A few times in the past, I've been taking the bus somewhere when a parent hops on with a kid who is losing it. It starts with some fussing and furtive attempts to hush him or her up, but the efforts to soothe seem to make things progressively worse. In no time the bus fills with inescapable wails of dejection.

My mind goes through a similar thought process each time I'm witnessing this. First I blame the parent. then I chastize myself for being so uncompassoinate. Then I start to wonder what it would be like if I was in that situation. Then I start to wonder about why the kid is actually being fussy. Then I ponder briefly that it's because the parent doesn't know how to discipline the child. Then I feel bad for the kid. Then I realize the kid's probably just uncomfortable or hungry or tired. Then I start realizing that I'm a little uncomfortable. Then I start to empathize with the kid. Then I realize that I wish I could be screaming too. Then... I am serene, and my heart fills with the goodness of the universe. I have once again come to the realization that I am a mature adult and have repressed my tantrums to the point where they only exert themselves through eye twitches and uncontrollable inner monologues (and sometimes dialogues).

Now that we're having a kid ourselves, I've started to ask what I would do differently than said struggling parent. I think I've come to appreciate the paradoxical parenting dictum that to have freedom you have to stick to a schedule. If the kid expects a nap at a certain time, and it doesn't arrive, it's like a balding man with a bad hairpiece. There's going to be hell toupee...

ahem...

As I was saying, it's going to be a bad situation. I think that most parents realize this, and the ones who are struggling on the bus have usually found themselves in some unavoidable scenario where they simply had to be out during tired time. This is going to be tricky for me, I know, because I tend to push myself for hours and hours past the point of being hungry and tired, and I somehow don't think our baby is going to be able to keep up. I'm sure his exacerbated screams keep me in check, though, if I don't keep his routines in check.


PS I am so happy to hear that the Amber Alert that was out across BC found a happy(ish) resolution.

http://www.theprovince.com/sparked+Amber+Alert+found+sleeping+Montana/7560464/story.html

No, this isn't a post about people like Donald Trump throwing tantrums on their social media accounts. I'm talking about babies in the more literal sense. A few years ago, say 2006, all of my friends suddenly hopped onto Facebook and stated sharing the funny and bizarre (and, yes, banal) details of their lives. It was all so innocent at first. We announced our political views in single-word statements. We told the world that our relationships were either official, or blithely stated that they were complicated. We even dared state our religious leanings. That was until the big social media hangover kicked in.

Flash to 2008. There was this huge rash of breakups among my circle of friends. Chalk it up to an age thing. A lot of people in their late twenties started to hear the passing years telling them things were either going nowhere with their partners or that they needed to be locked down more definitely. I noticed that, following the breakup wave, people stopped posting their relationship statuses until they were wither engaged or married. It was frankly embarrassing for people to have to announce their life disasters. We became wary.

This (somewhat arbitrary) moment gave many of us our first direct taste of the online privacy issues we'd been hearing so much about on Fox news (yeah right). I remember when I accidentally announced that my seven year relationship had ended (it was an accident because I didn't mean for the change to immediately go up on everyone's feeds). From such events, many of us experienced just how voyeuristic and invasive social media could be.

Now flash to 2011. Suddenly it seems like all of our friends are having kids, and we're preparing to hop on the bandwagon ourselves. But we've all been burned by over-sharing on our networks. Many of us have added at least a handful of vague, distant friends from our distant pasts, people we'd barely say hi to if we walked by them on the street. Do we really want these people seeing our kids? Maybe we're fine with posting a very select few photos here and there on the 'book, but what's to be done about all those unintended privacy consequences?

I wish there was an easy answer. The fact is, my kid's going to be so amazingly fantastic that it's going to be difficult not to share his life a little. I guess the smart thing to do is to manage what info gets out. Keep high privacy setting on your Facebook profile, choose who can see your albums, and use all of those acquaintance and list settings that are available if you're not sure about someone but aren't yet ready to completely sever the ties. If you're a bloggy-type, like me, be sure to protect your identity and not give out unnecessary details (mostly I just use first names, and though it would be easy enough to figure out who I am, it would be much more difficult to track anybody else that I've mentioned). Technology enables such a wonderful, rich, textured exchange of our lives, and it can connect us with like-minded individuals we'd historically have never had the chance to meet. It would be a shame to limit ourselves just because there's the possibility of a creep here or there. I suppose, as with may other things, it just boils down to knowing your personal limits and being smart about the way you interact with the world.

