It's all fun and games until...

Babe-O knows quite a few words by now. One of them, it turns out, is "fart."

She learned this from her mother.

Anyway, not only does she know what a fart is, she has also picked up on a universal truth: farts are funny.

Last night she was screaming bloody murder as I tried to put her on the potty and I was just about to write her off as inconsolable when I accidentally ripped one. At a little slower than the speed of sound (and a little faster than the speed of smell), Babe-O went from screaming to laughing.

A few seconds later she was doing her business on the potty and a few seconds after that, we were done and getting her dressed again. Brilliant.

Of course now it's only a matter of time before I try to console the baby and end up shitting myself.

How many boobs in a quart?

Tonight Amy needed to do some shopping/decompressing, so Babe-O and I were left to our own devices for bedtime. We knew this has a chance to get ugly, as the little one breastfeeds twice a day: first thing in the morning and right before bed.

It's been a while since I've done the bedtime routine solo, but as I remember, I'm a consistent disappointment in the nursing department.

So here's how it went down.

Amy left. I put Babe-O in the bath. So far so good.

After the bath I blowdryed her hair and got her dressed for bed.

Then we went downstairs and I picked out a drinking glass that looked like it would hold about as much milk as one boob. We filled it up with the organic whole milk that Babe-O drinks and we headed upstairs.

I cleared the bed off, shut the lights off, turned on the TV, and then grabbed Amy's nursing pillow and wrapped it around my waist. Babe-O crawled right over, I plopped her on her butt on top of the pillow, and held up the glass with a drinking straw in it.

She took a long drink, draining the whole thing in one stretch. Then I rolled her onto the bed next to me and shut off the TV. After that, Babe-O sat up, laid down, sat up, laid down, and then finally crashed out on top of her favorite fuzzy blanket.

I build her standard protective pillow fortress along the edges of the bed so that she wouldn't roll off and went downstairs to get some work done. In case you're wondering, THAT my friends, is how it's done.

Babe-O's on the Move

Babe-O had been taking her time learning to walk, but we had a feeling that she would be about ready to take off around Thanksgiving. I had been working with her in her playroom, pretty much just holding her at arm's length and letting her take the three or four steps it took to stumble over to me.

She got pretty good at that and was eventually able to navigate about ten excited steps in a row to get all the way across the room. In our experience so far, she makes huge developmental leaps when we're travelling, so we were expecting to be able to unveil her walking skills while we were in Kentucky for the holiday.

Sure enough, it was even more straightforward than we imagined.

When we got to my aunt and uncle's place, we placed her on her two feet on the floor and she immediately took off. That was that, she was off and running.

What was odd is that there wasn't really any intermediate stage. Once she took those first dozen steps in a row, she took the house over, going wherever she wanted and following the rest of us around. It was impressive.

She's been getting better and better ever since.

Tonight we played hide and seek. I would scamper down the hall on my hands and knees while Babe-O shrieked and chased after me with surprising speed. When I pop out around the corner she'll scream and laugh. It's a lot of fun.

So anyway, now when we're in a grocery store or someplace, she's quick and confident enough to toddle along, provided we aren't in any great hurry.

On the downside, she can get into anything, has no fear of stairs and our cat is a bit of an asshole, taking obvious delight in knocking her over every chance he gets.

The moral of the story is that our girl finally got her wheels. And she rules.

How to Fix a Wet Cell Phone (Really!)

So this is the last photo I took using my BlackBerry. It might not be obvious at a glance, but it shows a glorious moment in time as the phone traveled from my hand to the bottom of Babe-O's bath.

She was being damn adorable in the tub and I pulled my phone out to grab a picture. Babe-O, seeing the phone, decided to show off her latest trick, where she spreads her arms out to each side and flings herself backwards: cute in a big cushy bed, not so much in a full bathtub.

My arms shot out and grabbed her before she went under the water and/or smacked her head, apparently letting the phone fly along the way. It sank to the bottom and sat there for a good ten or fifteen seconds before I got the little one straightened out and sitting upright again.

Not sure what the odds of this are, but just the other day, I saw a commercial for some new quiz show type deal. The question they showed asked how to save a cell phone that's been soaked. The answer was to put it in a bowl of dry white rice.

So I did. I took the back off, pulled the battery out, and put all the pieces into a bowl of rice. The next morning I turned the phone on. It struggled for about two minutes with the little hourglass spinning around and then fired right up.

There's a little condensation still on the inside of the glass, but other than that, good as new. (And, to be honest, it already had condensation under the glass from a few weeks ago when I spilled my water bottle all over it in the middle of the night.)

Yesterday was a really crummy day for me and the phone thing was the icing on the cake. Can't tell you what a good feeling it is to catch a goofy break and not be shelling out of a new one right now.

Dad's Night In

It’s just me at the house tonight, which is rare. 

Amy and Babe-O are out visiting an old friend of Amy’s and I’m here with the dogs.

I kicked it off by making a feast of turkey dinner leftovers and now I’m stuffed silly sitting in front of the computer.  The whole thing is pretty cathartic, since I was super stressed all day at work.  After unwinding a little bit now I’m getting down to work, trying to accomplish some things while I’ve got the place to myself: caught up on some client correspondence, set up interviews with contacts for a couple of magazine articles I’m working on, and dug through my webmail to get some files together in the wake up my PC crash.

(Did I mention I had a PC crash?  A bad one.  It sucked.)

So now I’m in the super quiet house flying through work and decompressing at the same time.  One more work day this week and I’m on the road for Thanksgiving travels.  Tomorrow will be rough – more frantic work at the office and a bunch of freelance stuff that is just coming together ahead of deadline, but once on the road all should be will.

Wish me luck.  This time tomorrow night I should be in the home stretch.

Three Slices of Bread

I'm pretty good about my standing lunch date with Babe-O. Almost on par with the bathtime thing, I probably only miss lunch with her for whatever reason about once a month.

Today I was making our usual: peanut butter and jelly for me and just peanut butter for her.

Between plopping the stuff on the counter, giving Babe-O a high five, and walking over to get a knife, I noticed something.

It was the little stack of bread waiting to become sandwiches. Three slices. Two for my sandwich and one for Babe-O's half sandwich.

Someday, she'll eat a whole sandwich by herself. Then the stack will grow to four slices. After that, she'll probably start eating at school or something and our lunchtimes will be few and far between.

But right now, she's my little girl who eats half a sandwich.

And I know that any time I ever see three slices of bread, I'll smile.

Democracy!

I guess you could say it began with a dream. Well, not so much a dream, as a thought. And a pretty random one at that.

It was a long time ago and Amy was holding Babe-O as she shuffled through the line forming in a small gym attached to the elementary school by our house. It was election day and I was at the office.

Inspired by the impassioned campaigns of local businesspeople competing for positions in city and county government during a congressional off-year, she and I had discussed the possibility of having me run for office one day.

Finally to the front of the line, Amy checked off the appropriate boxes on the electronic voting machine until she got to the final selection – Judge of Elections, a position for which not a single person seemed to be running.

It was at that moment that a campaign was born. Amy wrote my name on the empty line and quickly submitted her votes. The polls would be closing soon and there was work to be done.

