Wild Kingdom: Suburban Edition

Ever since Babe-O was little, she's always shown an interest in our pets (at the moment, two dogs and a cat).

What's really cool now is that she is just getting big enough to play with them. And they are finally comfortable enough around her to play back.

The cat licks her, swats at her hands with his declawed paws, and involves himself in anything involving a ball. The dogs will bring her toys and let her chase them around…either in her Jeep walker or with me carrying her as she kicks her feet and squeals.

The dogs seem to know that her toys are off limits for chewing or other destruction and if she drops something, like a ball or a small toy, they will fetch it for her or at least swat it back in her direction. It's cute.

But what REALLY gets me is Maggie Mae, our golden doodle. If Babe-O is just fussing or making noise, it doesn't bother her. But if she is unusually upset (startled awake from a nap, bumps her head, whatever), Maggie gets very distraught as well. If the baby lets out a truly distressed cry, Maggie will cry as well, sort of a low, whiny howl as she paces back and forth. It works out well, because Maggie's worried nuzzle can usually make Babe-O snap out of it and the two settle each other down.

Lola, our cocker spaniel, doesn't get quite so visibly upset but definitely keeps a close eye on the baby pretty much all the time. And the cat, who doesn't like anybody, seems to have found a buddy in the baby, too.

When I was growing up, I had a mutt that would follow me around relentlessly…long after she had gone stone deaf and far exceeded any reasonable lifespan for a creature who ate only Gaines Burgers and McDonald's for just shy of two decades. I always hoped that any kid of mine would have an equally diligent dog to keep on top of things.

Looks like Babe-O just might have two.

DadMeal: Chicken et cetera

What you need: Boneless chicken breasts, shake 'n bake, instant mashed potatoes, random canned veggie

Prep time: 20 Minutes

How to:        

1. Chicken should be defrosted. Throw it in the fridge the night before or on the counter the morning before. (Or nuke it...defrost setting)
   
2. Preheat oven to 400F.
   
3. Put Shake 'n Bake in Shake 'n Bake bag.
   
4. Chicken in bag...one piece at a time.
5. Shake. (vigorously)
   
6. Bake. (twenty minutes)
   

At the ten minute mark:

1. Potatoes, per instructions on box.
   
2. Veggies in pot, low heat.
   

When you're done, take the time to make it look really nice on the plate. Presentation is everything with the comfort food.

This is a good one because you end up with a meal that looks like your Mom used to make. If you have an apron, wear it. You'll feel as foxy as June Cleaver and your lady will realize what a stud she's got…all secure enough to wear an apron and domestic enough to bread chicken (technically).

Lewd hand gestures and other educational opportunities

As Babe-O does the whole language development thing, I thought watching my mouth was all I really had to worry about. No such luck.

Just like those irritating "body language experts" on TV are always saying, a big chunk of communication is non-verbal. (A bigger chunk if you're in traffic. And an even bigger chunk if you're in traffic and pissed.)

Regardless, lots of child development types say that babies can pick up quite a bit of sign language even before they can talk. So we got Babe-O a sign language book and started doing a handful of signs with her: stuff like mommy, daddy, dog, baby, diaper (hell, what else is there?).

But first, let me point out that this isn't bona-fide American Sign Language or anything like that…it is super basic, super simplified, easily recognizable baby sign language.

The reason I mention this is because for about the first week of doing the signs, I thought we were teaching her American Sign Language. That lasted until I made some offhand remark to Mom-O to the effect of "Wow, I can't believe that deaf people really stick their tongues and pant when referring to a dog." Although my wife wasn't able to tell me the proper ASL gesture for "dog," she seemed awfully certain that it didn't involve barking or panting. She also seemed vaguely concerned about my role in Babe-O's early development education, but that's another story.

Anyway, Babe-O has been learning baby sign language and her baby sign language first word was "Mommy," which involves spreading out your fingers and poking yourself in the side of the head with your thumb like you're trying to flag down the short bus. It was very cool to be holding her and watch her reach for her Mom and make the sign. That girl's wicked smart. I look forward to seeing what else she comes up with.

Oh, and I forget the name of the book we're using. It's big and comes with flash cards (don't you hate flash cards?). I just used this picture because it humorously implies that your baby is an idiot.

[photo from http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51H8knQKylL._SL160_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-dp,TopRight,12,-18_SH30_OU01_AA115_.jpg] 

Zero to Sickie in 3.9 hours

I was home at lunch today and all was well. Babe-O helped me make a sandwich and then happily crashed her Jeep into the pets while I ate and Mom-O got some work done.

