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.