Welcome to Sol!

Today (2/24) Sol is exactly three weeks old.  Before Sol was born, the girls were telling me about "elimination communication". I had never heard of that before and I was skeptical. The idea is that you can minimize diaper use by training the baby to poop and pee in a container rather than in a diaper. The real training is on the parents to learn to recognize the cues that the baby needs to go.  Here is a video that explains the way it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3du12gD-iaU I would never have bet on this in a million years. Over the past three weeks, the girls have begun to learn some of his cues. For example, often he will cry even after he has been fed and it turns out he needs to pee. Before the girls learned this cue, they would discover that his diaper was wet. Now, if they get his diaper off in time, he will pee like Old Faithful. While he still screams bloody murder when he is on the changing table, he calms down when the change is done and he has a dry dia...

Warning: no baby pictures. Since I had planned to spend most of February in Brooklyn helping the girls wrangle a newborn, I brought cycling shorts and shoes, figuring I'd ride Annie's cyclocross bike on the Wahoo smart trainer that I bought her for xmas 2021 so I would not get fat and lazy. Here's the set-up (staged). Thanks also to Walter for cluing me on to Rouvy.   But Annie's bike is small for me and she doesn't have a front-wheel block, so I felt like I was always falling off the front of her seat. I had already raised the seat and I didn't want to screw around with any of the other settings because it would be impossible to get it back to her optimal fit. I decided to buy her a block and planned a trip to her favorite bike shop that had them in stock, about 2.5 miles away. It was a little far to walk, so I researched a trip that would take just a couple of subway stops. At that point, Lara said: "why don't you ride there?" The ride went throu...

The Caballero Sayalero Sullivan-Chin family is settling into their rhythm that changes in small increments toward normalcy. I am usually the first one up (I guess it depends on how you define "up"), but for those of us who are diurnal, the first activity of the day that requires getting dressed is taking Oso for a walk. When Sol is crying, Oso gets concerned and wants to hang around. The girls are a little afraid he might get too rough, so we often banish him to one of his "casitas". But he seems to have a genuine concern when Sol is crying. He whines and get agitated. He won't go out for a walk unless he really has to pee and then he turns around and immediately wants to go back inside. I suppose we could very well be talking about a classic case of anthropomorphism here. Maybe he just wants to eat the baby. So if things go well, Sol will have a morning feed, fuss a little, maybe get a diaper changed, and all before I get back with Oso from a morning walk.  Sol...

Annie and Lara seemed pretty open to when I would join them in Brooklyn.  I booked my train ticket for Wednesday, 2/8, and while I had a few things to tie up in the days preceding, I found myself spending a lot of time aimlessly wandering around, telling anyone who would listen that I had a new addition to the family, showing the pictures that are now in the previous blog post, and having difficulty focusing on anything resembling work. The train ride was pleasant and uneventful. I had a lightweight novel to read and nearly finished it (thanks, Alan!). The subway trip on the Q from Herald Square to Brooklyn was easy, and I arrived around 5:00pm. Here is my first time meeting my grandson. I saw it as my role to help out in any way I could - quite the opposite of what a Chinese mother/mother-in-law would see as her role. (There's a good story here, but that's for another chapter.)  Lara had an appointment, so I went to work on dinner. Since they lived with me before, and since I...

Sol Sullivan Caballero Chin was born on February 3, 2023 (2/3/23!).  He was right on time, exactly on his due date! Annie began labor on Wednesday, 2/1 and he was born at 7:44pm on 2/3. Annie described her labor as "epic". It's her L&D story, so I won't try to repeat it here.  Here is the first approved picture after Sol was born. Boomers can appreciate the "conehead" reference. Here is a picture from day 3 when he went for his first pediatrician visit. Too cute! I used to think that if my kids decided not to have kids, that would be OK and I still believe that is true. But now that one was here, I couldn't wait to meet him and make the transition to a grandfather.