First two weeks

Despite my best intentions of posting more often (something about second child equality of picture taking and blog posting), almost two weeks have passed since we had Deven and I am just now getting around to posting.  Oh well, we second children know our fates are to have less documented lives.  :-) 

Or, perhaps I haven't posted because I think I have written all of these posts before -- indeed, Deven is basically a carbon copy of his sister in every way.  For starters, there is the physical resemblance.  But it goes so much beyond that.  Nearly every issue we had with Sonia we are having again -- feeding issues, an initial bout of weight loss leading to formula supplements (although Deven is now above birth weight and gaining quickly), and most of all spit-up everywhere.  If there was one thing I was really hoping would be different this time around it was that Deven would not spit up after every single feeding like his sister did for six months.  But, alas, apparently we have a genetic predisposition toward that because 100% of feedings are followed by spit-up (and I don't mean a cute little dribble out of his mouth...think something closer to The Exorcist).  The doctor is quick to reassure that as long as your child is gaining weight as expected that excessive spit-up is a "laundry issue", but that is kind of like saying that if you had constant diarrhea that would be a laundry issue too as long as you didn't waste away.  Technically true, but does fail to capture just how disgusting and frustrating that would be.  The only "good" news on this front is that since we have been down this road before, this time we are far more relaxed about it and have just resigned ourselves to burp cloths and outfit changes.  I will be buying stock in P&G to benefit from our constant laundry.

But, other than feeding issues, everything is going well and it is so much fun to have a new person in our lives.  I think since we are 99.9% sure that this is our last child that we often find ourselves treasuring just how little he is and knowing we will never have a baby that small again.  And that makes each bout of spit-up or 4am wakefulness seem somehow nostalgic and special.  Or at least bearable.

Besides charming us, Deven has also been a big draw for visitors.  Already he has met both sides of his family (including Grandma and Grandpa flying in from Oregon just to meet him) and many of our friends.  This time around we are more relaxed about leaving the house, and Deven has already been to the grocery store, Costco, several restaurants, the park, and various retail outlets in his first two weeks of life (I think with Sonia we didn't have dinner outside of our house for a month).  I am again amazed that humans can exist for weeks on end with no more than 3 hours in a row of sleep (and usual less than that), and for the most part Sameer and I remain sane.  :-) 

Sonia is, as predicted by her, a "great big sister" -- constantly showering Deven with attention and kisses.  Most of the time when he is awake he finds his sister's face about 1 foot from his (whether he likes it or not).  She is also a constant monitor of his behavior ("Deven is crying!"  "Deven spit up!"), virtually replacing the need for a baby monitor.  She has had a few moments of inexplicable bad behavior that is probably due to no longer being the center of attention (my favorite of which was uncontrollable sobbing when she suspected Sameer had not given her the biggest banana), but in general is making the transition to sibling with flying colors.  I can't wait until Deven is a bit older and they can start playing together...I have a feeling that having a 3-year-old performer who wants nothing than to get her brother's attention will make for lots of entertaining moments to come. 

Enough stream-of-consciousness thoughts (lack of sleep is not a good editor!)...here are a few more photos of the last couple of weeks.  We need to take some more since if the pattern matching of Sonia's life holds the dreaded "baby acne" and cradle cap (or, "cradle crap" as we called it last time) is right around the corner, which does not make for Kodak moments.  :-)

This is what they mean when they say "sleeping like a baby"...wish it happened all the time!

Deven's "shadow" is never far from his side

Sameer already passing along his sleeping skills

Grandma with both her grandchildren

Deven's first trip to the park

Valentine's Day is for suckers...

...or at least not new parents.  :-)  Over the weekend, I read on several friends' blogs and status updates the stories of their lovely Valentine's Day date nights.  Fancy restaurants, home-cooked meals, flowers, etc.  So, in the spirit of sharing our own experience, here is a recap of how Sameer and I celebrated the day.  The scene is Sunday afternoon, sitting in our family room with the new baby.

Me:  Oh, by the way, happy Valentine's Day.
Sameer:  Is it today...are you sure?
Me:  I think today's the 14th...is it not?
Sameer:  [checks iPhone]  No, you're right.  [pause]  Let's celebrate next year.
Me:  Yup.

Having a newborn baby is a fantastic experience in many ways, but romantic it is not.  :-)  Here's looking forward to Valentine's Day 2011!