She immediately drove home and established an impromptu call center in the house, our modestly decorated living room now a full-scale campaign war room consisting of no less than one phone and volunteers from all walks of life: Babe-O, the dogs, a reluctant cat who agreed not to interfere in exchange for political favors to be determined down the line.

Amy reached out to everyone she could think of that (A) had not already voted and (B) was a member of our immediate family. Unfortunately, that was really just me.

She called me as I drove to the polling place and let me know that I was running for office this year. Always the last to know this sort of thing, I agreed to vote for our man, er, me. And that I did.

At that point, with just hours left to vote, informal exit polling indicated that of three people polled, one was seventeen years too young to vote and the other two had voted for me.

It seems that outside of those two shoe-in votes, we had no public support. We had done our duty, though…not only did we vote for the candidates and causes that we believed in but we threw a hat in the ring ourselves.

It was a good feeling. Democracy at its best – and most local. Right away we started thinking about the next election year and the possibilities to swing for the fences with a more robust campaign. 2010 is going to be an exciting one.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Today I got a letter from the clerk of elections indicating that I won a write-in campaign for Judge of Elections, besting the competition presumably by one vote.

Looks like Babe-O is going to be the first daughter of Elections next year.

Weekend with Nana

Our house is a work in progress. That said, we have a guestroom, but at the moment it is a staging area for rooms that we are working on. Or, less kindly, it's filthy and full of junk. We know my Mom was going to be stopping by over the weekend while she was travelling for business, so our goal was to have the room together in time for the visit. Needless to say, the timing didn't cooperate, mostly due to Amy, Babe-O, and me taking turns being sick recently.

So...fast-forward because this is getting boring...we bought an air ma tress and set it up in the nursery. If we had a little more time to prepare, we probably would have bricked up the future guestroom and forgotten about it all together.

Luckily, Nana's a trooper and was fine with the plan. She showed up yesterday in time for breakfast. She brought a great present for Babe-O: a bunch of stuffed dinosaurs inside a big soft dinosaur cave. You normally wouldn't think of something like that for a little girl, but Nana like it and was note even aware that Babe-O happens to think dinosaurs are really cool. She loved the thing and did much roaring and shaking of her little pretend T-Rex arms.

We had a great multi-generational weekend together and Babe-O clearly enjoyed spending time with her Nana. Plus, I got an air mattress out of the deal, which means I have a squishy place to sleep considering that Babe-O's sickie butt is still occupying my side of the bed.

Speaking of which, I'm still a little sick and will be going to bed super early tonight in hopes of hitting the ground running on Monday morning. Oh, and my computer is completely fried and won't boot up, so I'm a little bit crippled in that respect right now, too.

Hi, I'm a PC. And I'm pissed.

The Problem with Princesshood

Babe-O has this great, insulated stainless steel cup. She loves the thing and drinks more water out of it that we could ever get her to with other cups or glasses. It’s pink, which is fine, but it also has princesses all over it.

I’m happy to say that it’s one of few princess things that she owns, because princess crap drives me up the wall.

What the hell kind of message is that to send to a little girl? First of all, it implies that the best way to be a beautiful, stylish, wealthy person is to be born into it. Second, even if that was the message we wanted our girl taking to heart, let’s face it, Babe-O clearly missed the boat on being born into fame and fortune (sorry about that, kiddo).

Even if you want to be stereotypical about things, at least boys have better messages: Become a great athlete and make a million dollars. Chew Skoal and race Nascar. Grow a mustache and become a fireman. The list goes on…but at least it’s proactive.

Girls on the other hand are told from the very beginning that they should either (A) be the daughter of someone important and flit around like a Hilton sister or (B) be born to modest means and strive to be attractive enough to marry some rich douche (and flit around like a Hilton sister).

It bugs the hell out of me. That’s why for the next 30 years I’ll consider it my job to remind Babe-O that she kicks serious ass all by herself and that I’ll be happy to tell Prince Charming where he can stick that glass slipper.

THURSDAY UPDATE: Piggy Flu 2009

Allright, long story short: Amy has been feeling crummy and Babe-O has been back and forth between feverish and merely snotty. Regardless, her (Babe-O’s) spirits have been reasonably high throughout –a trooper she clearly is. Plus Amy has been awesome in taking care of the little one while letting me sleep the bejeesus out of myself on the couch as needed.

This morning, no longer satisfied with battling sick with sleep, I took a two Advil, two Mucinex, and two sinus pills before leaving for work. By lunchtime, I was downright manic and was pretty much crawling out of my skin from the drugs. And by the way, Mucinex claims to be an “expectorant and suppressant.” How the hell can it be both? If it’s doing one it isn’t doing the other.

Either way, I was pretty strung out by the time I got home and was happy to get away from the computer for a while and hang with Babe-O. We roughhoused in her playroom for a while and she was laughing like a maniac despite having a nose running so badly that even her cushy wipes were drawing blood (poor kid).

Right now, the little one is upstairs with Amy, hopefully drifting off to sleep while I get some work done downstairs before turning in early myself.

We’re still planning on seeing my Mom this weekend, so the goal is still to get us all ship shape by Saturday. We’ll see how that goes.

MONDAY UPDATE: Piggy Flu 2009

Today I was sick.  Slept most of the day, worked a little bit, then ate too much Papa Johns.

Babe-O was in good spirits all day long and took a decent nap in her car seat while I worked on my laptop in the car until the battery died (laptop battery, not car battery).

Now she’s sleeping and sounds crappy again, though is now in our bedroom, which thanks to our new vaporizer is humid as hell.

Now it is barely nine o’clock, I’ve made one last pass through my work e-mail so that it doesn’t kick me in the face when I get to the office in the morning.  Going to bed now, on the couch, hopefully falling asleep fast and staying asleep long.

My Mom is in town this weekend, so the goal is to (1) have everyone healthy by then and (2) have most of the tissues and baby snot rags cleaned up. Other than that, no promises.

SUNDAY UPDATE: Piggy Flu 2009

Babe-O slept pretty well last night, or so I’m told. I slept downstairs with the cat (both dogs apparently tired of sharing a couch with me as I get more stuffed up and fidgety at night).

I barely heard a peep from upstairs until morning, when the little one was waking up. Last night we picked up a vaporizer of some kind that shot steam in the general direction of our bed, which seems to have helped everyone lucky enough to sleep in our bed.

We had breakfast and then Amy started putting together some home-made chicken noodle soup, just in case someone decides to turn our sick and snotty family into a Norman Rockwell painting.

The soup turned out awesome, so we dug in before breakfast has even settled and I’ll admit that it helped. Too bad that Babe-O wanted nothing to do with it aside from picking out pits of carrot and throwing them to the dogs.

As of lunchtime, Babe-O is clearly sick but still acting more like she has a cold and less like she has Wilbur Fever. Amy seems under the weather, but is in a good enough mood, which is an excellent sign considering that she is not known for being a trooper when sick (Childbirth? No sweat. Head cold? Watch out.).

As for me, my ongoing morning sore throat has now lasted until noon and I’ve definitely got a head cold going on. If anyone is placing bets out there, I’d give about 3:1 that the two girls are going to bounce back in the next day or so and I’m going to get hit by a dump truck driven by Porky Pig. Just a thought.

