Daddy Does My Hair

Two.

2010-09-14T22:00:00.001-04:00

Babe-O's two, by the way. It happened a couple of weeks ago.

And it turns out that having a kid that's two is waaaaaay more fun than writing a blog about having a kid that's two.

So that's where the blog posts have been lately.

To bring everybody up to speed, Babe-O can now walk, talk, run, jump (sort of), swing, slide, sing, dance, swear, twirl, eat at the table, discipline the dog, use the potty, dress with style, spot a deer at 50 paces, nod knowingly, fasten her carseat, ride a tricycle, identify a Subaru, organize a dollhouse, unlock an iPhone, pose for the camera and thoroughly charm her daddy at least twice a day.

One of these days, Babe-O will officially become Kiddo.

But not today.

Two Green Things

2010-06-09T21:31:00.001-04:00

When you start with reusable grocery bags and glass milk bottles, you will (1) have nothing to use for picking up dog crap and (2) have nowhere to put used motor oil.

That is all.

Poop Story

2010-04-13T13:17:00.000-04:00

So a little while ago, Babe-O and I were hanging out in her playroom
when she wandered off down the hall. I was a little slow to get myself
up from the floor, so she was out of sight when I heard her saying
exitedly "meat! meat! meat!" I came around to find her pointing at a
pile of dog crap on the floor, still talking, with...her...mouth...full.

I freaked, and shoved both of my hands down her throat like a cartoon
dentist, successfully removing what turned out to be a well-chewed
banana.

It was a close one. (stupid dog)

{Sent from a mobile device.}

Outside!

2010-03-21T17:53:00.000-04:00

The weather is finally breaking here, which means we are at last
getting a chance to take Babe-O outside to play.

And she stinking loves it.

When she wants to go she squeals "Ousside! Ousside! Ousside!" which is
awesome when we are getting ready to go and quite not awesome when for
some reason we can't.

The other day we took a long walk (stroller free), watched geese in a
pond and followed some deer tracks over to the woods. Today we sat in
the driveway and did sidewalk chalk, which nicely combined two of Babe-
O's favorite things: "ousside!" and "colors!"

This kid gets more fun every day.

[Sent from a mobile device.]

Yo Amy, how 'bout some Cheerios?

2010-03-10T21:19:00.004-05:00

Amy thought it'd be a good idea to teach Babe-O our names: Amy and Josh as opposed to Mommy and Daddy. Babe-O can tell you my name if you ask her, but she never calls me Josh, which is more than fine by me, considering I'm hoping she still calls me Daddy when she's 50.

She will, however, break out an "Amy" or two (or twelve) if her Mom is busy with something and not giving her immediate attention. It is hilarious and always reminds us of the clip below:

"Baaaabe?"

2010-03-09T22:09:00.004-05:00

First, two things to know in terms of backstory: I typically call Amy "Sweetie" and she typically calls me "Babe." That first point isn't really relevant. The second one is.

One of the most common manifestations of Babe is at the beginning of a request, generally shouted out from another room in the house, as in "BAAAAABE? Can you bring me a glass of water?" or "BAAAAABE? Are you busy?" or the always popular "Baaaabe? Baaaaabe? BaaaAAAaAaaAAabe!? BABE!"

I digress.

The other day, Amy and Babe-O were upstairs, winding down before bed. I was just on the other side of the bedroom door and overheard Babe-O ask for some cereal. Amy told her to ask Daddy.

Then I heard it. That sweet little voice: "Baaaaaaabe?!"

The next couple of decades are going to be rough.

The Kitchen

2010-02-16T20:52:00.007-05:00

A little while ago, I was asked a very reasonable question via Twitter:

@JimmyJames70

@Dad_O what is it that you do in that kitchen night after night to make it so messy? Wait. Maybe I don't want to know…

Innocent enough, but it got me thinking: why the hell is the kitchen so hard to keep clean?

Tonight, I decided to investigate.

Yesterday, Amy and I teamed up to clean everything. All the dishes were done, right down to the silly crap that you have to handwash. That meant that when we went to sleep there was literally not a single dirty dish in the house (and as it turns out, when that is the case, the cupboards don't really have room for all the clean stuff, but that doesn't come up much).

So tonight as I loaded the dishwasher, I took inventory of how many dirty dishes our little family of three managed to accumulate during the approximately 12 hours between when I leave for work and when we put the little one to bed.

Here's the list, again, keeping in mind that we are a household of two adults and one small child.

In no particular order, tonight's dirty dishes include:

Two sauce pans (with lids)
One large frying pan
Two whisks
A wooden spoon
Two serving spoons
One pinch bowl (I think that's what it is)
Seven glasses
One kid bowl
Three kid spoons
Eight forks
Eight spoons
Three steak knives
A butter knife
A measuring cup
Two kid cups (with lids)
Three Tupperware containers
One measuring cup
One snack cup
Eleven plates
Eleven bowls
Eight forks
Eight spoons
Three steak knives
One meat tenderizers

If you do the math, that works out to just over 30 dirty items per person per day. So, @JimmyJames70, to answer your question and mine, that is why the kitchen is so hard to clean.

Although we are, it seems, finally getting a grip on it and I think have managed to cobble together a system that at least gets us back to zero each night. And really, how can we ask for anything more than that?

Super Bowl XXLICCLI (or something like that)

2010-02-07T22:28:00.002-05:00

This time last year I was watching the Steelers finish off a dicey fourth quarter with an 80 yard drive ending with Santonio Holmes in the end zone to beat Arizona. This year the Steelers were sidelined short of the playoffs and I could really have cared less who won the Super Bowl.

I spent the first half with the TV on, watching Babe-O burn off some energy chasing a beach ball around in circles and shouting goofy stuff at the top of her lungs. We were having eggs for dinner, so I sat with her and watched the game while she burned through every bite of two eggs and then started angling for some of Amy's soup.

She had been going strong all day so we didn't wait until halftime to get her in the bath. By the time we were done with that, we were just in time to catch The Who on stage, which Babe-O celebrated by dancing naked on the bed, flapping her arms and grinning ear to ear.

Then the game got interesting fast with New Orleans pulling off an onside kick to keep the ball after the half. I was impressed, but Babe-O was pooped so I shut the TV off and curled up with her to go to sleep.

She crashed out after about five minutes in the dark and I went downstairs and watched the Saints pull off the win. Sure next year I'm hoping to be at a party someplace watching Pittsburgh win a seventh Super Bowl ring, but I'm not going to lie...spending this one goofing off with Babe-O was a blast.

Slowplaying the Poop Card

2010-02-03T20:54:00.004-05:00

Today we considered not taking Babe-O to her swim lesson, as she had been a little under the weather today. She said she was up to it, though, and seemed good when it was about time to leave, so I went for it.

She was a little subdued during the lesson, but all in all did pretty well, until we got to about the last two minutes. She started fussing more and more and then finally blurted out the universal battle cry of kids that need to get the hell out of the pool: "poooooop!"

I excused us from the somewhat maddening end-of-lesson song and bolted for the men's locker room (no toilet in the family changing area where we usually go).

That meant running Babe-O through the YMCA naked old man gauntlet, which I imagine was a little traumatizing for her (let alone me). And why is it that old guys feel the need to use such an unholy amount of soap when they shower? They always look like giant liver spotted Santa heads with their huge nipple eyes shooting you sideways glances as you go by.

Anyway, we made our way to the one toilet in the place and as soon as I opened the door, Babe-O started shouting "no, no, no!" Long story short: not happening.

So we made our way back through Saggy Alley, where I'm pretty sure we saw Fidel Castro, and back out to the pool area. The lesson was wrapping up and it was pretty clear that time could become a factor on the poop issue, so we grabbed our gear and headed right to the family changing rooms.

By the way, the family changing area is just a closet with a stall mat on the floor. There are chairs there about a third of the time, but people steal them to sit in and read, which I only just realized in the last thirty seconds as I type this. Bastards!

Once Babe-O was stripped down, we figured out that we'd forgotten to pack a dry diaper. It seemed we were doubling down on the urgency of the pending poop. Luckily, Babe-O Commando managed to make it home without incident.

Now she's sleeping. And come to think of it, that poop never did materialize.

Either the morning is going to be ugly or she was just slowplaying the poop card to get out of the swimming song.

Dad-O, God of Lightning

2010-02-01T22:12:00.002-05:00

Static electricity is starting to affect my quality of life.

First it was just cute that the baby's hair would occasionally stand up on end when she wore hooded coats, but lately it's been out of control.

I blame my slippers, but whatever the cause, I get shocked every time I touch anything. One doorknob in particular HURTS.

When I pet the cat at night it looks like he's on fire. Luckily he's kind of a freak, likes it rough, and doesn't mind.

The dogs think I abuse them for fun and run away every time they get shocked.

Yesterday, I went to adjust the volume on the DVD player and it caused such a zap that the display scrambled and the external speakers crapped out instantaneously.

What the hell? Is there anything I can do about this? I'm afraid I'm going to touch off a grease fire in the kitchen or blow myself up at a gas pump. Little help?

Gross Riddle

2010-02-01T05:17:00.003-05:00

How long does it take a Q-Tip to travel 18 inches?

If the route runs from my dog's mouth to my dog's butt, about four days.

Since the other day when our cocker spaniel Lola decided to eat about two dozen Q-Tips for lunch, we've been keeping an eye on her and bracing ourselves for a $1200 vet bill. She's actually done this before, but never with quite so many at one time, so while we're pretty sure she can handle one or two, this didn't look good.

But luckily, sure enough just yesterday we finally started to see the first couple of slimy brown competitors poke their once fluffy heads out into the daylight and stagger across the finish line.

Unfortunately, if the dog's digestive tract is, I dunno, twelve feet long, she is apparently only able to push a Q-Tip for about 11.92 feet. That last inch or so is where I come in.

So anyway, we aren't out of the woods yet on the vet bill, but it looks like we're making some progress. And on the plus side, the dog has been acting very fond of me since last night when I yanked that first handful out for her. I suppose when you've got a problem like that and can't really reach your own ass, you'd better make some really good friends in a hurry.

Big girl panties

2010-01-30T09:27:00.003-05:00

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!

2010-01-29T21:38:00.003-05:00

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

2010-01-27T21:26:00.002-05:00

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

2010-01-15T22:24:00.004-05:00

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?

2010-01-15T19:09:00.001-05:00

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.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Often housebound (no, not me)

2010-01-14T21:35:00.001-05:00

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.

