Happy Birthday, Alex!

A year ago at this time, Kate and I were slowly walking up and down our street in the chilly drizzle as contractions were becoming more and more frequent. The baby boy we'd nicknamed "Nubbin" wouldn't emerge until close to midnight, but he did manage to be born on February 19th, which puts him one day closer to 21.

Alex is a strapping 1-year-old today. The baby features are slowly but surely giving way to those of a little boy. Even so, he'll always be our baby.

I'm Gonna Ferberize You, Baby

Alex has really come into his own over the last several weeks. At nine and a half months, he's crawling all over the house, his smile now includes four top front teeth and his expressions are increasingly those of a little boy rather than an infant.

The one problem we've run into is sleep. For months, Alex would wake up a couple of times a night and we'd go into his room to rock him back to sleep. Each wake-up took about 10 minutes. This wasn't ideal, but it was manageable between two people.

Then he started cutting teeth. The resulting soreness dramatically increased the amount of time Kate and I had to spend walking and rocking him. Even if he appeared to be sound asleep after 45 minutes, he would often start crying again within a minute after we placed him back in the crib.

We figured this would only happen when he had new teeth coming in. We were wrong. In spending such a long time getting him to sleep in our arms, we unintentionally created a new sleep habit that wasn't serving any of us well.

The prolonged sleep deprivation took a toll. My back was killing me and it became more difficult for me to fight off background anxieties. Even after Alex got to sleep, I'd lay awake in bed, playing worst-case scenarios of all sorts on an endless loop in my head. My waking attitude toward life in general became more dour and cynical.

Both Kate and I started forgetting things. Until I read Kate's blog post from yesterday, I'd totally forgotten the following episode of extreme forgetfulness even happened:

One afternoon this fall, Greg and I took Alex out somewhere. I think it was the Farmer's Market. We had a lovely time, and congratulated ourselves on making it out of the house and participating in one of the many, many activities that Austin has to offer. That self-satisfaction wore right off when we returned home to find that we'd left the door open. By "open" I don't mean unlocked - I mean we'd left the front door wide open. Luckily, everything in our house was intact and where we'd left it. But wow, did we feel stupid.

Visiting my family in Houston for Thanksgiving was a blast, but the change of scenery only compounded Alex's inability to sleep for more than an hour or two at a time. We arrived back in Austin last Sunday hoping against our better judgment that being back home would help get Alex back on his pre-teething sleep schedule. It did not.

Around 4am on Wednesday morning, Kate and I came to an agreement that the current situation was no longer sustainable. I'd mentioned the idea of using the Ferber Method of sleep training to Kate before, but the idea of walking away from a crying baby - even for a few minutes - was completely counter-intuitive to her maternal instincts.

However, the more we learned about the Ferber Method, the more it made sense to us. In holding Alex in our arms until he was completely asleep, we made it inevitable that he would be completely confused and disoriented any time he woke up in the crib. Who could blame him? I'd freak out too if I woke up someplace other than where I went to sleep.

While putting him down in his crib right before he went to sleep as Ferber recommends would definitely involve a crying jag of unknown length, we would be checking on him and reassuring him at gradually increasing intervals. This was not just letting him "cry it out."

Once we decided to try the Ferber Method, we decided to delay implementation for one more day so we could mentally prepare and be totally sure about it. Alex responded with another night of frequent wake-ups. Nevertheless, as Kate and I took turns trying to get him back to sleep, I felt a slight twinge of sadness knowing this phase of Alex's life was about to be phased out.

On Thursday, Kate put Alex to bed just as his eyelids got heavy and left the room. He immediately started crying. The crying intensified once he realized Kate wasn't coming right back in. Three minutes passed. Kate went in to comfort him without picking him up. The crying subsided momentarily, then picked up as she left the room. Six minutes passed. I went into the room, stroked his chest and told him everything was going to be all right. Then I left and the crying picked up again.

We girded ourselves for another 10 minutes of listening to Alex cry, but then his sobs started losing steam. Then they stopped altogether. After a minute or two, Kate peeked into his room. He was sound asleep. He woke up a couple of times during the night, but even without being rocked, neither wake-up was drawn out more than 10 minutes. This was bliss.

Alex hasn't woken up at all during the past two nights, which I believe is only the second or third time we've had two consecutive no-wake nights since his birth. When you consider all the crying Alex did by waking up every two hours, the total amount of sleep-related crying is a fraction of what it was.