So we spent eight hours on Friday at the BC Women's and Children's Hospital, learning all the ins and... outs of what to expect in the last few months of the pregnancy. There was a lot of emphasis on labour, which was good because, to be honest, I had no idea what it would be like. I mean, I knew it was going to be bad, but I quickly realized I was basing pretty much everything on movies. One of the key things they don't tell you in the movies is that it goes on and on and on and on for hours and hours and hours. If you've ever seen Knocked Up, you'll know what I mean about false expectations. The characters have plenty of time to have long, important conversations between the contractions. In fact, the director really only illustrates "labour" by conveniently timed pangs at the beginning of each scene. The delivery looks painful, but the scene lasts all of thirty seconds. Apparently, this picture of things is a little... minimalist.

I was impressed with how pro-active and progressive they've become when it comes to pregnancy. They're aware of every potential problem, and can identify any issues early enough to give baby a way better chance than he or she would have had 35 years ago when I was born. They leave as little as possible up to chance, and yet they acknowledge that every parent will have unique expectations and demands. They try to avoid unnecessary "interventions", and encourage parents to ask questions at each stage. Vancouver is an extremely diverse place, and to fit every parent into the same box would be individually and culturally offensive for a lot of people. It's a neat hospital in that it recognizes that birth is so much more than a medical procedure. Rachel, the nurse guiding the class, was a real firecracker.

As a part of the class, we got to go on a tour of the maternity ward Lis will be delivering in. The rooms look very private and peaceful, and it seems like the hospital is really geared towards the baby (apparently it's one of the few in Canada to actually have the WHO-UNICEF "Baby Friendly" designation). They're very pro breast-feeding and pro-natural birth, because they recognize the amazing health benefits each of these has for the baby. After the delivery, it's straight to skin-to-skin time, which is supposed to be good for temperature regulation and getting the baby on board with the boob. It was all very comforting to see. I'm feeling good about this.

I managed to get choked up a few times during the class. I'm so excited and scared, and seeing several deliveries was pretty powerful. It's clearly going to take all I have to keep it together when the big day finally comes along. Anyway, we progress. We're entering the third trimester now. Ready or not, here it comes!

Rawr! I used to love making wooden dinosaur skeleton models when I was a kid. I had Stegosaurus, Pterodactyl, Brontosaurus, and of course, my lovely little companion to the left: Chomposaurus MAX!

Lis and I did a QOL today, ambling around Granville Island for a couple of hours and just soaking in the sun, water, mountains, and uber-crafty aura of the place. A QOL, for the uninitiated, stands for a "Quality of Life" and is used as a noun in place of "constitutional", "afternoon off", or "I gotta stop working or I'm gonna snap break."

On our little jaunt, we came across a part of the Island called the Kids Market, an area that I had previously mentally nullified but that now, suddenly seemed relevant. Attuned to this strange and secret zone, we decided to take a little peek inside, and found a collection of possibly the coolest kids stores I'd ever seen. Each forewent the raucous and intrusive popular capital brands in favor of obscure and clever little toys for the ages -- all sorts of tiny plastic animals, wooden train sets, die-cast toy trucks, science toys, puzzles, and, yes, wooden dinosaur models. It was like the proprietors actually cared about what they were selling rather than just how much. It was lovely.

(Cyndi and Vince be forewarned: When you come here, we're going to the Kids Market).

One of the many ambling topics we covered on our QOL was the speculation that there is now an entire market for parents who want to introduce their kids to the same simple toys that lined the shelves years ago. Seeing a model such as the one pictured above practically breaks my heart, and I can guarantee that when I'm faced with the choice of buying junior a nifty dinosaur model that improves both manual dexterity and curiosity vs. a mass produced, plastic, smack-you-in-the-face-with-advertising, latest greatest whateverthefuck (or, for the initiated, a MPPSYITFWALGWTF), I think the simpler, more refined option will win out. Call me old fashioned, but I think there's something to be said for value and quality.

One of the experiences that I've had that's unique to being an expecting parent is the phenomenon of noticing every other expecting or already bechildrened person. For years, I counted myself among those who thought of children alternatively as a minor annoyance (pun!) or something worth paying no attention to whatsoever. Now, all of the sudden, I am curious as to who all of these parents and parents-to-be are. I want to know their stories. I want to know due dates. I want to know about services. I want to know their plans for the zombie apocalypse (well, actually that one's kind of ongoing, come to think of it).