2010-01-14T01:21:00.001-05:00

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

2010-01-11T00:57:00.001-05:00

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

2010-01-05T00:12:00.004-05:00

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.

It's all fun and games until...

2009-12-30T23:08:00.004-05:00

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?

2009-12-10T23:39:00.003-05:00

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

2009-12-07T22:43:00.004-05:00

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!)

2009-12-02T21:16:00.007-05:00

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

2009-11-23T18:47:00.001-05:00

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

2009-11-19T20:59:00.005-05:00

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!

2009-11-17T21:37:00.005-05:00

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

2009-11-15T20:00:00.003-05:00

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

2009-11-12T20:59:00.003-05:00

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

2009-11-12T20:24:00.002-05:00

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

2009-11-09T21:19:00.001-05:00

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

2009-11-08T12:04:00.003-05:00

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

2009-11-07T15:13:00.005-05:00

[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)

2009-11-07T00:43:00.004-05:00

(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)

2009-11-06T23:35:00.003-05:00

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.

2009-11-03T22:48:00.001-05:00

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.

2009-11-01T14:40:00.008-05:00

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

2009-10-30T22:43:00.006-04:00

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

2009-10-29T22:23:00.001-04:00

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

2009-10-28T12:45:00.001-04:00

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?)

2009-10-27T21:04:00.001-04:00

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

2009-10-26T22:21:00.001-04:00

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

2009-10-26T21:03:00.001-04:00

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

2009-10-25T22:32:00.001-04:00

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

2009-10-25T19:42:00.000-04:00

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.

2009-10-25T08:50:00.000-04:00

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

2009-10-20T21:16:00.000-04:00

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)

2009-10-20T20:43:00.001-04:00

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

2009-10-19T21:43:00.001-04:00

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

Guest Post at MakesMomHappy

2009-08-20T22:05:00.001-04:00

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)

2009-08-14T22:49:00.000-04:00

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)

2009-08-12T21:50:00.001-04:00

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)

2009-08-11T21:37:00.001-04:00

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)

2009-08-07T00:06:00.001-04:00

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...

Front-heavy hiking

2009-08-04T00:24:00.001-04:00

I've been stalling on this hiking post for a few days now because I was really hoping that one of the people in our group who was taking pictures would have e-mailed them out by now, but no such luck (hint, hint, photogs!). Anyway, blog post now, photos later.

We took Babe-O hiking at a place with big rocks. It was kind of a weird spot, but for six bucks you get to hike around a big loop in the woods with big, impressive cliffs and rock formations. I used to do the camping/hiking thing occasionally, so I was pretty stoked about the whole outing, even more so because I got to expose Babe-O to some genuine outdoor adventuring. She rode around strapped to my chest in her ever-useful Jeep carrier, which has now proven that it can accommodate everything from emptying the dishwasher to semi-professional rock climbing.

She did great. No fussing, no complaints, just riding around and occasionally cooing and shouting at the surrounding scenery. With any luck, this will lay the foundation for many daddy/daughter adventures.

Mom-O and nature don't really get along, so it'll be very cool if I can get away with having a buddy to run around in the woods with me. Time will tell, but so far so good.

Getting the Hang of This (Solo Dad-O: Part Two)

2009-07-24T21:28:00.000-04:00

This was the first full day that we've been without Mom-O and I'm going to push my luck and say that Babe-O and I are getting the hang of this. We played, went for a walk, went to the store, played some more.

So far bedtime has been the tricky part, but even that went like clockwork tonight...in fact better than it has gone in recent memory. At Mom-O's suggestion, I steered clear of the glider altogether (traditinoal mommy/baby nursing spot) and went to my big recliner instead. Babe-O drank her rice milk and the snuggled up on my shoulder.

She didn't zonk right out this time, but instead started to fidget, so I just took her upstairs and

plopped her in her crib. She was wide awake, looked me in the eye when I gave her a kiss goodnight, and didn't make a peep when I left. Five minutes later I checked back and she was sound asleep.

I did some interviews for a magazine article I'm working on and am currently waiting on my pizza to be ready. It's been a pretty good night.

Oh...I also did a guest post for Mom-O's site. Feel free to check it out over at www.makesmomhappy.com.

Two days down, two to go. At least it's the weekend.

Work at Word Dad-O

2009-07-17T21:40:00.000-04:00

Okay, okay, okay...I get it. Haven't blogged in a while. Been working, installing floors, thinking up excuses for not blogging, you name it, very busy. Anyway, just so this doesn't go another day, here's a link to a guest post I did for www.ourlifeupstate.com, just to prove that I haven't completely fallen off the blog train.

http://www.ourlifeupstate.com/2009/07/work-at-work-dad-o.html

Please give it a read and check back this weekend for more bloggy goodness.

The dog goes “bark bark!” What sound does a bunny make?

2009-06-27T22:29:00.001-04:00

Aieee!! Aiee! Aieeeeeeeeee!

[Day One]

It turns out that a bunny can scream bloody murder. If you've ever stepped on a cat, a screaming bunny sounds at least fifty times worse.

I learned this the other day. Babe-O and I were out in the backyard sitting on a big blanket in the grass. She was playing with her blocks and watching me throw the Frisbee for the dogs. Then out of nowhere came this ear-piercing Aieee!! Aiee! Aieeeeeeeeee! sound from behind us. Babe-O's eyes snapped wide open and she started flapping her arms and squealing, apparently sensing excitement afoot.

I scooped her up and spun around to find (big goofy golden doodle) Maggie Mae bouncing around with a whole litter of tiny bunnies scattering in different directions underneath her. But that wasn't the source of the screaming.

The screaming was coming from (cocker spaniel) Lola's mouth, where the unluckiest baby bunny was trapped.

I screamed at Lola. Babe-O screamed at Lola. Maggie barked at Lola.

I ran inside, unloaded the baby on Mom-O, and ran back out to Lola, who was still clamped down

on squealing rabbit.

I yelled at her to drop it, and sure enough, she obediently did. The dogs ran inside as they were told and Bunn-O scampered off to safety.

With the dogs locked inside, Mom-O, Babe-O, and I walked the yard looking for any casualties. Bunnies were nowhere to be found, but we did manage to locate their den (hutch? hole? gazebo?). We fluffed it back up and went about our business.

[Day Two]

The next day, I took the dogs out on their leashes to pee in the morning and then went to work. A few hours later, I get a phone call from Mom-O indicating that yes, bunny screams are terrible, and yes, they can be heard from the yard even if all the windows are closed. Lola had found another rabbit, terrorized it, and let it go as instructed. From then on we were back in leash mode, or at least stay-out-there-and-keep-Lola-away-from-the-nest mode.

We did some research online and determined that the rabbits were old enough that they were starting to venture out on their own with only occasional visits from their mother. It said that we could move their nest up to ten feet away by digging a hole and transplanting all their fur and grass and stereo equipment and stuff. The only problem was that the only spot that would be any good within ten feet was in the neighbor's yard on the other side of the fence. The only place in our yard that we could put them would have been the front yard, but that was too far away. So we figured we'd just monitor the dogs until the pain in the ass (spoken affectionately) bunnies left on their own.

[Today]

Today I was out in the yard again with Babe-O and the dogs and Lola again found one of the bunnies hopping around outside of its hole. I started squealing as soon as it spotted her and she never got her paws (or teeth) on it. Babe-O was again excited, shrieking and flapping her arms. Only this time, we found a casualty. Not sure what happened to this one – bird attack, lawn mower, who knows – but it didn't seem like the work of the dogs. Still, Mom-O and Babe-O and I walked the yard again to make sure there were no injuries that needed to be addressed.

We found the one that Lola has scared and wanted to make sure that she hadn't managed to hurt it, too. Before I could grab him, Bunn-O jumped through the fence lattice and bolted into the neighbor's bushes. He was about three inches long and you would think that a bunny bolting through the fence into oblivion would be the end of the story.

Mom-O lovingly pointed out that Lola could have hurt it, I failed to catch it when I had the chance, and if it was going to die a slow painful death somewhere, then may I be haunted for all my days by phantom bunny screams in the night.

Sigh.

I reluctantly hopped the fence and chased after this little guy, who admittedly looked like he might have a bum leg.

After a while it became pretty clear that I wasn't going to find this tiny thing on my own, so we called on the only one of us with a proven track record of bunny capture. Mom-O put Lola on a leash and came around to the neighbor's yard with me. After about ten minutes of sniffing, Lola found the bunny. She was super-obedient and cornered it against a plant for us while I scooped it up.

Babe-O watched intently and shouted occasionally throughout.

The bunny was fine, so we brought it back to our yard. We let Babe-O look at it and touch it once before running her inside to wash her hands so she didn't catch suburban bunny fever or something like that. Then we put Bunn-O back in his hole, which seemed to make him pretty happy.

By then it was bath time, so I went and did that before going back out to deal with the dead one. In case you're wondering I gave it a proper burial (in a bag of grass clippings) and will honor his memory (by setting him out on the curb on trashday).

Babe-O’s clinically beautiful eyes

2009-06-23T21:53:00.001-04:00

Okay, we already knew that Babe-O had pretty eyes, but today we got word that they were also nice and healthy and all that stuff.

We took her to the eye doctor for her freebie infant checkup. It wasn't entirely smooth sailing.

First of all, we had a very foul diaper situation within a few minutes of arrival. The office didn't have a restroom, so we ended up down the hall at a common office-complex bathroom that didn't have a changing table in it. After that it was out to the car to change the diaper. On the way back in, Mom-O carried the baby and I carried the paper Wegman's bakery bag full of baby poop. After briefly considering lighting the thing on fire and leaving it in the lobby as a friendly suggestion to get a damn family-friendly restroom, I settled on dropping it in a trash can and hoping it stunk a little.

With the diaper situation resolved, we were back in the waiting room for what turned out to be a really long time. Apparently they were backed up or something.

We spend 45 minutes or so goofing off and trying to keep the baby entertained until we finally got to go back for the exam.

After a little more waiting and letting Babe-O spin around on the stool and play with some of the eye doctor equipment, she got her checkup.

The first part was a breeze: look at the clown, flashy light, look over here, look over there.

Then we found out she was going to be dilated, which meant eyedrops.

Administering eyedrops to a 10 month old kid is a logistical challenge. Imagine Mom-O in the big optometrist throne with the baby in a headlock, little eyes pried open, the doctor trying to get the drops in there, and more screaming than we heard when she got stuck with big ugly vaccination needles. She was maaaaaaaad. And then couldn't touch her face for 10 minutes. She wasn't crazy about that, either.