The Ferber Method isn't for everyone. Some parents have strong philosophical objections to it and some babies don't respond to it. Moreover, we're going to have to re-Ferberize Alex every time something funky happens to his sleep schedule, but that's a small price to pay compared to what we were facing. As far as we're concerned, the good Dr. Ferber is a real American hero.

Do the Crawl

Kate shot this iPhone video of Alex crawling today. He's been making tentative crawling movements for about a week now, but today he just took off.



Seeing Alex start crawling in earnest is really something. As Kate aptly noted, "It's like he's a whole new baby." It reminds me of the essential human instinct for exploration. It also reminds me that our house just got a whole lot more fraught with danger.

Alex: The First 5 Months (A Slideshow)

Alex is hitting the big 5-month mark on Monday. Like all parents, Kate and I can't believe how fast time flies. After successfully transitioning the boy to the crib a couple of weeks back, we wistfully folded up the trusty sidecar co-sleeper this weekend. Even though we're all sleeping better now, I miss having Alex right there next to us. And I absolutely don't want to forget anything about what he was like as a newborn.

Accordingly, I decided to compile a whole mess of Alex photos into a slideshow-style retrospective. I'm posting it here so all the people who've asked me for photos when I haven't had any on my person can have a look-see. The music is "Cool Strut" by Bernie Hayes from The Complete Stax/Volt Soul Singles, Vol. 2: 1968-1971. I like to think Alex would appreciate the funky soundtrack.

Father's Day Cake

Kate made this awesome chocolate cake for my first Father's Day. While I do enjoy bikini-clad girls and American football well enough, the fact that Kate put French fries on an equal footing with the other two things demonstrates just how well my wife knows me.

Mother's Day at the Capitol

Kate, Alex and I celebrated Mother's Day yesterday with an altogether pleasant afternoon jaunt downtown.

At two and a half months, Alex's demonstrative repertoire has progressed well beyond crying and sleeping. We're having lots of fun responding to his proto-babble as though he was a Sunday talk show pundit. He still doesn't like car rides all that much, but Kate's friend Jen loaned us a terrycloth cover for the car seat, which seemed to make him more comfortable on the ride down Mopac.

We - well, Kate and I - ate at Little City and traipsed around the Capitol grounds. It was Alex's first excursion to the Capitol and he showed his displeasure for Texas politics by filling a diaper, forcing his mother and I to expose his bits in the shadow of the Pink Dome.

Pizza Box Affirmations

Kate and I picked up an extra large pizza from Arpeggio Grill on Airport Blvd. last Friday night. In the context of raising a newborn baby, this constitutes living it up.

I’ve always enjoyed Arpeggio Grill’s Mediterranean food, but it turns out their pizza is reasonably priced and quite tasty, too. We had the Arpeggio Pizza, which came stacked with pepperoni, sausage, red onions, black olives, Italian peppers and “extra cheese.” I put the latter in quotations since all of their pizzas come with extra cheese, which kind of muddles the notion of what constitutes “extra.” The 20-inch pie set us back $18.99. As a bonus, I got to carry it home in the artfully designed box pictured below.


“Delicious moments?” I think that’s the title of a Quiet Storm CD collection I once saw advertised on late night TV.

Kate's Baby Story

Kate posted her thoughts on the birth of our child on Lone Star Kate today. I didn't say too much about it in my last post because I figured the birth itself was primarily her story, not mine.

I will say that watching her labor gave me a whole new understanding of what a strong, courageous woman my wife is. Simply put, she did great and it blew my mind.

Alexander Harrington Beets

Alexander Harrington Beets was born Friday, Feb. 19 at 11:34pm. He weighed 8 pounds, 3 ounces at birth and Kate labored for about 17 hours to bring him into the world. Mother and son were released from the hospital yesterday. My dad took our first family photo (above) shortly before they were sprung.

Now we're all back home and learning to live as a three-piece. Everything looks just like it did when Kate and I left for the hospital, but we might as well be on another planet for how much everything has changed. It still hasn't completely sunk in that this beautiful, blond-headed boy who just turned 72 hours old a few minutes ago is really ours.

Before he was born, I had no way of knowing if the bond all my parent friends kept telling me about would happen. But there I was, gently rocking him in the hospital nursery at 2am while the radio played "Dance With Me" by Orleans, knowing there was no place else I'd rather be than right there at that moment.

"No Baby Yet!"

If I had a dollar for every time I uttered the above phrase today, I'd have the belated little buckaroo's college tuition locked up by now.