Pig flu or not, I’m expecting all three of us to be at least a little under the weather for the next couple of days. I’m hoping to medicate myself into oblivion beginning tomorrow morning, because I work in the largest office in town and if I so much as sniffle at work they’re going to roll me up in a carpet and throw me on the sidewalk. Most years there’s enough flu vaccine available to cover everyone in the company…this year not so much, for swine flu or seasonal flu.

(By the way, I love that they displaced seasonal flu vaccine production to accommodate swine flu vaccine production and now they don’t have enough of either to go around, unless the patient is 85 years old, asthmatic, and pregnant. Or works at Goldman Sachs.).

UPDATE: Piggy Flu 2009

[Warning: this post tapped out on tiny blackberry keyboard. Not responsible for poor spelling or inadvertently suggestive typos.]

This morning I woke up very disoriented because it was 9 am and very bright out...a good four hours after I usually get up. So either i'm getting a little ill myself or my body just took advantage of being able to sleep without being responsible for naby duty, as Babe-O was sleeping with Amy for the night in our bed.

When the little one woke up she was very snotty and quite warm, but in great spirits, the little trooper. Her face was all snotty and her eyes were puffy. I made her some eggs and it seemed like she was doing okay.

Now we are out running some errands and she is getting some good daytime sleep in her car seat while I sit next to her in various parking lots, writing blog posts and wishing that my blackberry had a full keyboard (hand cramps!).

At this point we are still crossing our fingers that Babe-O has a bad cold and not the gentile flu.
The doc said that If it was going to get bad it was going to get bad in the next day or so, so we'll see.

In the meantime, there is a lot of snot wiping going on. Here's a tip: skip tissues, use cloth diaper wipes. That are very kind to small noses and instead of carrying 87 wadded up disgusting tissues in your pocket, you can just carry one or two wadded up disgusting baby snot rags in your pocket. (Plus it's eco-friendly. Did you know that it takes 300 years for a disposable tissue to decompose underneath the passenger seat of your car? My lease will be up by then!)

[One final programming note: you may object to the fact that it seems at this point that Babe-O has a common cold, yet I still titled this post "Piggy Flu 2009." Please remember that (1) Babe-O's first real illness is unfolding in the context of the swine flu scare and (2) I'm competing with the 24 hour cable news cycle here, so let's get reactionary, people!]

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Gettin' piggy with it (Part II)

(continued from Part I)

The doctor checked Babe-O out, looking in her ears, nose, mouth, and elsewhere. Then, he apparently forgot his lines.

This was the part where he was supposed to say “Awww c’mon you overprotective parents, she has a cold and will be fine in a few days now get the hell out of my office.”

But that’s not what he said.

Instead, we got “mmmmm…probably 50/50” (chance of swine flu, that is).

He went on to tell us that in the next 48 hours she would either continue to have cold symptoms that would clear up in a few days OR she would get very sick, very fast – runny nose, cough, wheeze, high fever, dehydrated, inconsolable.

As of this evening, Babe-O was a little worse for the wear. She’s generally in good spirits but during her bedtime routine she ended up really upset, probably as upset as she ever gets, more than once. She definitely doesn’t feel just right.

Amy finally got her to sleep upstairs in our bed, so as not to rock the boat I am getting ready to crash out downstairs on the couch with the pets, which isn’t that bad at all.

I guess the next day or two should give us more information. Stay tuned to see how it goes.

Gettin' piggy with it (Part I)

I guess it started today at about 4 a.m. when a slightly under-the-weather Babe-O was up crying. Since she wasn’t feeling well when I put her to bed, instead of trying to soothe her back to sleep, I just brought her to our bed to sleep with Amy (who has also been feeling a little sick). The arrangement didn’t leave much room for me, so I went downstairs.

Thanks to the programmable thermostat, the downstairs is damn freezing in the middle of the night. I was only wearing gym shorts and flip flops and didn’t want to go back to our bedroom for fear of waking the baby. Lucky for me, within a few seconds, I had a big warm dog curled up on my feet. Followed by a little warm dog in the crook of my knees with her head on my back and, last but not least, a cat of unusual size sleeping on my shoulder and a good portion of my head.

Shivering solved.

Actually, I was cozy enough that I slept into the morning, blowing by gym time and only waking up a little after seven when the first school bus dieseled past the house.

A few hours later I was at the office doing whatever it is I do at the office when Amy called. The baby woke up more sick than when she went to bed and we decided to get her into the doctor. She wasn’t necessarily sick enough to take to the doctor, but if she got any worse over the weekend, we’d have to take her to Urgent Care, which at this point is probably a retail-zoned swine flu petri dish.

Luckily the doctor was able to squeeze us in, I went and picked up the girls, and we headed to the appointment.

We were only in the waiting room for a few minutes and several people came out wearing surgical masks, which I thought you only had to wear if you were either (A) in surgery or (B) a celebrity douchebag honeymooning in Mexico. Whenever I see someone wearing a surgical mask in public I’m always a little surprised that they aren’t also wearing a tin foil hat – it’s kind of an ensemble.

Not gonna lie. I’m getting a little longwinded here and this is taking way longer than it should. Going to grab some sleep now. So, as they say:

To be continued…

And tonight...we blow dry.

The little lady is getting dangerously close to first haircut territory.  She was born with quite a lot of hair, but so far all of the growing has been dedicated to filling in the little bald spot that used to be on the back of her head.  Only now is she beginning to get some length. 

In fact, when it lays just right, she has about eleven hairs that can hang down as low as her eyes.  As the resident baby-washer, I’ve recently had to add the blow dryer to the bedtime routine.  Rather than just giving her the quick towel head scruffle like I used to, now we head to the bathroom and do a little warm blowdrying and combing before bed.

Babe-O seems to prefer it to getting brushed with wet hair in her bedroom, so it is a nice little addition to our bedtime routine.

She shakes her head back and forth to bask in the warm air and I use one of her mom’s brushes to get all of her hair pointed in a similar direction. 

In the past, I was pretty hit and miss with the hair style and she would occasionally end up going to bed with a little baby combover.  My success rate is improving now that the hair dryer is involved. 

What’s next?  Who knows.  I might even start combing my own hair one of these days.

 

Confused in the dark. Again.

Here's an excerpt from my old pregnancy blog, Who are you (and what are you doing in my wife)?. This comes out of a post about the day we brought the pack'n'play home.

...a few hours later, I woke up (as usual) to one of three dogs scratching to go outside in the middle of the night, which (as usual) I sleepily obliged. While the dogs went out to do their thing, I puttered around the living room until the pack'n'play caught my eye. In my late night stupor, I had forgotten all about the thing and it was very disorienting to come face to face with it. My 2 a.m. amnesia kept me from remembering where it had come from and I wasn't entirely sure whether or not we had at some point come home from the hospital with Ava and that she was now lying inside of this strange thing. A few seconds later – less disoriented – I had my bearings and remembered what was going on.

But even then, there was the pack'n'play – a big plastic shrine to the baby gods – resting there in the moonlight.

Like the first time I really noticed BabyCar's protruding belly or felt Ava kick, it was one of those baby reality checks. She's coming. And she'll go in the pack'n'play.