The big meet and greet

Sonia has been anticipating the arrival of her new little brother for months and months, and today when she finally got to see him for the first time the moment did not disappoint for cuteness (at least according to these unbiased witnesses). Here is a quick video of the two siblings meeting, and Sonia bestowing two of many, many unprompted kisses to come on her new little brother.

And, yes, she is wearing the special outfit she picked out for the occasion -- a giant "Big Sister" hair clip (it's hard to gauge size when buying things online) and her princess nightgown.

Welcome Deven!

Deven Sameer Dholakia

Born February 8th, 2010 at 5:25am

7 lbs 7 oz, 19.69 inches in length

Not more than a few hours after my last post about our morning trip to the hospital, we had reason to make another! We're thrilled to announce that the newest member of our family made his debut very early on Monday morning after a midnight run to the hospital Sunday night. All in all, it was about as "uneventful" as these momentous occasions can be (in a good way). My water broke at almost exactly midnight, and Chuki (our nanny) was kind of enough to jump in her car and head over to our house to watch Sonia so we could make our way to the hospital. After not too long, the process was moving right along and (having learned from past experience) I asked for the epidural as soon as possible. :-) The rest of the night, Sameer napped and I watched a couple of movies during labor (HD OnDemand has made its way to the hospital....who knew?), and then finally at nearly 5am it was time to get serious about actually having this kid. The delivery itself proceeded pretty quickly (although let it be said that an epidural does not necessarily equal a pain free experience!), and at 5:25am baby boy Dholakia made his way into the world.

The rest of the next couple of days is pretty much a blur of experiences. There were a couple of standout moments (most notably Deven's tendency the first day to spit up large amounts of whatever was still in his stomach from pre-birth, resulting in a not-so-pleasant experience of having a tube shoved down into his stomach to empty its contents and an x-ray to confirm nothing was wrong with his intestines). But, for the most part, having been through this before, it was kind of like one of those TV episodes where someone says something and then you see a flashback to some past memory triggered by those words (needless to say, the images came flooding back with discussions of "cluster feeds", "every 2 to 3 hours", and everyone's favorite "meconium"). This time we were lucky to get a private room fairly soon (lesson learned: give birth the night of Super Bowl Sunday and it will be a pretty quiet scene in the maternity ward) and had a lot of great nurses who were just a push of a button away. We stayed two nights, and then made our way home this morning so Sonia could meet her new baby brother (H1N1 restrictions keep children from visiting the hospital now, even siblings).

Lots more to say when we catch up on some sleep and become humans again (in about, oh, 12 weeks or so?). For now, we are just at home enjoying getting to know the newest member of our family, and catching a few minutes of sleep when we can. In the meantime, here are some much-requested photos of the little man (and if you want to see a testament to genetics, check out the photos of a newborn Sonia to see his doppelganger).

Sameer, Deven, Laura and Dr. Osias about 5 minutes after the new arrival

Deven "flexing his muscles" according to Sameer

Proud Daddy, before the sleep deprivation really set in

Deven meets his big sister Sonia

Now a family of four!

Taking it on the chin

We've been anticipating a trip to the hospital in our near future, but today we ended up there a bit unexpectedly. In what was no doubt an inevitable rite of passage, today Sonia had her first real fall that required a trip to the ER for stitches. The whole family was at Safeway, and Sonia happily climbed into one of the special shopping carts they have with the kiddie car on the front with cartoon videos. I headed to the in-store Starbucks to get my daily allowable dose of caffeine (yes, I know, not great for the pregnant lady, but if you had as much trouble sleeping as I do these days, you would make an exception). Sameer pushed Sonia away in the cart and I said I would catch up with them. Literally within 60 seconds Sameer was back holding a screaming Sonia as blood dripped all over her dress and Sameer's shirt. Apparently, Sameer (by his own guilty admission) failed to buckle Sonia in or latch the car's door shut, so she was horsing around a bit and he took a turn into an aisle and she flew out of the car and caught herself with her chin on the ground. It was a small, but deep cut, and we decided pretty quickly that a trip to the ER was warranted. My apologies to the staff of Safeway for basically abandoning our fancy kiddie cart in the middle of the bakery section and hightailing it out of there without a backward glance.

At the ER, Sonia was very stoic and allowed all of the nurses and doctors to look at her chin without complaint. It was sad to see how scared she was (I don't think she uttered a single word the whole time we were there, and even refused juice!), but she put on a brave face and was perfectly still while the doctor stitched up her chin (2 stitches). It probably helped that Sameer was feeling ultra guilty (despite the fact that it was clearly an accident and Sonia often sits in the car at the store without incident), so there was lots of pampering and Daddy saying he was sorry. On the way home, she still looked pretty shell shocked, but a trip to McDonalds to get her a Happy Meal miraculously seemed to accelerate her recovery. She was soon chatting about her new toy penguin (that came with the meal) and scarfing down McNuggets and apple slices. Say what you will about fast food, we were fans today.

