Postscript

Thank you for reading this blog. This will be the last post on Changing Lyla, for I always meant it to be a one-year project. But after a lot of thought, I have decided to start a new blog. I'll keep it up as long as it's fun to write, and as long as I perceive that it's fun to read.

One thing. I'm making the new blog slightly more private because I'm no longer comfortable with complete strangers happening upon it. I need an extra layer of privacy to feel like I can write candidly.


So if you are a family member, friend, colleague, friend-of-friend, or acquaintance of either Julie or me, then I'd like to invite you to read the new blog. All you need is a Google account. You probably already have one. If not, then go to google.com and click on "sign in" in the upper-right corner. From there it should be easy to set up. So then email me the email address that serves as your Google account username, and I'll gratefully add you to the list of readers. You will then be able to log in to the new blog.

Sorry about this inconvenience. After the initial setup, it'll be smooth for you to log in, and you can even tell your computer to save your log-in information so you don't have to reenter it each time.


To sum up:

1. Set up a Google account.

2. Email me your Google account email address. Send it to me via text, Hotmail, school address, Facebook, or to my Gmail address, which is lylasdad@gmail.com.

3. Follow me to my new digs. I've named it Chasing Lyla, which I think aptly describes what I'll be up to this year.

Thank you so much for reading. I've written a proper post for today on the new blog.

One

Lyla is one. She's the girl who likes to open the dishwasher and shut herself in Daisy's cage. She's the girl who knows that cows go moo and that silly babies go blabble-abble. She's the girl who loves her mama more than anyone and binkies more than anything.

Look back:


This truly was the year of changing Lyla. She'll ask us one day what it was like when she was born, and I'll answer by repeating the first sentence I ever wrote on this blog: "With a newborn, you think about poop a lot."

"That's gross, Dad."

I'll give her everything I wrote. I'll say, "This is what you were like, and this is what we were like."

"Wow, I was cute."

"Yes."

"Do I have to read all this?"

"No. Just look at the pictures."

Eve

I remember this night a year ago. We had arrived at the hospital in the morning and by that night were half sleeping after the epidural. At 8:11 the next morning, Lyla triumphantly emerged. Everything happened so slowly, but so fast.

That's how this year has been. During my parenting leave, Lyla would spend 30 minutes drinking a 4-ounce bottle. Just getting her down for a nap some days felt like eternity. Everything took forever and yet again, in retrospect, time flew.

I wonder how tomorrow will feel. It's Lyla's birthday, yes, but let's be honest: this first one is really about us. It's about Julie doing all the work in that delivery room. It's about the nurse putting me in charge of Julie's left leg to make me feel useful. It's about becoming parents, that instant when everything else suddenly became less significant, that instant when our purposes in life were so utterly defined and in sync.

Sometimes non-parents complain that the only thing parents want to do is talk about their kids.

You're damn right they do.

Bumper

Lyla has decided that she knows how to run. I wonder if this elevated sense of ability will follow her throughout life. I hope so. What better way to learn how to do something than to just start doing it?

It is important to note, however, that Lyla's current proficiency level as a runner is approximately my level as a snowboarder. Which is to say that she falls down a lot and crashes into things.

Did you get a good look at that face? She has a purple bruise above her eyebrow, various yellowish bruises on her forehead, and a gash on her cheek. The gash is from an unidentified baby's fingernail at daycare (DNA analysis is pending), but the other dings are from Lyla treating the world like bumper cars.

The last two days, in fact, Lyla's teachers have had to fill out incident reports on her to explain her battle wounds. Yesterday it was, "Lyla was playing by the fish tank and tripped on a toy and hit her cheek on the shelf." Today it was, "Lyla was trying to run and lost her balance. She fell and hit her head on the toy shelf. She was also scratched by another child."

As we left the classroom, Lyla expressed a passionate interest in holding the incident reports. I denied her request, certain that she would discover a way to paper-cut her eyeballs.

This is the way parenting is, I guess. You watch your kids get older and hope that as they try new things, they'll go slow and remain standing, knowing full well that they probably won't. So you pick them up when they fall and take comfort in the thought that most kids do develop common sense by the time they're 25 years old.

Babble

I took Lyla to the doctor this afternoon. As we suspected, Lyla has another ear infection. Or is it the same ear infection as before? The medical community is stumped.

It'll be easier when Lyla is old enough to describe her own symptoms. Her vocabulary is improving: now when I ask her what a silly baby says, she goes "Babble-abble-abble." It's just a matter of time before she's able to say things like, "My ear feels like Claudius poured poison into it."

So now she's on an antibiotic that tastes gross. The pharmacist said to put it in whatever food Lyla likes. I'm wondering how to inject the glop into those Lil' Crunchies that Gerber makes. If you've never tried them, you should. They're like sophisticated Cheetos.

I did manage to squirt the medicine directly into Lyla's mouth this evening. Given the look of horror on her face as she swallowed it, however, I think we'll ultimately be better off with some pudding or a jar of frosting or something.

The best part of the afternoon was picking up the prescription. On Target's main aisle leading to the pharmacy, Lyla and I walked hand in hand. She babbled the whole time.

Pole

As Auntie Lori correctly pointed out, in yesterday's photo there is a binky even though Julie and I had previously decided to ban them except for bedtime. And now, after reviewing the photos from today, most of them show Lyla with two binkies. Did you know that with this whole parenting thing, Julie and I are making it up as we go?

So we're eventually going to de-binky this child. Someone suggested cutting off the tip of every binky in the house. The circumcised binkies will feel wonky to Lyla, and she'll kick her own habit. But it seems cruel to cut her off cold turkey while she's teething. Hey, I bet cold turkey would feel good on those gums.

But anyway, at night and during naps, Lyla still manages to lose the binky through the bars of the crib. When we respond to her cries, we often find her with her arms between the crib bars, straining futilely to reach to the floor. I think for her birthday on Friday I will buy her a small fishing pole.

Adult

Yesterday I was driving from Target to Chipotle and a guy nearly sideswiped me off the road. He changed lanes without looking, and the blaring of my horn did not compel him to notice or care that I was right where he intended to go.

I avoided an accident by slamming on my brakes. My Target bag hit the dash and emptied onto the floor. The young driver slid in just ahead of me; his back bumper could've high-fived my front one.

I nearly flipped my shit. My middle fingers were up before I could tell them to cool it, and I screamed obscenities as though the sound might penetrate my windshield and his. When his middle finger went up too, for a moment I wished upon him with all my heart a painful, horrifying death.

So here's my rudimentary understanding of the human brain. Teenage brains tend to process emotional stimuli in the amygdala, which makes them react impulsively. In adults, emotional stimuli get processed in the frontal cortex, a part of the brain that's more rational and slow to react.

Clearly my amygdala takes over in tense driving situations. I think that's true for a lot of America. In reality I don't wish the young man any ills at all, except for maybe a low sperm count. But those awful thoughts in the heat of the moment--I need to get that stuff under control. It could've happened with Lyla in the car; would I have reacted the same way? Or worse?

There was no further incident once we each put our fingers away. I didn't pass him or tail him or anything like that. My frontal cortex had shown up by then. Resolution: next time I'll laugh it off. Like an adult.