Well last night, I was up with Babe-O at about three in the morning (give or take, thanks to daylight savings time). We were taking our usual comforting walk around downstairs and I almost stumbled over something in the middle of the living room. It was about three feet high and maybe a foot wide, sort of like a tiny version of the obelisk from the 2001 movie or a recessionary Stonehenge. I really had no clue what the thing was and sort of paced around it in circles holding Babe-O trying to decide if I should be concerned.

Then it moved. Fast.

And screamed. Loud.

I almost woke Babe-O up as I stumbled back, thoroughly freaked out at what at that point I was convinced was a crafty dwarf that had Trojan-horsed his way into the house disguised as a UPS package or something. Thankfully that line of thinking went full circle in about a second and a half and my brain finally caught up to what was happening. The strange container was the pack'n'play, which we had just packed up to put in storage.

The moving and screaming was the cat, who was probably pissed that we had packed up what had recently become his primary sleeping place.

Anyway, this was really just a dramatic and complicated way to say that we packed the pack'n'play up for what may be the last time. Over the last fourteen months, it has filled in as Babe-O's living room crib, served as a playpen/babycage, and traveled with us all over the place to give the kid a familiar place to sleep wherever we went. It served us well and now it'll off to storage and then -- perhaps -- to eBay. From that first night encountering the pack'n'play while Amy was still pregnant to last night, just another dad up late with a fussy baby...another piece of the whole story comes full circle.

I know it's a cliché, but that doesn't make it untrue: it goes fast.

Ain't No Potty Like a Big Girl Potty 'cause the Big Girl Potty Don't Stop

We’ve been putting Babe-O on the toilet pretty much since she was big enough to do it without fear of accidently flushing the kid (remember the Lindbergh baby?). We started doing it after I very scientifically realized that every night before her bath, when the cool air hit her warm butt, she’d pee all over me. So we started putting her right on the toilet and she quickly got the idea that peeing in the potty is a good thing.

After a while, we stepped it up a notch and got her a little potty seat that allowed her to sit on there by herself. The seat is covered in pictures of Elmo is scuba diving, which is a bit of a strange mental image when you consider the context.

Babe-O doesn’t use a ton of words yet, but she has learned to make it known when she needs to poop. Today was a typical example as she and I were playing and she stopped what she was doing, grunted, and pointed at her diaper. I took her to the toilet, she dumped one in the money hole, and we went about our business.

That’s how it’s done.

And we very, very rarely need to change a pooped-in diaper. Maybe once every two weeks.

We’re not quite as on top of the pee situation, but she’s starting to understand the subtleties there, too.

Either way, this kid is excreting at about a first grade level.

A prodigy? I think so.

Happy Halloween

Tonight was Trick or Treat night in the little town where Amy’s parents live, so we took Babe-O out there to make the rounds.  She is just over a year old, so she is really at the height of Halloween costume cuteness, particularly as she toddled around in her ladybug suit.

Babe-O is also young enough that it is tricky to guess how she’s going to react to crazy situations like staying up past her bed time to panhandle door to door dressed like an insect.  No worries, though, she loved it.  After about two houses she figured out the protocol and began charging up the sidewalk grinning on the way to the candy buckets.  She had a tiny felt treat bag that she would wave wildly in one hand while hanging on to Amy or me for balance with the other.

We only did about a dozen houses and spent a little bit of time hanging out with Amy’s family and then headed home.  It was an excellent dry run for this weekend, when we’ll do Trick or Treat in our own neighborhood.

Once we got home, Babe-O was obviously pooped so we pretty much took her right up to bed.  And, for the record, holy crap what an adorable kid.  Just as she started getting sleepy, she put her arms out and reached for Amy.  Amy picked her up, and Babe-O slumped over her shoulder.  Then Babe-O, completely sleepy and eyes shut tight, started to pull her head back, kiss her mom, and put her head back down.  She did this four or five times and then laid down in the bed, now just barely awake.  She snuggled up with her baby blanket, which she lifted up and down for a few quick rounds of silent peek-a-boo before she drifted off.

Between the two very beautiful girls doting on each other and the sleepy acts of affection from the little one, it was one of the nicest things I’ve ever seen. 

The wrong side of the bed, apparently

Yesterday pretty much sucked.

 

Still, last night I got some work done and was quite happy as I settled into bed a little after midnight, tired, but looking forward to a high quality Wednesday.  Here’s how it went down from there:

 

Babe-O slept through the night, which is rare.  Usually good news, but this time caused some trouble.  First of all, I was sleeping so soundly by morning that I didn’t bat an eye when my cell phone alarm went off at 5 a.m.  So at 6:30 (the hour also known as way to late to make it to the gym before work) when Babe-O woke up fussing, I was immediately miffed that I had overslept and angrily shut off my apparently persistent cell phone buzz, which had been going strong for an hour and a half.

 

Then I started to get up to get Babe-O from her crib.  I swung my legs over the side of the bed and landed with the usual sleepy Jedi precision squarely inside of my black Nike sport sandals, narrowly avoiding direct contact with the cold-in-the-morning bamboo floor.  When I took that first step towards the bedroom door, my foot slid wildly out from under me and I landed with a thump on the floor next to what I would later identify as an extremely slippery puddle of dog vomit.

 

From there I went to get Babe-O, stuck her in bed with Amy, and build the usual little pillow fortress along my side of the bed so that she doesn’t roll off onto the floor (because, you know, that’s where we keep the dog vomit).  After that, things started looking up a bit.  But based on that first minute or two of the day, Wednesday might have shaped up to be an ugly one.

 

Oh yeah.  I did clean up the dog vomit before I left.  I also gave both of the dogs some dedicated attention for a while, as at least one of them, I assume, has the swine flu.

 

 

 

Bad and badder (but which is which?)

Today I had a really crappy day at work.  I was scrambling to deliver a project and had to work through lunch, which is something I almost never do.  No matter how busy things are, I’ll generally bring work home with me before I’ll skip seeing Babe-O at lunchtime. 

 

Anyway, today I had to skip seeing Babe-O at lunch.  And it turned out that today was a crummy day for that.  That’s because, back on the home front, Amy was having a really rough day with the baby, who was being generally difficult to please.  After all, my lunchtime pop-in is as much to give Mom-O a break as it is to give Babe-O her lunch.

 

Basically, I spent the day getting myself completely stressed out and Amy spent the day getting completely stressed out by the cranky kid.  So when I walked in the door, I was completely at the end of my rope, as was Amy.  I grabbed a beer and – since my stress wasn’t child related – took over baby duty for the night.  Finally, in the kind of small favor that makes it possible to get through the day, Babe-O went quickly to sleep right after her bath.

 

That little piece of good news turned out to be enough to get us grinning like idiots as we finish up the day and try to get some work done around the house.

 

As for the question at hand:

 

Who had the crappier day, Josh with work stress or Amy with baby stress?

 

Yes.  Absolutely.  By a mile.