Once the drops had enough time to work, the doctor gave her one last look and gave her a clean bill of eye health. By the end of the whole thing she seemed pretty tired and beat up.

I went back to work and she went home for a pretty long nap.

Next appointment: age three.

Naptime: wusses need not apply

2009-06-03T01:32:00.001-04:00

Lately Babe-O has begun using elementary terrorist tactics so influence her circumstances at naptime, namely to move the situation away from "it's naptime" and towards "do whatever you want, sweetie." And man, the other day I was working from home and for the first time really learned what a powder keg this place is during the napping hours.

First of all…no moving is allowed unless absolutely necessary. And anything that makes any noise (with the exception of Elmo on TV) is strictly off limits. If the floor creaks, you're a dead man. If the dog does anything to imply that she might be about to bark, you must pounce like you're trying to contain a hand grenade blast and then drag the animal outside before any nap-disrupting noises can be emitted.

Delivery guys need to be intercepted at the sidewalk before they have a chance to slam the truck door or – god forbid – get anywhere near the doorbell.

I actually unplugged my external keyboard down in my office because the laptop keys clack less. Naptime is intense and when I'm here I spend the entire hour or so completely wound up and terrified that I'm gonna hear Babe-O's sad little whimper, followed by her militant screaming.

Lucky (for me), I'm generally not here for naptime. But thanks to the magic of Twitter, I can catch a glimpse of how naptime is going from a safe distance. Here's a round-up of tweets from today, starting with the most recent and working backwards.

@HappyMomAmy
you know what a 9 month old who's slept 40 minutes in an entire day is? LOUD & CRANKY. Oh, and mad. She's attempting to damage my ear drums.
about 9 hours ago from web

@HappyMomAmy
apparently that sleep jag was to lull me into a false sense of security. worse now than before. hood is back over ears.about 9 hours ago from web

@HappyMomAmy
update: hostage released, ears recovering nicely. =) HappyMomAmy might be happy again!
about 9 hours ago from web

@HappyMomAmy
2 hours and 20 minutes later...SHE SLEEPS! VICTORY IS MINE!!! or something like that. ah, sweet silence. my ears are so relieved.about 9 hours ago from web

@HappyMomAmydisclaimer: before anyone worries, i'm sitting 2 feet from her. she's in her swing (NOT napping). (I have to, the #$@! batteries are dead!)about 10 hours ago from web

@HappyMomAmy
dear tweeps: 9 month old is holding me hostage. please send a coke float from wendy's and some ear plugs. don't mind the screaming. thanks.about 10 hours ago

It's a wild ride as you can see. I'm just glad I've got someone at home holding down the fort day after day. Mom-O (@HappyMomAmy)

rocks.

Wild Kingdom: Suburban Edition

2009-05-17T20:44:00.001-04:00

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

2009-05-14T21:39:00.001-04:00

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

Prep time: 20 Minutes

How to:

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

At the ten minute mark:

Potatoes, per instructions on box.
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

2009-05-12T20:40:00.001-04:00

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

2009-05-06T23:20:00.001-04:00

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

2009-05-05T21:27:00.001-04:00

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

2009-05-04T21:28:00.001-04:00

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:

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

2009-05-03T22:12:00.001-04:00

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

2009-05-02T22:16:00.001-04:00

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!

Beyond Breastmilk: the food post

2009-04-19T18:00:00.001-04:00

I just realized that I haven't really covered the whole "what she's eating" issue on the blog. These day's Babe-O has quite a repertoire when it comes to mealtime (not just nursing anymore).

A couple of months ago we started introducing veggies. The first one we did was squash, which we made using a little mini food processor. We decided to go with the food processor instead of buying jarred baby food based on the fact that jarred baby food tastes like crap.

I tried some at a baby-shower thing and I'm not sure what the stuff was supposed to be but it smelled like an old fridge and tasted like pureed beef marinated in cat pee. On top of that, it is expensive and, like everything else, subject to the occasional lead paint Chinese recall.

So we make our own. It's super easy, super cheap, and tastes better. We make a little batch of something, feed her some fresh and freeze the rest in an ice cube tray. After that, you just have to throw the little veggie cube in the microwave and bingo-bango, there you go.

So we did squash first. Babe-O wasn't crazy about it but seemed to dig the novelty of eating something that didn't come out of a boob.

We introduced a new food every week or so, and now she's up to squash, apples, green beans, peas, pears, baby cereal (mixed with breast milk or juice), banana, and probably some stuff I'm forgetting. She can also eat a teething biscuit, which is very cool when we are out to dinner because she can feed that to herself while we eat and everyone gets to feel very relaxed and sophisticated.

The teething biscuits usually need to be taken away from her as they get soft, which means the dogs get their share of gross, slimy, dog-cookie-like snacks which Babe- has learned to share with them.

The only real problem we've had with food has been in the last few days. Since Babe-O is always trying to feed herself and seems to really enjoy the challenge, we got her some cheesy poofs that are designed for babies, porous enough to mush up and break down so they don't turn into a choking hazard.

The things taste like stale Cheetos and probably aren't exactly in line with the kid's usual healthful diet, but she really enjoyed feeding them to herself so they seemed like a good plan.

On the downside, both times she had them she ended up projectile-vomiting the things all over the place about four minutes after her last swallow. Baby puke is usually pretty gross in its own right, but add that rancid Cheeto smell and you've really got a mess on your hands (and shoes, and shoulder, and torso, and chair, and floor).

So after the second instance of flying cheesy poof goo, we retired the things to the trash can. Before too long she'll be able to do Cheerios and stuff like that, which will be nice.

We’ve got a reader

2009-04-13T21:18:00.001-04:00

Today, Mom-O went through a big stack of Babe-O's new books with her, which she apparently enjoyed to no end. By the time I got home, she still hadn't had her fill and was eager to sit down with me and do some more reading.

That's when I got my first glimpse of Babe-O's very deliberate reading finger. As soon as you open a book, she balls her right hand into a little fist with her pointer finger sticking out at the page. She uses it to point at stuff, push buttons if there are buttons, and touch stuff in her touch-n-feel books (which she loves). That deliberate little finger is just stinking adorable.

It is very cool how interested she seems to be in her books, especially since both her Mom and I were big on reading when we were little. Hopefully some of her new, very basic books, will help her find the words she's been looking for with her little babbles and squeals lately.

"Dog...dog...dog..."

2009-04-13T14:38:00.001-04:00

I just got an e-mail from home that made me smile.

It seems that babe-o was playing with a book that says words when you push different buttons. She got hung up on "dog," pressing it over and over again.

That is one word that she seems to know. She will always look around to find one of her dogs if you say the word.

Perhaps this is a hint about what her first word will be.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Happy Easter!

2009-04-12T20:46:00.001-04:00

After the pre-Easter festivities that we attended on Good Friday, today was Easter proper. We again headed just a little ways out of town for another gathering of my inlaws: Babe-O's great-grandmother, grandparents, great aunt/uncle, and second cousins. I think they're her second cousins, I can never keep that cousin stuff straight. Unless you are dating dangerously close to your own family, it doesn't come up that much.

We got up a little after seven, hit the grocery store for green bean casserole ingredients, and had Babe-O's closed-door Easter with just us. We broke out the video camera and put her into an adorable little Easter dress so that we could capture the moment as she followed the little confetti eggs to her basket…okay, so I could hold her hands and tug her along until she arrived at her basket; same thing.

Actually it was two baskets, one from us and one from my parents back East (I always wanted to say "back East").

Ours was full of a cool selection of baby books, which I actually had not seen until today. The one from my parents was more elaborate, with a bunch of cool stuff for the baby and tasty stuff for us. Poor little sucker can't have candy yet – ha!

My parents' basket arrived last week, unassembled, with detailed and hilarious instructions on how to put it together. If I remember correctly, one of the instructions was "Place personally-selected Easter crap into basket." I laughed.

Anyway, the thing was very cute and very thoughtful and it was very cool that they went to the trouble to put it together. Very!

After that, we hit the road for the big gathering. Babe-O slept on the way there and after taking a while to warm up, seemed to have a good time. Her four cousins are all girls and run in age from something like 5 to something like 12. So they were very energetic and Babe-O eventually took an interest with them and played well, doing peek-a-boo and banging toys around. It was good to see her playing with other kids, even if they were pretty well separated from her in age.

Dinner was awesome, of course, and Babe-0 displayed outstanding manners by sitting in her booster seat and quietly gnawing on a teething biscuit for most of dinner. Sometimes we take for granted what a good kid she is, but stuff like this always reminds us.

Following a quick and pretty chilly trip to the park, we headed home, just in time for a pretty miserable bath that our slightly-overtired baby screamed most of the way through. She was good all day and earned some bathtime screaming.

Now she's upstairs with her Mom, nursing her way to sleep. Not a bad long weekend, but my sorry butt is thoroughly kicked.

Happy (Good) Friday

2009-04-10T23:34:00.001-04:00

Today, I had off of work (kind of unexpectedly…Good Friday, really?) and our little family had a chance to go catch up with the extended family (Mom-O's side).

We headed just slightly out of town and started out with a trip to see Aunt/Uncle/Cousins. Babe-O was in her new Easter Dress that we picked up last night – she looked adorable, of course.

When we first arrived, she was very reserved and for about a half an hour quietly sat and gave sideways glances at everybody there. This seems to be her visiting routine. After she took it all in and started feeling comfortable with her surroundings, she finally warmed up and let everybody see a little bit of her personality. She played with some early Easter gifts, harassed the cats, and had a generally good time. Her Great Aunt and Uncle had gotten her some plastic keys for teething, which she promptly started sucking on and some cool touch-n-feel books, which she immediately dove into, feeling out the textures and turning the pages. Good gifts.

After that, it was across the street to her Great Grandparent's house, where the girls chatted in the kitchen while I sat in the living room with Mom-O's Grandfather, discussing how much damn better the world used to be and what a bunch of sissy nitwits my generation is. It was a good time.

Babe-O was particularly impressed with the two pets of the household, a borderline asthmatic Chihuahua shaped like a football and a 45-pound cat who by closing its eyes can make it nearly impossible to tell his head from his ass. More presents here, including a little stuffed bunny picked out by her notoriously cranky Great-Grandfather, proof again that he's got a soft spot or two. She loved the bunny, which clucks like a chicken (a la the Cadbury Bunny).

