Bark

I'm afraid Julie might become hyper-organic. I can understand the benefits of eliminating some of the food additives from your diet. No one wants to eat preservatives made out of floor cleaner or otter fetuses or whatever. At some point, though, you have to look at the $6.00 potato and realize that an all-organic diet means your healthy body is home to a crazypants mind.

It's about choosing your battles, isn't it? For instance, we now buy organic milk, but we do so because it lasts way longer than the regular stuff. I'm not sure why that is, but we're throwing away less milk, so yippee. Likewise, if there's something organic right next to something that's processed in a mad scientist's bathtub, and the prices are comparable, then it makes sense to buy the organic.

And high fructose corn syrup, now I can understand why you wouldn't want to ingest that stuff if you didn't have to. No high fructose corn syrup and no meth: good rules to live by.

Which brings us to baby food. I know what's behind Julie's recent organic kick: it's anticipating the kind of baby food we'll buy. We saw this machine at Williams-Sonoma that allows you to make your own baby food. Toss in a few sprigs of asparagus, press on, and in seconds you have pureed asparagus for your baby's gagging pleasure. Your baby's food can be all natural, as pure as she is.

That's fine, but there has to be a line. If Lyla rides home with a friend after a chemistry club meeting and they stop at McDonald's, then Lyla needs to at least know what to do. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Johnson, but I only eat organic food. My mom already packed me some tree bark in this reusable Ziploc bag." She'll be a social pariah.

Really I'm more worried about myself. "Daddy, are you eating fudge-striped cookies? Don't you know they contain cocoa processed with alkali and traces of trans-fat?"

"Thank you, honey. Now eat your tree bark and give Daddy some peace."

Barrel

Gaston from Beauty and the Beast, the classic Disney meathead, has a build similar to Lyla's. Below the head is a barrel chest and four limbs sticking out of it like cucumbers. I mean look at that paunch! I never knew that at such a young age my daughter would be able to pull off a muscle shirt.

Okay, muscle onesie.

We haven't weighed her in awhile, but she's gotta be pushing what, 37 pounds? Or 12 pounds, but still. I think in a squared-circle battle royale of 10-week-old babies, she would kick ass...


...if you could wake her up for it.

Away

This is what I'm missing.

I'm at conferences currently, experiencing a slight lull. For the last two-and-a-half hours I have talked to parents about their kids in my class. Billy has an A, Jane doesn't work up to her potential, blah blah blah. Meanwhile, my own child, 10 weeks old today, is a couple towns away.

Let's get this straight. I'm spending extra time talking about other people's kids rather than spend time with my own, who happens to be much younger and more impressionable. It's a good way to become cranky. I'll get home after 8:30, just in time to tuck Lyla into bed.

This is what I'm missing!


I should stop whining. Things could be worse. I could work nights, or be unemployed. But good grief. Time is molasses tonight.

Wrath

Being a father, I've noticed that every day brings with it myriad blessings and tender moments. If I could light them all and fling them skyward, then surely they would shame the stars.

But sometimes Lyla fires her bowel canons so violently that runny feces burps out the edges of her diaper. Diapers are absorbent, but they need time to process new matter. If new matter is introduced with speed and force, it spreads, searching for the path of least resistance. And you realize that those clothes, the changing table, the flannel blanket, your very hands, will never be truly clean again. In fact the house will always be just a bit dirtier, so you're tempted to abandon it altogether and start fresh.

It's her superpower, I've decided. And she doesn't unleash it often, only when she thinks Julie and I, the apparent evil villains, truly deserve it. But she operates on a moral plane independent of adult logic, doling out punishment seemingly willy-nilly. Vigilance is futile, as is resistance.

We call them shitsplosions. We are at their mercy.

Bump

We're aware that at some point all babies learn how to high-five people. "Give me five!" is a technique even the most child-inept adults possess. And the child, in turn, gets to interact at his or her level in a non-threatening way. It builds confidence. It's fun.

