Bonjour Bouton!

Long time no see!

2008-10-21T21:03:00.004-04:00

It has been a wonderful summer.

We spent nearly all week-ends visiting some place in Montreal, be it a park as above, or a historical site, like the Maison St. Gabriel below.

Gabriel enjoyed these visits as much as we did, even though it was, at times, difficult for him that he wasn't allowed to touch objects, or that he wasn't allowed to watch his favorite exhibit all afternoon.

For example, the Stuart Museum showed a kitchen the way it may have looked in the 18th century, with several pans and pots. The display was encased with glass, which didn't prevent Gabriel from trying all the strategies he could think of to reach the pans. Eventually, we wanted to go and see the rest of the very nice exhibition, but Gabriel refused to leave. Worse: as soon as we put him back on the floor in the next room, he rushed back to the display, so that we almost literally had to drag him away.
Poor Gabriel. This wasn't even the only sad event of the day for him. We had visited the museum because it was the Montreal Children's Festival held in the large Jean-Drapeau park, which meant that all museums there were free. Of course, that was not the only reason to go there: On that day, there were countless attractions and activities for children of all ages.

In the afternoon, it got really crowded, so we were heading toward the metro station, when we noticed that Gabriel's giraffe was missing. Retracing our steps among the crowds turned up nothing. Gabriel got over the loss more quickly than Michelle and I, who had become so familiar with Gabriel grabbing the giraffe and stuffing the animal's nose in his mouth. Fortunately, there is the internet, so we were able to replace the stuffed animal. In fact, I ordered two of them just to be safe.

Michelle, Gabriel and I did not all our excursions alone.

Sometimes, we were accompanied by little Sophie, who is 1.5 months older than Gabriel, and her parents, for example on our stroll through the Ile de la Visitation park.

Sophie and Gabriel get along really well, playing, for example, hide and seek with the ball.

There is even talk of them opening a band!

Of course, while the kids (and Michelle) play,...

... the dads amuse themselves, too.

Here, we were taking apart the pasta machine for the third or fourth time, but in the end, it miraculously worked! And the pasta was awesome.

Oh yes, summer was wonderful, even on our balcony.

However, Gabriel didn't spend it just sitting around (I really envy him for his pajamas, by the way).

Gabriel spent large portions of this summer walking. At his birthday, he had made his first serious steps, and he kept on going. This is a snapshot from the 2nd of August, where Gabriel still needed some assistance to get started.

It was only a few weeks later, when Gabriel walked for some 100 meters at the Mont Royal park, holding my hand only when we were afraid that he may take an involuntary bath in the lake.

He even went exploring on his own on the viewing platform, which had me trying to figure out whether I should encourage his drive for discovery, or whether I should protect the other people's property.

All the moving, unfortunately, makes it tricky to consistently capture nice pictures.

Thus, we have to rely on situations when Gabriel doesn't move so much. For example when he sits in his little seat, ...

... or when he is restrained, such as on the bicycle seat, ...

... or in his high chair.

Gabriel is slowly, slowly getting more efficient at feeding himself. What works much better is when he feeds me while I feed him from the plate that I put between the two of us. That way, I can use my more developed motor skills to hit his mouth with my spoon, and to hit his spoon with my mouth. Also, Gabriel enjoys being able to feed his dad, which means that he enjoys more being fed.

Unfortunately, summer is over. My nose is cold as I sit on the bed, typing the blog entry. At least we have been rewarded with a splendid indian summer. On our fifth wedding anniversary, we took a trip north to Mount Tremblant, an important ski resort. This was my first non-airplane trip off the island of Montreal. The sky could have been more blue, but the colors were amazing. Even Gabriel was impressed.

The resort itself felt very artificial, almost Disney-like, ...

... but there were some opportunities to take a nice walk.

Had we not known that the trees were genuine, we may have wondered how they had managed to color them.

Ten days ago, we went to the botanical gardens, where we also saw some beautiful trees.

Gabriel was more impressed with stones and leaves on the ground. Fortunately, he mostly gives them to me rather than starting to try and eat them.

The Chinese garden within the botanical gardens is always worth a stop, ...

... but this time, it was even more impressive because of the diverse lanterns that are, every year, specially made for the October exhibit.

On Friday, we plan to see them at night.

Well, that's it for right now. I hope you won't have to wait that long till next time!

Happy Birthday!

2008-07-28T22:29:00.009-04:00

On Saturday, Gabriel celebrated his first birthday. He really liked the blueberry muffin Michelle has made for the occasion. Fortunately, Michelle made more than one, so that I got to enjoy them, too.

Some of the noises he is making now keep reminding me of the Crazy Frog.

Gabriel enjoyed unpacking the presents, and he was particularly fascinated by the tape that came with the presents, though it turned out to be somewhat frustrating.

Normally, he does not play with tape. He prefers to cook.

As a little present for us, Gabriel is walking more and more. On his first birthday, he was taking steps by himself consistently enough that we were able to make a movie.

Today, he walked across the entire kitchen toward me, while I kept going backwards. Soon, he will no longer need our reassurance.

By the way: Gabriel got his vaccines today, and was officially measured: He weighs 10.5 kg (50-55 percentile), and is supposedly 80 cm long (90-95 percentile). This is a bit surprising, since he was 78.5 cm two weeks ago in Switzerland. Maybe Canadians are used to tiny centimeters, given that the country switched from inches not too long ago.

365 days

2008-07-25T22:40:00.003-04:00

Today, Gabriel is 365 days old, tomorrow, he will celebrate his first birthday. What a great moment to look back on his vacation in Switzerland.

It turned out to have been a good idea to purchase a seat for Gabriel. He slept for a third of the flight, thanks to which he recovered from jet lag quite fast.

It was another good idea to equip Gabriel with a dough scraper - a toy that had everything Gabriel needed: It was used by grown-ups, it had a handle, and chewing on it comforted his toothing pain.

Fun fact: After the two lower central incisors, Gabriel continued with the top left lateral incisor, progressing steadily from left to right. Now, he has four upper and two lower teeth. It still looks strange to me to have a baby with so many teeth. Of course, these have to be brushed, though Gabriel still needs a bit of help.