Unstoppable

There I was, five minutes ago, just settling into bed and working on a guest blog post for www.makesmomhappy.com.  Using an uncanny ability (shared by her mother) to sense when my butt is just settling into something comfy, Babe-O started to cry.  So off I went.  I scooped her up (she was sitting up in her crib, fussing loudly) and took her downstairs, as is our routine.  We walked back and forth for about two minutes and then I plopped her back into her crib.  Thanks to the creaky floor, she immediately woke up again when I tried to make my escape, but after a few quick pats on her bottom, she was sleeping soundly once again, this time enough for me to sneak out into the hallway.

 

So here I am, back in bed, sleeping baby, getting some work done.  Like I said.  Unstoppable.

Early (rude) awakening

Lately I’ve been feeling pretty good about my level of fitness following my jogging stroller runs with Babe-O.  Most days it would be a race-pace 5k and my times were generally good, even though I haven’t done any serious training in years.

 

Today, I got up in the morning around five, moved Babe-O from her crib to out bed, and hit the gym.  I jumped on the treadmill, cranked it up to around the pace I’d been running on the road and set it for thirty minutes.  About ten minutes in, I realized something was up. 

 

I was seriously winded, pretty queasy, and despite moving at close to top cruising speed, waaaay off pace.

 

Then it hit me.  I’d been basing my workouts on the odometer built into Babe-O’s stroller.  And as it turns out, the odometer built into Babe-O’s stroller is (apparently) way, way off.

 

Thirty minutes later, owchiwawa.  My legs ached, my lungs burned, and I’m pretty sure I had a mid-sized aneurism at the 18 minute mark.  I guzzled some water, took a long shower, and went to work.

 

Looks like getting back into shape isn’t going to be quite as easy as it might have seemed.

A good night

Driving home with Amy and a sleeping baby tonight, I ended up with a really bad headache that stuck around after we got home (and in fact, is still sticking around as I type). I was getting kind of bummed because it has been cramping my Sunday routine, but then I had a thought.

We were just in the last few miles of a return trip, driving on a very dark, two lane road at about 50 mph. A very nice-sized buck started to dart across the road.

I hit the brakes, keeping one eye on the buck and another eye on the asshole I had noticed just a few minutes ago to be tailgating me pretty badly. The buck made it halfway into the road and I let off the brakes as I saw him turn to run alongside us, which gave Dr. Ride-My-Bumper just enough room to keep from slamming into the back of us. I drifted over onto the shoulder so that the buck head some more room, now thankfully thinking “$500 deductible if he decides to get personal with the driver’s side of my car” instead of the much more intense “holy shit, don’t wreck” that was going through my mind a few seconds before.

About a mile later, another much smaller deer darted across the road, going from guardrail to guardrail in about two bounds. This time we just slowed down enough to be sure that it was running alone.

Then, about a half mile from home in a residential area, out popped one more, this time a very small buck that made it across just like the previous one.

I am going somewhere with this:

Any one of these three animals (not to mention any others that were running around out there in the darkness) could have really screwed up our night. It could have been as bad as a deer coming through the windshield and causing a really serious wreck or as relatively minor as getting sideswiped and picking up a hefty repair bill. Either way, whether we ended up with cosmetic damage or stranded in the woods with a wrecked Subaru and no cell service, it could have been a much crappier night that it was.

Any automotive mishap I’ve ever had – accident, ticket, whatever – I always went to bed thinking “man, this day really wouldn’t have sucked if that hadn’t happened.” Well tonight, it didn’t happen. And I’ll go on record with automotive karma and say that I’m really thankful that it didn’t.

I still have a headache. And a touch of sore throat that just might be the piggy flu.

But that’s okay. It was a good night.

...at the Y-M-C-A

We joined the Y the other day, which gives us access to a handful of the various Y locations around town. We joined downtown, but yesterday got to check out a newer location closer to our house. I'm loving having access to the stuff (including childcare).

This time out, I played with Babe-O in the pool while Mom-O swam laps in the lap pool. Mom-O hasn't trained in a while, so she didn't spend a ton of time doing laps, but it was more than enough time for Babe-O to splash around and have a good time.

She has started to enjoy perching on her butt on the edge of the pool and then jumping off into the water...pretty impressive as far as I'm concerned, especially considering that I was about 14 before I had the guts to do that (I'm not much of a swimmer. Have been around water and watersports all my life, but never learned to swim beyond what you need to keep from drowning.)

Anyway, it was a great time and we'll be back there often.

One downside to this particular YMCA: very odd locker room layout. Let's just say that there are lots of unmarked doors and it isn't hard to imagine how one might find themselves marching buck-ass naked into the family swimming area. So yeah, I'll watch out for that.

A very quick reflection on 3 a.m.

Super-frustrating combination:

1. Very tired.

2. Baby sleeping in her crib but ready to immediately scream if you stop patting her bottom.

3. Really having to pee.

Dad-O is Flab-O

When my wife and I first met, I was in really, really good shape.

In retrospect, that sucks. Because over the years, she hasn't forgotten.

She'll be the first to tell you that my property value has declined a bit in the last few years.

And let's face it, I'm a little bit grossed out, too, especially when I'm winded going up a few flights of stairs that I used to be able to tackle with a dude clinging to my back.

So with our brand-spanking new YMCA membership now official, I'm going to see if I can recommit to being a fit guy. Besides, I'd like to clean myself up a bit before Babe-O knows the difference. That's me over there, evidently hovering right between overweight and normal, which believe it or not works out to being about 40 pounds heavier than I was in college. I'm not sure if I'll keep up with the Wii Fit thing regularly, but I figured I'd at least use it to keep track of my progress. It doesn't help that I had to pull batteries out of every device in the house to get the remote and balance board up and running after much disuse (141 days, according to the Wii).

Wish me luck

Rough Night, Rougher Morning (and Dad Rule #9)

Okay, last night was rough.

 

Babe-O has some molars coming in and they are obviously causing her much pain.  When I put her in her crib, she was out cold after swimming earlier in the day and I was sort of expecting an easy night.

 

Dad Rule #9: Don’t expect an easy night.  The universe resents that and will make you pay.

 

It was about one in the morning when she first woke up crying.  In late-night TV time, it was Craig Ferguson hour.

 

I went and got her and she pretty much immediately slumped over on my shoulder and went back to sleep.  I rocked her for a bit and put her back in the crib, where she immediately started crying.  We repeated this exercise a few times, until I finally gave up on that and went downstairs with her and started walking in circles to soothe her into a deeper sleep.  If I stopped walking, she’d cry.  If I sat down, she’d cry.  If my nose itched and I moved my hand from her back, she’d cry. 

 

I was really tired, so I was forcing myself to walk for another ten minutes once she fell asleep again.  Every time I walked through the kitchen on my little circular route, I’d glance at the clock on the microwave (1:35, 1:35, 1:35, 1:35, 1:35, 1:35, 1:35, 1:36, 1:36…).  I can’t even tell you how long it felt like it took.  Once I hit my completely arbitrary ten-minute mark, I went back upstairs and laid her down in her crib again.  Still sleeping.

 

I stepped away from the crib and the floor – just like it always does – creaked. 

 

Immediate, hysterical, gasping-for-breath crying.

 

Shit.  I scooped her up again and tried to rock her back to sleep.  More crying.  Screaming.  Getting worse.

 

Back downstairs.