We finished there and decided to press our luck and extend our stay by stopping by in-law's house, where we knew we would end up staying well past Babe-O's bedtime. Her good mood didn't let up, and after a quick nap she spent the evening babbling, playing, and generally having a good time. I also babbled played, and had a good time. We ended up getting home around 10:30 p.m., which is hours after bath and bedtime. Babe-O slept in the car on the way home, as we knew she would, and is now happily sleeping in her Mom's lap, hopefully ready to be transferred seamlessly to her crib for a long, uninterrupted night's sleep. This is actually a possibility, as despite being sick, she has been sleeping through the night lately and just might cut us some slack and do the same tonight.

Tomorrow will be a day just for the three of us and on Sunday we've got more Easter festivities to attend. These holidays are busy, but as Babe-O grows (even at just seven months) she is getting more and more fun and more involved in everything that's going on. What a cool kid.

B.Y.O.Door

2009-04-08T22:34:00.001-04:00

Babe-O has a cold. Mom-O has a cold. I have a cold.

Needless to say, as I drove home from work today, I wasn't expecting that a fantastic evening lay ahead.

I was wrong.

Perhaps starting to feel a little better than she has recently, Babe-O was a complete delight when I walked in the door. She was bouncing up and down, laughing and excited. I had plans to do some work as soon as I got home, but pushed that off until tonight on account of her awesome mood.

Mom-O headed out to run some errands and I got to hang out with my small buddy (I used to call her "little buddy," but that had a little too much of a Gilligan's Island ring to it).

She had a new FAO Schwartz wooden puzzle that was send to us by my parents and we had a great time banging the pieces around and trying to get them to fit in the holes. I couldn't believe how long the thing held her attention. In fact, I was by far the first one to lose interest, so we saddled Babe-O up in her Jeep baby sling and started doing some work around the house.

She helped me get the kitchen halfway together and goofed off with me as I tried to get moved into my rearranged office…soon to be an office/guest room, a fact I'm still struggling to accept. We've decided that Babe-O needs a dedicated play room, which means the guest room becomes Babe-O's Room II and my office becomes the guest room. I very stubbornly resisted this at first, but my office is waaaaay bigger than I actually need (which is/was pretty sweet) and it will be waaaaay nice to have a dedicated room for playing, which should translate to me tripping over less baby stuff elsewhere in the house.

We'll see how it goes.

It's actually a great deal for our guests, since our current guest room is quite small. The only downside is that at the moment there is no door leading to my office, so our more modest visitors will have to abide by the temporary B.Y.O.Door policy.

Putting the “ick” in Sick

2009-04-05T21:28:00.001-04:00

Babe-O hasn't been feeling so hot. For the last couple of days, her nose has been running like a fountain, she's been sneezing constantly and she's developed a tiny, quiet theatrical little cough. She is up a lot at night, having trouble breathing through her stuffy nose and she is very temperamental during the day.

I was on baby duty yesterday. We were playing with some plastic balls that she has, which was all well and good until she accidently dropped one and started bawling about it. Poor kid…short fuse.

Anyway, today ended up being a daddy/baby day (as opposed to a baby-daddy day, which happens four times a week on most daytime talk shows).

I know that she still feels like crap, but Babe-O was a little trooper.

We got up at seven, ate some breakfast together, and played around for an hour or so while Mom caught up on sleep (she was up most of the night with the sick kid).

When it was time to get some stuff done, I plopped Babe-O into her Jeep carrier and she rode around with me while I worked in the kitchen and did some work in my office. I talked to her while I worked and she seemed to have a blast.

Sleeping has been challenging, so we planned the day around getting her into the car for her two naps, morning and afternoon. Being propped up in her car seat seems to help with the stuffiness and the car is always a good bet on getting her to sleep.

For our morning outing, I hung out in the car with the sleeping sickie while Mom-O hit the grocery store.

After that, it was back to work, bustling around in the office and hanging out with Babe-O. Trying to cut Mom some slack, I headed back out in the afternoon, taking Babe-O with me.

We ran a few errands, including a trip to the bookstore to get me some thoroughly mindless reading (see shelf at right). After keeping my sick buddy up for maybe an hour, we got back on the highway and headed in the general direction of home. She fell asleep and I found a shady spot to stop and read.

About 100 pages later, we pulled back in the driveway and spend some time playing and then hit the tub for Babe-O's bath.

Surprisingly enough, about half an hour later I came inside from playing with the dogs in the backyard and found a sleeping baby on her way upstairs to be put into bed. With any luck, we'll have a good night and she'll be feeling better in the morning.

Looking back, this was a really cool weekend. Babe-O and I have been getting along better every day and I'm starting to get used to the big smile she shoots me when I come in the room. She's still super attached to her Mom, but I'm glad to see she seems to have decided that Dad ain't so bad either.

Love that kid! (that sick, snotty, fussy, occasionally-gross little kid) Love her!

Babe-O’s Sweet Ride

2009-04-01T20:45:00.001-04:00

Happy birthday to me.

Mom-O picked me up an outstanding, slightly early birthday present today. It's a jogging stroller made by Jeep (who says Chrysler isn't diversified?). I've wanted one for a while now, but it was a good deal today as the line was discontinued and the floor model was available at a discount. So long story short, Mom-O was in the parking lot at Babies-R-Us trying to stuff the thing in the car, along with Babe-O's everyday stroller and a giant box of diapers.

Right now, I pretty much hang out with Babe-O from the time I get home until her bath/bed time at 7:00. I try to get up and work in the mornings before going to the office, so on most days my fat butt is out of luck when it comes to making time to get any exercise (though the Wii Fit helps). Anyway, I'm hoping I can start inserting an afternoon jog with Babe-O into my super-routine-driven days and maybe get in a bit of shape while I'm at it.

Plus, getting Babe-O out in the fresh air for some jogging excitement a little more each day has to be a good thing, too.

I'm completely stoked about the whole thing.

Houston, we have a tooth…

2009-04-01T20:35:00.001-04:00

So what causes your delightful, well-mannered baby to suddenly turn into a relentlessly cranky duck? You got it…the first tooth is here.

On Sunday, Babe-O was being really, really difficult. Mom and Dad were taking turns being at our wit's end. She didn't want to be put down. She didn't want to be held. She wouldn't eat. She wouldn't sleep unless she was in her Mom's lap. It was bad news all around.

Just when I was starting to get worried that we had gotten cocky and let our sweet little girl turn into a bad egg, it all became clear.

I got an excited phone call at work today letting me know that Babe-O had her first tooth, a bottom one. Obviously, this is super cool, but on the other hand we're pretty shocked at how quickly she's growing up.

She eats pureed vegetables. She drinks from a sippy cup (she skipped bottles altogether). She laughs. She plays.

It's getting harder and harder to remember those days when all she did was eat, sleep, and poop.

Sure, it's a little sad, but I can't help but feel like she only gets cooler every day. And I think she can keep that pace up for quite a while.

Happy St. Pats

2009-03-17T21:32:00.001-04:00

For St. Patrick's Day, Babe-O wasn't allowed to have any beer, but we did let her have a shot – a vaccination, that is (badda bing!)

Because of our spaced-out vaccination schedule, today she just needed two vaccinations, one was an injection, the other the sugary liquid stuff that seems to go down pretty easy.

Anyway, I was so stinking proud of my girl. First of all, she was playing like a maniac while we waited for the doctor to come in. She sat on the table with just her diaper on and just beat the hell out of a few of her toys, making noise and generally enjoying herself.

Her measurements were all good – she's in about the bottom 15 percent of the growth curve for height and weight and around the top 30 percent in terms of head circumference, which as far as I can tell translates to a girl that is somewhat petite yet biologically brilliant. An in terms of the size thing, I am told that I never actually clawed my way onto the growth curve at all, so I'm not worried about her size.

After getting the measurements done and talking with the doctor for a bit, it was time for the shot. She was such a tough guy. The nurse jabbed her, she shouted out (no tears), was upset for about five seconds, and then snapped right out of it – "yes that hurt, yes I'm okay."

After that, we were at the front desk making her next appointment and Babe-O charmed the hell out of the nurses there. One of them said her name and she immediately spun her head around to see who was speaking to her. She was in a generally good mood and made everyone happy that she encountered.

Once we were back out in the sunshine, we headed up to the grocery store where my wonderful wife treated me to a four-pack of Guinness and Babe-O and I got to hang out in the store for a while, which she usually enjoys. Back at home, we took a family walk before bath and bed. It was a great, laid-back St. Patrick's Day.

(Speaking of Saint Patrick's Day, on the way to the baby doctor at about 4:00 in the afternoon, I drove down the main drag, looking at all of the revelers outside of the bars downtown. It wasn't sexy. It takes a special kind of lady to have the ability and inclination to drink all day long. Typically, she isn't a pretty sight, especially after a few hours pickling. Yectch!)

My buddy, Jack

2009-02-25T20:53:00.001-05:00

It's been a hard few days, which is why I haven't had a chance to post in a while.

This weekend we had to place our youngest dog, Jack, in a new home. It started about a week ago.

Jack is a cocker spaniel; a honeymoon baby that we purchased at the mall pet store after he was deeply discounted, apparently because no one would buy him. He was adorable, friendly, and was getting to an age where it would be pretty unlikely that he'd find a good home.

We took him in and fell in love with him right away. He got along great with our other two dogs and he brought a lot of life to the house. He was always a little off…acting a little bit like an abused dog (perhaps he was at some point). He would growl occasionally for no reason and would get fearful and submissive if he thought you were upset, such as if you caught him peeing in the house during potty training.

So he had his quirks, but he was a good dog and he was a lot of fun. Lately, he has been particularly energetic and difficult to deal with, and I was getting frustrated with him. After a long day of Jack getting in trouble, I tried to make amends right before bed. I got down on the floor with him, pet him for a while, and then leaned in to give him a kiss on the head.

Out of nowhere, he bit me. It was hard enough to break the skin on my arm and cause some pretty significant bruising. If I had been the baby, it could have broken a bone or left a scar – the thought of which made me physically ill.

He has always been great with the baby, and he was clearly her favorite dog, but we just couldn't take the chance of something happening down the road…maybe in a week, maybe five years from now. If it was just me, I would have kept him. The little guy weight 20 pounds and isn't exactly menacing. But with the baby in the house, we really didn't have any choice but to send him away.

Next came the task of finding a home for an apparently aggressive dog. Most shelters wouldn't even take him and I was getting to the point where I was afraid he would need to be euthanized.

