The Virtual Family Gathering

Well I hope everyone's thanksgiving was great. (all the Canadians, anyways. Don't worry, Americans, you can wait a while before you have to be thankful)

We saw a lot of family this weekend. We took our first long road trip with Otto (all the way to Morden). Ralph and Otto slept soundly all the way there while mom quizzed dad on the differential diagnoses of ST elevation on EKGs. You know, the usual thanksgiving stuff.

However, we didn't see ALL my family or Trisha's family. I feel bad because I really want to show Otto off while he is (somewhat) little. So I turn to the Internet to solve this problem (the Internet solves most of my problems...the Internet and coffee).

In order to recreate the family gathering experience, here are the Klassen Family Thanksgiving FAQ's, derived by statistical analysis of all the questions we were asked at the three family gatherings we did make it to. To complete the virtual family gathering environment, turn the heat up in your house to 32 degrees Celsius and turn two television sets on at full volume, one playing the Maury Show and the other playing the last 30 minutes of Home Alone on a continuous loop.

1) How are you doing? Are you tired?

Yes

2) How does Otto feed?

He sucks on my wife's breast until milk comes out, then he swallows it.

3) Jeff, that's not funny, I meant is he a good eater?

Otto eats in 6 distinct steps.

Step 1: He begins dead asleep. He is so completely asleep you can lift his arm up and it flops down completely limp and lifeless. Remember when the British Bulldog would get Jake the Snake into a sleeper hold and the ref would lift Jake's hand and then drop it to see if he was unconscious? It's kind of like that. He sleeps so deeply you can hold his hand over his face and his palm will flop squarely on his forehead. Of course, I haven't done this (very often).

Step 2: Otto is awoken by hunger and promptly LOSES HIS MIND! The most impressive part is the time from the beginning of step one to the end of step two is about 3 seconds.

Step 3: Otto then attempts to swallow my wife whole.

Step 4: Otto realizes he is still hungry after a whole 4 seconds of eating. He decides this is unacceptable and seems to expect instant gratification (first world problems). Once again he LOSES HIS MIND!

Step 5: With consoling, coddling, encouraging, and coercion we manage to get small amounts of milk into Otto's belly.

Step 6: Otto falls asleep with a mouthful of milk +/- poops his pants.

4) Does he sleep well?

Hmmm. Compared to his parents, yes.

He sleeps a lot like an on call surgeon: at best he sleeps 1-3 hours at a time when he can while a lot of other people look after the details of his life. He demands a lot of attention when he wakes up and nobody wants to wake him unless they absolutely have to because they're not sure how he'll react.

5) Most people ask one of the following two questions:

5a) Wow! He's so big! How much does he weigh?

Yeah, I know, he's huge! He's over 10 pounds!

5b) Wow! I can't believe how small he is! How much does he weigh?

Yeah, I know, isn't he precious! He's just over 10 pounds!

There you have it.

We also got some awesome gifts. Thanks to all my family who thought of us and got Otto something. He seemed like he didn't appreciate, I know, but he did. Trust me.

One gift I have to highlight is this toque (or winter hat or noggin toboggan for some of my international readers):

My cousin, Kaylee Sawatzky, made this hat in three hours! She saw that we had an owl theme going on in Otto's room so she woke up the morning of the family gathering and started making it and three hours later, there was a hat where there was no hat before. Amazing. He might need to grow into it, but we're excited.

Otto's inspired a lot of art and craft around our house. My mother-in-law made us stacks of awesome blankets:

My wife sewed these super owlish curtains:

I drew a couple pictures that we framed for his wall:

And I made this mobile (I call it the Otto-mobile):

Not bad, huh?

To end the post today, some awesome rock and roll dog and kid photo shoot photo shots, including laser eyes and lil' lumberjack. Otto's outfit, by the way, is the outfit I wore home from the hospital when I was born. It is very Bruce Springstein. My mom gave it to me this weekend. Boss.

