Big girl panties

Yesterday Amy went out and picked Babe-O up some sporty Elmo panties.

She's sixteen months old, so it isn't like we're jamming the potty training thing down her throat at this point, but lately she's been doing a great job keeping her diapers dry in between potty sits so we figured what the hell.

So far, she's doing great. I was a little slow picking up on the pre-potty symptoms last night and we ended up with a wet one, but as long as you're willing to remember that a quick pants change is no big deal, then everyone gets along fine.

In the meantime, the sitting on the potty routine is much faster since we don't have to monkey with the cloth diaper and Babe-O gets to feel like hot shit in her big girl panties.

The downside? With no diaper, it is more obvious then ever that this kid has NO butt.

Cookie? Cookie!

I'm not a big fat guy, but I will eat every last cookie in a bag of double stuff Oreos in one day. Even when I was at my most fit, I could not expose myself to that temptation. It's a huge weakness and I know it, so unless I'm feeling really decadent and want to drown out some specific frustration by way of nine-hour diabetic coma, I don't keep the things in the house.

Oh, and not just Oreos. They are the worst, but I will eat homemade chocolate chip cookies until I am sick or suck on frozen cookie dough until my teeth hurt.

There I said it. It's disgusting.

Anyway...Babe-O's into cookies as well. They give kids a free cookie at the grocery store and she knows as soon as we get in the car to start asking for one. Then when we get to the store, she'll pretty much made us go directly to the cookie bin and from there we have to plan our route around the store so that we don't go past the bin again later.

Even worse is that Amy told me today that Babe-O has started asking for cookies within minutes of waking up in the morning.

That's a problem. It's genetic.

One thing that we're considering is perhaps making cookies available to the little one 24/7 so that she stops making such a big deal about getting them. The idea is that once the cookie thrill is gone, she'll chill out on the issue and adopt a less passionate relationships with cookies.

Just a thought. And I'm not even kidding, as I write this I feel like crap because Amy made cookies tonight, I ate too many, and now I want to die.

Corporate Travel, Sick Baby, and Sick Everybody Else

So I guess it started when I had to go out of town on business. It was last week and I was up at something like five in the morning on the way to the airport. My flight left at six, or so I thought.

After standing around for a while with about twenty of my coworkers who were also trying to get down to Orlando, we learned that our flight had been diverted because of fog. The next flights out were much later that day and I rebooked myself a seat on a 3:30, grabbed some egg mcmuffins, and went home.

The good news? I had a company car so I hadn't dragged the girls out of bed. The better news? I got to spend a day hanging out with the family instead of puttering around the Ritz futzing with my laptop.

It was a good day and I was well received on account of the egg mcmuffins.

I went back to the airport that afternoon and made it to the hotel by ten p.m. or so. I was there working for a couple of days, managed to enjoy a couple of open bars, and was glad to be on my way home after keeping busy down in Florida.

After getting home around midnight, Babe-O was already asleep, but I managed to nuzzle her halfway awake to give her the little Mickey Mouse I had picked up for her. She looked up at me with adorable sleepiness and studied the little Mickey for a while before smiling and giving it a hug. Very sweet.

The rest of this is kind of a blur, but I'll try to piece it together.

I had work related to my trip that had to be done in a very timely manner, so I went to bed at about 1 a.m. and got up at 5ish to go to the office. I got a lot done that day and then came home not feeling well. I was up sick much of the night and went to the office at 4:30 to finish getting done what needed to get done. By lunchtime I was done with anything pressing and went home to be ill.

Then Amy got sick. She wasn't feeling well that night and ended up sleeping in the bathroom, throwing up about every half hour. The next day, she was pretty much out of commission so I decided to try to work from home and take care of Babe-O while she slept off the ugliness of the previous night.

That was going fine, until about ten a.m. when I was trying to reply to an e-mail and was interrupted by a couple of good SPLATs as baby vomit flew threw the air to land first in the dead center of my laptop keyboard (still smells funny) and then all over the right hand side of my screen (still streaky).

Luckily, by that point any work that was absolutely on fire was all done and anything else could wait until the little one was sleeping.

That was Friday.

I spent that day and most of the weekend feeling fine myself but the poor kid was just a pathetic little wreck. I felt awful for her, but she was a trooper all the way through.