Meanwhile, as the days passed, I was keeping Jack on a leash and at my side…which made things harder as he and I were joined at the hip while we were trying to sort this out. He was being a good dog for me and every night I spent with him completely broke my heart.

As always, I was spending about an hour a night with him outside, playing fetch and running around. He has completely boundless energy, which I think probably contributes to him getting a little stir crazy sometimes.

By an unbelievable stroke of good fortune, my mother-in-law managed to find someone at her job that was a perfect fit. He had grown kids and lived on a farm, complete with other dogs and assorted barnyard animals. Jack has never showed any aggression towards animals and his potential new family were familiar with dogs (not to mention farm animals) and could create a perfect environment to rehabilitate Jack – lots of land, activity, and attention, so he would be able to blow off steam outside and come in to a good home.

In my mind, even before we learned about this family, I believed that a farm was the very best place in the world for him. So my fingers were quite crosses as we worked towards getting him placed in his new home.

The new family talked it over and decided eagerly that they wanted him. We were thrilled – making the very best of a very crummy situation.

So I took Jack on one last trip to the vet to make sure he was healthy and had all of his shots. He could tell something was wrong and acted completely terrified at the vet. Once they took him to the back room, though, I was told he was happy and friendly. Clearly the vibes I was putting off in those final days weren't going unnoticed – in fact he had seemed downright annoyed by the tears in my eyes when we played our last game of fetch. To me it was goodbye, but to him, I was just being stupid.

After the vet, I met my father-in-law, who took Jack the rest of the way…which I will always appreciate to no end. I could barely hold it together in the gas station parking lot during the handoff, so I'm sure I would have been a wreck if I had to watch him go with his new family.

Later that night, I got an update. He was a little uneasy at first, but after some treats and some fetch, he jumped right into the car with his new family. I'm so happy for the little guy and hope his new home is more suited to his personality than his old suburban one.

So, to close, I figure I'll just share a few things I'll never forget about Jack:

He loved life. His tail was always wagging and he was always so excited about everything. We should all be more like that.

He was a fetch machine. Once I threw him a snowball into a very snowy backyard and went inside. That dog came to the door more than an hour later with the thing in his mouth. When we played with the other dogs I had to hold him back to let the others get the ball sometimes. He was a competitor.

He loved the baby. Jack used to sit in my lap and let Babe-O tug on his big, floppy ears. If she was too rough, he would bite his own ear and pull it out of her grasp.

He was my buddy. His name was Jack, but he knew when I said "Buddy," I meant him. He used to sleep in the crook of my arm at night, until we began the no-dogs-in-the-bed policy. Then he started sleeping on the floor right next to me. I was glad to learn that his new family plans to name him "Buddy."

The last few days were just awful – really, really hard and emotionally draining. I guess sometimes it's hard to be a dog person.

Duck…duck…goose egg!

2009-02-18T20:09:00.001-05:00

So Mom-O went out for a rare evening by herself and left me at home with pretty much one rule: don't send the baby careening down the stairs.

Oops.

Things were going well. Babe-O and I were hanging out upstairs, playing and having a good time. Eventually, she started fussing a little bit, as she's been teething lately. I scooped her up and headed downstairs, where there was an iced washcloth waiting in the freezer.

As soon as my wonderful, cozy Ugg slipper hit the top step, I knew we were in trouble. My toe landed firmly on the edge of the step, but my heel landed on what I knew instantaneously was my dog's red rubber bone, also known as a red rubber tripping hazard.

The bone, and my foot, slid out from under me and both of my legs went up in the air. It's amazing at how many thoughts you can have in a very short period of time:

#1. "Oh shit!"

#2. "Don't fumble the baby!" (as I swung her from the crook of my left arm to a crash position on my chest, wrapped in both arms)

#3. "No arms left to catch self!" (as the back of my head cracked the edge of a hardwood step)

#4. "If I black out, will that happen right away or will I have time to get Babe-O safely to the ground?" (as I slid down the flight of stairs, cracking my head on each step as I went)

#5. "Oh good, I didn't black out." (yippee)

#6. "Do I hear the garage door opening?" (I did.)

I had enough momentum that when I came to a stop, I was lying flat on my back on the floor. Babe-O was cradled across my chest, screaming, but unhurt. In fact, she had already been screaming because of her mouth pain and I'm not sure she realized that there was anything terribly unusual about that particular trip down the stairs.

I was barely back to my feet when Mom-O arrived to find me leaning against the kitchen counter with a screaming baby and in obvious pain.

The baby was easily settled down and we were sharing a shaky, relieved laugh a few minutes later.

I limped away from the thing and kept a persistent headache for the next 24 hours.

Anybody else have any heroic stories where they did something clumsy but managed not to break the baby?

Good morning!?

2009-02-13T21:54:00.001-05:00

Last night was a good night. This morning was a little disorienting.

Usually (okay, ideally) the bedtime routine is this: bath at 7:00, dressed for bed at 7:20ish, last feeding at 7:30ish, in the crib shortly thereafter. The night usually involves a few feedings and maybe a diaper change. Babe-O wakes up, fusses a little, I go get her, Mom-O feeds her, and I take her back to her crib.

Last night, it didn't go like that at all. First of all, she didn't go to sleep until about midnight…which is not only way past her bedtime, it's also way past mine.

That wasn't a big deal, though. I had client work to do, so I was going to be up late anyway, and Mom-O was on hand to read drafts and be my second set of eyes. So we are both going to be up one way or another, which made it much less stressful to have our prickly baby refusing to go to bed.

Finally, when my work was done and Babe-O was asleep, we went to bed.

Now keep this in mind: I don't have an alarm clock. I have three dogs, one of which always has to pee (wakeup call). I also have a baby, who gets up a few times each night, including once right about the time I need to be handing her off to her Mom and heading to work.

This morning, I woke up to the sun coming through the window. The dogs were asleep and Babe-O was nowhere to be seen.

In fact, I hadn't seen any of them all night long.

I freaked a little, jumping out of bed and hurrying down the hall to the nursery. There was Babe-O, wide awake and playing with her feet through her sleep sack.

As I opened the door, she turned to look at me and cooed.

She had slept through the night. Then, after she woke up at a very reasonable hour of the morning, she kept herself amused for who knows how long. And the good sleep karma must have been flowing, because the dogs slept through the night, too.

Babe-O and I got up together, made some coffee, and let the dogs out. Then she sat in her bouncer in the bathroom while I showered and got ready for work.

In the meantime, Mom-O was getting another hour of sleep to top off the first good night's sleep she's had in months.

It was just awesome. Here's hoping for a repeat performance tonight.

“Mother ___________”

2009-02-03T21:29:00.001-05:00

I'm one of those guys lucky enough to be married to a stay-at-home Mom. And yes, I was once one of those guys who assumed that most stay-at-home Moms divided their daylight hours between changing diapers, running on the treadmill, and sipping vodka martinis.

But that was yesterday.

Today, I am enlightened. That's because this afternoon, I came home from work to see a whole bag of tricks that Babe-O has been carefully cultivating with her Mom's diligent support, day after day.

She can stand up in her crib, clinging to the rail. She can sit on her butt, all by herself. She can roll over, if she wants something close by badly enough.

She's also finding her voice, which is really cute; though I'm told that it causes headaches if you listen to it seven hours a day. She has kind of a jovial, high-pitched squeal that she likes to let rip for long periods of time. Still…you can tell she's working on getting some words out. She will enunciate when she's happy and mutter under her breath when she's mad.

Her first words can't be far off, which might be problematic because her Mom and I haven't quite gotten our potty mouths under control yet. On the plus side, even in the most profane scenario I can think of, Babe-O's first phrase still begins with "mother." In the scrapbook, we'll just leave it at that.

Remedial Snowman Building (retraction)

2009-01-29T21:40:00.001-05:00

A few days after I published my Remedial Snowman Building post, there was a knock at the door. Standing out front was a local attorney, retained by my mother to deliver the photo below, which was accompanied by a formal Cease & Desist order forbidding me to "further discuss in public forum any childhood deficiencies as they may relate to parental instruction or lack thereof with respect to snowman construction."

That said, and given the fact that I can't afford another snowman-related lawsuit, I'll take this opportunity to correct my snowman post. While it is true that to this day, I have absolutely no talent when it comes to snowmen, in my lifetime I have clearly built at least one with moderate success.

On the plus side, this means if Babe-O ever gets mad at me for not being able to build her one, I can show her this photo and point out that I USED to be able to build a snowman, but I must have pushed the knowledge out of my brain to make room for learning how to build all of her baby contraptions, which fit together like Erector sets from hell.

So there, I said it.

I have built a snowman. I was raised properly.

Oh – and one more thing: The snowman Polaroid was not really delivered by an attorney. It arrived along with a box of baby stuff and other goodies. Many thanks to the 'rents/grand'rents!

“You suck, Daddy”

2009-01-27T20:48:00.001-05:00

Today was a heart-breaker.

At 7:15 this evening, Babe-O and I were where Babe-O and I always are at 7:15 in the evening – playing in the kitchen sink. We were about half way through bath time and I noticed my little girl, who was quite smiley just moments before, was giving me a kind of strange, stern look. In that moment, I felt a little like the soon-to-be loser of a quickdraw gunfight: by the time you realize you've made a mistake – you're dead.

In less than a second, the quiet stern look turned to an angry shouting look. She looked me right in the eye and started to cry very deliberately in my direction. I quickly realized that I had let her catch a little bit of a chill during her bath, so I turned the water back on and waited for it to warm up before pointing it towards the chilly baby.

Once the water had heated up (5 seconds in people years, 35 seconds in dog years, nine days in screaming baby years) I grabbed the spray/hose/nozzle thing and gave her a warm-up squirt…without taking into account that the sprayer needs to spit out that first bit of ice cold water before the warm stuff comes out.

SCREEEEAMING ensued.

For the very first time, I got what was very clearly a "You suck, Daddy" look. I was able to identify this particular look because when Mom-O came running in (the scream was very alarming), Babe-O immediately reached for her while glaring at me. At that point we aborted the bath project, and even as Babe-O was being carried upstairs, she never broke her angry gaze, which was aimed directly at me until she was out of sight.

All in all, tonight was a little bit of a heartbreaker, but it was still pretty adorable to catch another little glimpse of another side of Babe-O's personality.

So now it's your turn, fellow parents: when was the first time that your baby got really, really mad at you? Share your story in the comments below!