Gabriel and Michelle stayed in Switzerland for five weeks, I returned to Canada two weeks ahead of them. We spent time both with my and Michelle's parents, and there was much to discover, both for Gabriel...

... and for us...

... since Switzerland was co-host of the Soccer Euro Cup. There were lots of people in Zürich, which is always a pleasure to see...

... but we were even more interested in visiting friends and family, such as Gabriel's great-grandfather...

... or my former roommate Sascha, who tried to teach Gabriel how to clink glasses.

Gabriel also met many friends from his last stay in Switzerland, such as Louise,

his godmother Laurence,

his aunt Elia,

and Voyou, Michelle's parents' dog.

It was wonderful that Gabriel wasn't scared to visit new places. While he usually spent the first few minutes staring at the new surroundings, he felt at home quite fast, especially if he recognized some of the toys, like when we visited his great-aunt and great-uncle.

Of course, he also made new friends. For example, he immediately took to this cute and fluffy sheep:

We really enjoyed meeting all these (and many more) people, though we made sure to spend also some time sight-seeing. One sight we always enjoy is the Lac Leman, as seen here from the train.

Of course, we also went to the mountains, where there are picturesque villages,

deep gorges,

strange entrances into the mountainside,

and of course, the mountains themselves.

One day, we took the train up to the Gornergrat, from where we admired a wonderful panorama, well, almost all of us.

As we were climbing down, Gabriel calmed down...

... and soon, he was so full of energy again, that it was easier to take artistic pictures of the Matterhorn than to capture a good shot of Gabriel.

Gabriel not only explored the touristic parts of the Valais, he enjoyed at least as much exploring kitchen cupboards (Chuchichäschtli).

Water was something else he discovered - be it water to splash in, or water to sit in.

Yes, he really liked that.

I'm so glad that he and Michelle came back to Canada after such a wonderful trip!

Ready to go!

2008-06-12T17:22:00.004-04:00

Gabriel is ready to go! Tonight, he is leaving for 5 wonderful weeks of vacation in Switzerland. He has his own seat on the plane, so we hope that both he and us will be able to get some sleep during the flight.

He is also getting ready to walk. There is some potential for optimization when it comes to being able to stand on his own, though he is progressing rapidly. The video was taken one week ago, today he already stood on his own for 5 seconds!

Gabriel stands very well as long as there is something to hold on to, such as my or Michelle's hands or legs, the stove...

... the side of the bathtub...

... or a leg of the table.

Better (or worse) still, he only needs to hold on to support with one hand, which leaves him ample freedom to pull things down from the table, for example. Lucky for him (and for us!) that he is so cute, which makes people so much more forgiving.

Double digits!

2008-05-31T10:18:00.006-04:00

Monday, Gabriel was 10 months old. He is a big guy now - 10 kg and 76 cm - so he has started to help us clean the apartment.

Just kidding.

Actually we have to be careful when we sweep the floors, because he would love to munch the bristles. On the occasion of his 10-month birthday, he did demonstrate, however, how to properly deal with a bottle.

One game he likes to play more and more is peekaboo. Of course, one has to be careful that the object behind which he is hiding is not more interesting than the object itself!

Note that in French and German, you don't say peekaboo, but rather something like coocoo.

Changes

2008-05-19T09:48:00.013-04:00

It is impressive how quickly Gabriel is changing now. It is not so much that he looks different (with a notable exception, see below), rather, it is the way he behaves. Most obvious is of course the way he moves.
While he was still "swimming" (pulling himself by his arms and sliding over the smooth hardwood floors) at the time of the last post,...

...he has started standard crawling some two weeks ago.

Not quite a month ago, he has started to pull himself up wherever there is a handhold.

Very quickly, we had to decide which shelves Gabriel can clean out, and which ones we would try and defend. Fortunately, Gabriel is beginning to listen to us saying "no", though in some cases, knowing what he can't do merely means that he is now just looking over his shoulder to check whether Michelle or I are looking before he grabs what he shouldn't.

For a while, standing up has been a one-way street for Gabriel. While he could get up, he didn't know how to get down again. That was convenient at times, when we had to quickly leave the room - just put him on his feet somewhere, and you will find him at the exact same spot two minutes later.
Since a few days, he is getting much better at getting down, though he usually needs to hold someone's hand for help and reassurance (video cut and split because the whole thing was taking way too long):

Probably the only thing able to keep up with Gabriel's changes is the weather. While I was greedily soaking up sunlight at the time of the last post,...

...and Gabriel had to be wrapped warmly every time we left the house,...

...we soon were able to leave the warm bag for Gabriel at home.

When we made that stroll that lead us to the public library of Westmount (one of the richer neighborhoods of Montreal) with the adjacent glass house three weeks ago, we still had to go inside in order to be able to sit down comfortably.

Two days ago, it was almost summer.

Something else that keeps changing is Gabriel's hair, which takes on a large variety of colors and styles depending on the lighting and the time of the day.

Gabriel now rarely drinks from the bottle. It is just too difficult to justify why Michelle should spend time pumping after which I spend time feeding Gabriel instead of Michelle directly breastfeeding him. Especially since Gabriel still knows how to drink from a bottle in case Michelle is taking a class in the evening.

Gabriel is, again, eating lots of solid food. Just before he turned 9 months, he came down with an intestinal bug, that brought violent vomiting, unholy diarrhea and fever. While we knew that it would probably pass, it wasn't an easy time to be parent. The first day, Gabriel kept making the sign for "eating" right after vomiting, but the second day, when he was limp like a old salad leaf, and a few days after, he hardly ate anything. Not surprisingly, he lost quite a bit of weight - from 9.5 kg at 8 1/2 months, he went to 9.1 kg at 9 months (he still grew to 75 cm). He has caught up again, and at 9 1/2 months, he has passed 9.5 kg.

Gabriel is not only eating baby puree. Michelle has been feeding him larger bits. For now they pass his digestive system more or less intact, but Gabriel will surely adapt soon. Here is an example of him eating banana and grapes, which turned out to be a good way to relax the tired baby.