Air guitar! Solo face! Intensity!

The J. Klassen Method on Making and Losing Friends

When we decided to have a kid, one big concern was that we were going to lose friends. Or at least not see them as much.

Friends are pretty important to me, but since my early twenties there has been a pretty steep decline in the number of friends I have had. The chart below will illustrate:

Of course, I wanted a kid, but I didn't want to have even fewer friends than we already had.

Well...it's been pretty interesting so far.

When we got a dog, I could sense half our friends rolling their eyes. I didn't blame them, I used to be the same way. When my brother and sister-in-law first got their pomeranian in the back of my mind I thought, "Why on earth would you get a dog? And why would you get a dog that looks like a cat?"

To me, it meant they could never travel and their house would always be a mess and they wouldn't sleep at night because of yapping...etc.

When they left for Kazakhstan to adopt their son, Cooper (who is awesome), somehow we ended up agreeing to look after this dust-bunny sized dog. We were looking down the barrel of two to three months with a yappy little mutt that could easily get lost in the laundry. I remember early on, I'd try to take a step towards this pup (named Scully, after X-Files) to pet her and she would run the other way and hide behind furniture. And then I couldn't find her and I'd panic. Honestly, she is so small, she could easily disappear into the air ducts. This was going to be a blast.

The next couple of days are a little bit hard to remember. I remember one day, Trisha had Scully somewhere, maybe at the family cabin, and I came home from work and there were no mouse sized paws scampering somewhere just out of sight. I continued to cautiously walk around the house as I had come accustomed to, making sure not to step on this nano dog until I convinced myself she wasn't around. And in astonishment, I had to admit to myself, I missed her.

For nearly three months, I loved that dog, and I still do. As soon as scully went back home, we started talking about getting our own.

But having a dog does polarize your friends a little. Some people stop coming over, understandably because of allergies or whatever. Other friends start coming over for the first time. We had friends that lived two streets over from us that we knew, and we liked, but for some reason we never got together. Then, suddenly they were over all the time. In fact, they would come over to check up on Ralph for us when we weren't home. So were we riding the coattails of our dog's popularity? Maybe.

It's no secret that once you have a dog on a leash you meet all sorts of people walking down the street. I have found, though, that a lot of the people you meet in that scenario are just a little off. There is one very pleasant lady in our neighbourhood that would never pass up a chance to meet a dog. I like her, and she's very nice...but she's nuts. She drives a bike with a stuffed dog in the front basket. She wears a helmet covered in stickers of dogs. Did I mention she's about 50 years old?

The first time we met her, she nearly bailed off her bike to get to Ralph as fast as she could. In her thick, french-canadian accent she says, " 'Allo, Ralph. You want to zay 'allo, Ralph? 'E's just trying to zay, 'allo."

She continued to speak to Ralph for about 3 minutes. She would say bizarre things, like, "'Dis is da precious pineapple!" It got to the point that even Ralph was tilting his head to the side as if to say, "What's your deal, lady?"

Eventually she turned to me and instructed me that, "It iz very good dat you 'ave ah 'arness. Dis type ov dog cannot wear ah collar because if zay choke to 'ard, eh, dare eyez, day can POP out ov dare 'ead."

I started to laugh and then realized she was serious.

Babies have the same affect on neighbours. Our old walks that used to take about 20 minutes now take well over an hour because everyone wants to see Otto (he's that good looking). We've met a dozen people that live on our street that we had never met before. Two sets of neighbours who have never been inside our house have made us meals. It's been pretty nice, if not a little bit revealing as to how we segregated ourselves when we were D.I.N.Ks. (Dual Income No Kids).

And as for the friends we already had, it's been pretty amazing as well. One set of friends transplanted all of their 18 month old's infant-care items into our house, easily saving us $1500 (strollers, carriers, etc). They made us meals and bring us coffee. Another set of friends have had us over to eat twice, brought food to our house once and once showed up with cookies just because. They call all the time just to see how we're doing and send Trisha supportive texts on a regular basis. We really love those friends.