But Julie and I are trying to teach Lyla how to fist bump. She makes fists all the time. Why not teach her how to greet Howie Mandel should she ever appear on a baby version of Deal Or No Deal? Plus, if she ever has a boyfriend with a soul-patch, God help me, she needs to be well-versed in the only way I'll allow her to touch him.

This doesn't mean we won't also teach her the high-five. I don't want her to stare in bewilderment at the first person who offers to high-five her. Imagine the social consequences.

"Hey, that Lyla girl doesn't high-five, pass it on."

"Like, I know! With me, she covered her head like I was going to smack her!"

"Is she Amish?"

Heck, I'll even teach her the "High five, on the side, up in space, slap your face" game so she can be ready for it. And nobody will achieve "Down low, too slow" with Lyla, mark my words.

Julie is even more ambitious. She's trying to teach Lyla the fist bump followed by the fist expanding to a palm, coupled with the explosion sound. Currently it's a bedtime game, which I discovered yesterday when I bounded up the stairs not as quietly as I should have.

"If you wake that baby, then effin' hell," she hissed at me. "I played fist bump with her for ten minutes to settle her down."

Are we totally cool, or completely lame? I'm afraid the existence of the question gives us our answer.

Safari

Lyla's favorite chair, which she often sits in when the paparazzi descend on her, has an attachment that puts her in a simulated baby safari. Sounds of the rainforest sputter out of a tiny speaker. A plastic monkey sways. A plastic frog goes up and down. It's very exciting.

Lyla talks to the monkey and frog. If you watch her and listen carefully, you can translate her gurbles into actual English:

"Froggy up, froggy down, froggy up, froggy down. Monkey left, monkey right, monkey left, monkey right."

Sometimes she gets angry when the monkey and frog do not obey her.

"Monkey stop. Monkey stop! MONKEY! STOP MONKEY STOP STOP STOP MONKEY! AUUURRGH!"

She's getting bigger. Her feet now hang off that chair. And today we bought diapers in the next size up, size two, specially designed for the 12-18-pounders, with the word "Jumbo" in the upper corner. The first diapers she wore might have kept your fist dry in a rainstorm. These ones you could stick to your Swiffer and use to mop the floor.

Her newborn clothes are packed away. The bassinet is ready to be returned to the family who lent it to us. Everything shifts; everything gets replaced. One of the only constants is that chair and its stubborn, disobedient monkey and frog.

Left

We're wondering what hand Lyla will prefer to use when holding her scalpel, and leading up to that, pencil. I'm a lefty, but Julie's a righty. I have two left-handed siblings. Julie has two right-handed siblings. Julie's parents are right-handed. Mine are also right-handed, though one could argue that based on how my mom holds a pencil, some overzealous kindergarten teacher might have had a hand in her becoming a righty.

Lyla has discovered recently that if she clenches her hand, the resulting shape is a decent approximation of a nipple. The hand she always chooses for this activity is her left. Does this mean she'll be a lefty? Or does it suggest that she's saving her right hand for more academic pursuits? By suckling her left hand, she can calculate derivatives with her right hand, for instance.

She also prefers to sleep on her left side. Perhaps this is so the right side of her brain--the side that controls the left part of the body--has a better opportunity for nighttime expansion. We're watching out for that flat head syndrome because it's really hard to get her to sleep on her right side. But maybe her sleeping preference indicates that she'll be creative and scattered, a dreamer, a romantic, a bohemian bongo drum player with no permanent address who dabbles in astrology and talks to trees.

We have no control over anything, do we?

Sore

The other day I was at the dog park, throwing a tennis ball and watching Daisy bound after it as though it was much more exciting than a tennis ball. Meanwhile, Tulip ran around in search of droppings to smell and possibly eat.

It was freezing out. I was in boots and gloves but no hat, so I shivered. Don't ever chuck a tennis ball as hard as you can while bundled up and shivering. Two days later, my neck and shoulders are still sore.