I've noticed Lis is getting a lot of this now, too, from others. She tends to be a tad on the reserved side, but in the last month especially more and more people have been asking her very directly about the pregnancy. It's kind of funny, because at first she was oblivious to why suddenly everyone wanted to know how she was feeling. She's still adjusting to all the attention. Random chats aside, I also see her have these contented shared glances with other mothers. It's kind of cool. They're in the club. One day we ended up striking up a random conversation with a couple in the IKEA, because we both happened to be shopping in the crib aisle (a place that registered in my attention precisely zero times before that day).

When we see little ones on the bus or out for walks, it has taken on this whole new significance. Life is kind of amazing that way. Even though we can technically see and interact with any other person (except invisible people, of course), we all occupy these very different, concurrent realities at any given time. When I was a grad student, I barely had any awareness of what people with other lifestyles were doing. There were all of these people who worked at jobs for a living. Now, I can't remember what it's like... oh wait, I'm virtually unemployed. Regardless, it's amazing to me that we can all overlap on a daily basis and be so clueless as to what one another is up to.

My awesome sister-in-law sent me an article about this great idea: a parental bucket list of things to do with your little one before he or she grows up and moves out. It got me to thinking. I feel like we should have one of these for pretty much every day of our lives. There was that famous Randy Pausch lecture awhile back, where a professor who was dying of liver cancer participated in a series with the theme "what lecture would you give if it was your last on earth?" The talk was life changing. The big takeaway was that it's important to know and do the things you want to do, whatever the context.

So, what are some things that would go on my 'Before He Leaves' list for Junior? These are arranged in no particular order, and the list is not at all exhaustive.

• Teach him to appreciate coffee shop conversations. Obviously it'll be apple juice instead to coffee until a certain age, but I truly hope he can come to appreciate the joy of meandering, enthusiastic conversations about ideas and life.
• Take a family road trip down the West Coast with him.
  
• Visit the Rockies. A more beautiful landscape I have never seen in all my days.
  
• Read tons of books with him. And talk about them. A lot.
• Teach him pointlessly grandiose words (and when to use them). In my humble opinion, a robust vocabulary holds many keys to a subtler and less alienating understanding of the world.
  
• Create an awesome theme room for him. I'm thinking Star Wars. Lis is on board. X-Wing bed? Yes, please.
  
• Teach him to meditate. For a long time, I've held dear the image of a child and I meditating in front of a large, bright window overlooking the sea.
  
• Convey to him the utter importance of building strong family and friendship bonds. Sine qua non.
  
• Teach him how to take courageous risks. I'm not talking about being stupid, but understanding the value of going outside his comfort zone for the sake of personal expansion and personal ethics.
• Teach him how to enjoy both technology and its absence.
• Encourage his active meddling with spaces and technology. Hacked iPhones, self-programmed computer and web environments, all-black bedroom walls... He needs to know that the wild and crazy world is his to shape.
  
• Visit a country of his choosing. This could be challenging when he then proceeds to say Sealand, but hey, you only live once.

There are a ton more, but I'll stop there. Looking over these, I realize that there's a lot of teaching in there, but I am an estranged university professor after all. I'd love to hear about other people's list items of things they must do to complete their human journey (either with regard to kids or not).

So if you’re a regular reader of the blog, you’ve probably noticed that my posts have been somewhat patchier in the past few weeks than they were in the early days of the blog. I feel like part of it is that I’ve processed a fair bit more of the cultural significance of having a baby, which is something I'd never really pondered over. However, today I was thinking that there may also be another reason things have tapered off around here of late. I think I may be avoiding the subject as a way of clinging to our last couple months as child-free adults. Of course I’m excited about the baby, but things are getting very real very fast, and I’m realizing there’s a certain indulgence we’ve been taking in our free time these days. We’re soaking it in. Even if we don't know exactly how things are going to change when the baby's born, we know the change itself is going to be massive.

I’ve also been really busy trying to make something work for work in this crazy economy. I want so badly to be able to provide an awesome, prosperous life for our son, and the thought of this career search dragging on any longer than is necessary is, frankly, upsetting. The last thing I want to be in such a situation is a whiner, so all of my extra time and energy is usually going into actually trying to do something about it. That doesn’t leave a lot of spare time for blogging, sadly.