And then there's Facebook, and now this blog, that has allowed me to connect with all sorts of people. There are people reading this blog that I never expected to care, and that's been really, really appreciated.

That all being said, this makes for 6 posts in about a week. It's been fun posting like this, but I've discovered it takes a lot of time. Therefore, I'm going to cut back. I've been so happy with how many people have been reading this thing. (Almost 500 views this week!) I really hope you'll continue to check back every now and then, and even tell other people if you think they would be interested. However, I think I'm going to cut the posts down to somewhere around twice a week.

Finally, I wanted to say one more thing. My wife has been a real super star over the last two and a half weeks. I watched her turn into a great mom so quickly and so naturally. Trisha has always been talented and caring and beautiful and organized, and motherhood has only accentuated each of her remarkable traits. I love you, Trisha. I love you, family.

Little Baby Drug Dealers

I'm OK with this.

Yesterday, I didn't post anything.  The night before was a little rough.

Otto's not a great sleeper.  He's not bad, I've certainly heard of a lot worse.  But last night, you could only describe this kid as purely nocturnal.

He needed to be walked to go to sleep, and that took about 2 hours each time.  There were two episodes of 4 diaper changes in 20 minutes.  He fussed and squirmed and pooped and cried and grunted and even just sat there looking around.  But he didn't sleep.

By the end of the night we had incorporated a hybrid sleep strategy from every expert we could access.  (Happiest Baby on the Block, the Baby Whisperer, the Dog Whisperer, Dr. Oz, Dr. Suess, Dr. Dre, Steve Jobs and a little Inception.)

Didn't work.

What I noticed last night was the weird affect a baby has on a person in an emotional state.  When I was lying in bed and he started to fuss (he doesn't really scream; he cries in very subtle and artistic ways), I would be upset and grumpy.  But after getting him up, changing his clothes, and changing his diaper for the fourth time and we were finally bundled and relaxed in our rocking chair, I would still be exhausted... but it didn't seem awful.    He would make a face that would resemble a smirk and he would flail his arms in frustrating and adorable ways, and just like that, it wasn't that bad.

It's weird.  The only thing that I've seen that can change a person's demeanour so quickly is drugs.  Think about this, I'm a pacifist, but if ANYBODY ELSE were to yell at me every twenty minutes for an entire night and then smear mustard coloured feces down my leg, I might lose it.  But not with Otto.  This guy wakes me up at 3am, stretches out the collar of my favourite David Bowie shirt, cries through a diaper change, pees up my arm in the 2 seconds between old diaper and new diaper, cries through a sleeper change and completely disrespects my excellent renditions of select acapella Radiohead songs.  But once we're settled into our rocking chair, both drifting off to sleep, I can't remember why I was upset and I'm kind of happy I get to hang out...and then he has an atomic poop explosion in his pants.  Again.

How can babies do that? (The state of mind change thing, not the atomic poop explosion.) It's like they excrete some sort of inhaled narcotic that instantly affects anyone in a 20 foot radius.  But it effects different people in different ways.

For Tirsha and I, Otto is like marijuana.  When we've got a list of 40 things to do and Otto has barfed all over our new furniture and we should be super stressed out, we just laugh a lot.  And talk about how big his hands are. And I'm eating a lot more snacks.  And anyone who knows Trisha should be interested that now, suddenly, she doesn't care if the house is a little messy (That's major. I should be clear, it's still pretty spotless and organized.) Me on the other hand, I seem to be a little more paranoid.  It's funny that the hot water tank temperature, furnace filter and stair hand rail are suddenly so important.