Gabriel is even using his teeth. While he is not yet able to actually eat a carrot, he likes scraping off bits.

Another change that happened recently was that I had to lower Gabriel's mattress, so that he wouldn't fall out of the bed when he was standing up. Gabriel tried to help me, or maybe he just wanted the screwdriver, at any rate, he wasn't particularly successful, and was a bit annoyed.

This is just one example of his new, broader range of slightly more easily interpretable expressions. I like the third one a lot, though as a parent, it feels a bit discomforting.

On the last picture, Gabriel shows his tired face, which we now get to see earlier in the evening. Gabriel is going to bed at 8:30 pm, and wakes up at 6 am. Ideally, he sleeps twice an hour during the day, otherwise, he gets quite irritable. Fortunately, even when he hasn't slept much, he is able to entertain himself quite well, which leaves us time to get some work done. For example, writing a blog post.

Good news!

2008-05-19T08:49:00.003-04:00

There will be a long blog post soon!

Did you notice the teeth? They just started to show when I wrote the last entry. It was much easier to feel the little razorblades than to see - or show - them, though.

While you wait, you can enjoy Gabriel learning about water. By the way, he has now learned that testing the surface tension of the water makes his daddy doubly happy: Not only is Gabriel already conducting scientific experiments before he is a year old, but daddy gets soaked enough that he doesn't have to take a shower before going to bed.

It's the teeth

2008-04-09T21:18:00.005-04:00

Seriously. It's Gabriel's teeth that prevented me from posting. With a baby that is not sleeping well, I just get home from work, eat, play with the baby, talk to Michelle, and sleep. Last night, Gabriel finally slept without waking up (or Michelle and I were just so tired that we didn't hear him), so tonight I am sufficiently awake to write. There is so much to look back to!

Three weeks ago, Gabriel participated in his first Palm Sunday celebration. For this occasion, he went to the cathedral of Montreal, where he joined the choir to sing at the mass for those members of the diocese that were traveling to the World Youth Day in Australia.

There were full-size, triple-size and way-too-big t-shirts for Gabriel, so he took a full-size, of course.

Finally, Gabriel proudly posed with the other choir members.

For easter, Gabriel did not sing. Instead, he went to join his godfather David...

... on a trip to New Orleans. Gabriel demonstrated his travel experience at Chicago O'Hare when he pushed the baggage cart all by himself.

He enjoyed the trip so much, that he had to find a new way of expressing himself: He started babbling.

Gabriel visited the French Quarter in New Orleans,...

... he saw nice manors in the city,...

... he enjoyed visiting a plantation, ...

... that was also impressive for us,...

... and he visited the aquarium, where he fortunately didn't manage to catch any fish.

So many new impressions get even the hardiest traveler tired!

Gabriel was not too sad when we had to leave, because he got to ride the bus again!

A few days after we returned, Gabriel celebrated his 8th month birthday with the usual state of the baby address. He was standing on my belly, and he tried to help me digest by jumping up and down on my stomach.

With this, I leave you for now. In my next post I will link to an online album with more pictures by David, Michelle and myself of New Orleans, and there will be two new videos of Gabriel: Gabriel vs. the water, and Gabriel vs. the bear!

Forward!

2008-03-17T22:36:00.007-04:00

Since Friday, Gabriel is mobile, and he is getting faster by the day. Goodbye peaceful days! Gone is the time when we could put Gabriel somewhere and be sure that he would not move. Nevertheless, Michelle and I are very proud.
Sometimes Gabriel still gets stuck, of course ...

... but I still have to learn to live with the fact that it is no longer easy to build a tower out of Gabriel's reach.

Of course, there are solutions to limit Gabriel's mobility. Here's a low-cost version.

We are also happy that Gabriel is eating well again. He had refused all solids except banana while he had a cold. Now he devours again everything we feed him.

Note that it was Michelle who had been feeding him. I usually put the food in Gabriel's mouth. At any rate, Gabriel is growing well. At 7 1/2 months, he is ~72 cm tall and weighs 9 kg.

He also likes taking baths as well, after he had grown terrified of the water, possibly after water had run into his eyes once.

By the way: Guess the two other letters that Gabriel gets to play with in his bath. Michelle claims she chose the letters randomly.

Sunday, Gabriel was at his first Montreal St.Patrick's day parade.

He heard bagpipes,...

... and he saw many elderly men march and drive down the street.

Oh, and camels.

Every place has their own flavor of St.Patrick's day, I guess.

For easter, Gabriel is going on vacation where he'll meet his godfather. Gabriel can't wait.

Even though we've enjoyed the snow a lot (and it was a lot of snow: after the big snowstorm ten days ago this winter has become the one with the second strongest snowfall since they started recording), we're glad to get a preview of early summer in New Orleans.

We're just glad we won't have to go to the airport by car.

Playing

2008-03-08T22:08:00.007-05:00

Gabriel is learning to play more actively, and he is able to keep himself entertained for 15-20 minutes at a time (for comparison: His dad can play on the computer all by himself for hours on end). One good time for playing is in the morning.

Although he pretends to be a poor little prisoner, he actually enjoys himself quite a bit in the morning, doing gymnastics...

... or playing with the stuffed animals.

We can often hear him "talk" to the animals after he wakes up. Whenever we come into the room, he turns to us with a big smile.

Playing has more nuances now. When he gets a new toy, Gabriel first studies it carefully.

Then, he eats it.

Beware, you who take away his toys. You make a baby cry.

Playing is also more varied. Gabriel likes playing with the same toys as his parents. He loves books, for example. I have to give him a baby book if I want to be sure that Gabriel won't try to eat what I'm reading.

Thus, when I read, Gabriel reads. When I work on the computer, Gabriel... ah, well.

Gabriel has started spending more time in his room, which we have intended as a place where he can leave his toys, and where there is little risk of him breaking or pulling down things.

As I mentioned in my last post, Gabriel has become much better at sitting without assistance.

Therefore, Michelle had the great idea to put a few toys in a bowl and to sit Gabriel next to it. Gabriel enjoys taking out the toys (we hope that in a few months, he will start enjoying putting them back in!), and playing with them and the bowl.