Love that baby. And man, it is brutal to watch her suffer.

Oh. Also, Amy is fine now, too. It is also brutal to watch her suffer, but she gets mean when she's sick, so it's easier not to feel so bad for her.

Dog-sizing

When Babe-O was born we had three dogs. Now we have two. Lola is the oldest, a sassy buff-colored cocker spaniel who has always been Amy's dog. Maggie Mae is a Golden Doodle, big and goofy with a heart of gold. (Our youngest, Jack went to live on a farm after biting me in the arm. I still have the scar and every time I look at it I get a little sick knowing that the mark -- or worse -- could have been on Babe-O's face. Click here for that whole story.)

My parents have always been dog people and recently had to part with their very cool, one-of-a-kind English bulldog, Elizabeth. They are now in the market for a new dog and we have been talking about giving them Maggie Mae.

Here's the thing. Maggie is my dog. I stinking love her like you wouldn't believe. However, life with a baby and two dogs often gets hectic and we can't help but wonder how much happier she might be with my parents, where my home office Dad will be with her all day long and she won't have to compete with a sixteen month old baby for attention.

Having two dogs is a lot different than having one. It is a pain to go on a run with two dogs. They chase each other around the house. They get out of control excited when people come to the door. Maggie barks. They track dirt and mud into the house such that it is almost impossible to keep the floors clean for more than about an hour at a time.

During the spring thaw, the downstairs floors need to be mopped literally two or three times a day just to keep them from being a complete wreck from all the mud. Not to mention wet dogs all over the furniture.

Maggie is very sweet and my parents have always taken a liking to her. We'd never just get rid of her outright, but given the chance to place her in a great home where we know she'll be well taken care of...we're considering it.

Here's the best way I can put it. When we had to give Jack up, I spent our last day playing with him with tears in my eyes. It absolutely broke my heart to turn him over to the new owners...in fact I couldn't even do it, instead taking Amy's Dad up on his offer to make the hand-off as I said goodbye to the little guy in a gas station parking lot.

Anyway, the point is that it broke my heart, but (and I still hate to admit this) things were better once he was gone. The house got quieter, things were less hectic, and I no longer had to spend an hour a night playing fetch with him just to tire the energetic little bastard out.

Now we can't help but wonder what it'd be like to be a one-dog family once again. Two dogs bounce off of each other competing for attention, which is admittedly scarce since Amy and I both dedicate so much time to the baby. One dog would be more likely to curl up on the couch while we played with the kid and settle for a head pat instead of jumping up and down getting under everyone's skin.

One dog is no big deal to drop off with family if we're going away for a weekend, while two is an obvious and ridiculous imposition.

The list goes on, but you get the idea.

So we're thinking about it. My parents are on board with adopting Maggie, especially keeping in mind that if the transition doesn't go well, we'd certainly take her back.

I stinking love this dog. If we do give her up, I will be upset. But I have a feeling that once we had Maggie Mae living happily with my folks, our little family would be a little better balanced for it. Okay, a lot better balanced.

And right now, we're really looking for every chance we can find to dial things back and make it easier to focus on our little family.

Right now I guess all I can say about it is that Maggie Mae is the best dog I've ever known, and we're taking a deep breath and trying to do the right thing for all of us.

Cookies?

So Babe-O has been super fussy today. It's probably a tooth issue.

Regardless, she's got her mom at the end of her rope and is trying my patience even in the few hours I've been home. She wanted nothing to do with dinner and has been persistenly whining the whole time we ate.

I finally got her to eat some apple slices and a little bit of shepard's pie and took over for the rest of the night while Amy headed upstairs to get some work done.

Now Babe-O is marching happily around in big circles saying "cookies...cookies...cookies" as she goes. Props to me for standing firm on that issue on account of (A) she didn't eat enough dinner and (B) we're all out of cookies anyway.

Now THAT'S parenting.
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Often housebound (no, not me)

So today Amy asked me to juggle my lunch hour around a little bit to help her get the car for the afternoon. (We became a one-car family when we reprioritized life in general to keep Babe-O home with her mom during the day.)

I gave her a dirty look.  A lively discussion followed.

See, I've been running myself a little ragged lately and haven't had a lot of minutes to spare.  The lunch thing apparently added just enough stress to the week to get me miffed and I pissed and moaned for a while about burning the candle at both ends.