For sisters/sisters-in-law/mothers/mothers-in-law/ladies at church, Otto is a lot more like crystal meth.  They will claw and scratch their way close to him and once they've got their hands on him they DO NOT let go.  They become irrational and potentially violent (to others. Not to Otto).  And it only takes the briefest exposure and they are addicted.  I feel bad for the people that live with these women when they go home, because I'm positive there's some sort of withdrawal process. Although I don't mind the side effect of them loving to change his diaper.  (love you guys, come over any time)

For other guys my age, Otto is a little more like ketamine.  It doesn't matter how tough or confident they are, once they're holding Otto, they dissociate into spacy, mindless masses.  They may snap out of it into some sort of nightmare.  


Otto's pretty amazing, though.  One of my areas of interest is human behaviour.  I have researched and observed and surveyed and taught for a few years now, and I don't know how to change it.  All he knows how to do is poop, eat and sleep and he's already got everybody in line.


And to complete my sappiness quota for today (and to make up for missing yesterday) I must say this to my big boy, Otto.  You are not a drug dealer, you are just adorable and it's not chemicals that make me like being up with you all night, it's love.  There.  I said it and it's true.  You can all make fun of me now.


By the way, for any other parents out there looking for sleeping tips...white noise.  I don't care if I have to play it every night in my house for the next 18 years, it works and it puts me to sleep, too.


It's Otto's second week birthday today.  No, I didn't make him a video this week.  Maybe I'll save that for all the firsts (first month, first year, etc.) but here's the one I made last week in case anyone missed it:

Otto learns about politics

Otto, only 2 weeks ago!  With my beautiful wife, Trisha.

New bud, Brody.

So innocent.

Mennos Drink Espressos

You know those people that you see in public places with three or more children who just seem to have it together?  They're dressed nicer than your are, their kids are dressed nicer than you are, they're not screaming, they're intermittently laughing with each other.  The dad stops to pick up a leaf to show his 3 year old daughter and effectively explains photosynthesis in three sentences.  Meanwhile, the two year old son is doing cartwheels while reciting the nation capitals of Africa in alphabetical order.  You think to yourself, "Wow! Those people really have it together.  They must be great parents."

How do you get there?

Otto.  Staying out of trouble.

You would think that rearing children is in my blood.  You see, my last name is Klassen.  My mom was a Friesen.  That makes me extremely mennonite. Thorough bred.

If you don't know what a mennonite is, that's fine, but for the purposes of this post you should know that mennonites are pretty well known for having A LOT of poorly coordinated, extremely sober, cheap-skate children.

While I didn't have an overly large family, both of my parents did.  My mom has 9 brothers and sisters and my dad has 4.  I know, it's not quite TLC-syndication worthy, but it's still a lot of people to fit into one place for a Christmas party.  Fact is both sides of my family now have family gatherings in churches and community halls because there's just too many people.  Especially now that the cousins are mostly married and many have kid's of their own.

My step-grandma called me this morning to say congratulations about Otto.  It was very nice.  It's impressive that she can be personable with any of us grandkids given the following facts:

When she married my grandpa, he already had ten kids, most of them married and with kids of their own. Several years after he past away, she re-married a nice man who had 12 kids, all of whom were married and had kids of their own.  She told me today that Otto is her 52nd great grandchild!  And that's JUST my mom's side.

And none of us are psychopaths.  Nobody in that enormous mass of human beings has ever turned into a serial killer or a cult leader or a politician.

How is that possible?

I've been trying to think back to my upbringing.  How can I raise Otto to be as straight laced and well behaved as my sister and I?  Here are some unofficial tips I think my parents used pretty effectively:

1. Learn a language your child doesn't understand.  My parents both speak a strange, hybrid language called low german, which seems to be part dutch, part yiddish and part martian.  It was perfect for sheltering us from dirty jokes, "adult" conversations and Christmas present discussions.   I believe that somehow this kept my sister and I naive to most things until our early twenties.

