Babe-O's on the Move

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

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

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

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

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

She's been getting better and better ever since.

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

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

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

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

How to Fix a Wet Cell Phone (Really!)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three Slices of Bread

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Democracy!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weekend with Nana

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

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

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

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

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

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

THURSDAY UPDATE: Piggy Flu 2009

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

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

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

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

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

SUNDAY UPDATE: Piggy Flu 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UPDATE: Piggy Flu 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Gettin' piggy with it (Part II)

(continued from Part I)

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

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

But that’s not what he said.

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

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

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

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

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

Gettin' piggy with it (Part I)

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

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

Shivering solved.

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued…

Confused in the dark. Again.

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

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

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

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

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

Then it moved. Fast.

And screamed. Loud.

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

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

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

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