Julie has little sympathy. "Wait, so you hauled a 130-pound kitchen table into the house and then hurt your neck throwing a--how much does a tennis ball weigh?"

"You are evil incarnate."

"Are you able to pick up our daughter? Or is she too heavy for you?"


Julie is doing a kickboxing workout as I type this. She's bouncing around like she's training to fight a Muppet.

Lyla is watching her and cooing. Seems like a pretty good workout, actually. I should get in on this action...after I take some Advil.

Sleepy

This is what Friday night looks like.

Lyla consistently wakes up once per night; I change her diaper before handing her to Julie for feeding.

I wonder how many dads say, "Well since you have to feed her anyway, why can't you change her too and let me sleep?" For me, and this is a secret, it's all about accruing as many husband points as possible so that I can spend them later on poker games and electronic upgrades. Oh, I almost forgot: I'm also completely whipped.

This morning I woke up and realized that there had been no 2:00 AM feeding, that in fact it was now 5:15 and I had not woken up since going to sleep. And don't think that Julie tip-toed around just to let me sleep. I'm the one who always wakes up first. No, Lyla slept through the night. Slept through the night!

However, Lyla's doctor told us that parents should avoid celebratory fist-pumping when their baby sleeps through the night for the first time. That's difficult advice to take. The reason we shouldn't get too excited about this is because a baby's growth plateaus and spikes. The first time a baby sleeps through the night, she is simply in the midst of a growth plateau. Before long, her growth will spike, and she will once again demand feedings at cruel, inappropriate hours.

But isn't it also possible that our daughter will be the exception, the perfect sleeper every single night from now until she begins night shifts for her medical residency? Hey, we can hope.

Giggle

I entered the nursery after brushing my teeth. Julie was holding Lyla in the chair.

"I wish you would've been in here a second ago."

"Oh?"

"I might cry."

"Why? What happened?"

"She...giggled." A smile spread over Julie's face.

After Julie had fed and burped Lyla, she was holding her on her knees and saying "Blabble-abble-abble-abble" and making funny faces.

And Lyla giggled. It wasn't a "Hee hee!" giggle but more of a "Heh heh" giggle, as if what Julie was doing wasn't brimming with hilarity but still worthy of acknowledgment.

Which means that Lyla is a nine-week-old with a sophisticated sense of humor.

What it really means is that she's developing new ways to interact with us. Now I need to work on my own "Blabble-abble-abble" technique.

Gurgling

We've been watching American Idol, and all I can say is that I hope the show is off the air by the time Lyla is old enough to audition. Lyla has been sort of crabby the last couple days; perhaps the reason is that she's annoyed by any one of several hundred annoying aspects of the show. Or annoyed that despite all of them, her parents still tune in.

It's possible that she's having mild digestive annoyances. These might also be a result of American Idol, but they also might come from food recently eaten by Julie. We've read that what a woman eats during pregnancy determines what a baby can tolerate in breast milk. Babies whose mothers eat spicy foods throughout their pregnancy are typically unfazed when the mother eats at an Indian restaurant before breastfeeding. On the other hand, if a woman shuns Ho-Hos during pregnancy, she shouldn't suddenly have a Ho-down when the kid is born.

The trouble is that there are always cravings and anti-cravings during pregnancy. Julie loves chocolate, for instance, but the thought of it during pregnancy disgusted her. Once Lyla was born, she craved chocolate again. But after living with a cranky baby for a couple days a few weeks ago, Julie momentarily eliminated chocolate from her diet. It seemed to work, although it could have also been a coincidence.

Julie's sister Jen made a chocolate cheesecake and sent Julie home with a piece for me. Like Charlie Bucket with a new Wonka Bar, on the first day all I did was look at it and dream about it. On the second day, I ate one bite. Heaven. And this morning, I opened the fridge to find it gone. Julie had stolen my cheesecake, likely while finger-twisting an imaginary handlebar mustache. By the sink I found the empty tupperware, sides scraped with a fork and then spoon and then tongue. I wonder if cheesecake acquired nefariously tastes better.