 

Back to doing laps around the kitchen (1:50, 1:50, 1:50), which got her back to sleep.  Finally (2:01, 2:01, 2:02), she was sleeping soundly enough to take back upstairs.  I got her back in the crib and decided to hold still for a while so that she could settle in before I navigated the unavoidable floor creaks to get out of the room again (Indiana Jones fans: Jehovah starts with an “I”).  Because I was at my wit’s end, I forced myself to count down from 60 before moving a muscle (57…56…55) and the whole time I stood there, she didn’t make a peep (35…34…33), though let me add that I really had to pee at this point (10…987654321).

 

I crept out, watching every step as I went.  Made it to the door.  Made it into the hallway.  Closed the door.  And then slowly, turned the knob so that it wouldn’t click in the latch.  The sound of the doorknob turning did it.

 

Immediate, hysterical, gasping-for-breath crying.

 

I let her cry for just a minute while I got some Tylenol for her and opened it up, figuring that since she isn’t usually this difficult (at all), she must be in pain.  After scooping her up, I tried to give her the medicine, and she completely freaked, which was all the more disheartening since she loves the taste of the stuff and usually settles right down.  While she closed her mouth tight and shook her head and squirmed, I got frustrated to the point of snapping at her a little, telling her to knock it off and behave…something that Mom-O later told me she had overheard with surprise, as I’ve never really been so short with Babe-O before.

 

Eventually, the medicine went down, though not without getting the sticky liquid crap all over my hands. 

 

Back downstairs.  More laps. (2:45, 2:45, 2:45…)

 

By this point I was really, really mad at Babe-O.  Like I’ve never really been before.  Completely frustrated, completely spent.  Mentally fried, defenses down, and worrying about EVERYTHING.  Rational stress, irrational stress, just fretting until I felt like I was going to develop an ulcer overnight.

 

Then Babe-O arched her back suddenly and started fussing all over again.  But suddenly, I was calm.  Really calm.  And not mad at the baby.  For some reason, it hit me that she wasn’t being a little asshole or trying to give me a run for my money.  She was tired.  And not feeling well.  And in pain. 

 

She just wanted to be held and didn’t want to go to sleep on her own.

 

Suddenly, I felt better, and could have walked with her until the cows came home.

 

I took some more laps (no counting, no watching the clock), and eventually took her back upstairs, where she curled up in her crib and slept until morning.

 

And then it got really ugly

 

After my rough night up with Babe-O, I got up at five, planning to go to the gym.  I haven’t really worked out much since the baby was born.  And by “since the baby was born” I mean “since way before the baby was born.”  Yesterday we joined the YMCA, mostly for Amy and the little one, but I’m also pretty stoked about having a decent place to work out.  So anyway, today was going to be my get back in the swing of things workout. 

 

Five o’clock is pretty dark in these parts, but the super dark house got me to thinking that I probably don’t need to spend a ton of time at the gym on my first real workout in years.  I don’t need to be to work until 7:30, so I figured I’d have some coffee and check my e-mail before I got dressed and headed to the Y.  By this time it was about 5:30 and within about two seconds of logging into webmail, I realized that I had screwed something up the day prior and needed to get it straightened out post-haste.

 

In retrospect, my little snafu wasn’t a big deal, just putting a fire out like any other, but at the time it seemed like such a big stinking deal it was overwhelming.  I was so pissed at my mistake and so frustrated with myself that I could barely stand it.  And once I got everything straightened out (now about 6:30 a.m.) I was still FURIOUS.  Everything seemed overwhelming.  I was thinking that I could still squeeze in a quick workout, but suddenly felt completely overwhelmed by the logistics involved.  Driving there, getting dressed, working out, showering, packing my bag up, getting dressed – it all seemed like a huge ordeal.  I fretted about this until it was really too late to go to the gym and I just jumped into the shower at home.

 

Then it was time to get dressed.  It felt like it took forever.  I found myself resenting men’s fashion, violently hating stuff like shirt buttons and my belt.  I clearly remember HATING whoever it was that came up with the idea of belts and cursed pants designers for not making them fit better unaccessorized.  I remember being terribly angry at my feet for being wet from the shower and at my socks for not wanting to slide on over wet feet.  If my shoes had laces, I probably would have thrown them out the window and gone to work in my Uggs, I was that mad.

 

Then, believe it or not, I got in the car, started driving to work, and felt much better.  By the time the sun was up and I was at my desk, everything seemed just dandy.  I no longer resented mankind for not agreeing to all wear the same colored one-piece jump suits like you always see in the movies on people from the future.  Aside from having missed my workout, I felt fine.

 

Weird, huh? 

Guest Post at MakesMomHappy

Check out MakesMomHappy.com for a quick guest post on (gulp) cloth diapers.

Guest Post at MakesMomHappy

If you just can't get enough of our D.C. trip, stroll on over to Makes Mom Happy to see my guest post recap. Come for the me, stay for the sweet reviews and giveaways that you won't get on this blog.

D.C. Recap (Day IV)

Recently got back from taking a few days off to hit Washington, D.C. This is the last in a series of posts about how it went.

Our last day in D.C. was pretty similar to the others: subways, museums, food, all that. But a few things stood out, namely a pretty grueling march we did around the national mall to check out the sights. Trying to reconstruct our route and think it was something like Smithsonian à Capital à Lincoln Memorial à Viet Nam wall àSmithsonian subway stop. Take a look at the photo, imagine it's 100 degrees and that you're carrying an eleven-month old and you've pretty much got the picture. It was hot. It was tiring.

At this point, the biggest issue we were having with Babe-O was keeping her hydrated. She wasn't really nursing during the day and she was sweating quite a bit. She tended to snub her cup of water and we were getting pretty worried given how little she was drinking and how few wet diapers we changed. It was the fourth day of the trip when we really figured out how to keep her hydrated. The answer turned out to be bottled water. This is from a kid who never took a baby bottle and immediately preferred a cup with a straw over a sippy cup or anything else. As much as we struggled to get her to drink, it turned out that all we needed to do was share the water that we were drinking. All you had to do was hold up the aquafina bottle and she would grab it with both hands and tip it to her mouth. With a little gentle assistance to keep her from drenching herself she would drink more than enough. We stopped often and let her drink and she went through just about a whole bottle of water during the last bit of the day when we did the most walking. Cool kid.

Anyway, all of our trudging around and aquafina drinking finally landed our sweaty butts at the Lincoln Memorial. Unless you've been there, it's tough to appreciate just how big and impressive the thing is. The seated Lincoln is probably 20 feet tall. At this point, Babe-O was (mercifully) in her stroller, so we wheeled her up to the statue to take a look. Her eyes got big and she looked up at it, gesturing with her hands and babbling away. For a few minutes she pointed, shook her hands, and yammered on about the statue. It was stinking adorable and very cool that she seemed to appreciate the thing.

The memorial was our farthest destination and it wasn't until we got there that we realized that the nearest subway stop was all the way back where we started, near the Smithsonian. At this point we were all pretty beat and Babe-O was starting to fuss. It took a lot of effort, but by mixing things up a little on the walk back to the metro, we managed to keep her happily distracted. I took her out of the stroller and ran around with her quite a bit, holding her up over my head, letting her ride on my shoulders, and generally bounced her all over the place as we walked back. The extra work of tossing her up in the air and jogging back and forth while the others walked thoroughly kicked my ass, but it was well worth it to keep a happy kid all the way through the home stretch of the trip.