The handliest hand she’s ever seen

2009-01-23T21:41:00.001-05:00

Right now, we're kicked back watching Supernanny on TV while Babe-O lounges around, probably amused by how long ago her bedtime was. We were doing some visiting this evening, which led us to missing our 7 p.m. bath/bed routine – which was fine until it wasn't.

Babe-O was delightful for most of the visit, being cuddly and wonderful, but once it started getting past that magic 7 o'clock hour, she got a little prickly. She slowly went from happy to sleepy, then from sleepy to pissed.

And I really mean pissed. She cries when she's upset, but she screams when she's pissed. She pretty much shouts deliberately right in your face. Then, when she gets really mad, she starts enunciating angry little sounds, which I'm pretty sure in her mind are the worst swear words a four-month-old girl can muster. My little sweetie.

So now we're back at home, cat in my lap, baby in Mom's lap, and dogs strategically arranged on couches.

Babe-O is acting like she always does when she's up way past her bedtime and is fighting sleep, which to the untrained eye might make her look like a little stoner. Right now she has rediscovered her left hand and is waving it slowly in front of her face, obviously amused by the handliest hand in the history of hands. When that got old (which took longer than you'd think), she looked up and noticed the ceiling fan, which, incidentally, is the fanliest fan in the history of fans.

As I'm writing this, I can see she is drifting off. Here's to a sleepy Friday night...

...I wish my hand was that cool.

Intro to sitting

2009-01-22T21:42:00.001-05:00

Babe-O gets cooler and more fun to hang out with every day. Her latest advancement is sitting, which I now realize I've been taking for granted for quite a while now.

For years I've been going from office chair to meeting chair to desk chair to car chair to dinner chair to home office chair to recliner chair (rinse and repeat). But until the last week or so, Babe-O couldn't really sit anywhere, at least not without some help. But now she can finally sit up on her own, which means that we can stick her in her high chair or her Bumbo sitter and let her chill out in the room with us while we do stuff. She loves it and will either watch us bustle around doing our thing or will amuse herself with her toys.

The Bumbo sitter is a really cool invention, because it can actually prop up a baby pretty well even when the baby is too small to sit up solo. We could put Babe-O in hers when she was tiny, although until recently she would either tip over to one side or get tired and start to cry if she was in there for more than a minute or two -- much love for the Bumbo.

Anyway, the product is great but the marketing is quite terrible. If you are ever at the baby store, be sure to check out the Bumbo box. Just as a preview, Below is the photo they use, which features the two ugliest babies I've ever seen in print. And best of all, they look like tiny versions of the guys from TV's King of Queens.

How's this for an obscure television reference?

Remedial snowman building

2009-01-19T23:25:00.001-05:00

Today I was less of a baby parent and more of a dog parent. For starters, I spent lunch at work eating a god-awful ramen noodle "just add water" concoction and missed my usual noontime date with Babe-O. Then, because I had some client work to do this evening, Mom-O took over the bathtime ritual and left me to my own devices.

Before long, the baby was sleeping happily and I was done with my work and puttering around the house with no one to play with.

At about ten o'clock, I headed outside with three dogs and a splash of whiskey in a coffee cup.

I knew it had been snowing outside, but it wasn't until the back door wouldn't open all the way that I realized just how much. Last night I cleared off the back deck and spend a little more than an hour snow-blowing and shoveling out front. By the time I went outside tonight, it didn't look like I had done either.

I started over on the back deck, first clearing the door area and then brushing the rails, carving out the steps, and doing all the heavy lifting. As I did this, the dogs just watched me, which was odd, until I realized that there was so much snow in the back yard that they couldn't even move around out there. The littlest and most enthusiastic one would hop along like a furry swimmer doing a very cold butterfly stroke, but the other two weren't having it.

So with my sweat pants tucked into my boots, one black glove, and one blue mitten (I was in a hurry to get out there), I started trudging. Oh, and I'm not usually a sweatpants kind of guy, but in the few minutes I spent with Babe-O today, she managed to pee all over my jeans.

Anyway, I trudged my way through the almost waist-deep snow until there was a big oval. This activity was much more tiring then I expected.

Once the oval was in place, the dogs had a blast running around like greyhounds at the track. The big dog was the only one tall enough to see over the edge of the trench, so unless you were standing up on the deck, you couldn't even see the little dogs. But there they were, going around and around until they were completely whipped.

At that point, I was roasting from trudging around in circles and didn't want to go inside yet, so I made them stay out a little longer to keep me company. I planned to stand out on the deck and finish my drink, but by this time it was thoroughly frozen to the deck rail that I couldn't even pick it up. When I finally did pry the thing off of the wood, my mitten-wearing hand lost its grip and send the thing flying into a three-foot snow bank. My littlest dog found it immediately and signaled the location like he had just spotted a downed bird.

With my (empty) cup perched safely on the doorstep, I figured I would take a few minutes and make a snow man. Then, if there was time, maybe a snow baby and a snow BMW.

Well, it turns out that I couldn't make a snow golf ball, much less a snow BMW. After a few minutes, I thought back a little bit and realized that to the best of my knowledge I've never made a snowman in my life.

What kind of childhood rip-off is that? As of my sixteenth birthday I could tell you how to shoot a potato through a garage door, open a beer bottle with the edge of a coffee table, and pull a quick U-turn using the parking brake. But apparently I missed that day in third grade where they teach you how to make a damn snowman.

I guess that's what HR types refer to as "distinct skill sets."

After staggering back inside, my skill-rich wife promised to take me outside for a lesson in snowman building later this week. Which is good, because otherwise I'd eventually have to endure Babe-O's what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-my-daddy-and-why-is-he-using-duct-tape-and-a-basketball-to-make-me-a-snow-man look a few years down the road.

Table for Three

2009-01-14T21:11:00.001-05:00

My wife and I have a nasty television habit. It isn't so much that we watch a lot of it; it's just that the stupid thing is on all the time. Constant background noise. All day, all night – it's just sort of always there.

Which is fine. Every once in a while it feels like I've got voices in my head and need to grab the iPod (like now) or work outside (too cold). But other than that, it's fine.

At least until Babe-O came along. Babe-O also enjoys the TV and her little eyes jump at the thing every chance she gets. We'll catch her watching with one wide eye while she's nursing, or enjoying the flickering of the TV's reflection in the window.

Basically, we try to discourage that sort of thing. Except, of course, during dinner.

Dinner time has always been in front of the TV for us. Maybe that's pathetic, but the TV trays stay out day and night. The kitchen table is pretty much a catch-all for modern day debris like the mail, little piles of baby laundry, and the diaper bag.

Well, tonight it was time to take a stand. As soon as I got home today, Babe-O and I suited up and went to work ("suited up" referring to Babe-O being strapped to my chest in her Jeep baby sling).

We cleaned up the kitchen quickly, while she hung on my every word as I told her what all the kitchen crap is (spoon, fork, digger thingy, little chopper guy, giant spoon, another &%$# giant spoon, etc). Then we unearthed that kitchen table like a couple of Siamese archeology majors.

Once everything was cleared off, we gave it a quick wipe-down, using lemon juice and water at the recommendation of our slightly hippyish pediatrician ("mercury-based vaccines are no big deal, but Windex will kill your ass"). And if I do say so myself, it is a good-looking kitchen table. Many thanks to my Aunt-in-Law for donating it to us when we got our first apartment.

Anyway, we got the table cleared off and then stuck one of the chairs in the corner to make way for Babe-O's high chair (thanks for the high chair to another Aunt-in-Law).

Then, for the first time, we had a little family dinner together. Babe-O is still 100 percent breast fed, so she just watched us and played while we ate. She was obviously a little uneasy about the situation at first, but eventually settled into playing with a spoon and a cup and even made a little conversation with the occasional cooing.

I enjoyed it much, and think that the girls did, too. Call us retro, but I think we've got a new routine on our hands.

Written, produced, and directed by Dad O.

2009-01-09T20:43:00.001-05:00

Today was a tremendously snowy, crappy day. The major declared a weather emergency, and all that jazz.

While I was battling the elements trying to get the work, my snowbound wife was battling a cantankerous baby who was outdoing herself with respect to crankiness. By the end of the day, the cranky baby was still being a cranky baby, and Mom-O had a doctor's appointment fast approaching. To avoid Babe-O being dragged out of the house into the snowy afternoon and then into a boring appointment, I came home from work early and took over baby duty.

That meant Babe-O and Dad-O were home alone for a few hours, which doesn't happen very often.

Whenever Babe-O and I are on our own, we try to keep things interesting, just because it's an unusual thing and we don't always get to hang out as much as we'd like. Today we broke out the camera my parents gave us this Christmas to shoot a video.

Ever since she was quite tiny, Babe-O loved for me to sing her Dire Wolf, by the Grateful Dead (with lyrics modified slightly to exclude references to murder and whiskey). My lack of milk-producing boobs means that when she's upset, our little song is often our only hope. So we shot a little music video, complete with scenes starring Babe-O's favorite cocker spaniel.

We had fun doing it and she got a kick out of watching it on the big screen when we were done. And maybe, if things ever get really ugly and I'm not around, our little video just might save the day. When all else fails, try the homemade Dire Wolf music video.

12 pounds: mostly baby, some snot

2009-01-08T21:45:00.001-05:00

So we're coming up on about a month of on-again off-again sick baby. Nothing serious – no fever, no 360 degree head spinning, no pea soup on the ceiling – mostly occasional fussiness and a nearly constant flow of snot and goo out of her little head.

This means that several times a day, Babe-O has a date with Mommy, a bottle of nasal saline, and her little blue snot sucker.

It goes like this: saline up the nose, screaming, snot sucker up the nose, screaming, suck – squirt, suck – squirt, screaming…you get the idea. Technically, I think it qualifies as waterboarding, but that's for Geneva to decide.

Whatever you call it, I feel bad that she has to go through it and I feel bad that her Mom has to be the bad guy about it so often.

I did a little snot-sucking while I was doing her bath tonight and it pretty much broke my heart. And that's without the saline.

The doctor insisted that it wasn't a big deal and that we should pretty much expect her to go through about 10 colds a year. If they all run as long as this one, that doesn't leave a lot of time for being healthy. That said, I'm hoping that this one runs its course and she never has another cold as long as she lives. Or at least as long as I live.