The note I left her said, "You stole my cheesecake, and you will pay." If history is any indication, we will each pay through the gurgling stomach of our daughter. The nice thing is that even Lyla's whiny squawks sound better than most of the contestants on that idiotic show.

Presidential

I was born during the end of the Carter administration, so I was too young for him to make an impression on me. He liked peanuts. That was about it.

My earliest real exposure to politicians was watching Ronald Reagan on TV. I didn't understand Democrats, Republicans, or really any issues at all. Reagan seemed like a nice man. He liked jelly beans. He talked in a calm manner, almost like a whisper but with an authority you could trust. Plus, Alex P. Keaton on the show Family Ties liked Reagan, and I thought Alex was way cool.

Lyla's first memories of politicians will not involve George W. Bush. This fact makes me want to march around the living room while playing a trombone. Instead she will remember Barack Obama. And hopefully the nation he leaves for her will be a less cynical one, a nation where anybody can do anything if they're intelligent, ambitious, and good.

And who knows? Maybe we'll all be voting for her one day.

Tricks

I was home alone with Lyla for a couple hours today. After she woke up from her nap, I changed her and fed her a bottle. Then we hung out on the couch for awhile. Clearly something was wrong in her world, but she wasn't in the mood to tell me what. I tried to burp her again, but that wasn't the problem.

I realized that my bag of tricks for calming a baby is ridiculously small. And so far Lyla has been pretty accommodating with me, as if she understands that all Daddy knows how to do is change her, rock her, feed her, burp her, and act dumb. But today none of those techniques worked. I wanted to say, "Daddy's a bit slow, honey. Could you just tell him what's pissing you off so?"

I can see how people go crazy when they have a colicky baby. I dealt with a cranky kid for a couple hours today, and it was exhausting. Yet all the while I knew that Julie and her infinitely larger bag of tricks would be home before long. I can't imagine being a single parent at all, let alone a single parent with a colicky baby.

It turned out that Lyla just wanted her mom, and that's a trick that will never make it into my bag. But I need to figure out other tricks. When it's early March and Julie goes back to work and I begin my time at home, I can't be driving downtown to interrupt Julie in a meeting every time Lyla won't settle down. Maybe I should buy a clown nose and a squirty flower.

Hidden

Julie is in love with a product tastefully named the Hooter Hider. It's a cloth whose shape makes it possible to breastfeed in public without giving a peep show.

Here she is with hooters hidden:


The Hooter Hider is especially useful in non-baby-friendly establishments. So far in our eight weeks of being parents, we've tried to live normally in terms of eating out when we want to, within reason. Not once have we said to ourselves, "It's too bad we can't go out...damn kid." We just go out. Maybe it's because Lyla hasn't reached the stage where she crawls under tables, ties strangers' shoes together, and punches waiters in the crotch. All she does now is occasionally whine when she wants to be fed, changed, or held. Mostly she just sits there and looks cute.


Speaking of which, we ate with friends and Lyla at a restaurant we'd never been to that just happened to be rather non-baby-friendly. It wasn't our fault. I called ahead and said we'd have four people and one car seat, and the host didn't object or seem annoyed at all. I wish the host would've warned me that only a couple tables in their tiny dining room would even accommodate us, or that there wouldn't be any fold-down changing tables in the restroom, or that calling an hour in advance would still result in a 45-minute wait once we got there.

So in that restroom without the fold-down changing table, I realized that we need to add a roll-out padded mat to the diaper bag. Luckily in this restroom there was a pretentious-looking wood cabinet with flower vases on top. In a flash, those flower vases were replaced by a spit towel with a baby on top who had unleashed a momentous taste explosion in her pants. I walked out of the restroom whistling, clean baby on my hip, and glanced at the host and his raised eyebrow. Yeah, we might not be heading back to that place anytime soon. And if we do, then just to be obnoxious I'll urge Julie to leave the Hooter Hider at home.