It's weird how a "due date" goes to work on your expectations even when you know it's not perfectly predictive. Although Kate and I weren't counting on him arriving today, I was using it as a benchmark date to make sure certain tasks were either completed or at least well in hand.

I'm not quite sure what to do with myself now. I don't feel like diving into anything I can't finish quickly because I might have to abandon it before getting any real work done. Of course, there's never a "good" time to do your taxes.

A Weekend in Waiting

Our baby boy's Feb. 16 due date is fast approaching. More than a few friends have said they have a feeling he will be born early. That could very well be the case if he takes after Kate. If he takes after me, he'll probably arrive late, but not too late.

Regardless, I've been treating the last few days as though he'll show up this weekend just to make sure the critical tasks are well in hand if Kate suddenly says it's time to go to the hospital. Some part of me thinks the thing to do in the final days of pre-fatherhood is to gorge on garbage food, see a lot of violent and/or sexually gratuitous movies and cram in as many domestic beer-drenched rock shows as I can.

But then I look at the yard or the shower stall and realize our soon-to-be harried home life will be marginally less harried if I get those things into some semblance of shape before the baby comes. I've never been much for housekeeping, but when I think about not being able to readily devote a large chunk of time to it for months and months, it makes me want to try and start off with as clean a slate as possible.

Kate at 38 Weeks

Kate and I are now less than two weeks away from the due date of our baby boy and the dawn of our new lives as parental units. I took this belly shot of Kate on Monday night. I think he's gotten bigger just since then.

Depressed Christmas

On Thursday, John Seaborn Gray listed his picks for most depressing Christmas songs of all time on the Houston Press music blog. Sure, John Prine’s “Christmas in Prison” is pretty grim, but Gray overlooked the yuletide suicide note right in his own backyard.

Culturcide’s “Depressed Christmas” was the B-side of the experimental Houston group’s 1987 single, “Santa Claus Was My Lover.” I played it just now and Kate offered the following succinct assessment:

“It woke me up from my nap in a very unpleasant way. Make it stop!”

Bewitched in Salem

Forget Witch Trials ephemera and the House of Seven Gables. The thing I most enjoyed seeing on our day trip to Salem, Mass. last week was the Bewitched statue. Upon reaching it, I immediately whipped out the Olympus (not a euphemism, folks) and made Kate pose like a tourist. After token resistance, she complied.

The statue is one of several placed by TV Land around the country, including one of Mary Tyler Moore throwing her hat in the air in downtown Minneapolis. Believe it or not, there were protesters when the statue was dedicated in 2005. But the show does have a semi-legitimate historical connection to Salem: Elizabeth Montgomery and company filmed a series of episodes on location there in 1970.

In memory of Steve Harrington

We got some very sad news yesterday. Kate’s cousin Steve died in a skydiving accident in California late Wednesday. He was a longtime skydiving enthusiast who had just completed a charity jump with 68 others to set the U.S. record for parachutists in formation wearing wingsuits. Today’s Boston Globe has a nice obituary.

I first met Steve and his husband Adam on Christmas in 2007 at Kate’s Aunt Charlotte’s house in Wellesley. Several months later, Kate and I would follow Steve and Adam’s lead by having our wedding in the backyard.

We’d just gotten engaged and it was my first holiday gathering with the Harrington family. I immediately took note of the tight, quick-witted rapport between Steve and his brothers. It reminded me of my dad and his brothers when they’re together. They heartily welcomed me into their family and I felt privileged to be there.

My heart goes out to Steve’s husband, parents, brothers and everyone else who loved him.

Rolling out to Reimers Ranch

Kate's Aunt P.K. is in town this weekend, so we decided to take advantage of the perfect weather by going out to Milton Reimers Ranch Park.

Located on the Pedernales River in the far western reaches of Travis County, Reimers Ranch is well-known to rock-climbers and mountain bikers, but it has only been in the Travis County Parks system since 2006. This was the first time I'd been out there.

With the recent rains bringing the Hill Country back to life, our quick day trip was well worth the $8 admission. I think we'll bring a picnic next time. Here are a few amateur snapshots to give you a better idea of how bucolic things are right now.

The flowers are blooming...


...and the water is flowing.


The mission-style "village" on the bluff was actually the movie set of the 2004 version of The Alamo.


Not quite the Playboy Mansion grotto, but close.


The Pedernales heads toward Lake Travis under clear blue skies.

When SWAT came a-callin'

It's been a crazy day here in the soul-crushing, pedestrian-hostile North Dallas suburb of Addison. I got no sleep last night, which left me less than fully charged for a full slate of Texas HIV/STD Community Planning Group meetings.