Of course, this much playing takes its toll.

Seven months!

2008-02-26T22:23:00.006-05:00

Fortunately, Gabriel gets older, so that I am forced to update the blog at least once a month.

He does not only get older, but he keeps growing. This brings the inconvenience that he keeps outgrowing beautiful clothes. However, it does tell us that something happens with all the food and care Gabriel is getting.

At seven months, Gabriel does not have any teeth yet, and he does not say "dada" or "gaga" yet. But as you will hopefully understand from his State of the Baby address, he is quite happy and active.

He is still very fond of standing up (with help, of course). What is new is that he is able to sit without help for quite some time. At least until he's distracted, or until a parent wants to play with him.

In that video, I coughed on purpose, because I knew that would make Gabriel happy. I am not sure why that would be. Gabriel had a cold this past week, so maybe he feels happy that he is not alone. Anyway, here's the footage of when we found out that coughing is funny according to some.

While some things change, others stay the same. Gabriel still likes to discover new things by putting them in his mouth, such as this new toy.

Other things to put in his mouth include electrical cords, paper, or anything else he can get his hands on. We have to be careful, because he is able to get his hands on more and more things. When Michelle checked on Gabriel a few minutes after taking the picture, he had already managed to get three diapers out of the bag.

His favorite objects to suck that don't provide food are of course his fingers.

In the last few days, we have seen him suck his thumb, but he has not done it when we had the camera at the ready. Something else he has been doing more often is bite his lower lip.

I don't think it has anything to do with teething. Gabriel has probably noticed that this face pleases the crowds, and since he is a nice guy, he tries to please the crowds.

The daily routines have not changed much, Gabriel still has a healthy appetite, even though he has scaled back a bit on the solids for an unknown reason.

We also have to still dress him up warmly before we go outside. Fortunately, he doesn't protest as much anymore as before when we dress him.

But once we get outside, he is usually fast asleep within moments. Even on a stunningly beautiful day.

Finally, he still enjoys taking his bath, ...

... and the lobster remains one of his favorite toys. This is, by the way a picture taken by my brother during Christmas break. Click the link below for a few more.

From Christmas2007

6 months!

2008-01-27T22:41:00.000-05:00

It is amazing how quickly Gabriel is growing. So much change, and he has only just been around for six months. It's not so much that he is getting longer (70.5 cm) and heavier (8.4 kg) by the day, but he is starting to become a person with his own will.
For example when I am feeding him, he now grabs the bottle and puts it into his mouth by himself, so that he can drink at his own pace. He also wants to set the pace by himself when he's eating solids, which he started two weeks ago. He loves the rice cereal that is the first non-milk food given to babies in Canada, and he could not get enough of carrots and apples. Today, we tried pumpkin for the first time.

Needless to say that he liked it.

The food container is not the only thing he tries to grab. For quite a while, he has been fascinated by liquid containers, such as bottles, glasses, cups. He wants to hold them and he wants to drink from them. This is mostly funny, but sometimes, all I want to do is to drink in peace!

To finish for tonight (yes, I haven't forgotten about the Christmas pictures), here's Gabriel's state of the baby address on the occasion of his 6 months' birthday.

By the way: In case you have to rotate the videos you made with your digital camera, I can very much recommend the free program VirtualDub.

Happy 2008!

2008-01-14T22:02:00.000-05:00

Many things have happened in the weeks since I last posted. For one, Gabriel is now 5 1/2 months old, and, fittingly for the new year, he has passed the 8 kg mark. Also, I try to feed him non-liquids since Sunday (and it's not the reason all my hair is falling out).

I am getting ahead of myself, though.

Early December, we put Gabriel's machine-readable passport to use for the first time: We went to the US. They weren't actually able to read from the chip yet at immigration, of course. Still, we wanted to make sure that we use the 150$ passport required for entry into the US a few times before it expires in less than three years.
Thus, Michelle and Gabriel accompanied me to the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in Washington DC.

The flight was no problem whatsoever, and we were very happy with the Bed&Breakfast we stayed at, the Meridian Manor. We had been promised a baby bed, so we were a bit surprised when the owner had prepared an adult's bed for Gabriel. He apologized, saying he didn't actually know how to put the baby bed together. Gabriel slept like an angel, so fortunately I didn't need to show off my talents as an engineer.

While I was at the conference, Michelle and Gabriel visited the city, enjoying many of the amazing sights and museums.

Then, they would come and pick me up at the conference and tell me all about their great day.

After a dinner in one of the excellent restaurants in the area, either only the three of us, or together with our good friends Dinah and Raffi, whose great idea it was to try out the B&B, we would spend the evening in our room, relaxing...

...or playing.

This was not a bad arrangement. Normally, I would have spent all night meeting people, which one of the reasons ASCB is so draining. Now that I actually slept at the hotel instead of napping during a boring talk, I only had to survive the several thousand posters.
Fortunately, I could spend one more day in Washington to relax and cool down - it even snowed! The entrance to the B&B was pretty when we came home the night of the snowstorm, and we were glad we hadn't tried to fly back that night.

Fortunately, Montreal had us well-prepared for the chilly temperatures, so Michelle, Gabriel and I tremendously enjoyed the day off (Gabriel is actually inside the stroller, not in the net below).

Then, we had to go back to Montreal and prepare for the arrival of our Christmas guests. But that is a story for another day.

4 months

2007-11-27T19:37:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, Gabriel was four months old. It's bizarre - it feels like he has been with us for an incredibly long time, but when you actually count, it hasn't even been 125 days. So it may be true indeed: Babies grow fast. In the last two weeks, Gabriel grew by 0.5 cm to 66.5 cm, and he got heavier by 300 g, so that he weighs now 7.3 kg.
One moment last week that made me realize just how much he has changed was when I looked for a desktop wallpaper for my new laptop (which I recieved after long wait; the University of Montreal is not the most efficient place when it comes to ordering. I was very much reminded of the process by this comic). On my old laptop, I still have the picture of little Gabriel asleep on Michelle's shoulder that I posted a while ago.

