Popped in to the hospital today for a quick EMG on my LUE, or Left Upper Extremity. If you’ve never had the pleasure, an EMG is a test whereby doctors (in my case, five) cram into an exam room and shoot electricity into you for a good half an hour to determine if your nerves work.

“It’s not the most pleasant procedure,” my doctor said apologetically last week.

I’d made an appointment to see the doctor due to some recurring numbness in my left hand combined with a dull ache in my upper left arm. For my trouble she also talked me into the first flu shot I’ve had in thirty-one years on this green earth.

“You’ve got a little one now,” she said. “You don’t want to bring it home to him.”

It is surely a low blow to use one’s child against him in this way. For the next two days it felt as though someone had punched me in the Left Upper Shoulder.

Turns out it was good practice for today’s session.

One of the lab coats stuck a few sensors to my hand while another doctor was brought in to show them how to reset the computer. For the next 30 minutes they talked mostly to one another, asking which knob did what, sharing keyboard shortcuts (”so I just hit pulse twice?”), wondering why the results didn’t show up on the monitor, etc. Apparently the approach during an EMG is: crank the intensity up until you get a result or the patient can power their own appliances.

“Uh, that hurts,” I had to pipe up at one point as the dial went past 15 to 30 to 45 to 60.

“Oh yeah,” one of them laughed, “it is up kinda high.” Ha ha, good times! It felt like someone was continuously snapping a rubber band on my arm from six feet away. My hand flopped about as if in its death throes.

Finally satisfied, they all left the room to share results with the Head Honcho doctor, who returned only to zap me a few more times. Then she turned to me and said, “now they will put the needle in the muscle.”

And thank goodness, because silly me thought the unpleasantness had ended. Nope! For the next twenty minutes they stuck a needle into various spots on my arm, twisting it around as if it were a key and the corresponding keyhole was around here somewhere…

“This next spot is kinda tender,” Lab Coat said before sticking the needle into the flesh between my thumb and forefinger. “Now try to relax this hand. Heh, I know it’s tough, I got a needle in there.”

I mean we had fun today.

Last week I found a handy little snippet of PHP for Wordpress that could do exactly what I wanted. Now, instead of seeing a list of post titles, you’ll see a thumbnail of the picture/video in that post. The subject and date archives also work the same way.

Small update, but a fun one. I love that I can see all at once just how the lad has changed in three months.

I have studiously avoided Facebook because I heard it was a huge time suck, and I’d rather waste spend my time online reading news or blogs. Plus, I’ve already left a Twitter account languishing pathetically by the side of the internet. What am I doing? I’m trying to think up something amusing to write on Twitter.

But last month I caved, and so far Facebook strikes me as enjoyable and peculiar. I’m quite happy to connect with my ‘now’ friends and reconnect with the ‘whatever happened to’s. However, I’ve started receiving ‘friend’ invitations from Mylers across the globe, which just seems very sideshow-y to me. ‘And over here, a TENTFUL OF MYLERS!’ I imagine people lining up to stare at us and pay a quarter to poke us with a stick.

Seems you get out of Facebook what you put into it, and my energy level has been Twitterrific so far. I’ve yet to change my status since first logging on; “Drew got himself a new baby boy” seems like it should carry me to at least Thanksgiving, and possibly Christmas, at which time I can change it to “Drew’s baby boy is almost six months old!”

Getting a close-up of people’s personalities played out online is pretty fascinating, though — even the ones you don’t know. The other day in my news feed, I saw this gem:

“Tim became a fan of Nutella.”

Nutella! Yes! I need to know these things about people. I seriously heart the fact that someone out there loved Nutella enough to start a fan group about it, and that 541,435 people joined it. This is the kind of world I want to live in, where people find common ground through a chocolaty hazelnut spread. Drew is now thinking about Nutella.

When I returned to work a few weeks after Bennett arrived, one of my colleagues eagerly asked to hear stories.

Those of you out there with young’uns may recall differently, but in my experience there are no stories from the first month. He ate, slept, cried, pooped, peed (sometimes on me), and got a bath every few days. He didn’t do anything funny, though perhaps nothing feels funny on four hours of sleep.