By the time I got home again at the end of the day, it was a different story. She was low key and pretty clingy. Her nose was running and she kept sleeping. Looks like she's a little sick.

We've been through this once or twice before, so we know that Babe-O is a trooper when she's sick.

Still, her bath was short-lived and she pretty much shrieked all the way through putting her PJs on. This was partially due to her being tired and partially due to me trying to stuff her into pajamas that are extremely cute but also ridiculously difficult to operate. Her hands got stuck in the sleeves and I had to fish her arms through the holes like I was yanking a tiny hamster out of a baby python. Only the hamster was a thrashing little fist and the python was soft and covered in purple flowers.

Regardless, we got through it with both of us still in one piece and I took Babe-O downstairs to drink some boob and go to sleep.

By "go to sleep" of course I mean hang out with me for the next three hours. After a few attempts, the crib wasn't happening, so we gave Babe-O the sick kid benefit of the doubt and let her hang out for a while.

She was in a pretty punchy mood and for really the first time ever she and I just sat on the couch and watched TV together. We played a little, which was kind of like horsing around with a stoned, affectionate dwarf – definitely a weird mood for the little one. Finally, after laughing at the sleeping cat, crawling all over me like a bird grooming a bison, and repeatedly poking the hell out of a stuffed pink bunny, Babe-O went to sleep.

It's all just in time for me to do some work, crank out a blog post, and zonk out on the couch while my endlessly productive wife continues building her online empire. She generally works into the night since it's hard to get much done around here during the day that isn't baby-centric. Before long, I'll be lovingly curled up with my biggest, fluffiest dog…that is, until I wake up to a swift kick in the spine when it's time to go upstairs for the night (I'm a heavy sleeper).

Wish us luck with sick baby. I'm hoping she's at least got a good night's sleep ahead of her. Us too.

More on the pointing finger

A while back, I wrote about Babe-O using her little index finger to point at things while I read to her.

Well it's not just for reading anymore. Since then, that little index finger has gotten completely out of control.

She uses it to poke her food. And push buttons. And to poke me in the face. And to probe her Mom's nose.

Whenever she explores something new, she breaks out that one pointing finger on each hand to poke and prod.

It's the strangest thing. It's kind of like watching someone play eighteen holes of golf using only a putter. It' perfect when you're on the green, but a little awkward everywhere else.

I think it has something to do with Babe-O watching Mom-O work on the computer all the time. One woman's mouse-clickin' finger is another woman's go-to digit.

On the plus side, it's perfect for poking grocery store lobsters.

New Feature: DadMeals

It turns out that Mom-types really appreciate it when Dad-types cook dinner every once in a while.

That's all well and good if you can cook anything besides cereal (skim milk, please!) and TV Dinners (stir and rotate!), which I can not.

Or so I thought.

In the interest of helping Babe-O understand that 99.99999 percent of the guys out there are not good enough for her, I try to be as kickass a husband as possible. So lately I have been venturing into the kitchen for little adventures in cooking, much like a drunk newborn fawn venturing out on those wobbly drunk newborn fawn legs.

DadMeals will be a recurring feature that breaks down how to make pathetically easy meals that will get you much spousal love.

Today's DadMeal: Cheese Ravioli with Garlic Bread

What you need: Frozen ravioli, jarred spaghetti sauce, box of texas toast

(if you don't like things that are frozen, jarred, or boxed, stop reading right now, fancypants.)

Prep time: 20 minutes

How to:

1. Get your water boiling. Use a big pot.
   
2. Dump your sauce into a small pot on low heat. Stir it whenever you feel like you haven't done something in a while.
   
3. Dump frozen ravioli into boiling water. It will splash and hurt.
   
4. Set timer for whatever ravioli bag says, probably about 16 minutes. Stir ravioli occasionally.
   
5. Preheat toaster oven to whatever toast box says, probably about 425F. For Celsius, go back to Russia, comrade.
   
6. With about five minutes left on timer, put frozen toast into toaster oven.
   
7. Have you been stirring your sauce?
   
8. Watch that toast. It goes from squishy to burnt in about 15 seconds. Remove when brown.
   
9. When timer goes off, dump ravioli through strainer, let sit.
   
10. Grab plates, take drink orders, find something for the baby to do while you two eat.
    
11. Ravioli on plates, sauce on ravioli, toast on side.
    
12. Collect brownie points.
    

Technically, after the meal you could finally be on the good end of that "I cook, you clean" crap. But if you clean up yourself, you'll be a hero.

Sunday in Three Acts

Act I: Pre-Mother's Day Extravaganza

This morning was the big Mother's Day breakfast extravaganza.