2. Buy your kid's first gun early.  Of course, I'm not serious.  Working in emergency, I'm not a big fan of guns.  In fact, I endorse gun registration whole heartedly (sorry dad).  Perhaps the heading should be: Spend time with your kids when they're young.  I got my first .22 rifle when I was about 11 (I think) and I would spend a lot of time hunting or target shooting.  It was great bonding time with my dad and, ironically, kept me out of a lot of trouble, I'm sure.  As a teenager, many of the guns in our house were stored IN MY ROOM (sans ammunition of course).  By the time I was an adolescent, guns held no mysticism anymore, and were for the most part, kind of boring.  But again, not serious.  Please don't buy your kids guns.

3. Move to the middle of nowhere.  I grew up in a village called Roseisle.  You should really satellite google it, it's quite remarkable.  Two or so streets.  About 45 people.  I never learned to do anything bad, because there was nothing bad to do.  The town does have three churches, though, which may also have something to do with my innocent upbringing.

4. Be more fun and interesting than your kid's friends.  I never really had enough energy to keep up with my dad.  Fishing, water-skiing, camping, snowmobiling, road trips, go-carts.  When I was about 8, my dad built a three wheeler.  He BUILT it.  When I was a teenager we built a life sized, remote control robot.  Are you kidding me?  He was like MacGyver with a beard.

"What's that, mister delinquent, teenager, high-school friend?  You want to smoke drugs with me?  Sorry, I'm busy.  My dad and I are going to build a rocket ship that can go back in time, but maybe later?"

If anything, I'm sorry I didn't spend more time with my dad.

My awesome dad with Otto and Otto's cousin, Teagan.

5. Just let your kid be a little bit weird.  My parents were very supportive of me...and very patient.  They never gave me a hard time about listening to hard-core heavy metal, or being in a hard-core metal band, or about dying my hair.  They encourage me to draw comic books and program computers and do all sorts of socially abnormal things.  I think my parents had pretty good insight into letting me do things as long as they weren't dangerous or evil, and because of all that support, I never really felt like I needed to rebel.  Thanks, mom and dad.

Anyways.  That's what I've got so far.

If you're wondering about the title of this Post, Nils Vik (a la Parlour Coffee.  See earlier posts) informed me today that espressos are the cheapest way to get the most caffeine into your body and referred to them as a good Menno drink.  Never thought of espresso as a Mennonite thing, but it makes sense.

And because I will squeeze every bit of attention I can get out of this six year old triumph, here's the shining moments of my med school career in all their lo-fi, underproduced glory, Menno in Med School:

The Winnipeg Hipster Index

I want to tell you my favourite jokes of the summer (which I stole from 2 Chris friends...read on):

1.) How did the hipster burn his mouth?

A: He was eating pizza way before it was cool.

(thank you Chris Yorke)

2.) How many hipsters does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Well, it's a pretty obscure number, you've probably never heard of it.

(thank you Chris Campbell)

Trisha and I have been occasionally bringing up the topic of what Otto is going to be like when he's older. It's mostly me who's bringing it up:

"Do you think he'll be funny? I bet he'll be funny. Unless he's serious, but that's fine, too. Maybe he'll be really into the Smiths or something. Do you think he'll watch Curb Your Enthusiasm with me? What if he doesn't like Curb Your Enthusiasm? How old do you have to be to watch Curb Your Enthusiasm? You know what, we better never show him Curb Your Enthusiasm."

The poor kid JUST learned how to open his eyes. He's only known how to breathe for about 10 days and already I'm ruminating about his what his favourite novel might be. I'm trying to stop.

Ironically, there's a big part of me that doesn't even want him to grow up. I'm already noticing how much he's changed and I'm not that into it. He's not sleeping as much during the day and he's feeding a little less often. It's kind of weird, but it makes me just a little sad.

In honesty, it's not that big of deal to me, but I think it all started with a running joke during the pregnancy. There was this never ending conversation about what I would do if I had a son and he was into sports. Anyone who knows me knows I don't do sports. And suddenly I was picturing myself being dragged to a hockey arena at 6 in the morning by a Sydney Crosby wanna be (minus the concussion) in about 5 years. (By the way, I'm the only guy in Winnipeg that seems kind of indifferent about the Jets coming back. Although I am excited about new restaurants downtown.)

