Monthly Archives: July 2012

Third in a series; come back tomorrow for more of this month-by-month look back at Nyan Thomas’s first life; scroll down for the first two installments.

Nyan Thomas’s third month of life – from late September through late October – started out with a necessary evil: vaccinations. As it turned out, Mommy and Daddy were more uptight about the needle than Nyan was; as we reported at the time:

He was brave. He was nonplussed. He took it just fine – no fussing, no crying, no nothing.

He did get a bit fussy later that evening and the next day, but no fever to speak of. He’s been like that all of his doctor visits, and vaccinations: calm and cool and more interested, frankly, in flirting with the nurses, or getting up and crawling around and exploring the office, than being worried about being poked or prodded. In fact, to this day, we have yet to find anything at all that he’s afraid of. Not sure if that’s normal or not, and I suppose it could be a problem when, for instance, he’s not afraid of grabbing electric cords and shoving them in his mouth for a good chew. Just one more thing for his parents to keep an eye on…

The number of visitors dropped off in October, but we still got to enjoy a brief visit mid-month by Grandma and Grandpa L., who swung through town on their drive back to Iowa from a vacation in Virginia. Mommy and Daddy also both caught a bug in October; Daddy got the worst of it, and stayed in bed for two straight days. They discovered that a cuddly little baby really is the best medicine. (And don’t worry: we made sure we didn’t get the boy sick. In fact, we decided that he had whatever it was first.)

We also noticed in October that our boy was paying extremely close attention to what we do, and doing it himself. Case in point: Mommy had a cough for a few days after she was sick; during one overnight feeding, he suddenly starting coughing as well. It momentarily freaked us out, until we realized it was not a real cough  he was just doing what Mommy was doing.

Another minor health issue in October (seems to be a theme of the month, doesn’t it?): we found a small boil on his bum. Didn’t look serious, but we still had the pediatrician check it out. She said it was nothing and prescribed antibiotic cream. It never really went away, however; a couple months later, Pho Pho (Grandpa K.) determined that it was a fistula – nothing serious, but more than just a boil, and someting that a simple antibiotic cream wouldn’t take care of. This, frankly, was our first sign that our pediatrician was not all that great. She was friendly and seemed competent enough, but on Nyan’s visits to see her, she would spend all of five minutes with the boy after her nurses took care of everything. I guess that’s how it’s done in a busy, crowded place like Park Slope, Brooklyn, but for Mommy and Daddy – who come from smaller towns, where medical service is more personal, and both of whom have plenty of medical professionals in their families – it was rather jarring. It ended up being just one more reason we determined Brooklyn was no place to raise a child.

We also worked a lot in October on communication with the boy. As I wrote at the time:

Otherwise, we’re just enjoying hanging out with him, talking to him, whether in Burmese, English, or baby talk… and yes, the kid is a talker. Especially during the days, he’s babbling nonstop. We figure he thinks he’s actually communicating with us, and wonder what he thinks we’re saying when we make random gurgling noises at him. Other times, we think he seems a little frustrated when he’s babbling and gurgling and yet remains unable to clearly communicate. We recognize most of his cries and what they mean, and have gotten quite good at figuring out when he’s hungry, when he wants a cuddle, when he wants to be left alone, and when he needs a new diaper. Beatrice is especially good at interpreting those signals; I’m not nearly as far along, since I get to spend huge chunks of my days and weeks away from him, chained to an office in Midtown Manhattan.

Minor medical issues aside, I’d say it was a good month, with a lot of progress made as far as figuring our what makes little Nyan Thomas tick.

Editor’s note: Second in a series of posts in which we take a sequential look back at the first 12 months in Nyan Thomas’s life, leading up to his first birthday later this month. For Month One, just keep scrolling down after this post. And check back tomorrow for Month Three!

The second month of Nyan Thomas’s life began with a hurricane and ended with a birthday.

In the waning days of August, all of New York was panicking over the approach of Hurricane Irene. Daddy had lived through a fair number of hurricanes and tropical storms during his stint in the Caribbean, so he was pretty non-plussed about it, and in fact was more excited than anything else. And young Nyan Thomas? He was pretty chill about it too, as you read here.