In the small favor of all small favors, as soon as we got to the subway station our train was waiting for us and we easily hopped on and zipped back to the hotel. The walk from the subway to the hotel was not quite as easy and Babe-O insisted on being held by her Mom for that last little bit. That was okay, though. By that time it was well past her bedtime and she was as tired as the rest of us.

Once we got back to our rooms, Mom-O hopped in the shower and I took Babe-O for her bath. Once she was all cleaned up I passed her back to Mom-O and MIL-O and hopped into the car to zip across town just in time to beat last call at that little Italian joint where we had eaten on the first night. I brought back a pizza, which we ate before packing up the car and going to bed.

The next day, we got up at about 5 a.m. to get back on the road. Once again, Babe-O woke up at almost exactly the halfway point, which was the same exit she needed to stop at on the way there. We were a little thrown off that it was still only about 9 a.m. as we were looking for lunch food, but managed to get a decent bite/stretch at eat-n-park. Babe-O and I ate pretty quickly and headed out to the parking lot to stretch our legs while the ladies finished up.

While out there, we were lucky enough to spot a parked Porsche 911 Carrera, which Babe-O had never seen before. Introductions were clearly in order. Just as we were kneeling way too close to the car so that I could show Babe-O the independent exhaust tracts, the owner walked out, probably right after gulping down the last of his coffee after spotting us through the window looking underneath his car. He was very friendly and understanding as I thanked him for letting my little girl catch a glimpse of a really impressive vehicle. As an experience, the car was at least as valuable to her development as that Van Gogh she had swatted earlier in the day at the museum (oops! painting pictured).

After that we got back in the car and made it home with no trouble, Babe-O sleeping most of the way. I made it back to the office a little after noon and managed to get all caught up on being away by the time I left at the end of the day. The half-day back after a vacation was a good idea – can't recommend that highly enough.

Well, that's the D.C. story. I'm sure I left a lot out, but I think I hit the high points pretty well. The whole thing brought me closer to Babe-O and it was a just plain incredible experience. It was very cool to hang out with her 24/7 with minimal distraction from work and other obligations. Plus, now we know that Babe-O can handle herself on the road and in the city, which makes me really excited to start going other similar stuff with her – both big trips like this one and smaller ones closer to home. Two thumbs, way up, big time.

D.C. Recap (Day III)

Recently got back from taking a few days off to hit Washington, D.C. This is the third in a short series of posts about how it went.

By our second full day in the city, Babe-O had pretty much mastered the whole routine. She would sleep in her stroller or on my shoulder when it was naptime or skip naptime and be no worse for the wear. Either way, we didn't really miss a beat as she modified her routine to accommodate sightseeing and other touristy activities. We did the normal stuff, Smithsonian museums and all that, and she was awesome all day long. But the best part of that day was dinner.

The four of us (Mom-O, Babe-O, MIL-O, me) went to the Old Ebbitt Grill, a niceish, semi-historical bar/restaurant near the White House. We were a little concerned with how Babe-O would do, way past her bedtime and after a long and active day, in a nice place with tablecloths and soft music and all that. Of course, by now you're probably picking up on the pattern and know that she did splendidly once again.

It did start off a little rough, however, when we came to the entrance, which was a revolving door, and only a revolving door. After several awkward attempts to get the stroller through the thing, a near-by shoeshine guy showed us which of the decorative doors we could use, which I popped open, just about knocking a big plant to the ground on the other side. The restaurant guy inside didn't seem super impressed at the time, but fixed the plant and got us a table pretty quickly. We got to our seat to find a high chair and a special place setting for Babe-O, featuring a single silver spoon on top of a cloth napkin. She immediately grabbed it and held it up to the light like Excalibur or something, and we unanimously dubbed her new accessory the Spoon of Justice. She held onto it for the rest of the meal.

They didn't exactly have a kid menu, so let her help herself to a cheese tray appetizer, which featured a bunch of weird, very flavorful fancy cheeses. She loves cheese, but usually doesn't get anything any more exotic than cheddar. But she ate this stuff like a sophisticated little lady and impressed the manager lady while she was at it. Manager Lady and the servers all seemed impressed by Babe-O, who sat in her spot at the end of the table, quietly babbled with us and ate things like blue cheese and seafood.

We got through dinner with no problem, but had a little bit of difficulty at the very end. After ordering desert (booze), I scooped Babe-O up for a diaper change. On my way back to the restrooms, Manager Lady spotted us and told me that they didn't have a restroom with a changing table. In an effort to keep up my public persona of superdad, I told her that was no sweat and headed back to the bar area to find the men's room.

There was no men's room. Just a single bathroom for everybody, about the size of an elevator. And for a really nice place, it was dirty. As I walked in, our server saw me and asked if I was going to change her in there. When I told him I was, he pointed out that he must need more practice because he'd never be able to change his kid in there. He also promised that my drink would be waiting for me when I got back to the table, apparently not thinking that I might like him to pour it directly down my throat on the spot.

So I walked into the bathroom. There was a sink and a toilet and that was it – nothing big enough to accommodate the changing pad, much less the baby. I knew that Babe-O wasn't going to like this, so I turned the sink on full blast to drone out any fussing (the bar was about two feet from the door and there were people eating right on the other side of the wall). I sat down on the toilet and spread the baby out in my lap. She started screaming and I just worked to get her taken care of as quickly as I could. By the time I had the new diaper on and started to get her little dress all straightened out again, she was really wailing and I was getting a little bit flustered. Just as I was looking for a place to throw the old diaper away, I glanced at the sink and noticed that my full blast faucet setting had not only sprayed water all over everything, but had also filled up the (apparently) slow-draining sink, which was now spilling all over the floor.

After shutting the water off and making an awkward attempt to clean up one-handed while holding the kid away from all the gross surfaces in that little room, we stepped out and were greeted by a bar full of folks who were probably wondering what all the screaming and swearing coming from the bathroom was all about. Fortunately, Babe-O settled down immediately and I didn't have to walk back to our table with her screaming and carrying on.

After that, it was back to the hotel to rest up for Sunday, when we would basically deathmarch ourselves to the remaining corners of the city.

More to come…

D.C. Recap (Day II)

Recently got back from taking a few days off to hit Washington, D.C. This is the second in a short series of posts about how it went.

The first thing we learned about Babe-O on this trip is that she is a master traveler. This held true on our first full day when we left the hotel on foot for the subway. Except for two trips to the kickass Italian joint mentioned in the previous post, we didn't touch the car the whole time we were there. The subway was just a few blocks away and we could ride it all the way into town and get wherever we needed to go that way. Babe-O never fussed on the train and put up with all the commotion and running around between connections beautifully. It didn't matter if she was in her stroller or being carried by one of us, she was a complete trooper and didn't slow us down a bit.