But this all blossomed into all the other things my kid could be. A hipster? A hippie? A punk? A jock? A nerd? A health nut? A Nickleback fan? Honestly, I'm happy with whatever he becomes (accept the Nickleback thing) but now I'm curious to see which it's going to be.

But is he really going to be a type cast character from a '90's teen movie? I realize that's not how it works. I've been each of those things at some part in my life, and sometimes all of them to varying degrees. (except the Nickleback thing). It's all a spectrum. Right?

For instance, I used to think I was a hipster. I thought this because, in my opinion, I dressed interestingly and I listened to pretty good music. Then I met real hipsters and I quickly realized I don't have the energy or foresight or organization skills to be a true hipster. (Do you know I've actually heard a conversation jump from the importance of sock and shirt colour coordination to how the current use of saxophones in modern east coast indie rock is an impressive and interesting turn of events?)

That being said, to a lot of my friends I think I am a hipster because I talk about music they've never heard of and I'm hard on them for liking Nickleback (and I wear ridiculous glasses).

Let me boil it down to a simple example. I read pitchfork.com. To half of my friends (the non-hipsters) that makes me a hipster because it's somewhat pretentious and kind of weird. To the other half of my friends (the hipsters) it makes me lame and predictable because pitchfork is not nearly pretentious enough.

On the scale of Winnipeg hipsterdom it probably boils down to something like this:

Maybe? I don't know, it's pretty early in the morning. By the way, I really like Parlour Coffee.

Basically, what I'm getting at, is I hope Otto is balanced, but even more importantly, I hope he's happy. Hipster, punk, jock, or even... Nickleback fan. Sounds sappy, but, there it is.

And because I know it's going to start coming up more and more, let me address my current feelings on the whole will-he-be-a-doctor-some-day discussion. At this point in my life, let me say I hope not. That may change, and if he decides he does want to I will support him. But the day my son comes up to me and tells me he wants to wash cars or serve fries or teach water aerobics for the rest of his life, at least I know he'll never have to write this unbelievable licensing exam.

(Admission: I didn't read yesterday.)

I know the feeling, Ralph. I've got the same helpless look as you do in the first picture most of the day.

Slowly getting back to normal...sort of.

We are slowly beginning to do things we used to do before Otto was born.

Yesterday we managed to watch a little TV. We've left the house a handful of times. We've even been walking Ralph.

It's obvious, though, that nothing is quite the same as it was before. For instance, even as a type now, it's mostly with one hand because the other is holding a drunk looking, milk stained miniature grandpa in his monkey pyjamas.

I've even started reading again. I have an exam I'm studying for. In fact, when it comes to Otto, this exam has given me more stress than anything else. More than crying, more than diapers, more than sleep deprivation (which I'm a little bit used to anyways.)

This is my licensing exam. It's only in May, but I've done the math, and if I want to get through most of the examinable material by then I should start studying...about two months ago. When we broke the news to some of the people I work with that we were going to have Otto in September the response was a muted, "oh?"

As in, "You mean right before your exam?"

As in, "So there's something wrong with you?"

As in, "Well, you can always write the exam next year...I guess."

It was a concern. And Trisha and I talked about it. We've let my chosen career dictate how our lives go for way too long. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy my job but I've given up a lot of stuff for it. I've lost friends, I've forgotten how to play guitar, I've gained weight and then lost weight and then lost hair and then gained ulcers. So we decided, enough. Having kids is important to us and we want them now so we're going to have them. And that's it.

And guess what, last night alone (between burping and rocking to sleep) Otto and I read about asthma and reviewed all the relative and absolute contraindications for fibrinolysis in stroke and ST elevation myocardial infarction.

We're going to be okay.

"C'mon, Dad! Keep reading! My pampers ain't gonna pay for themselves!"

I swear this wasn't set up. Trisha found Ralph like this just after lunch. I guess he may be more jealous than we thought.