But that's not the moral of the story.  The moral of the story is that Amy was pissed too.  Because just like she doesn't know exactly what it's like to do all the stuff that I do all the time, I don't have a clue what it's like to be essentially a shut-in until 5 o'clock on weekdays.  

If Amy needs the car she needs to get me to finagle my schedule around and also has to taxi me back and forth to the office downtown.  Usually this takes a day or two's notice and some amount of bitching on my part.  Either way, it sucks and the bottom line is that she can't just jump in the car with the kiddo whenever she feels like it and take off for part of the day.  It's kind of like being 14 again, but with no bike.

Going forward, I'm trying to do a better job of remembering that Mom-O is chained pretty securely to the home front.  And yes, I might be ripping out my hair and growing an ulcer farm at the office all day long, but at least I'm out and about, typically on my own.

Here's to doing better in 2010.

Swim Lessons. Sort of.

Today was nuts.  I've been running around like a crazy person all day long with very little time to spare.  So I finally got home, jumped on a conference call, inhaled dinner, and jumped in the car with Babe-O to go to the Y for her first swimming lesson.

I hadn't really given the lessons much thought in advance, so I'm not sure what I was expecting: maybe a slightly chilly Yasmine Bleeth with a kickboard standing in a the shallow end surrounded by other parents with babies wearing water wings.  I figured Yasmine would have the kids doing kicks and putting their faces in the water and all that sort of thing.  

I never did the swim lessons thing, so I had no idea.

Anyway...Yasmine wasn't there and the whole deal was not what I expected.

The instructor kicked things off by saying (I think, it was echoey in there) that she is a very quirky lady who likes to sing songs.  Then she proved it.  Here's how it all went down:

Big circle, Old McDonald

We started out signing Old McDonald in a big circle.  I wasn't thrilled with the activity, but put my heart in it for the sake of giving the whole deal a fair shake.  Babe-O was amused.

Big circle, going around it

After that, the parents all pranced around the big circle holding the kids up out of the water.  Babe-O was amused.

Big circle, Hokey Pokey

Yeah...more singing.  Babe-O started getting less amused and seemed vaguely aware that we could be doing much cooler things in a swimming pool than sing-a-longs.

Line up!

Sweet.  This seemed more in line with what I was thinking.  We all lined up along one wall and were told to head over to the other side, letting the kids kick.  Well...kicky-feet happen to be Babe-O's specialty.  She started kicking away and then seemed to feel her racing instinct kick in when she glanced to either side and saw all the other kids kicking their way towards the opposite wall.  She turned up the heat and splashed her little feet like nothing I'd ever seen her do before.  I made sure that her effort was rewarded by being first to the wall and she squealed the whole way, kicking up a big, frothy wake behind her.

Humpty Dumpty

This one was right up Babe-O's alley, too.  All the kids perched on their butts on the edge of the pool and (while singing the humpty dumpty song) hopped off the edge into the water.  We do this one together all the time and it's probably Babe-O's favorite thing about the pool at this point.  She's learning to count to three (as in 1, 2, 3..GO!) so she ignored the singing and instead held up her finger for "1..." and bounced in place until we got to three and she could leap off with a little squeal.  

Arm Paddling

So then they gave us these squishy little balls and had us toss them in the water and let the kids chase after them.  The idea was that they would paddle their arms to get to the ball.  Babe-O didn't seem to get the idea of the arm thing and we didn't have much luck with the paddling thing.

I like...Scotch

Then back in the circle, or as I've grown to call it, "oh shit, back in the circle."  More singing.  This time, to learn everyone's name, we had to sing a song.  One kid would hold a ball and we'd sing "I like ButtFace (or whatever his name is), ButtFace is my friend.  I like ButtFaaaaace...and ButtFace is my friend."  Then on to the next kid, passing the ball off.  There were probably fifteen kids to go through and then when we finally got to the end of the list, we started over to learn the parents names.  It was a little weird.  Oh, and the passing the ball thing is supposed to teach sharing.  Only one kid freaked when it was time to give up the ball and it wasn't mind, so bonus.