That said, he has surprised me from time to time.

First, he does not hate baths, which floored me. He wailed through sponge baths as if we were wiping him down with acid. The first time we plunked him in a tub, I gritted my teeth, and what did he do? He sat there quietly, biding his time, burbling only when the water hit his head. Go figure.

He changes every week. He loves his car seat, he hates his car seat. He loves being swaddled, he hates being swaddled. He loves his pacifier, etc, etc, etc.

Less surprising are his eating habits. Sir was formidable at birth (8 lbs 15 oz) and he weighed in at 10 lbs 11oz during today’s one month checkup. Atta boy.

Of course what goes in must come out, and it frequently comes out with gusto. We refer to these audible evacuations as ‘butt explosions.’ He let one fly today just as the Doctor was discussing his admirable weight gain.

“He’s in the ninety-fifth percentile for weight,” she said, showing us the chart of national averages.

BLATT.

She blinked in surprise. “Maybe ninetieth percentile now.”

The gentleman of the manor has arrived! Bennett Anders Myler was born on Wednesday, July 23rd at 3:46pm.

He’s lucky to be so flippin’ cute because sir is a taskmaster; we change him, feed him, burp him, change, rock, try to sleep, feed, burp, feed, burp, change, try to sleep, change, feed, change… I’m fortunate to check email twice a day or sleep for 3 hours straight. Honestly it’s tougher than I thought it would be. But it’s also amazing.

I’d love to post more, but I think he knows I’ve found a pocket of free time. Quickly:

The deets:
8lbs, 15 ounces
21.5″ long
Born 3:46pm, 7/23/08

How it went down:
Renate woke me at 4:30am. Nine hours of labor and pushing later, the doctor held Bennett up for me to see. He was as blue as a blueberry, which they say is normal, and silent, which is seriously freaky. But he wailed like a banshee after they sucked the snot out of him, and a nurse pointed an oxygen line at his mouth, flushing him with a healthy pink tinge starting from his head and moving slowly to his feet.

The hardest part? Having no baseline. He’s so new that nothing is normal, and everything slightly odd is worrisome. He just ate an hour ago, how can he be hungry again? Is his umbilical cord infected? What does that scream mean? Did he seriously just pee all over himself while we were changing the previous dirty diaper?

The best part? When he opens his eyes.

More when he’s 18 and out of the house. Until then, I’m posting pics on the photoblog.

We pulled back the curtain on her new online home just in time for the media blitz. The new learnedonwomen.com runs on Wordpress as a CMS and blogging platform. I imported 4 years of posts from her hosted blog and used mod_rewrite to preserve permalinks to the existing posts and categories.

The switch from Typepad to a self-hosted blog also saves Andrea money; Typepad requires a tiered monthly subscription fee.

All in all a fun project; I really enjoy nerding out with a good Wordpress customization. Also, a fun client; attending Feist concerts makes Andrea possibly my coolest client. Oh, and that whole New York Times thing helps, too…

The first time I saw this poster, a “woop” slipped from my lips. Renate rolled her eyes.

Breastfeeding doesn’t make me uncomfortable. I’m just a bit caught off-guard by the imagery associated with the product packaging.

Honestly - you don’t see this kind of thing every day:

Back in the store yesterday, I examined diaper bags to avoid any further bouts of surprise. Can’t embarrass yourself by staring at diaper bags, right?

“You know, we’ve got some man bags in the back,” a store clerk said helpfully. I felt like I’d been discovered unwittingly browsing the women’s selection at Footlocker. “Let me get one for you. They’re more manly, they go across the chest.”

I was unaware that a cross-chest carry is more manly than over the shoulder. Might be time to subscribe to Men’s Journal.

Made of canvas and mesh, the enormous man bag looked more suitable for transporting orange cones and soccer balls to practice. The words “Daddy Bag” were glued to the flap, which seems like a potential source of ridicule; instead of ’secure-enough-to-carry-a-diaper-bag’, I’d be ’so-insecure-he-had-to-get-the-testosterone-bag’. I already have one woman rolling her eyes at me.