For the new laptop, I chose this picture:

It's not only his looks that have changed, but also the way he interacts with the world. Here's a video from when he was one day old:

And here's Gabriel's speech on the occasion of his 4-month "anniversary" (featuring Michelle):

Learning

2007-11-25T22:05:00.000-05:00

This week, I've had two more opportunities to try and be only parent for Gabriel. I'm learning quickly. For example, the milk has to be thawed before Gabriel gets really hungry. Once he's been crying for ten minutes or more, he has a very hard time calming down. The milk has to be around 37°C, or Gabriel will keep complaining while he eats. And there are all kinds of fun way to carry a baby (at least in my and Gabriel's opinion) that I best explore when Michelle is somewhere else.

Gabriel is learning, too. He is gradually getting better at interacting with objects: He grabs them with one or both hand and puts them in his mouth. Or at least he tries.

The above is a toy Michelle has borrowed from the Joujouthèque, a "library" that loans toys. What an excellent idea for parents who don't really need heaps of toys all over the place. Below, he is trying to eat one of Michelle's own creations: A rattle made from two sieves that enclose two bells and that are held together by multi-colored yarn. Both Gabriel and I like to play with it a lot.

Another activity Gabriel likes is touching the wall. He can spend several minutes pushing against a wall. That is good because it leaves sufficient time to call Michelle, admire Gabriel's activity, and get the camera to take pictures. He also does that with my face, which is kind of neat, except that I have to clean my glasses afterwards. I believe that he is starting to get a feel for the length of his arms, and for distance in general, rather than to explore the wall. For example, he didn't ever try to touch the light switch. Apparently, it is going to take a moment before he realizes that this is something unusual that can be manipulated.

Feeding the baby

2007-11-11T15:30:00.001-05:00

I have been giving Gabriel the bottle almost every evening for the last two weeks. It is wonderful that I am finally able to feed my boy, too. In retrospect it was fairly easy go get Gabriel to drink from a plastic nipple, though I did worry for a while that he would refuse it. Walking around with the crying baby to calm him down, teasing his lips with the nipple, and not giving in finally did the trick.

Now, Gabriel starts making sucking motions when he sees the bottle, which is nice. However, he is tired in the evening which dramatically shortens his attention span and his ability to endure discomfort. Thus, if he's not extremely hungry, he keeps looking around while trying to drink, or he cries because of hunger and tiredness instead of drinking, so that I have to walk around with him to keep him sufficiently calm.
At any rate, feeding Gabriel seems to have quite an effect. At 3.5 months, Gabriel weighs between 6.9 and 7 kilograms and is about 66 cm tall, which puts him into the 75th percentile for weight, and 95th percentile for height (US statistics). I'm glad his weight isn't in the 95th percentile, too.

Wednesday, I have spent my first evening alone with Gabriel, since Michelle went to take a class on autism. I am glad she is able to start making contacts. While having a baby with you tends to make start talking to you, their questions are most often limited to age ("Il n'est pas vieux, non?"), sex, and name, and in a place where parties seem to mostly start around 9pm, it's hard for young parents to hang out. Fortunately, there are also local associations for young parents, where Michelle can meet people other than me and Gabriel.
Wednesday night taught me that I will be able to take care of Gabriel next week, too, when Michelle is going to be absent for two evenings - Gabriel did everything a baby his age can do to make a parent's life difficult except peeing all over me. Not on purpose, though, and when he was lying on the changing table for the second time (he usually poos about once every 2-3 days, not twice on a single evening) with a diaper so full of abysmally stinking poo that it had overflown, soiling his entire back, he was so happy and cute that I couldn't feel bad about the mess. Just a bit tired, maybe.
Michelle told me that I wasn't allowed to share a picture of a full diaper with you. All of you who don't know, or don't remember what it is like, I therefore have to invite to come here and experience the other side of feeding the baby for yourself.

Halloween

2007-10-31T19:05:00.000-04:00

For Halloween, Gabriel decided to wear a pumpkin-bib in order to honor North American customs while staying true to his Swiss roots where Halloween is not (yet) widely celebrated.

He could easily go out to scare people. After all, he does a good impression of scary crying baby. Look at how my hair stands out!

One more novelty is that he started to like sticking his tongue out. Michelle wonders whether he's training to be a snake.

Michelle wouldn't like that too much, so she is happy that Gabriel for now rather looks like an angel than a scaly creature.

1/4th birthday!

2007-10-26T21:37:00.000-04:00

Gabriel is three months old today.

Much has happened in the meantime. For example, on September 2, Gabriel was baptized in my hometown, Dielsdorf. We were a group of 12 people (+1 baby): The families of Michelle and me, my grandfather, Michelle's cousin Laurence, who is Gabriel's godmother, with her husband, and Peter, my best friend, who happened to be able to visit us from Berlin only on this weekend during the entire summer. He wasn't the one with the longest way home, though: My brother, Gabriel's godfather, came from Boston, where he is currently doing research at the economics department at MIT (click on the link below the photo to see the album).


From Gabriel's Baptism

There were two baptisms at the same time; the other child, Orell von Arx, was already 8 months old, and looked a bit like a teletubby in his whole-body white knitted dress. Gabriel was wearing a somewhat more stylish outfit. We carried him on a pillow on which already my dad got baptized.
After the service, we went for lunch to Regensberg, a pretty medieval town overlooking the Zürcher Unterland. It was a beautiful day.

Since then, Gabriel has been busy, mostly with eating and sleeping, though now he also coos, smiles, drools (unfortunately), fights rabbits, and he even starts trying to grab things. Not with reliable success yet, because he lacks hand-eye coordination, and overall control over the movement of his extremities.
It isn't because Gabriel has been busy that I didn't update, though. Two days after the baptism, I left for Montreal, to start my research at IRIC (which, initially, consisted of trying to figure out how to deal with the administration), and, more importantly, to find a place to live. Finally, I came upon a beautiful apartment that I almost didn't visit because I didn't think we would be able to afford it.

There are four apartments in the house; the upper left one is ours (car not included). It is a three bedroom place, though since we converted what originally was the dining room into Gabriel's room, we have now an office and a dedicated guest room, in case anyone plans a visit to Montreal. September and October were gorgeous, and there were no fires.

