Lake has recently  been fondly called “barracuda” by my brother and by my friend Kelly “barnacle” el percebe, the Spanish endearment for a baby that eats all the time. I’ve been operating off the notion that Lake may have to grow to 6’6″ by the time he is fifteen years old or so. To that end he’s going to need a lot of milk early on to fuel his growth, so I offer him the breast every time he makes rooting gestures. 

I’m reminded at PEPS earlier last week that the sleep education begins at just a few weeks old and that he would be typically doing his nights by a few months old. I’m wondering about nudging the mealtime structure, too. Lake is nearly two months old now and time is passing quickly. My windows are rapidly closing, so while on holiday at the lake I cracked back open the book that so inspired me while pregnant Bringing up Bébé to check in with the basic principles and timelines of typical French baby rhythms.

I’m reminded it all comes down to the importance of the Pause. The reason for the pause is the teaching of alert awareness and patience so that our children may enjoy the world and their experiences in it. And their parents too! When the children can entertain themselves and happily become accustomed to delayed gratification, they are more relaxed and confident. Certainly traits I wish to empower Lake with by patiently teaching patience.

Doing his Nights

I’ve been pretty pleased with his rhythm since a few weeks old of typically sleeping from approximately 11pm to 5am. Then often he’ll eat for an hour and have another sleep segment. But it’s not bomb-proof. It could be better. Especially since we are moving him out of our bedroom and working to reclaim our parental privacy and relationship intimacy.

Upon revisiting the phenomenon of French babies doing their nights from just a few months, it’s supported by intriguing research*.  The experimental group was given a few basic rules to follow from birth or just a few weeks old compared to the control group who were given none. 

1. Not to nurse, rock or hold baby in the evening before sleep.
2. Starting at weeks old, between midnight and 5am, do not attempt to nurse unless other means have been tried and failed: reswaddle, pat, re-diaper, walk around.
3. Distinguishing between whimpering in their sleep versus awake crying. Ensuring that your baby is awake before picking up!

The findings are compelling. For the first three weeks there was no distinguishable pattern or difference among all the babies. However, by four weeks 38% versus 7% were sleeping through the night. Then the experimental group was all sleeping through the night by 8 weeks, versus less than a quarter of the controls. What?! That’s a very strong endorsement. Lake is officially 8 weeks old now. He is a trooper for doing his nights pretty well, but honestly it’s not 100% and it’s always the breast. Before, during and after sleep. Is it me, not being creative enough or does he really need the breastfeeding for energy to grow? I do try to use the Pause, but perhaps not rigorously enough. Well, there’s always extinction which works in just a few days, but the main drawback again is parental consistency. Dang! You gotta want it!

Eating meals (Wait!)

By age four months, the rhythms of the French babies’ appetites have all coincidentally coalesced to coincide with the 8am, noon, 4pm and 8pm mealtimes of their French parents. The are also referred to elegantly as “meals” not “feeds.”

Okay, so I still have a few months to get with the program. I begin referring to his eating as a meal, mealtime, first course, second course, etc. but what else should I be entertaining over the next few months?

It looks like I should begin now at approximately two-three months to stop treating him like an addict, and begin to follow three basic principles:

1. Lake should eat at roughy the same times each day.
2. Lake will enjoy a few larger meals rather than multiple snacks.
3. Lake should fit into the family schedule.

Hmmm, well, we do the larger meals rather than snacking for the most part. I think this has enforced his general pattern of daytime eating and nighttime sleeping. Schedule and timing, though… Mummy’s going to have to work on putting that concept into practice for her own self first. Being on maternity leave with a newborn (who admitted is quickly changing) is the antithesis of having a schedule. Okay, the challenge is on to begin adding a bit more rigorous discipline to our days… Regular mealtimes and sleeping our nights.  

*Pinella T, Birch L. 1993 Help me make it through the night: behavioral entrainment of breast-fed infants’ sleep patterns. Pediatrics 91(2):436-43.