So, all in all, not too bad for our first (but no doubt not our last) trip to the ER for stitches. Sonia is probably secretly happy to get out of swimming for tomorrow, and I see a lot of Dora and Princess bandaids in our future.

At least now when we tell her that "Mommy went to the hospital" to have her baby brother she'll know where we're talking about.

No News

Just a quick post to share the lack of news...no baby yet, and he doesn't appear to be coming anytime soon. The due date is February 11th, so officially less than a week away, but at least at the last couple of doctor's appointments there has been no progress to speak of. Of course, they are quick to tell you that with second children you can go from zero to 60 with no warning, but the doctor also said that if we make it to next week's appointment with no baby we will start to talk about picking a date to induce. Ugh. As it was last time, this phase is just like Groundhog Day where every day is the same...I now have to think hard to figure out which day of the week it is. Admittedly, it has been pretty great to rest and catch up on all of the TV I've been missing (small plug for "Modern Family" which I have finally started watching and is as hilarious as people have been telling me). But, when the big event of your day is that you saw the original pilot episode of NCIS during the "marathon" of reruns on the USA Network, you know it is a slow news day. Also, getting lots of sleep is actually not that easy when someone is sitting on your bladder, you can't roll over without some real effort, and you have murderous heartburn (but, yes, I know I will miss these days once they are gone).

Predictions are running rampant on when Baby Boy Dholakia will finally make his appearance...several have argued for this Sunday, since starting life by causing your father to miss the Super Bowl would be a fair signal of the amount of disruption to come. Sameer is hoping for February 10th, his mother's birthday. I'm hoping for anything that is sooner than later since we are not getting any more ready (note: this is not the same as being ready), but suspect we may see the 11th come and go and still be waiting. Hopefully just writing that will "jinx" us in a good way? :-)

On Active Duty

As mentioned in the last post, Sonia considers herself to be quite a performer, and lately she has been focusing on lots of new activities that give an outlet to her natural (albeit very shy) tendency to showcase her "talents." :-) Or, really, a series of activities that Sameer and I subject her to to keep her active while the weather outside is rainy and cold (at least by California standards). First off, she has started taking a ballet class, which really is just an excuse for 3-year-olds to wear pink tutus every Wednesday, but chances are Sonia would have done that anyway. Here is a video of Sonia and her classmates stretching at the end of the session...you'll have to trust me that she was having fun since there are no smiles, only fierce concentration. It seems she is focused on fulfilling her genetic destiny to be teacher's pet (she is the one sitting on the teacher's left).



In addition to dancing, Sonia has become a *huge* fan of the Nintendo Wii that we got our house for Christmas. It has become our latest bargaining chip in all conversations ("You can play the Wii later if you eat two more bites.") She particularly loves all of the little games that come with the Wii Fit and is the current reigning champion at our house for the penguin iceberg game and table tilt. Her favorite, though, is soccer (where you try to hit incoming soccer balls with your head while avoiding flying shoes and panda bears). Sonia was the long time champion at this game as well, until someone (ahem...Sameer) played it often enough that he beat her score, an episode which ended in tears. The high scorer for each game is listed with a crown next to their name, and Sonia was very proud that she had the crown for soccer ("I'm good at soccer!" was uttered at least 5 times daily). Sameer claimed it was a "good lesson" that Daddy had done better, but after the tears (from Sonia) and the glares (from me) he has since avoided playing soccer again. :-)

The Wii Fit also includes Yoga, and Sonia enjoys doing the poses along with Sameer. Here she is doing "The Tree" (with potentially better form than her father).



Finally, with the new year upon us, Sonia is focused again on swimming. (Yes, we do let her sit down and relax every once in a while.) After several lessons that mostly seemed to involve just splashing around, it seems that the teacher is now focused on actually teaching her to swim. She's not exactly a natural, but this is still big progress from our initial encounters with the pool. The lessons seem to involve mostly being dragged around the pool by the teacher while practicing kicking, and then swimming on her own for approximately 6 inches. Oh well, I'm sure Summer Sanders started the same way. (Sorry for the fog in the video, the pool was having its own weather system inside due to the fact that it is super heated and it was quite cold this day.)