Our new address:
Jonas, Michelle & Gabriel Dorn
4966 Rue Jean-Brillant
Montreal, QC H3W 1T7
Canada
+1 514 227 4140

Don't call us on that number right away, it will only be valid starting November 2.

Fortunately, I'm no longer alone. Three weeks ago, I went to Switzerland to pick up Michelle and Gabriel, and on October 2, the three of us flew from Lyons to Montreal with Air Transat, the only company selling affordable one-way tickets.

There is not much to tell about the flight: Gabriel slept a lot, and since Michelle nursed him during take-off and landing, he didn't have any problems with the pressure. Because we reserved seats in the front row of economy, Gabriel had a cot in which he could spend most of the flight. His place was probably more spacious than ours: Air Transat is inexpensive partly because they stuff a lot of people into the planes. Still, we arrived without problems, and even Gabriel hardly felt any jet lag. Within two days, he was back to his schedule of eating about every 2-3 hours during the day, and then sleeping from 10pm till 6am. Good boy!

While I had found an apartment, I wanted to go buy furniture together with Michelle. Thus, we initially had to change Gabriel on a borrowed camping table, that also served as our dinner table (we cleaned it in between, of course).

Now, after a few trips to IKEA, our place is starting to look and feel much more habitable. And we have an actual changing table and a bed for Gabriel. And now that we have put all the furniture together, we finally start to have time to go and see Montreal - or to post on the blog again.

One month checkup

2007-08-27T15:39:00.000-04:00

One day after he turned one month old, Gabriel went to the pediatrician for the first time. All went fine, even though Gabriel does not like to be naked at all, so he screamed all the way through the exam.

It turns out that he has grow very well:
Length: 55.5 cm (+4.5 cm)
Weight: 4.605 kg (+1.385 kg)
Head: 38.4 cm (+4.4 cm)

The pediatrician was very nice. She gave us a lot of information, and then patiently answered all our questions. I learned, for example, that vaccination for tuberculosis has been stopped, because it was not providing 100% protection, and made people always test positive for tuberculosis, whether they had it or not. Thus, many people have undergone unnecessary treatment (for example, when you want to get a green card, you are very likely going to have to take tuberculosis medication for 6 months most often simply because you have been vaccinated).

4 weeks

2007-08-24T06:05:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, we applied for a passport for Gabriel. After all, in little more than a month he'll be traveling abroad for the first time. We looked at the requirements for passport photos, and we realized that we might have a hard time making pictures with the required characteristics.

None of these would be accepted, for example.

Thus, we drove to Sion and and went to a professional photo studio. We left right after Gabriel had eaten in the morning, because he usually is highly awake for quite a while after that. He was intently looking at everything while we were driving - and he fell asleep right before we parked the car. Ah, happy parents. We spent about ten minutes at the photo studio trying to wake him up so that he would open both eyes at the same time long enough so that a picture could be taken. Finally, we succeeded.

Naturally, he was wide awake by the time we left the store.

We aren't complaining, though. Aside from providing blog-material from time to time, Gabriel is really a very nice kid. And when he's slightly cranky, I am still fairly successful at singing him to sleep. Even when he isn't crying, I like to hold him - he is great entertainment, and he is a cute little oven.

Of course, when he's really hungry, there's not much daddy can do. Except to make sure Michelle is comfortable, especially when she goes through ten feedings of 30-45 minutes as has happened on Wednesday.

3 weeks

2007-08-20T02:46:00.000-04:00

It makes quite a difference when you know in advance what your baby is going to do. On Thursday, when Gabriel was three weeks old, Gabriel had eaten normally around eight, for about 30 minutes. Instead of being content and just looking around and listening to us, as he would normally do, he started crying soon after, and it looked like he was already hungry again. That was unusual, because normally during the day, he had been eating every 3-4 hours, taking a break of ~6 hours during the night.

Fortunately, all the midwifes who had talked with Michelle about breastfeeding had told her that after 3, 6, and 12 weeks, the baby was going to have a growth spurt, for which it would need to eat more than usual. So Michelle had him feed again after less than two hours, and he was indeed hungry: He ate for another 30 minutes. Friday and Saturday, he kept up a mostly 2-hour rhythm for the entire day, though fortunately, he kept sleeping during the night. Now we're curious what he's going to do with all that food.

In the meantime, we have started to put him on his belly from time to time. Not during the night (there is too much uncertainty about the sudden infant death syndrome, SIDS), of course. Gabriel, who had almost exclusively lived on his back so far, did not enjoy the first few tries - he was just lying there with his knees pulled up and his face on the floor, totally confused that gravity was pulling in the other direction. Now he has learned that with a lot of effort and concentration he is able to turn his head, although he still gets stuck at times to his frustration.

2 weeks

2007-08-10T03:50:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, Gabriel was two weeks old. Comparing pictures, it does look like he has changed a bit:

It's not only the way he looks, though. He is much more awake, has recently started to make noises other than crying, and has added to his repertoire of expressions.

Michelle and Gabriel have figured out breastfeeding very well by now, whether Gabriel is in front of Michelle, on her side, or lying next to her. Only when he's really hungry he sometimes doesn't have the patience to latch on properly.
He also sleeps regularly for 5-6 hours during the night, followed by another 4, so that we are not too tired. The one thing I could do without is the fear of being peed on when I change him, but as I still remember from my cousin who peed over his dad's tie right before we left for the baptism, I know that I have to be patient. At least I've always some tissue at hand, and I'm getting much faster at moving out of the wet zone.
All in all, though, my former coworker was right when he told me that kids get cuter by the day, even when they start off at a very high level.

That picture on the card

2007-08-08T08:26:00.000-04:00

By now, many of you who are reading this blog should have received a card with this picture (we didn't send one to all our friends in the US, but sent you the link to the blog instead):

I would like to take the opportunity to credit my brother David for this cute photo. In May, my brother, who is currently doing research at the University of Chicago, was joined by my dad for a tour of Lake Michigan. Among the many sights they visited was the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, with the Au Sable Lighthouse on the southern coast of Lake Superior.

