parenting

When I arrived home last night — in the fog and pitch black — Orion wanted to ride bikes. So I fixed him up with a set of blinky lights and we rode laps around the cul-de-sac.

That was pretty cool, but it’s not the moment of awwww. This is:

When Iris saw Orion and me putting on our helmets and fixing up for a ride, she pulled her helmet off the shelf and dragged out Orion’s old scoot-bike, which has kind of become “her” bike. She can barely walk, so even the scoot bike is kind of beyond her, but still.

(My kids are three y.o and one y.o.)

I spent a lot of time this weekend alone with Iris. I had wide swaths of such time in Orion’s first two years, because Jenny was at work full time, thus I was the on-call parent for sick days and so forth. I also worked a lot harder to give Jenny breaks from childcare, so I’d have Orion solo for an entire Saturday, for example.

I’m always struck with how different my kids’ personalities are, even at tender ages like 14 months.

Orion was a poor conversationalist for a long time. He didn’t babble much before about 11 months, and then began producing (or approximating the sounds of) words, usually in the form of a demand or question. His babbling was discretely encoded: “brrrrrrnnn” meant “balloon,” and so forth. When he wasn’t trying to communicate something encodable he would just produce incoherent hollering.

Once he mastered a basic vocabulary — around fifty or a hundred words, maybe — it was like a dam broke. He talked — and still talks — pretty much constantly. Often in gibberish or make-believe talk, but always with these en/decodable word units.

Iris began ba-ba-ba-ing at a pretty tender age, perhaps before 6 months. She’s making some clearly encoded words now, like “duh” for “dog” and “aye-n” for “Orion.” But much of her speech is just wordlike noises, rendered with startlingly conversational rhythms. She and I took a loooong walk in the forest Sunday. I would speak to her about any old thing — “look at this pretty ferns, I wonder if we’re lost, oh here’s a slug” and she’d ba-ba-ba with a kind of “oh, really?” or “my yes!” inflection. Or I’d ask her a question and she’d ba-ba-ba with a distinct “yes, please” or “I don’t know” inflection.

She also has a bunch of nonverbal communications. If you offer her something she doesn’t want, she’ll shake her head for example. This is different from Orion, who had acquired a few hand signs — “more,” “all done,” etc. — which Iris has not acquired. Again: her nonverbal “speech” is more organic, less transactional.

(Orion also made a lot of animal and machine noises in lieu of the actual words for the things that produce those noises. He couldn’t say “motorcycle” but “vrrrrm, vrrrrm” did just as good. Iris never makes a noise that doesn’t sound like human speech, AFAICT.)

There may be some kind of Venus/Mars thing here, I dunno. I’m certainly a transactional conversationalist, and Jenny spends a lot of time talking to her friends on the phone in a way that (to me) doesn’t seem to convey much actual information but which is probably more warm and sociable. I’m leery of too much Venus/Mars stuff though, Iris is already way better at throwing and catching than Orion.

Iris Elizabeth Souders, born July 11, 2010. 7lbs, 6oz. 20" long. Ten fingers, ten toes, a full head of hair.

Jenny & Iris are sleeping, Orion is out with Grandma Ellen, I finally got five hours sleep. Some random thoughts in this short pause.

This labor was completely. Different. Than last time. Saturday I said to Jenny, "that baby's coming tonight." But we went about a mostly-usual Saturday, except I insisted on running errands and watching Orion all day. (Sidebar: we went bike riding and he actually rode his bike. Like both feet off the ground. This no-pedals thing works.) I gave O his bath and put him to bed as usual, which in our case means we fall asleep together in his bed and then about an hour later I creep downstairs. But Jenny woke me early in his bed: "I'm having contractions." There was nothing tenative about it, they were hitting hard and close together.

With Orion, the first inkling was her water breaking, followed by 15 hours of sloooowly building labor, ending with a teriffying rush into surgery.

With Iris, there was barely time to think; so somehow more focused and lucid. Jenny couldn't sit in the car, her pain was too great. She kind of crouched over the infant seat in back while I drove exactly the speed limit to OHSU. Her first words at the ER were: "get me an epidural."

Of course, they can't just shoot opiates into the spinal fluid of any random person who walks into the ER. It took maybe 90 minutes to get the epidural, by which point she was probably fully dilated and within an hour she started pushing.

As luck would have it, Jenny's usual Ob-Gyn was on call that night. So we had one doctor (OUR doctor, importantly) and one nurse for the entire experience. It was significantly less terrifying. Orion's arrival spanned two shift changes; that experience was attended by a parade of strangers.

But as with her brother, baby Iris presented backward and Jenny (despite pushing with an intensity that impressed even the seasoned L & D nurse) couldn't get her past the final curve. And, as with Orion, Iris' heartrate spiked and she started to show signs of distress. Jenny, very lucidly, put forward that Iris was the most important factor in this experience, and she was "open to whatever would be best for her."

The C-section was magnitudes less terrifying than with Orion. Orion's c-section was ordered by a doctor who had just come on rounds, and had dreadful bedside manner. The staff had no idea what to do with me that time and I spent half an hour sitting on a folding chair in scrubs, shaking and near tears. This time, waiting for Jenny's prep, I got kind of bored.

Cesarian deliveries have a kind of mysterious poetry. There's a long sequence of surgery where mom's health is paramount. Staff talk in hushed, professional tones, just like during surgeries on TV. All this happens behind a kind of screen. On the other side is Mom and Dad and the anaethesiologist. In both experiences, our best friend was the anaethesiologist. S/he stands right next to mom's head during the delivery and can narrate what's happening if Dad's too squeamish to watch. I tried.

Then with a sudden rush of activity the baby emerges. She is perfectly shaped, shiny purple and screaming, covered with cheese and ectoplasm. A being from another world. The pediatricians and nurses put her on a warming table and start doing Apgars or whatever.

Because the mother is immobile, fathers are extra-important during a c-section. We have to be comforting. We help wash off the cheese and ectoplasm. We get to hold the baby first, and give her to mom. We go from being well-intentioned supercargo to vital team members.

36 hours with Iris and I realize kids are all different. They come out different. Based on a sample size of 1 I used to say things "babies are like this" or "newborns are like that." It's really clear that "Orion was like this" and "Orion was like that." Iris is different.

Where Orion struggled to eat, Iris won't stop. Orion barely reacted to the world, Iris shows a keen interest in anything near her face. Where Orion cried, unprovoked and inconsolable, Iris only cries when something bugs her and shuts up when it stops. Where Orion slept fitfully for 20 or 30 minute periods, we have have to wake up Iris to eat. Where Orion liked tight swaddling and lying on his back, Iris likes her hands near her face, and sleeping on Jenny's chest. Where Orion could barely lift his arms, Iris can move her head (!) and kick off her socks. (She is, in fact, very strong).

The corollary here is kind of keen too. As a newborn, Orion was fussy and collicky, fragile and indifferent to people. But as a toddler he's adventurous and empathetic, rugged and outgoing. Kids come out different but they don't end up the way they come out I guess. He was a "difficult newborn" but he's an "easy toddler." Iris might be the other way around, or a totally different configuration, who knows? One day isn't very long to know a person.