Plus, there's the whole possibility of allergies, which would be a huuuuuge pain, considering our three-dog, one-cat household. Fortunately, we are told that kids who grow up on farms are dramatically less likely to develop allergies than those yuppied-out, paved-road-driving, indoor-plumbing-having kids. And our house is about as close to a farm as you can get around here without running into zoning issues.

So wish us luck. May our noses stay dry and our snot-suckers collect dust.

The doctor washes his hands (of our vaccination schedule)

2009-01-06T21:49:00.001-05:00

So today was Babe-O's four month well-baby visit, which is a bit of a misnomer because with her cold she isn't feeling like such a well baby. Regardless, off we went, knowing that we'd have to have the potentially awkward "we're not hippies, but we're not down with the traditional vaccination schedule either" talk. He was very upfront, and told us plainly that we were more likely to die in a car crash on our way home than to see any complications related to the vaccines – due to metal content or anything else.

Fortunately, he is also aware of the fact that she is our baby and it is our call. Besides, we aren't doing anything crazy. We are just spreading the shots over more appointments than the standard recommendations. So today, instead of getting a fistful of shots all at once, she got half a fistful today and will get another half a fistful next month at a quickie appointment with the nurse. The doctor simply said that he'd do whatever we wanted, but if she contracts Polio or Amish or something due to the funky schedule, he's not responsible.

Bottom line: today was a home run. Rewind to Babe-O's last set of shots (which were administered per the recommended schedule): she was stuck with needles until she screamed and hyperventilated until she threw up. After that, we got her home, where she spent the rest of the day tired, cranky, and looking ill.

This time around, her first vaccination was administered orally, where she just had to suck on a sugary little medicine wand for a bit. She was thrilled.

After that, she had to deal with one needle stick, which means Mom whispering happy things into her cheek while I held her little arms down (traumatizing for all concerned). Babe-O cried for about twenty seconds and settled right down.

After that, I headed back to work, but reports from the field indicate that the baby was happy and upbeat for the rest of the day. Big improvement over the last time around.

Most Valuable Lunch (and vaccination theory)

2009-01-05T21:20:00.001-05:00

It was one of those days… by about 10 a.m. I was stressed out and agitated. It doesn't happen all that often, but today is sure did. I was on generally tired, on deadline for freelance work, and playing post-holiday catch-up at the office. Plus I had to skip my shower this morning and for some reason was walking around smelling like a cross between white bread and feet.

I was planning to work through lunch, just to keep the productivity train moving, but before long realized that if I didn't catch a breather I was going to have a little freak-out. So…it was a good time to pop home for some time away from the office.

Lucky for me, Mom-O needed to run out to an appointment and I got the chance to let her fly solo and to hang out with Babe-O for a while. It was reenergizing to say the least.

My little girl was a delight as we played together and hung out until Mom got back and I scurried back to work. Things were looking up as I drove back, though I still wasn't really thinking about anything except getting back home at the end of the day to see her again.

I guess that was a short, uneventful little story, but it was certainly the highlight of my day.

As far as things go that aren't the highlight of my day, now I'm sitting down to a stack of childhood vaccination research so that we have some decent information at hand tomorrow when we take Babe-O to the doctor for her four month well-baby appointment. Last time, we went to the appointment not expecting any discussion of vaccinations at all, but apparently she was due for her first few. We were caught unprepared and our perhaps overzealous doctor pretty much plowed through a bunch of medical mumbo-jumbo and stuck a bunch of needles into our kid.

We aren't planning to do anything crazy like skip vaccinations altogether, we're just looking into a more spread out schedule. We're just thinking that when we're talking about a twelve pound kid it is probably best to err on the side of caution when it comes to injecting metal-rich concoctions into a little body. So, long story short, instead of two shots this week, she'll get one this week and another one next week. Twice the doctor visits, but other than that it seems like a win-win.

Happy reading…I'm off to hit the good old Vaccine Book.

Babe-O’s big Saturda(dd)y

2009-01-03T22:11:00.001-05:00

Today was cool, because we had a lot to do but nothing that couldn't be done with the little one close by. It was great to spend a full Saturday hanging out with my littlest girl.

I spent the morning cleaning the kitchen and the living room while Babe-O rode around strapped to my chest in her Jeep baby carrier (who says GM is over-diversified?). The carrier is awesome, and she is now big enough to hang out in there without getting too tired from holding her head up. So as I did stuff like unload the dishwasher and wipe down counters, she got to watch me work.

After a good hour or so in the carrier, she did start to get fussy, so I took the excuse to quit cleaning and headed up to her room with her where Mom-O was working. As she grows and acquires more stuff, we need to keep juggling things around in her room so that it all fits. While Mom-O plugged away at that, we sat on the floor and played together. It was a good time had by all. Or at least for me and the baby.

That got us through the morning, and Babe-O slept through a good chunk of the afternoon. She's been a little on the sick side and wasn't particularly happy unless she was curled up with her Mom cuddling and eating.

Later, once she was up and at 'em again we headed out to the store to pick up some baby supplies – mostly clothes because this kid just doesn't quit growing. Going out with her has become a whole lot cooler in the last few weeks, because now she is big enough to ride in a big stroller seat instead of having to stay in her car seat, which doesn't really let her do anything but sleep. The car seat is great for front, rear, and side impact, but crappy for rolling through the grocery store. Now that she can sit in the bigger seat, she can look around, play with toys, and generally enjoy herself.

More important than that, though, is that I have somebody to hang out with while my painstakingly careful shopper of a wife does her thing. So now, instead of discussing the merits of changing laundry detergent for forty-five minutes, I can hang out with Babe-O, either hovering close by or cruising the aisles looking for neat stuff to play with. Today I did just that, that is, until the poor little girl got sick of listening to me talk and fell asleep slumped over to one side of her seat. Funny enough, she zonked out within a few minutes of her usual bedtime (which we were obviously out way past). She is a little routine machine sometimes.

Once we got her sleepy butt into the car and back home, we were wondering what kind of mood she would be in, but she perked right up when she heard the word "bath." Even on a busy workday, bath time is a Babe-O and daddy thing, so I was happy to spend some more time with her in the kitchen sink. Aside from a mildly traumatic incident where she snorted a bit of splashed bathwater, all went well. I was surprised she wasn't more sleepy given how late it had gotten.

We tried to finish her night as we usually do – out of the bath, upstairs to get dressed, downstairs to get fed, and upstairs to bed, but Babe-O felt more like watching the TV then eating (her daddy can do both at the same time quite effectively). Mom-O was watching Sleepless in Seattle, so maybe it was just a chick thing. We figured that it was okay for her to stay up and watch a crappy romance flick if she wanted to, so we put her in her swing and let her hang out with us while we did our thing (clack away at our respective laptops – we rock).

Regardless, she was sound asleep after about five minutes. I don't think she has yet acquired the female taste for romantic comedies.

Dad-O is now on Twitter

2009-01-03T16:14:00.001-05:00

Are you on Twitter? If so, please give us a follow: username Dad_O.

Twitter is a microblog, which allows me to post 140 character updates (tweets) throughout the day from my PC or phone.

If you're not on Twitter, all tweets will be displayed in real time under "Josh On Twitter" on the right hand side of this blog. To look at the tweet history, just visit my Twitter profile.

Babe-O and I hope you enjoy this new feature.

I like this kid

2009-01-02T18:54:00.001-05:00

You know, I really like Babe-O. You'd think that would go without saying, but really it doesn't.

Everybody loves their kids.

You have to. It's the genetics. It's the law. You just do.

But nothing says you have to like your kid. And I imagine that there are a lot of people that do love their kids, but never get around to particularly liking them.

I like Babe-O. She's great. She is genuinely fun to hang around with.

Granted, she's only four months old, but she is really cool. She's funny. She's nice.

And I have a feeling that it only gets better from here. (Just keep snide remarks about teenage girls to yourself.)

So tonight was a great Friday night. I got home a little on the early side, hung out with Babe-O until right about now (when she had to pop over to see Mom-O for her dinner), and in a few minutes it will be time for me to do her nightly bath and put her to bed. In the couple of hours that I've been home, we've played with her toys, done tummy time, and danced to the CD that came with her Rhinoceros Tap book. That is an awesome book, by the way, and she squealed with delight and flashed big crazy smiles as we bounced up and down to the music. She's a very musical kid, which is cool.

Anyway, here's to a short post for the moment, because hanging out with my kid is a whole lot more fun than hanging out with my computer.

Sleepy New Year

2008-12-31T22:46:00.001-05:00

Right now it is 10:30 p.m. on New Year's Eve and I'm sitting in front of my computer (obviously) with one eye on Ryan Seacrest doing his thing on TV (whatever that is). This time two years ago, I was in Times Square with an engagement ring in my pocket, getting ready to drop down on one knee and pop the question. I guess a lot has happened in two years. We got engaged, got married, had our baby girl, got jobs, quit jobs, kept jobs, got dogs – it's pretty wild to think about.

So now, instead of being shoulder to shoulder with about a million partiers in New York, we're sitting in our living room, more excited by the fact that Babe-O is sleeping soundly in her crib then by anything else. Given how strung out we ended up with all the holiday travel, unwinding with the dogs and watching our brand new second-hand big honkin' TV feels pretty close to paradise.

My phone is off. The baby is sleeping. There are buffalo wings in the oven and Yoo-Hoo in the fridge. And we will almost certainly fall asleep in the living room and wake up to the first infomercials of 2009 after snoring through the ball drop.

Couldn't be happier. Happy New Year, everybody!

Made it!

2008-12-30T21:42:00.001-05:00

Well, our wee hours of the morning departure paid off and we were back at Mom-O's parents' house by late morning. We were still just under an hour away from home, but it was very nice to be done with the serious driving by lunch. We learned that our dogs hadn't burned anybody's house down, which is pretty good for them, and were happy for the chance to unwind and get Babe-O out of her seat for a bit.

The ride was a little bit rough, as the little one was still a bit sick. Things were made a little tougher than usual because our car was packed to the brim. Not only were we leaving with Christmas presents as you might expect, but we had also inherited a very large and ungodly heavy television set from my parents. This meant that we didn't have very much room in the back seat, so when Babe-O was fussy, it was tricky to get back there with her. Luckily, Mom-O had been up late the night before repacking the car over and over again until she managed to get everything jammed in there while still leaving room for a tiny sliver of middle seat where one person could fit, assuming they were double jointed with a pelvis that rotates 110 degrees.