Newman Lake… Why do we love it so much out here? It’s possible to get a bit fanatical about how wonderful the lake is and how attractive

the lake lifestyle is. It’s so relaxing. It’s so safe. It’s our happy place. It’s full of families who’ve been sharing summers for years, for decades, for generations. It’s so friendly! 

Today we spent all day socializing. Not on purpose directly. It just happened, really. We set out for a walk through the woods, where we saw six deer, and then two more later, who may have been the same two as from the earlier bunch of six. We walked around the bay and the peninsula visiting the Galvans, the Heylmans, the Martins, Landreth, Beil, and then we had the Aldworth and Frasco families over for dinner. Everyone is happy to meet Lake, but it’s not just that. It’s what people do around here: drop in, drop by, come around, socialize, stop in, stop by, come over, say hello. Everyone is friendly and so relaxed, on “lake time”, and you’ve known them and their parents and maybe grandparents too your whole life. 

Around here we are known as the Thompsons, or as a reference to Ruthie and Don who are both passed away, but who were fixtures of the community for 70+ years. My grandmother Ruth (Thomson) Thompson grew up summering in this cabin with her parents and two brothers. Then she and her husband Don Thompson raised their two children summering in this cabin. One of them is my mother. All throughout childhood beginning when I was just two years old my parents sent my brother and me here to spend summers with our grandparents Ruthie and Don. Now my parents are here spending summers renovating the cabin, “shoring it up” so to speak and generally carrying on the tradition. We introduce ourselves as Ruthie’s granddaughter, daughter, daughter’s husband, etc. Even my dad, who has never been a Thompson, introduces himself as a Thompson out here, in town, at the library, and at the local U-pick farm “Carvers” where he picked our green beans today for our dinner tonight.

It’s friendly. It’s folksy. It’s safe. It’s so safe we leave our car keys in the car, our homes not just unlocked but with the doors open day and night. People don’t just wave from their car, which they do, but they also stop and have a whole visit. People look out for one another, call you if there’s a stranger walking in the area. Families are now purchasing second lake homes to accommodate the growing generations.

 The Barrett’s daughter and her husband just bought the old Pool place. 

This is how things go here in our bay. It’s comforting. It’s folksy friendly, and it’s my happy place. I’m so glad I could share it with you, Lake and all you lovely folks at the Lake.

We set out under dubious skies. Nana accessorizes with a fleece and rain jacket and I with my straw hat and sunglasses. It feels like the weather could go either way, and most probably both ways given sufficient time. The impetus for our excursion was to take a piece of outgoing mail up the mailbox. Friday had been thus far a pretty off and on rainy day overall. We had a fire going inside in the fireplace and a we enjoyed a leisurely brunch. Our cabin is at the end of a long shared gravel driveway, and it’s a short walk up to the paved peninsula road where the cluster of mailboxes and newspaper boxes reside. So getting the bill in the mail was our overt objective, but the covert aim was more that it was an excuse for a walk to liven up our day.

So the three of us, Nana, Lake and I are out for a walk. We were nearing the paved road when I hear a vehicle drive up fast then stop. I guess it’s the mail truck, and sure enough it zooms by past our field of view at the end of the tunnel of vegetation. We are thus committed to walking down toward the end of North Peninsula Drive to catch her on the way back. Indeed we do. We successfully flag her down as she comes zipping back up the road and hand over our letter. 

Inertia has us continuing along down the road, and before we know it we arrive at the end where our friends Craig and Kathryn Ann live. We drop in unexpectedly for an old fashioned visit. Kathryn Ann is home so we visit and enjoy iced tea and coconut water with fresh mint on the welcoming porch. They have a beautiful view of the lake from their charmingly restored cabin on the point. I’m wearing my sunglasses and there are big swaths of blue sky and puffs and whisper of fluffy white clouds. Kathryn Ann has fun meeting Lake and singing him songs they wrote for their own blue eyed red headed baby boy who’s now 22 years old and living in the American Southwest on a conservation corps. Funny how they grow up! 

