August 5 – September 8
Could a person be bored enough of Switzerland to want to come to Dubai? The answer is yes. Marietta, a good friend of ours, already paid her friendship dues by visiting us last December. While on a family visit in Geneva, she became . . . well—disenchanted with Swiss order and the timeliness of their trains. So she schlepped herself out here again to get away from it all. And what better way to celebrate in a hot and lawless place like Dubai than to visit the Movenpick Hotel (it’s a Swiss chain) and get Swiss fondue! I guess she’s still okay with the superiority of Gruyere cheese and of real Swiss chocolate, just wanted to consume them outside the manicured foothills and away from the all yodlers.
Besides the Movenpick, we just did a round-robin of all our favorite restaurants in Dubai, ending on a high note of the best chocolate mousse cake in all the world.
We also went swimming. Christian has learned to dive with daddy. . . better said, to dive ON daddy. He holds on to my shoulders and will go all the way to the bottom of the deep end to touch whatever shiny metallic fixture happens to be there. On a separate trip to the pool, Christian saw me do an underwater forward flip and asked if he could hang on for a ride. I thought it would freak him out, but he loved it! Instead of gasping for breath, his first word after resurfacing was an emphatic “Again!” so that we did a series of maybe a dozen piggy-back, underwater flips!
Just when we started getting used to the Thursday/Friday weekend, the UAE Government has decided to switch the weekend to Fridays and Saturdays (although Fridays remain the Muslim holy day). After reversing the decades-old habit of saying “Saturday” or “Sunday,” we had finally got it straight. Now, on top of switching the day names, we’ll have to get comfortable with having church services on the first day of the weekend followed by “fake Saturday”—as it used to be called in the early days of us trying to adjust. Now “fake Saturday” is really Saturday, so there is no more “fake Saturday,” only “fake Sunday” which is “real Friday” which is when we attend church services.
On Sunday, August 13th (that’s “real Sunday”) Amy went in for her 36-week check up. We asked her doctor about our options to avoid delivery of a baby over 10 pounds (many of you may remember Christian was a whopping 10 lbs. 1 oz. at delivery!). We discussed mechanical induction and chemical induction, but all of us agreed that we didn’t want to start anything too soon. A week later, the doc did a “growth scan” and saw that the baby was 3-weeks ahead of schedule by weight. In other words, he was right on target for a birth weight of sumo-wrestling proportions. Even the previously-skeptical obstetrician dialed the hospital maternity ward to schedule an induction for one week later.
Meanwhile, a friend of ours threw a baby shower for Amy (and for three—yes, three other women—in our church group who are close to delivering). Later that week, we had a smashing dinner at our favorite restaurant to celebrate Amy’s birthday. The next day, Amy’s doctor started “mechanical induction” wherein the amniotic membrane is separated from the uterine wall. Hours later we were on the road, headed for the American Hospital of Dubai.
Now, there were several aspects of this delivery that made it, by far, the best child-birthing experience. First, the obstetrician came to the hospital and was close by the entire time. (In fact, Amy was a bit beside herself since this Lebanese doctor and I started in a heated debate about U.S. foreign policy in the middle east while she was concentrating on breathing!) In the States, a mother’s doctor sometimes shows up late in the game and nurses or an unfamiliar doctor end up delivering the lad or lass. Furthermore, there is no shortage of nurses here (as there is in the US), so nurses can really devote time and attention to you alone.
But the absolute best thing about it all was 24-hour room service. Yes, when Amy was craving a turkey on wheat with mayo, mustard, lettuce and tomato with two glasses of skim milk, she got it. In fact, I didn’t know what to say when the nurse interrupted my exposition on the benefits of US action in Iraq and asked if I wanted anything: a burger, pasta, a sandwich . . . ! (Amy was none too pleased that, first, I was discussing politics with her obstetrician while she was in labor and then ordered food, too.) Anyway, the delivery went very well and we all knew immediately that Amy’s mother won the naming contest: the name we had chosen for him, Cyrus Aaron, suits his look.
On the down side, Cyrus took a bad turn about an hour after arrival. His breathing rate was too rapid and he was expending every shred of energy just to pump air in and out. His lungs were fully developed and there was only a small risk of pneumonia or another infection. Still, he had to stay in the neonatal intensive care unit for observation for a week. We experienced a taste of the burden that many parents deal with of not being able to hold, nurse, or cuddle the cute little guy. He was under an oxygen tent for the first few days and was hooked up to a number of wires and monitors. Thankfully, his 8 pounds-plus of bulk made him by far the biggest kid in NICU and probably helped him get over whatever it was that was bothering him.
We brought Cy home, and the boys took right to him. We have some gorgeous video footage of the two of them taking turns giving Cyrus kisses. (This footage did follow a very clear lecture laying out the ground rules of having a baby brother around, but Henny and moreso Christian both got the idea.) Henny squeals with delight whenever Cyrus is around, and Christian insists on waving hello to him and figuring out why he doesn’t just say what’s on his mind.
And speaking of the two newest Bangerter brothers, they’re doing some very cute things themselves these days. Christian wears a Batman mask about 50% of his waking hours. Thankfully, there doesn’t appear to be any identity crisis, but he does insist on being called Batman when he’s wearing the mask. It’s hard not to smile when he says, “I’m not Christian, I’m Batman,” but that could have more to do with the Charlie Brown blanket tied around his neck as a cape or the dark socks and white sneakers he’s wearing or that he may or may not have pants on at the time he says this.
Henry is on the brink of starting a real vocabulary. Amy and I have each heard him say full sentences, though neither of us was around to confirm the other’s outrageous claim: I reported to Amy that Henry had said, “I like pasta,” while Amy reported that (while no one else was around, of course), he had said, “Wherein the differentiation of paternalistic orders of societal organizations recuses itself, concomitant institutions of wealth adduce vituperation.” Well, as you can imagine, we didn’t know how to respond. He does call all beverages “joo,” all adults “dada,” and definitely learned “mama” while she was in the hospital. Apparently, he woke up every morning, walked into the empty master bedroom and said, “Mama.”
Well, Cy is the best baby we’ve had so far. He sleeps for several hours at a time (unlike Henry did) and consumes an average amount of food each feeding (unlike Christian did). He’s doing what a text-book baby should do: eat, sleep, and—well, you know the rest. We’re not sure how to get new baby pictures up on the blogsite, so we’ll be sending them out to you via email. Let us know if you don’t want your inbox crowded with pictures of somebody else’s kid.
“For a diplomat, you’re not a very good liar.”
“I haven’t risen very high.”
--The Constant Gardner