Just as we were wrapping up, I checked the web to see what was going on back home and found out there was a SWAT team standoff on our block. I immediately called Kate and she rushed home from work only to find our street blocked off by an army of APD officers and vehicles.

Fortunately for everyone, the standoff (which, as it turned out, wasn't actually a standoff at all) ended peacefully and without injury around 5:30. The bomb squad truck drove away and Kate was allowed by the authorities to go home and use the bathroom. Good thing it didn't drag on any longer because denying a pregnant lady restroom rights could've easily spiraled into Dog Day Afternoon.

It's a boy!

Kate and I found out the gender of our baby at last week's ultrasound. Having notified immediate family and friends, I can now say we are having a boy.

At our previous ultrasound, the technician said, "I think this might be a boy...no, wait, that's a finger." Kinda gave a whole new meaning to the term "prick-tease."

I would've been surprised - though not disappointed - if the baby was a girl, but I'm quite elated about the prospect of fathering a son. Although I know it won't necessarily make me a better dad, having some vague recollection of what it was like to be a boy can't hurt. I still act like a 12-year-old boy much of the time, too.

Week in New England

Kate and I just returned from a week visiting family and friends in New England. It was nice to get away from the furnace and even better to arrive home to downpours.

We celebrated Kate's dad's 70th birthday last Sunday (which just so happened to be our first anniversary) in Rhode Island with 70 or so fellow revelers. His wife, Mary, catered the party. I enjoyed catching up with Kate's New England cousins and eating too much. It was the first of many gastronomic overindulgences on my part.

We went over to Cape Cod on Monday to visit Kate's stepmother, Phyllis, and her sister, Eloise. I'd never been to Cape Cod before, but I quickly got into the swing of things with a lobster roll and a dip in Nantucket Sound. Kate and Eloise trounced me at miniature golf on Tuesday at a near-mythic establishment called Steve & Sue's Par-Tee Freeze, but the vanilla and coffee soft-serve swirl made defeat go down a bit easier. We also partook of traditional ice cream at Four Seas, which is one of those institutions you must partake in if you care about ice cream and find yourself anywhere near Cape Cod during the summer months.

Still woozy from a morning of mini-golf, we drove back to Kate's hometown of Worcester to stay with Kate's mom and her stepdad, Michael, for the remainder of the week. Michael treated us to a Boston Red Sox game at Fenway Park on Wednesday night. It was a good one against the Baltimore Orioles, but the Sox prevailed with a three-run double by Victor Martinez in the seventh inning that led to a 7-5 win. While all this was going on, the couple in the seats next to us stood up with an officiant and got married. Hopefully the Red Sox will maintain their wild-card lead over the Texas Rangers or the happy couple's honeymoon will be flat-out scotched.

Once we settled in Worcester, the days became more languid. Despite losing an hour, I found myself getting tired uncharacteristically early and having uncharacteristically vivid dreams once I fell asleep. As Kate and I hiked in Wachussett Meadow on Thursday afternoon, you could feel the end of summer approach in the cool, crisp air.

By Friday, it was rainy and overcast, with daytime temps in the mid-50s. We warmed up with corned beef on bulky rolls, matzo ball soup and birch beer at Weintraub's Deli. You just can't get everyday Jewish deli comfort food like that in Austin.

Our flight back home on Saturday was non-eventful, but after a week in the remote parking lot at Austin-Bergstrom, my car wouldn't start. Fortunately, AMPCO dispatched someone to jump-start the car and that gave us enough juice to get home, unload the bags with the car running and go to Pep Boys for a new battery. Not the best way to conclude a vacation, but at least it wasn't the alternator.

She's having a baby

Now that we've made it past the three-month mark, I guess it's high time Kate and I went wide with the news that we are expecting a child.

The above ultrasound was taken last week. Although we were able to see the baby moving around, the technician had a hard time coaxing it into all the necessary positions at 8am. We still don't know if we are having a boy or girl, but I'm pretty sure he or she won't be a morning person.

Kate is grateful to be done with the first trimester. Morning sickness and fatigue are never pleasant, especially in extreme drought conditions. Fortunately, these symptoms seem to be abating as she moves into the second trimester. I find it amazing that she didn't stay in bed for the entire month of July.

This baby of ours is due sometime in the latter half of February. Impending parenthood has us both vacillating between excitement, anticipation and anxiety, but one thing is certain: I couldn't be happier to be embarking on this ride alongside Kate.