On the way there, they stumbed upon a curious rock

David quickly found two pebbles to turn the stone into a face:

Then, while my dad continued toward the lighthouse, David created the masterwork above. Fortunately for my dad, he was waiting in a magnificent area until the artist had finally caught up with him.

Happy baby - happy parents

2007-08-06T11:20:00.000-04:00

On Thursday, Gabriel was one week old. On Saturday, he still looked cute.

Yet, he hasn't changed that much, despite the claims of some that I had to enjoy every minute with Gabriel because he would change every day. Granted, there are gradual changes, but those would actually be much more obvious if I didn't spend so much time close to him. I'm not complaining, though, to have the privilege of working an arm's length away from Gabriel.

Gabriel still spends most of his time eating and sleeping, though he is awake for longer, and he does open his eyes much more than before. He is crying when he's hungry, uncomfortable (e.g. cold), and very tired. Fortunately, it's quite easy to figure out when he's hungry: That's when he tries to suck on anything that comes close to his mouth: My finger, my shirt and the nose of people who aren't careful when they're giving him a kiss (or who don't get away from me fast enough when I'm holding a hungry baby).

One thing that has changed, though, is his weight. The midwife was very impressed when she found out that he was gaining 60 g per day, reaching his birth weight in less than a week. The normal range for weight gains is 25-50 g. This is good news for us, because it means that Gabriel is getting enough food so that we can let him sleep when he doesn't want to wake up for almost 6 hours during the night. Unfortunately, we don't get this amount of sleep every day yet. For example, when he's too tired during his 11pm/12am meal to eat sufficiently, he wakes up after 4 hours already.

The midwife who came to check on Gabriel has been visiting us at home. For both Michelle and me it was great to have someone come, have a look at Gabriel and at how we handle him, and listen to our questions and concerns. All her three visits were paid for in full by the Swiss maternity insurance. In fact, she would have come as many times as necessary during the first 10 days since birth to make sure the three of us are doing fine. I can only shake my head at the thought that it took the Swiss so long to vote the maternity insurance into existence (the Swiss voted against it in 1984, 1987, and 1999, until they finally accepted it in 2004), and I remember how not proud I was of my country when I had to try and explain to a Swedish exchange student in 1999 how the Swiss could do that. It's good to see, though, that things are improving at home.

The many faces of Gabriel

2007-08-02T04:40:00.000-04:00

Michelle and I are slowly settling into our new life as parents. So far, Gabriel has been nice; after a meal around 11pm, he sleeps till 3 or 4am, and then again till 8am. Thus, we are able to get a reasonable amount of sleep.
He is a bit more awake now in the morning and especially in the evening, when he doesn't seem to sleep at all between feedings. He doesn't communicate a lot yet aside from indicating when he's hungry, when he's cold, and when there is too much light. Even though they aren't really conveying any particular message, it's neat to watch him go through his wide range of facial expressions, and I wanted to share this pleasure with you (click on the image to see it all).

Fourth Generation

2007-08-01T05:49:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, my grandfather came to visit his great-grandson on yet another beautiful summer day.

He brought four Gladioli from his garden, which are quite probably the tallest flowers not only Gabriel, but also his parents have ever received.

Once Gabriel joined his parents, grandparents, and his great-grandfather, there were four generations at the table - not a very common occurrence in Switzerland.

Home!

2007-07-31T06:08:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, Gabriel and Michelle came home.

Gabriel on his first day outside...

... accompanied by his happy mother with some of the flowers she has received...

... and finally, still asleep, in his bed at home. The white teddy, Oursinette, has been made by Michelle.

Michelle has stayed at the hospital for four days out of the five she was entitled to. Even though it was hard for me to drive home and leave Michelle and Gabriel behind at the hospital every time, I am still glad that she had the option to stay there for a bit. This allowed us to learn from the experienced nurses and midwifes how to handle the baby. For example, I bathed Gabriel twice under expert supervision, and I was glad that the second time I did most things right. A baby has lots of moving parts, which make dad's life difficult, and you can't just dunk the baby a few times to wash it.

Now that Gabriel is at home, I have the opportunity to watch him and to hold him whenever I want. According to the advocates of attachment parenting, I should not only do that, but I (or Michelle) should carry him around wherever we go.
I am generally wary of all parenting styles that come with a label, because they tend to overemphasize the labeled aspect, and I believe that this could be the case for attachment parenting, too. I have a very strong urge to hold him all the time, and once I held his little body against mine for a while, I don't want to let go of him anymore. This is supposedly good, though I believe that if I just give in to these urges, my life will revolve around Gabriel and only around him, which is neither good for him, nor for me. For one, I should not forget that am still married to that other person who gives milk to Gabriel.

More pictures

2007-07-27T20:10:00.000-04:00

I've added a few more pictures to the album of Gabriel's first day.

The third time's a charm

2007-07-27T18:55:00.000-04:00

As promised, here's the story:

