Nyan Thomas L's Blog

On Wednesday afternoon, while Beatrice stood sentry over our napping son, I ran a couple of errands in the neighborhood. We’re a few blocks from where they’re building a new arena for the NBA’s New Jersey (soon to be Brooklyn) Nets, and it’s been an ugly process – shady eminent domain and tax breaks handed to the developer, blocks of homes leveled to put up the arena, dirty clangy construction trucks that have started rattling down our street, and the design of the arena itself. It was originally to be designed by Frank Gehry, of whom I am not a fan, but at least you can say, I suppose, that his buildings are usually interesting. Ugly, but interesting. But due to cost overruns (or bait-and-switch, if you’re a cynic, which I am), as soon as the project got all of its permits, Gehry was dropped, his design replaced with a mundane arena with a weird curved design that many critics said make the whole thing look like a giant toilet seat. (Given how woeful the Nets have been in recent years, there’s an easy metaphor in there somewhere.) Read the rest of this entry »

Nyan got strapped in to his carseat/stroller combo yesterday afternoon so Mommy and Auntie Maria could take him down the road for some bubble tea. (Well, bubble tea for them. Nyan, as you can see, wasn’t too fussed. In fact he slept the entire time.)

Nyan got his first bath on Monday evening. Much needed.

We’d been cleaning him, of course, through sponge baths and the like. But on Monday evening, when I went in to the bedroom to wake him from his nap and give him his evening feed, his onesie was soaked in the back. I quickly realized that someone (ahem) had, uh, apparently screwed up the diaper and had left a little gap along the side of his hip. His jojo (as they call it in Burma) was placed just so, so that when he peed, rather than the diaper absorbing it, it somehow shot out the back of the diaper and up the back of his clothes. (No, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, and it clearly took a lot of either skill or luck. But be that as it may, half his back was soaked in his own pee. Not good.) Read the rest of this entry »

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my company gives new fathers 10 days of paid leave. I took just four days right after Nyan was born, choosing a couple painful weeks of being away from him so that I could have time off after Beatrice’s sister left. That time is now, so for the next week, I’ll be blissfully house-bound with my wife and new son.

Day one was Saturday, and it was probably a good indication of what to expect: chaos, really. Not in a bad way, but just in an impossible-to-plan-things and impossible-to-get-much-done sort of way. We managed to do some laundry, clean the house a bit, and make a quick grocery run. But for the most part, we’re at the mercy of Nyan’s needs. He’s hungry? Drop what you’re doing. He needs a new diaper? Ditto. He’s having a gas attack and needs comforting? Go comfort him, now. Read the rest of this entry »

Beatrice, Nyan and I live in New York. Almost all of my family lives in Iowa or a neighboring state. Most of Beatrice’s family – including her parents and five siblings – live in England, with aunts, uncles and cousins scattered across the globe, from Burma to Singapore to Tokyo to Houston. Most of our close friends also live far away – the Midwest or England, for the most part.

Point is, it’s pretty easy to feel isolated. So thank god for family. Read the rest of this entry »

My theory is that “colic” is simply a catch-all term that baby doctors (and, I suppose, parents) use when they don’t know what’s wrong with a baby. I base this theory mostly on a few seconds of Googling and skimming a couple of baby books, and on how often the term seems to be tossed around.

And it’s also borne out by experience. Long-time readers will recall a post from a few days ago, in which I noted that poor Nyan was having minor tummy troubles. Well, they continued for a few more days; I won’t bore you with the dirty, poopy, farty details, but the poor kid was having a poor time. Lots of gas, obvious discomfort, and not a whole lot of sleep overnight.

On Wednesday, we (or rather Beatrice and Emerald; I had to work) called our pediatrician’s office to say ‘hey, our baby has some GI issues, it’s not just a need to burp, it’s more than that; help!’ The secretary cheerfully replied, “Oh, it’s just colic, nothing to worry about, it’ll go away!” Read the rest of this entry »