For the last hour and a half of the trip, the guy with the half backwards pelvis was me. Babe-O was willing to settle down and keep quiet as long as she had a finger to suck on, so we managed to make it the rest of the way with a generally volatile but mostly calm baby. At this point I was feeling pretty guilty about the gauntlet we had run her through for the last week, but it was nice to know that she had gotten to see everybody and that we were almost back home where she could have a good night's sleep in her own crib.

We planned to spend the afternoon with Amy's folks, but after an hour or so it was obvious that it was time to go. It was obvious to me, anyway, because my wife told me so after waking me from my comfy recliner slumber. She was tired, I was tired, Babe-O was tired – it was just time to get home. We didn't leave without making an impression though, as Mom-O at one point tossed me a singing glow worm, which knocked my late-morning, destination-reached victory beer out of my hand like John Wayne disarming a bad guy with a shot to the wrist. Lucky for all concerned, the couch had a removable cover that could go in the wash.

Okay…fast forward to home. As soon as we walked into Babe-O's bedroom, her eyes lit up and a big smile beamed on her face as she looked around at all of her stuff. It was very cool to see the flash of recognition as she realized that she was back at home. She had a similar reaction to her dogs, which was also cool. I'm glad to have a baby who has some dogs. And I'm glad that she appreciates that it's good to be home.

The Cranky Threshold

2008-12-29T23:32:00.001-05:00

Seems like Christmaspalooza has finally taken its toll on Babe-O. She was up much of last night and fussed all morning.

We fueled up on Dunkin' Donuts (which we can't get back home) and McDonald's (which we can). After that, we packed our girl up to go for one last visit – a long-distance buddy of Mom-O who happens to live very close to my folks. When we got there, Babe-O was delightful, but with a very short fuse. She was tired and a little irritable, but did a good job meeting people and interacting with two very friendly, very cool dogs. I felt bad, because we ended up having to leave after quite a brief visit, as our meltdown warning light was flashing bright red after we had been there for about a half an hour. The poor girl was just overwhelmed and was simply not up to seeing anything else new – not today anyway.

So it was a short visit, but well worth the trip. We had a good time and ended up leaving with a half box of diapers our host's baby had outgrown and some clothes that will fit Babe-O. Coolest of all, we left with a very stylish pink beret that was hand-crotcheted (not pronounced "krotch-it-ed", I'm told).

We are scheduled to head back home dark and early tomorrow morning, so hopefully we can get her back into her old routine and feeling a little more secure about life in general.

Despite being a little on the strung out side, Babe-O was allowed to stay up past her usual bed time to meet some extraordinarily good friends of mine that I've known since grade school: the dad, the newly married guy, and the single guy – all in one room for the first time in years. It was a super quick visit, but it was outstanding to see them. Plus they brought me an enormous bottle of beer, which is always a nice gesture.

After they took off, we considered jumping right in the car and driving through the night, but thought better of it after Babe-O started sleeping soundly and I started eating myself into a donut coma. Babe-O had transitioned into all-out sick mode, with a slight fever and a runny nose, so we didn't want to risk robbing her of some good hours of sleep.

I set an alarm for 3 a.m. and stretched out on the couch. Wish us luck on the road!

Babe-O’s Christmas World Tour (final stop)

2008-12-27T16:48:00.001-05:00

We made it thankfully to Delaware, getting as many miles as possible out of Babe-O's sleeping time by leaving around 3 a.m. for the seven or eight hour trip.

We did our best to get some sleep before we left, but it was kind of a rough night. We were all camped out in the living room at Mom-O's parents' house, which meant Mom-O on the couch, Babe-O in her bassinet, me in a recliner, and dogs strategically placed throughout the room.

The problem was that whenever anyone upstairs made a peep or did something outrageous like go to the restroom, our littlest dog would freak out and start barking, which would wake up our biggest dog, who would really start barking. By the end of the night, this chain reaction had woken up everybody in the house (Babe-O included) three or four times.

Regardless, 3 a.m. finally did roll around and we were off and running.

We made it about halfway to Delaware before we found a good Perkins where we could get Babe-O out of her seat for lunch and a fresh diaper. She was in a good mood, but wasn't happy at all when it came time to put her back in the car.

She was fussier than usual once we were back on the road, despite me being willing to risk getting pulled over under suspicion of DUI for changing lanes constantly to rock her to sleep.

It was at about the same time we realized we hadn't seen any poop in about twenty-four hours when we heard a noise in the back seat that sounded like a walrus choking on a trumpet.

We pulled over to assess the damage in a little one-street town that ran parallel to the highway. Mom-O managed to get the diaper changed and the baby happy in the back seat and we got driving again without too much fuss.

We made it to my folks' house before lunch and it was nice to be where we were going with much of the day to spare. Babe-O was a little cranky from the ride but after a while she was delightful for her Nana and Granddaddy.

When we exchanged Christmas gifts, she was still a little out of sorts, but still did her share of unwrapping presents and generally enjoying her booty.

I was also feeling like a little kid, with eyes lighting up at the two giant boxes of diapers we had been given. I was half tempted to keep the boxes sealed and hide them in the basement. If the world economy ever collapses completely, a good box of diapers will be worth more than gold.

Ava ended up with lots of cool stuff and she seemed quite pleased. We gave Nana and Granddaddy personalized mugs that showed a beautiful picture that Mom-O had taken with her very cool, very professional camera. It is a great picture, with Babe-O sporting a bright red tutu and a little Santa hat. I received a similar gift the other day, and it ended up very high on my list of favorite presents. Love that baby.

Now we are relaxing with my parents in dog-free bliss. Actually they have a dog, but Elizabeth is an old English bulldog who is about 112 in people years and doesn't have quite the enthusiasm that makes our three such a handful.

It was also cool to see Elizabeth because she has been snubbing me every time I visited since I started bringing my own dogs with me. Now it is more like old times and she has been willing to hang out and send a few friendly glances my way.

As we plug along at an Elizabeth-like pace, this is pretty much the perfect environment for Babe-O to recover from her go-go-go first Christmas experience. For a very small person she has managed to pack a lot of activity into the last few days. Now all three of us can unwind a bit and catch our breath.

Hooray for kicking back. I just hope our dogs are behaving themselves with their various (and very generous) family babysitters back home.

Babe-O’s Christmas World Tour

2008-12-25T22:46:00.001-05:00

Today was a big day for our little girl.

Last night, Mom-O was up late getting us packed for our holiday rounds, an 800 mile loop that will take us from our cozy snowy home, all the way across Pennsylvania, into Delaware, and back again.

I was also up late, but instead of being busy packing I was busy not putting gas in the car. (Attention aspiring English Majors: the preceding line is what's known as foreshadowing.)

So we were up late last night, which led to getting out of bed late this morning. This was a problem, as we has breakfast plans with Mom-O's folks followed by back-to-back gatherings at other pretty rural locations, the kind where the roads are two lanes, the Amish hog both, and the gas stations are few and far between. (You still with me, English Majors?)

Anyway, we made it out to our first stop, where we had plenty of time to eat a bountiful breakfast and to catch our breath. From there it was off to our first set of Christmas festivities. Babe-O was wearing her Sunday best, a cute little red dress complete with white leggings and little shiny black shoes. She hated it, and did much fussing and fidgeting.

She did pretty well at the party, particularly once we got her dress off of her and put her in something more comfortable. She isn't used to being surrounded by noisy, excited people, so we had to take her into a back room to catch her breath every once in a while. All told, though, it was a good time and the visit was a success.

Then it was off to our next destination, following a brief and much needed pit-stop at Mom-O's folks' house.

Our next stop was filled with more people and more noise, so once again Babe-O was a little wigged out from time to time. She did, however, spend quite a bit of time with people that weren't us, which was certainly a testament to her budding independence. She often kept one eye on us from across the room as she was held by different family members and actually took a nap with Amy's uncle in a big comfy recliner that is known for slowly draining sitters of all will to remain awake.

We got through the night with a minimum of crying, though by the time we left, it was getting harder and harder to keep the little one happy. She was clearly a little overwhelmed/overtired and was happy to get back to more low key surroundings.

But getting to low key surroundings turned out to be more difficult that we expected. We hopped in the car and stopped at a nearby Country Fair to get gas, something we had avoided doing on the way because the baby was happy in the moving car and we really didn't want to make any waves.

Big mistake.

It's Christmas Day, which apparently means that gas stations are closed. No self serve. No nothing.

Lucky for us, we were following Mom-O's parents, so we weren't completely on our own. Driving through the Pennsylvania woods with zero gas makes you notice three things about Pennsylvania woods: (1) there isn't much shoulder to speak of; (2) there isn't anywhere to buy gas even if it wasn't Christmas Day; and (3) there isn't any cell phone service anywhere, so if you do run into trouble, your sorry butt had better start walking.

It was a really bad scene, and I pretty much made myself sick worrying about making it where we were going and thinking about how I had brought my wife and baby out into the middle of nowhere in a vehicle that wasn't up to the trip. Now I know how all of those wagon-driving Dads felt back in the day, when things almost never went as planned.

Fortunately, for various reasons throughout my life, I've had the chance to drive cars on fumes and knew that I was smarter than your av-er-age bear when it comes to fuel economy. Mom-O was understandably miffed at the situation, but I was pretty sure that a light foot on the pedal and the extra 9 miles per gallon you can pick up through the magic of positive thinking would get us either to the house or to a Jewish gas station that was open on Christmas. A few phone calls made by Mom-O-in-Law told us that Kwik-Fill was open and we managed to coast our way there.

It was a relief to be there and a lesson well learned the hard way.

On a happy note, it was nice to be able to fill a bone dry gas tank for under $30. It wasn't long ago that it took $20 just to make the needle move. Happy Recession America!

So we made it back to the house and managed to unwind and get Babe-O down to bed. It was a few hours past her usual bed time, but WAY earlier than it would have been if the gasoline gods hadn't smiled on us the way they did.

I admit that I am still completely tweaked about the whole gas debacle and am only just settling down enough to get some sleep. I am really, really glad that it worked out the way it did. I really wouldn't mind spending the night walking down some woody road if I was on my own, but thinking about Mom-O and Babe-O stuck in that car makes me sick.

Ack! Now that I have told my little story, it's time to join the rest of the house in getting some sleep. We will be leaving dark and early in the morning so that Babe-O will sleep for as much of the trip as possible and hopefully we'll make it to Delaware to see my folks earlier rather than later.

Plus, it'll probably take us a little longer than usual because I am not planning to let the gas gauge drop below nine tenths of a tank.

Merry Christmas everybody!