I thanked the clerk, handed over the bag, and wandered up front to study the ‘Horton Hears a Who’ onesies. Renate rescued me shortly thereafter.

“Ferris - he never drives it. He just rubs it with a diaper.”

When I turned 30 last September, both sides of the family kicked in to help me get a new bike as a present. Touched, I decided to wait until this spring to make the purchase; no need for the bike to sit in the garage getting creaky in the cold Chicago winter. I would take care of this gift.

Last month, after several weeks of comparison shopping, I finally bit the bullet and brought home a new hybrid road/commuter bike. It cost a bit more than I wanted to spend, but it rode so smoothly and leapt ahead like a racehorse when I’d pick up the pace. I envisioned long rides up and down the Lake Shore bike path; me and this bike, we had a bright future.

The next morning I took it for an inaugural spin, not bothering to remove the plastic wrap protecting the handlebar brake controls. I just wanted to enjoy the newness of it for a bit, like those first few days of a new pair of shoes, when they’re scuff-free and you look good.

It didn’t last; the bike was stolen out of our garage the following day.

What could I do but laugh? The answer, of course, is curse the giant turd who stole it. Then I glared at every cyclist that passed, trying to see if the bike had plastic on the handlebar brake controls. I also filed a report with the police, who informed me that the bike was probably sold for a hundred bucks within ten minutes of the theft.

I hemmed and hawed over getting a new/different/used bike. Maybe I should get something that wouldn’t cause me so much agita if it was stolen. In the end, I re-bit the bullet and replaced the bike. After all, it was the one I’d selected after much deliberation, and I knew I’d fume every time I rode the inferior choice down the street. And you should never fume and cycle.

However, now I’m overly paranoid. Instead of storing it in the garage, I keep the bike in the sunroom, secured to the futon frame.

That’s right - I’ve locked my bike to a piece of furniture INSIDE OUR APARTMENT.

“What about my jewelry?” Renate asked, bemused at my efforts. “Should we do something to protect that?”

“I already glued your jewelry to the bottom of the crib,” I replied.

I haven’t even ridden it once. What if someone knocks me over and steals the bike? IT COULD HAPPEN. For now, I’m content to just wander into the sunroom and see it standing there, unstolen, tethered to the futon (aka the bike rack). It’s very beautiful, and very cold, and no one’s allowed to touch anything.

There’s also more where that came from.

Last fall we retooled our dining room into a sitting room. Two leather chairs face the television, with a bookshelf standing nearby in case the power should go out and we need either a) entertainment, or b) fuel.

The rearrangement was a smashing success. We now spend a good portion of our evenings on those leather chairs, either engrossed in our laptops (yes, we have become those people) or watching the tube (we’ve always been those people).

We’re usually enjoying a quiet moment in these chairs when the cat wakes from a nap and comes shooting into the room, squawking as if her tail is on fire, just to let us know that she IS HERE and she IS NOT HAPPY ABOUT SOMETHING.

Now that the guest room has morphed into a nursery, the cat largely avoids it. I think she’s protesting the loss of her favorite hiding spot beneath the guest bed, or perhaps ignoring the impending reshuffling of the pecking order. (Maybe I’m alone in that.)

But then earlier this afternoon she gingerly picked her way about the room, sniffing the freshly killed rug and the drawer beneath the crib, which holds burp cloths galore, a sound machine that mimics the womb, swaddling blankets, and roughly one-third of Target’s nursery department.

I wonder how she’ll get on with the newest Myler. She once sniffed around the base of a car seat that carried a sleeping infant, but I don’t think she knew what was inside. She tolerates toddlers until they get excited, at which point she hides and we steer the child toward toys that don’t have fangs.

These days she routinely sets up shop on top of Renate’s belly for a snooze. I like to think she’s aware of the little one in there, and hopefully not trying to establish dominance from the get-go.

I can picture her reaction when we return from the hospital: the ears will go up and the eyes will widen. Upon hearing the first squawk from beneath the swaddling blankets she will slink off to hide, waiting for the right moment to remind us that she IS HERE and she IS NOT HAPPY ABOUT SOMETHING (IN PARTICULAR).