Note to subway-travelling parents: The sooner you decide you are willing to take the stroller on the escalator, the better off you'll be. Trying to use the elevators taught me how inconvenient it would be to be handicapped (besides the obvious). Every station has an elevator. But generally there is only one, even if there are eight different sets of stairs/escalators going to different levels and different areas. That means you need to go out of your way all the time just to get to the floor you need. Using the escalator makes life easier. In fact, when the escalators weren't running for one reason or another, we found it easy to just pick the stroller up and hike up the stairs than to find an elevator that gets off where you want it to.

Anyway, I think I was a teenager before I set foot on a subway for the first time. I'm glad that Babe-O was able to get her foot in that particular (sliding) door before the age of one.

Small, flammable world

Our first stop in the city was the National Archives. We breezed right in, which was a relief because it was hot and the last time we went there it took hours to get through security. We faced a very stern security lady who made us dismantle all our crap, which was pretty much the name of the game every time we tried to go anywhere. This is a little bit of an ordeal with the stroller/diaperbag and all that, but we never had too much trouble with it. We got through, hopped on the elevator, and as soon as we hit the button we heard a loud, repeating noise that sounded like an electric slide whistle. It turned out it was the fire alarm and the whole building was evacuated. And by building, I mean block. It was at this point that we noticed that the tightly-wound angry security lady was armed. She was making very sure that everyone got the hell out of there and away from the building. We took about two steps out of the elevator (after Mom-O paused to take some catastrophe video) and then we ran into Mom-O's aunt, uncle and cousins. They live about an hour away from us and were (evidently) also visiting D.C. that weekend. Crazy coincidence. That stuff freaks me out. We talked for a while out on the lawn and then went our separate ways after getting the feeling that the security lady might shoot one of us as an example to the rest of the loiterers.

I have a stroller (and I'm not afraid to use it)

After some more sightseeing and running around the city, we made it back to the archives to see if things had calmed down. They had. Apparently there was a bus on fire nearby and they had to evacuate just to be on the safe side. On the downside, this time there was a bit of a line to get back in, but we waited in it and got through in about thirty minutes. Once inside, we checked out all the goofy stuff they have in there, Taft's big bathtub, George Washington's wooden thong, that sort of thing. Then we made our way to the rotunda where they have all the really badass stuff, like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Every American should make an annual pilgrimage to the rotunda to see those documents. It will help you keep your head on straight politically and recharge your patriotic batteries.

The line to get into the rotunda was a little more than an hour long, but as we stood there, a security guy came over and told us that the stroller entrance was just down the hall. We went over there and were shocked to find out that we could just walk right in without waiting. That was really the only time that having the stroller/baby really sped things up, but I was impressed none-the-less.

No, no…take your time…we'll be right here

After the rotunda, we went over the other side of the building where the research side of the Archives is. That was the whole reason that MIL-O wanted to come down, so that she could do some genealogy research on her family. She and Mom-O headed in to get their bearings before spending a longer chunk of time there the following day. You have to be 14 to go in there, so I was more than happy to stay outside with Babe-O while they went inside. We goofed off on the steps out front for about an hour before meeting up again and heading back to the hotel.

Five Guys and a baby

One of the coolest thing about travelling with Babe-O was that even though she had her own food packed, in general, she pretty much ate whatever we ate. Usually this just meant a stray french fry or a bit of salad, but she really blew me away with one particular lunch. We went to Five Guys Burgers and Fries, where all the burgers are doubles and all the beef is well done. You might know it as the burger-joint-of choice of a certain famous individual.

The burgers are absolutely awesome. We held one up for Babe-O to inspect, just for the sake of a laugh and maybe a photo opp, but the little carnivore chomped right down on the thing. These burgers are big enough that I could barely get it in my mouth, but her little jaw opened wide and took a huge bit of beef. She loved it right away and went back for more. So.Freaking.Proud.

Just one thing

The only real issue we had with Babe-O through all our travels was that she wasn't drinking enough water. She ended up a little dehydrated by the end of the day, so we just had to stay on top of offering her water all the time. Don't know if she was just distracted or what, but she was not drinking enough. By the end of the trip, though, we figured it out.

More to come…

D.C. Recap (Day I)

Just got back from taking a few days off to hit Washington, D.C. This is the first in a short series of posts about how it went.

I guess this is what a vacation feels like. Right now Mom-O and I are side by side in a hotel room in Washington D.C., clacking away at our keyboards just before midnight, trying to keep up with our blogs/work. Don't take that the wrong way…it really isn't me bitching that we're on vacation but are still up in the middle of the night working. This has actually been great so far, even though most of the day was spent in the car. I haven't touched twitter. I checked my voicemail once and my e-mail once. Both of us are waaaaay more unplugged from technology and work than we have been in a really long time. So this'll be good. Today is Thursday and we're going to be here until we head out on Monday morning, which now that I think about it is a pretty long time (in a good way).

So today started with me getting up after about three hours of sleep and going into the office butt-early to get everything in order so that I could leave without being stressed about work. Around noon we were in the car, Mom-O, Babe-O and Mom-O-in-Law. Mom-O-in-Law (MIL-O?) is particularly stoked about the trip because she is a genealogy nut who is going to be like a kid in a candy store in the national archives. (While she's there, I plan to behave like a kid in a candy store too, only I'll most likely actually be in a candy store someplace.)

It is about a six-hour drive for us, which meant and awful lot of time for Babe-O in the car. We haven't done a trip this long with here since she was tiny, and even then we just left in the dead of night so that she'd sleep the whole way. This time around we just carved it into two three-hour chunks with a good break in the middle to stretch/eat/play.

Babe-O nailed it. She was awesome. MIL-O was in the backseat to keep her company and she took two big fat naps that pretty much ate up most of the downtime. We made it here no sweat and I have renewed confidence in our ability to travel with the little one.

Once we got here, we checked into the hotel and moved in to our rooms. We ("we" as in "not me") actually went to the trouble of unpacking the suitcases and moving into the dressers and closets, but I guess that'll be kind of nice since we are going to be here for a few days. Babe-O loved the hotel. She rolled around on the beds and was in a generally great mood, so we decided to push our luck and take her out to eat way past her bedtime for the sake of letting her enjoy some of the day out of her car seat.

We went to what turned out to be a completely kickass Italian place. This was the first time in my life that I have been the ONLY white guy in an Italian restaurant, so I knew from the get-go that we were on to someplace special. Babe-O was in a great mood and charmed the hell out of the servers and other guests. She waved at people across the room and impressed our server with how well she sat in her booster seat and ate her kids-eat-free buffet food like a little lady. I was proud as hell to be her Dad and the food was freaking amazing. Good times had by all.

Then we finished up and headed back to the hotel to put her to bed. We are staying in a suite, so she has her own space in the common area where we set up her pack-n-play, which was going to stand in for her crib while she was away. Unfortunately, that plan fell apart a bit when Mom-O decided that it was too risky to have Babe-O sleeping alone by the door to our room, where any run-of-the-mill nutcase could break the door down in the black of night and disappear down the hallway with our girl. Needless to say, as soon as I'm done typing this I'm going to get up to go to the bathroom and almost certainly break my toe on the pack-n-play, which is now crammed in our room with us. On the plus side, she is sleeping soundly and is safe from any would-be invaders that might be prowling the halls.

More to come...