Still, I’ve made  a promise to myself to try and do the full five posts this week (my long-lost ideal). The juggling act has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember anyway, so it’s time to throw the blog back into the mix more regularly and see how it goes. I suppose I can consider it practice for when things get really crazy in a couple of months.

I mentioned a while back that we're planning on avoiding an all out barrage of primary colours when the little one comes. With perhaps foolish optimism, we're hoping to encourage a sophisticated palette by having toys and baby items made with a variety of subtler colours. I finally decided to look into the actual feasibility of our experiment, and it turns out it might not be such a bad idea after all.

Based on studies, babies actually show interest in a wide range of colours, and are particularly interested in the contrast between multiple colours placed side by side. On the anecdotal front, I've witnessed this with my awesome nephew, Theo, who loves to look at a bee painting that hangs on his awesome parents' wall. Furthermore, babies do not seem to have any preference in terms of primary or secondary colours (so oranges, purples, and greens are in), although they generally don't respond with as much interest to browns and greys. I found it kind of cool that these studies focused primarily on "interest" as their chief indicator of preferences (it feeds into my belief that people are natural learners and only lose this tendency through cultural discouragement as life progresses.)

This colourful knowledge flies in the fact of the traditional wisdom that babies are completely colour blind when they're born and must be coaxed into the realm of sight with bright, simple hues. I'm wondering if the whole idea of "simple" colours is just an adult concept that has no real foundation in the way the undifferentiating baby brain perceives things. Anwyay, it's kind of neat to see things through the eyes of an infant, though, sadly, it's time for me to get back to adult work....

There it is! We did an Ikea run this weekend and picked up the Sundvik Crib, along with a Hemnes dresser, which will double as our change table. As you can see, baby will be in the bedroom with us for the first little while, both for convenience sake and... uh... spatial reasons. While the picture may look a little cozy, we still actually have plenty of room to move around, and there's a large space on the other side of the bed. There's also more space on the side of the room that you can't see, which means we're sailing!

We also picked up our stroller today, a Safety1st Lux Travel System. It's a little big for our very modest apartment, but it's very sturdy and rather spiffy, I must say (brown body, with white, blue and brown retro designs on the canopy). It's satisfying to finally have some of the essentials taken care of. While we still have a lot of smaller things to pick up, it's good to know that if there are any early surprises, at least the baby will have a car seat and somewhere to sleep (the women in Lis's family do tend to have their babies three weeks ahead of their due dates).

Anyway, things continue to be extremely, insanely hectic. Sorry about the patchy posts of late, but it's been go,go,go on the job search front. If you'd like to see what I've been up to in the rest of my life, you can visit my new professional page, which I launched today.

It has been another crazy week. Our cat-baby continues to have kidney troubles, apparently a very common thing for kitties of her age. A lengthy trip to the vet on Wednesday ended making everything feel topsy-turvy for the rest of the week. Hence no posts for a couple of days.

While we were at the vet, Lis commented that she felt she grew another four inches outward overnight. There was definitely a noticeable difference. Every day she says that she can't imagine being able to get any bigger, and yet somehow it keeps miraculously happening. This week we've also noticed this more exaggerated feeling of there being no going back on our kid decision. Obviously we've felt this theoretically for awhile now, but when the pregnancy becomes so visible, it gets harder and harder to forget about what's going on.

One of the biggest psychological effects of this feeling of inevitability is that we've both been able to imagine more vividly exactly what it'll be like to have a little person joining us in a few months. In time, he'll be a little tyke asking us questions about every weird little detail of daily life. I have to say I'm looking forward to that. I want to encourage an explorer of the world. I want him to feel the world is a place of no intellectual limitation. I often feel that learning is a fundamental human activity, every bit as important as eating and sleeping. Think about it: learning is the mechanism by which we go from being totally reliant on others to (mostly) functioning and independent. It always baffles me when learning is discouraged or forgotten after a certain point in people's lives. You think of how absolutely vital it is early on, and you wonder what people could be if they actively became lifetime learners (or at least I wonder about this, but I'm an alien).

Anyway, we're through another week of this crazy adventure. We're coming up on the third trimester in a couple of weeks, which is bonkers. This weekend we're going to buy our crib and a few other baby essentials. Very exciting! It's truly amazing to me that this little imaginary person is going to soon be sharing our abode. It's hard to describe knowing what it's like to have generated this new life-to-be!