Nearing the end of our social call, as we are inviting them over for dinner tomorrow, the skies turn ominous and black. Nana puts her jackets back on which had been around her waist for the ride, and I prop my sunglasses up on my hat. The weather suddenly shifts.
It threatens rain our whole walk back and we duck down to the beach at the tip of our bay. It isn’t until we are crossing our next-door-neighbor’s beach when the first gigantic raindrops begin to fall. Nana takes a quick documentary photograph, and then we scurry up the steps to our side porch as the hail arrives with a vengeance, driving down with unrelenting fury. One of my hands covers Lake’s soft head and the other his tender feet, and we dash into the cabin. We look out as the hail and rain sheet down, the wind torrents, and the electric lights flicker. We are secure and dry and we don’t lose our power; we make it in the nick of time! 

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We relish the exhilaration and anomaly which is our stormy weather reprieve. The afternoon is filled with reading by the fire, hot chocolate and popcorn, a real contrast from our hot day yesterday, and our hot summer days likely looming again on the horizon. The calm comes later, after the storm, when the surface of the water is completely glassy. 

After our eventful journey to Newman Lake, we  are enjoying a few very relaxing days of rest. Grandpa and Nana are keeping us fed with delicious food and lots of quality bonding time. 

Next up: brother and family including nearly three year old cousin are set to arrive for the day. Boy cousins to meet and maybe splash in the lake together!

Saturday we three walked up to the University District Farmers Market to meet an old friend and shop the market together. It was fun! We were all baby carrying and optimizing efficiency as she pointed out, visiting while taking care of shopping errands. The organic apricots were definitely the seasonal highlight. Then we bumped into some new friends from the collective PEPS peeps who were also out cruising the market. Later in the evening our friend Lena came over to join us for our favorite German board game Agricola, our first post baby go of it. We talked and laughed and played and caught up on our daily vegetable intakes. As it turns out my attention was incredibly divided. I was primarily taking care of Lake. Yet even though I had an impossible time concentrating on the game, earning possibly the lowest score ever, I was grateful to be back in the game. Feeling gratitude for community!

Meanwhile Lake continues to deliver egregiously on the cuteness front. 

Today my husband and I got out for a date. We chose to go on a running date. It wasn’t quite at the level of Sarah Brown’s two week postpartum Olympic trials training epic proportions, but it was my own version of the postpartum running story with husband-coach. We’re at 6 1/2 weeks and we did a leisurely 5 miles. In addition to some hill work it included bowls of steaming pho on the Ave at mile 4.6. 

So, our big night out post baby was actually a midday running date. We got sweaty. Our date included joint banking errands. In spite of that, it felt great to get out on our own, just the two of us talking about this and that. And to be up and running again. 

Well I did resume running at 6 weeks postpartum. It was just on the tennis court. So triumphant to get back out on the court! My Kindrick friends were incredibly supportive and maintaintained a round robin tennis approach, handing off Lake like a relay baton while I kept my eye on the ball. Last up was Papa who gave me a few solid pointers, a mini tennis stroke clinic! 

It was a whole new dimension to challenge my intellect with something to focus on: technique and strategic playing. The last and only tennis lessons I had were when I was nine years old. They gave me a surprisingly respectable foundation. I’m pretty surprised at how much fun I can have on the court with the few basics I learned nearly 30 years ago. This was at the behest of my grandparents enrolling my brother and me in city parks tennis lessons over the summer at Comstock Park in Spokane. Notable for how impressionable I was at that age, and that the lessons and exposure to art, dance, piano were all well invested. Note to self for Lake. 

Anyhow if anyone wants to play some tennis, here’s an open invitation to arrange a play date. Meanwhile now I can get back on the courts solo to practice my stroke technique. No excuses! For me though, it’s always more fun with a friend! It’s not about the winning, it’s about the playing and how much happiness tennis brings me!