The storm hit in the early hours of Aug. 28, with damage, at least in Brooklyn, limited to a couple of downed branches and a wee bit of rain. But it snarled air traffic, and Uncle Dominic and Uncle Sean – who had been visiting – found their return flight to London was canceled. It took them four days until they could get a flight out (and what a flight: we found them two seats in First Class on Qatari Airlines from JFK to Heathrow. What a life!). So Nyan got to spend a little extra time with his uncles. Not long after, Grandma L. came for another visit.

We also continued to try to figure out the best ways to care for the little guy; this remains a work in progress, but you can see some of our thinking-in-progress in this post from last Sept. 1. And then there were the various noises the boy would make – which we named and chronicled here.

We also worked on “tummy time.” It’s hard to imagine today, when the boy can hardly keep still as he crawls anywhere and everywhere, but last September, all he wanted was to lay on his back; as you saw in this post, he was not happy when we would put him on his belly.

Nyan’s second month was also the first (though not that last) that poor Mommy, while taking him out for one of their daily strolls through the streets of Park Slope, was mistaken for the boy’s nanny. Oops.

The month ended with another visitor, as Uncle Scott flew out for a long weekend; Chris’s old colleague from the Caribbean, Susanna, was also in town for business and popped by one afternoon. And finally, on the 25th, Daddy celebrated his first birthday as a Daddy. Not a bad way to celebrate a birthday!

I won’t say that we had it all figured out by the end of that second month – far from it, in fact. But we were started to get into a rhythm; not just figuring out the boy’s daily rhythms and routines but starting, ever so slightly, to get a handle on our own routines, and the best way to deal with this mysterious, wonderful creature called Nyan Thomas.

Editor’s note: We realize that the postings have been a little light of late, and we do apologize for that; we’ve been busy with moving and trying to settle down into our new life. But fear not: today we start a countdown of sorts, a look back at the first year of Nyan Thomas’s life, one month each day until we reach July 26 – his first birthday. Today, we go back to the very beginning. And check back tomorrow for more!

When we look at Nyan Thomas today, as he babbles, crawls, climbs stairs, cruises, opens every cabinet he can and in general shows an unending curiosity about anything and everything, we can’t help but be a little amazed at how he’s changed over the past year. I know, I know, that’s a silly observation; he’s not exactly the first baby to near his first birthday, and to hit all the developmental milestones pretty much on schedule. But still. It’s a new experience to us, and no less remarkable, really, despite it not being a first.

As we wrote nearly a year ago, our little guy came along at 8:27 a.m. on Tuesday, July 26, 2011,  a typically hot sunny summer New York day. I vividly remember the entire day, all of the events – from racing across the Brooklyn Bridge in a taxi at sunrise, to the birth itself, to holding our boy, to my own attempts to give him a bottle for the first time (let’s just say that I’ve come a long way when it comes to basic parenting skills!) That first day remains one of those days where you remember pretty much every moment. Such days are rare, of course, but the birth of your first child is obviously one of them.

Nyan’s first 30 days were filled with (duh) plenty of firsts. Lots and lots of first visits from relatives: Grandma and Grandpa L., who drove in from Iowa; Auntie Emerald and Uncles Dominic and Sean, who flew over from the UK; Aunt Nyo and Uncle Min Han, who drove up from Maryland. First visit to the doctor. Daddy’s first day back at work; Mommy and Daddy’s first encounter with Nyan’s first constipation (as you read in the creatively titled post, Poop.) His first bath, chronicled here. Even his first flirting – on his third day of life, flirting up a storm with Joy, the nurse who was discharging him. (“He’s my new boyfriend,” she told us. “I may not let him leave!”) And, sure, there was the first night where he – and thus we – got very little sleep; there were plenty more nights just like that.

It was a predictably intense and crazy month, with lots of new challenges to over, lots of highs and lows (mostly highs, though, I think it’s safe to say). One of the most remarkable things that we’ve noticed all year long is how certain aspects of the boy’s personality were present from pretty much that first day. The way he looks at and watches everything, for example; his intense curiosity about everything. And the fact that he was – and remains, really – a pretty easy going baby, from the start. At one point I wrote this:

We’ve been remarkably calm, actually, throughout this thing; I think it’s a virtuous cycle: Nyan is a mellow, easy going kid, which keeps us mellow, which keeps him mellow, and so on and so forth.

Of course, these days, he’s incredibly active, but underneath it all, he’s still the same curious and easy going little guy he was from Day One.