On Wednesday, at 8pm, Michelle's water broke. Knowing that giving birth may take a while, we first finished dinner, then Michelle took a shower, while I sent out the information that "Bouton" was going to be born soon.
We arrived at the hospital at 9:30pm. Unfortunately, the assistant doctor was not able to confirm that Michelle's water had broken indeed - there was no amniotic fluid coming out anymore. While the midwife believed Michelle because of the way she described what happened, the doctor wanted to send us back home. Eventually he agreed to the midwife's suggestion that Michelle and I should go walking around for about two hours. The midwife believed that the baby's head was completely blocking the uterus, and that walking could sufficiently displace the baby to get the sanitary napkin wet.
Two hours of walking around in the city later, Michelle and I tried for the second time at 12:30am. However, the sanitary napkin was still completely dry. The midwife asked whether contractions had started, and Michelle denied. However, her belly hurt a little bit, and so we decided to still do one final check before we went back home. That was a good decision. On the monitor that recorded Bouton's heartbeat and Michelle's contractions, there were clearly visible contractions. However, there were also signs that the baby's heartbeat slowed down after the contraction peaked. This was a bad sign that indicated stress for the baby (it is much more normal that there is a deceleration of the heartbeat in sync with contractions followed by immediate recovery as contractions end - that means that the umbilical cord is being squeezed). Now, suddenly, the doctor was very alert.
Fortunately, the deceleration disappeared, and there were nice, regular contractions - one every three minutes - for the entire hour Michelle was hooked up to the monitor. Thus, instead of getting a caesarean, Michelle got admitted to the hospital, and she was given a bed around 2am.
Since contractions hurt more when she was lying down, Michelle decided to walk around. So we walked, until I got really tired (I didn't have contractions to keep me awake), and I slept for about an hour in a rather comfortable chair. We both got plenty to drink all the time, which was very nice (in the birth preparation class in San Diego we were told that all Michelle would get were ice chips from time to time).
Around 5am, the contractions went from rather painful to extremely painful, and around 6:30am, they came so quickly one after the other that Michelle didn't even have the time to take a deep breath in between. When it turned out that in the entire time since labour started, there had been no dilatation yet, it was clear that Michelle would opt for the epidural.
At 7am, she came to the delivery room for the third time. Since she had to wait for the anesthesiologist, the midwife prepared a hot bath for her. This did wonders. Michelle was able to relax, and suddenly, spacing between contractions became much longer again, and contractions weren't as painful as before. Michelle almost opted out of the epidural, though when she was lying on the bed after the bath, there was no longer any doubt that it would be a good idea to be without pain.
The epidural worked like a charm. Contractions stayed as regular as they had been during the bath, and from then on, everything went great. At 10:30, Michelle was already 5cm dilated, and at noon, dilation was complete. The baby was still quite far back, so the midwife suggested we let it move down on its own. That didn't happen, so from 12:30 on, Michelle was ordered to push. She did that very well, "as if it wasn't her first child", as the midwife said.
It was quite amazing to eventually see the head come out. I have seen babies before, but when one finally came out of Michelle, I was really amazed at the size of that head and then the body. Also, Gabriel was rather blue, though that was quickly remedied with exposing him to oxygen. He was, and is, in great health.

When we heard a midwife insist "Push! Push with all your force!" in an adjacent room a little later, Michelle and I were already able to exchange knowing looks, and a slightly tired, but happy smile.

Gabriel, age 1hr

2007-07-26T16:22:00.000-04:00

More pictures can be found here. Story tomorrow; now I need sleep.

PS: Michelle at in the Hospital of Sion, room 518
Her phone number at the hospital: +41 (0)27 603 54 59
Visiting hours: 13-16, 18-19:30

It's a boy

2007-07-26T07:57:00.001-04:00

Gabriel Jonas Dorn
12:52 pm
3.220 kg
51 cm

It has begun

2007-07-25T14:22:00.000-04:00

It looks like the baby is going to be born on July 26. Michelle's water just broke.

Still waiting

2007-07-25T13:07:00.000-04:00

Once again, we've only seen the hospital from afar (the orange building on the right side of the image).
Speculation goes on when the baby will be born. Several people suggested it would be tomorrow. Among them is the Swiss doctor, who arrived on the due date through calculation. Others reason that tomorrow is the day of St. Ann (Anne is the first name of Michelle's mother).
Personally, I like the 27^th, because 27 is 3³.

Waiting

2007-07-24T11:58:00.000-04:00

The US due date has passed. We're still waiting. In the meantime, we have taken the opportunity to go for a little walk. We can't just bake cakes or write code all the time.

Yesterday, a database of first names for the Canton of Zurich has been published (thanks to my dad for the info!). We were glad to see that we have chosen good names for the baby. There are also first name statistics for Switzerland and France, in case you're looking for ideas, or in case you want to know the popularity of your name.

Why Bouton?

2007-07-22T05:49:00.000-04:00

I guess I should explain where "Bouton" comes from, given that it's most likely only a few more days we will use the name.
Friends from San Diego had called their child Peanut before it was born. I still remember thinking at last year's Halloween party that it was really smart of them to have some sort of a code name to be able to refer to the baby - like us, they didn't know the sex of the baby yet.
Then, on January 31st, when we were celebrating our 4 year anniversary of our civil marriage with our best friends from San Diego, who had had their civil marriage on the exact same date, we were talking about baby names. Returning home from the excellent dinner, I suggested to Michelle that we should copy the "Peanut"-idea (incidentially, I also copied the idea with the blog from them. Smart people!).
Bouton is French for the English button, and the Swiss German chnopf. The latter can also mean little kid, which is quite fitting. Michelle liked my suggestion - after a while.

Speaking about names: In Switzerland, when you go to the hospital, you apparently have to tell them a boy's and a girl's name, even if you think you know it's a boy. Fortunately, we already know two names.

Tomorrow is the US due date. Michelle is having Braxton Hicks contractions a bit more often now. It seems that Bouton may be born at any time. I'll keep you posted!

Stroller

2007-07-20T11:48:00.000-04:00

Michelle has been to the hospital for a checkup today. Apparently, the local doctors don't supervise the birth. Rather, this is the hospital's responsibility. Fortunately, everything is fine. Her next visit is scheduled on July 26, the Swiss due date (to calculate the due date, the Swiss seem to count every month as 30 days, unlike the Americans (July 23), who do it exactly. Who would have thought?).
Edit: A pregnancy takes an around 280 days from the first day of the last menstrual period. If you use months with 31 days to calculate the due date, it will be earlier.

In the meantime, I tried for the second time to get the stroller (Baby Jogger, because it is relatively small and accepts the Canada-approved car seat available here) from the store. On Wednesday, they had kept saying that it was ready and assembled within just another five minutes for way too long. This time, the stroller was ready. In fact, one of the assistants immediately hurried to get it when I came in. Unfortunately, the car seat didn't have any belts attached to it. At least, this gave me the time to take everything apart and put it together again. I wonder: How did people manage before strollers were high-tech machines?

On a completely unrelated topic: I have been asked to put also an image of myself onto the blog. Here you go:

Happily Pregnant

2007-07-18T10:32:00.000-04:00

Michelle is still happily pregnant

See her happy face?