella Deville and stopped watching the baby for ONE second, excuse me!) He went in for a flu shot and came out with Roseola. So that's how vaccinations cause baby illnesses, for those who were drawn in by the catchy title of this blog post.

For those who don't have kids yet, I'll tell you... sick kids are a drag. They suck all the energy out of you so even when you're at work or away from "ground zero" you're still exhausted and disoriented. Probably because you got up three times during the night to comfort the baby, or because you had to change your outfit due to a fat line of snot that trickled down your back when you hugged your little darling on your way out the door. Maybe there should be a sick kid farm where you can send them to heal up, then you can pick them up when they're back to 100%. Unfortunately, I think there's something about hugs from mommy and daddy that are more powerful than penicillin. But I'm no doctor, so don't quote me on that.

Your baby is not a baby until he is at least six months old

When Miles was first born, me and Sarah packed a few things to bring to the hospital, including some baby clothes and a little toy rattle. As it turns out, what the baby wears is probably the only thing you don’t worry about at the hospital, and the rattle was even more useless. In fact, he really didn’t show any interest in the rattle until very recently.

I meant originally planned to write this entry back when Miles was about seven months old. Now that he is almost a year old I’m finally getting around to it. Even though time is passing so quickly, one thing I often tell people is that it feels like Miles has been with us forever. And yet, maybe the best thing about having a baby is that he is just a little different every day, it’s so amazing to literally watch him grow up before your eyes—now he does all the things you think of when you think “baby”—crawling, giggling, shaking rattles, making doo doo at least 3 times a day—anyways this post is starting to feel ramble-y so best I just get back to posting pictures:

Miles with his oldest and favorite rattle, about 5 months ago:

Miles will never need glasses ever according to the eye doctor

To properly tell this story I have to first explain that our pediatrician has a funny habit of diagnosing Miles as potentially having every ailment known to man. It took us a few stressful trips to various foot, heart and eye specialists to figure out that she didn’t really think that Miles had these ailments, she just wanted us to go see the specialist just to make sure. Or maybe she just wanted to send business to her doctor buddies, I don’t know.

The important thing is, we now know for sure that Miles doesn’t have club foot, and even if he did, Troy Aikman, Kristi Yamaguchi and Damon Wayans were all born with club foot, so Miles’s future career as superstar-athlete-turned-stand-up-comic would still be safe.

The other important thing is the eye doctor told us is that he can tell Miles will never ever need glasses just by looking at his eyes, which is pretty great, although it makes me feel a little gypped for all the times I read a book in adequate lighting or uncrossed my eyes so they wouldn’t stay that way. Also I hope that being a nerd goes out of style soon.

The Best Picture of All Time

Well it was only a matter of time before this blog degenerated into just a bunch of cute pictures of Miles.

So we were all in Denver last week for what turned out to be an awesome wedding of our friends Kelly and Tommy, and we were eating turkey burgers in Sarah's parents' backyard (check out the baby cage they got at a garage sale!) when Sarah and Miles started sticking their tongues out at each other while food was in their mouths. I had to take a picture.

Parenting Basics: Nobody cares about your baby (as much as you)

Remember how it gets kind of boring when someone is showing you endless pictures of their new “super-cute” baby or telling the “adorable” story of that time their baby made himself spit up by sticking his hand in his mouth?

I don’t. So…

WHO WANTS TO SEE A VIDEO OF MILES CRAWLING (forward and everything!)? It’s pretty awesome. I can’t believe how incredibly proud me and Sarah are over something so seemingly pedestrian. Just imagine how we’ll feel when he makes the NBA or defuses a live nuclear bomb…

Miles's first words?

This morning Miles was whining for his bottle and repeatedly babbling “nai nai nai!” – It occurred to me and Sarah that for several weeks now, whenever he seems hungry, he always whines in the same way, and says “nai nai nai,” until he sees his bottle, and then he laughs.

For some reason I never really put it all together—“nai” means “milk” in Chinese (as well as “boob,” and “grandma”).

I’ve never taught Miles to say milk in Chinese, but being that the Chinese are so awesome, I wouldn’t be surprised if the word was actually created because of this particular type of baby speak.

If words were named after baby gibberish, it would also explain why variations of “ma ma” and “da da” appear in so many languages, and they happened to be some of Miles’s first babbles.

I’ve always thought that it was up to adults to teach babies how to speak, but I guess in some way, it was actually babies who taught adults. Crazy!

What's Miles up to?

The most common question I get as a parent is, "How old is the baby now?" As soon as I respond "x months and x weeks", I can usually tell whether or not the person I'm talking to has kids or not. If they do, a knowing smile will cross their face and they'll laugh and start talking about what their kid was like at that age. If the don't then I get a blank look accompanied by a nod. I realized it's because once babies are out of the "alien" stage, it's all pretty congruous until he's reached a milestone like walking or talking.

So, to help out those of you who don't have kids, I've made a list of some of the things Miles is doing this week (month 7, week 1):

• Rolling from tummy to back and vice versa.
• Sitting up from a fully reclined position.
• Gaining some rhythm and keeping the beat by slapping his hands to music.
• Showing a clear preference for certain stories and picture books.
• Ripping apart a necklace, spilling a string of beads all over the floor.
• Crawling backward.
• Growing out of all his pants.
• Tearing magazines and books cover to cover.
• Waving bye-bye.
• Pushing a very hard tooth up through very tender gums
• Touching a cat named Thomas.
• Pinching and scratching mom.

Baby Product Placement

We use pampers because the hospital gave them out as free samples (I realize its a dumb reason). Little did we know Miles was about to be brainwashed...

Family Resemblance

Lately a few people have been giving me a hard time cause they say that Miles looks more like Sarah than me. Totally untrue. But then I got to thinking about how I've always thought that Miles looks a lot like Sarah's dad, but he definitely doesn't look unlike my dad. I'll let you guys be the judge.
 

Parenting Basics: Baby Bias

When you are a parent you think that your baby is the cutest baby of all time. Even when he is just a newborn, during the "alien" stage, you might say something like "Man, Miles is way cuter than any other baby I've ever seen." You are wrong. One day you will look back at old pictures and wonder what the heck you were thinking, he wasn't even cute at all. In fact, he is SO MUCH CUTER NOW THAN HE WAS BACK THEN! That's right, six month old Miles is way cuter than six day old Miles, and is the new reigning "cutest baby of all time."