To be completely honest, I thought it was just breakfast at Amy's aunt's house…but when you walk in the door and see the dining room table extended out to its full capacity, you know something is up. Ordinarily, that would have been the point where I'd feel like an ass for arriving late (as we generally do), but it turned out that we were still one Nana (Mom-O's grandmother) short of a full house, and without our extraordinarily Italian matriarch at hand, no one else could yet be considered late.

Long story short: the day included some sort of egg casserole, noontime beers, and four generations of Mom-O. It was a good time all around.

Babe-O was a hit once again and managed to captivate the room with minimal fussing. I didn't see a lot of her all morning, as the guys were pretty much planted around the kitchen counter BSing and grumbling at a crossword puzzle that eventually got the better of us.

Act II: Baby Diagnostics

Did I mention that Babe-O hasn't been feeling so hot lately? Mostly at night.

She went from sleeping through the night (more or less) to being up four times before midnight and an additional eighty-seven times between midnight and sunrise. Her only symptom, besides being generally cranky, is that she's been pulling at her ear a little bit, which honestly scares the hell out of me. That's because Mom-O's side of the family has a history of ear issues that I've always hoped Babe-O would avoid. As far as I know, I've only ever had one ear infection in my life, but I can remember it like it was yesterday and it was absolutely miserable. And on top of that, if it gets really bad, we end up in surgery territory, installing all sorts of weird hardware to drain ear goo from the ear canal do the nose to the throat to the stomach (or something like that).

Anyway…we had a suspicion that she had an ear infection, so after breakfast we took a run up to Urgent Care, which is pretty much a hospital satellite office that's like a clean, quiet emergency room with no lines or stabbing victims. I think every time we've ever been there, we've shared the waiting room with a Mom carrying a snotty kid and a college kid whispering about burning while peeing – pretty low key, all things considered.

By the time we got there, Babe-O was sound asleep (no nap 'till then), which meant she was NOT happy to doze off in her car seat and wake up on a hard, strange, doctor scale. She screamed, which pretty well set the tone for the rest of the visit. With a little luck, the doctor was able to get a look at her ear, which he thought did look a little red.

We left with an antibiotic script, which hopefully will do the trick.

Act III: Tiptoeing through suburbia

We got home and the little one seemed to be feeling a little better. We played for a while, she had a lengthy conversation with one of the dogs, and then it became pretty clear that our girl was running out of gas again. She wouldn't nap, so I loaded her up into her stroller and headed out for a jaunt. Babe-O was sleeping after a few blocks and I walked with her until I ran out of sidewalk. Once we got home, I tried to transplant the seat part of the stroller (plus sleeping baby) from the garage to the living room. I did not succeed.

Babe-O woke up and wasn't terribly happy about it.

But she shook it off and we had a good night: good dinner (introducing mashed potatoes), good bath, and in bed at a decent hour. Good deal.

Epilogue: Please, please, please, please, sleep through the night

Now, we wait. Babe-O is sleeping soundly. I'm beat. And I'm really hoping that all three of us have a good night's sleep tonight. This last week of fussy nights has left my nerves frayed, big time. Fingers crossed, blog readers!

Baby on the move

For the longest time, Babe-O was reluctant to move around. She took forever to make an effort to roll over, always hated tummy time, and at seven months hasn't shown much interest in crawling.

But lately she's been seeing stuff that she wants. And sometimes, it isn't right next to her.

If she sees a toy or one of her dogs, she'll squirm to be put down…though I'm not sure what the immobile little butt thinks she's going to do once she gets down there.

Even though she isn't much for crawling, she is very good at standing and seems like she'll be walking before we know it (I'm told that Mom-O skipped scrawling and went right to walking).

So to help her out, we decided we'd get her some gear.

Sticking with our love for the Jeep baby stuff, we introduced Babe-O to her new Jeep Liberty Renegade baby walker. After a few days of sitting in it and one or two coaching sessions, she figured out how to move around in it. She went from only being able to go backwards to being able to get pretty much wherever she wants to go – which usually adds up to chasing the cat, running over the dogs, and crashing into things.

She loves the thing. And with any luck, it'll be just the boost she needs to figure this whole walking thing out once and for all.

In the meantime, it's a great toy that she can use to play with the dogs and putter around without being planted in one of our laps. Today I stood some (empty) Coke 12-packs up on their ends in the living room and Babe-O delighted in chasing them down and knocking them over.

Oh, and once she gets tired of cruising, she loves to honk the horn and rev the engine. If you say "beep beep," she does. She knows what "vroom" means, too. My kinda girl.

Much love for the Jeep stuff!