So that was it.  I guess I really did enjoy the actual swimming stuff, but all the standing around and singing drove me up the wall.  Babe-O clearly got impatient with it, too.  After the lesson was over she and I swam for a while more and she had a good time.  She ate like a horse when we got home, shoveling down a bowl of this awesome cinnamon flavored Total cereal that Amy found.  It's like a fairly healthy version of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, which if you aren't familiar is one of the great culinary accomplishments of my generation.  

I'm not sure how many swim lessons there are going to be, but we'll be back next week.  Hopefully things will progress a little more as we go, but either way, it gets us out of the house and into the pool at least on Wednesdays.  That's a good thing.

Going to bed angry

They say that one of the secrets to a successful marriage is to never go to bed angry.  I can do you one better.

Never got to bed with dishes in the sink.  

Maybe it's not an issue at your house, but in my experience, dirty dishes can and will ruin your life.  Between the three of us we go through MORE than a dishwasher full of dishes just about every single day.  I'd spend a week pushing Sisyphus's big pansy-ass rock up that endless hill if it meant he'd take care of the dishes for a couple of nights.

There's something maddening about dishes.  We have a dishwasher, so I really resent having to handwash anything.  In the past, that mean leaving dishes in the sink and filling up the machine the next day after you put the clean stuff away.  Well then you end up with a half full dishwasher before dinner even starts...then you dirty up a few pots and pans which take up half of the bottom rack and the next thing you know you're piling the sink full again and deciding that it doesn't make any sense to clean the kitchen up before bed because even if everything else is spotless, the whole thing will still look like crap because of the sink full of dirty dishes (which likely spill over onto the surrounding countertops).

So the kitchen doesn't get clean which means the next morning sucks and I get pissed making coffee and and up buying sludge out of the vending machine at work.  Then when the girls come down for breakfast, THEY have a lousy time because the kitchen is so cluttered and they do their best to make breakfast and eat in front of the TV for the sake of getting out of our tiny, cluttered, messy, borderline non-functional kitchen.  

Then Amy ends up piling more dirty crap next to the dirty crap already in the sink because, let's face it, she's not going to juggle the baby while trying to dig out from underneath the dish pile long enough to get another load going.  A few hours later, I come home, run another load (which is a half load shy of getting the kitchen clean) and somehow always end up going to bed with the kitchen just like it started.

Gaaaaaagh!

So new policy: get all the dishes clean at night...even if it means washing a few things by hand while the dishwasher does its thing.  I still hate our tiny dishwasher and the kitchen still drives me nuts, but at least I'm not going to bed angry.

Covert Electrical Work

Lately I've been pretty keyed up...not sleeping well at night, up late with little projects, up early to go to the office...that sort of thing.

The timing has been good, as Amy has been sick and doing a lot of sleeping and I've been left to my own devices once she and Babe-O are in bed for the night.

So tonight, the girls were both in bed by about ten and I decided to see if I could make some progress on Babe-O's playroom without waking anybody up. So far we've installed hardwood floors, painted, and installed trim. The nagging loose ends -- stuff that I need two baby-free hands to do -- include replacing all of the electrical switches/outlets with pretty white ones and putting up a ceiling fan that's been sitting in a box in the hallway for a few months now.

The fan is a must, since the existing overhead light provides all the ambiance of a police interrogation room with none of the charm. You can't tell in this picture, but one of the bulbs is even burned out just for good measure. In the otherwise super cute and tidy playroom, the light looks quite sad and pathetic.

So anyway, I snuck out to the garage for a ladder and down to the basement for screwdrivers and electrical stuff. Once I was all set up and had the fan out of the box, I went back down to the basement to take care of the circuit breaker. Unfortunately, our house is wired for the ever handy bedroom/hallway/bedroom circuit, so when I flicked it off, Amy lost power in our room, killing the TV she falls asleep to and rustling her sick self out of bed to find out what the hell was going on.

So much for letting her be surprised in the morning.

My cover blown, I went back to working on the fan and she went back to bed. It took a little over an hour, but the thing is done. I'm pretty happy with the one-hour timeframe when you take into account all of the tiptoeing and careful sneaking around needed to keep the girls from waking up (again).

Here it is, all done and ready for action.

I took a shower, headed downstairs, and am now writing this blog post while I watch an old movie and eat Cocoa Pebbles.

Also, I'm open to suggestions if anyone has ideas on how to drive nails without banging on them with a hammer. If I can figure that out, my nighttime project possibilities will open up considerably.