Night

A couple of Julie's out-of-town college friends are in town, so they're having a girls' night. I am home alone with Lyla, dad and daughter, chillin' and playing board games. And I'm totally dominating her. She has no idea what she's doing. Jump, jump, jump, and king me. Who's your daddy? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Next we're going to eat pizza and read magazines.

This morning I removed the three pink leg bandages from yesterday's shots. The old adage that you should do unpleasant things quickly "like pulling off a Band-Aid" originated when someone had to pull one off an eight-week-old. The first two went without incident, but I lingered too long on the third. Lyla responded with a rage reminiscent of the shots themselves. I assured the shrieking lady that she had a bad, bad daddy and that he was sorry.

Later I discovered that tummy time is an excellent way to clear Lyla's sinuses. She has neither the muscle mass nor the limb awareness to really do anything, and this frustrates her greatly. So she grunts and snorts like a baby dragon trying to breathe fire, and out come the boogers. Aren't you glad to know that?

Pizza's done. Lyla needs a bottle and a diaper change. This is the Saturday night that soon-to-be fathers dread--and the one that actual fathers love.

Pissy

At Lyla's doctor appointment today, she got three shots. Man! I heard before that it's tougher on the parents than the child. I don't know if that's true, but it certainly sucked for us considering we've spent the last eight weeks doing everything in our power to prevent her from feeling any discomfort.

Lyla took it very well, considering. Yes, she demonstrated the true power of her lungs and vocal chords, and yes, her face became temper-tantrum red. Minutes later, though, with two pink bandages on one leg and one on the other, she fed as if nothing had happened.

Earlier in the appointment, just after she weighed in at 11 pounds and 13 ounces, I held her under the armpits and complimented her on her weight gaining skills. At that second, the cork popped, and a torrent of urine splashed against my hoodie and dripped down all the way to my shoes. It was Niagara.

I think she did it on purpose; I think we have a little practical joker on our hands. The first time someone peed on me intentionally was in nursery school. At pee time the boys went in two-by-two. This nasty little future inmate and I were pee partners, and he peed on my pants on purpose. I wish I could say I dunked him in the toilet or pulled his underoos up over his head or something, but in actuality I ran out and cried to the teacher.

Twenty-six years later, I am happy to say that this time I did not cry.

In the car on the way home, Julie exclaimed how exhausting the appointment was.

"Oh, because you got three shots too?"

"Well--"

"Oh, because Lyla sprayed urine all over you?"

"You're going to put this conversation on the blog, aren't you."

"'Hi, I'm Julie! I witnessed aggressive urination and three shots! Take me to McDonald's!'"

"Oh my God."

"Should we pull over? Maybe I could rub your shoulders a little, take some of the edge off from your stressful appointment."

"Yes, maybe we should do that."

"Yeah, the urine on my pants is pretty much dry anyway."

"How often do you say that? 'Hi, I'm Dan! The urine on my pants is almost dry!'"

"I think she peed on me deliberately."

"Well, I told her to. She listens to her mommy."

Quacking

I'm trying not to become obsessed with comparing Lyla to those various baby normalcy charts. Lyla is eight weeks old, which means she should be waving her arms around while quacking like a duck. And if she doesn't, then she probably needs Ritalin.

I remember my post on bowleggedness, on how doctors say it almost always goes away by itself. But at various points I've wondered what signs I can look for to determine whether her legs are de-bowing at a normal rate. Give me a chart that averages American babies from the past century with regard to relative bowleggedness at different weeks of life. That way if she's off the chart I can invent a de-bowing machine in my garage out of twine and bamboo shoots.

And this whole crawling thing has me in a tizzy. If she doesn't crawl, then is she more or less likely to win a Pulitzer? Hasn't anyone researched this? What effect does crawling have on the pre-frontal cortex? Are there flashcards I can buy to fill in any gaps left by not crawling? Of course, she's too young to crawl right now, but I'm just thinking ahead.

At Babies R Us they sell baby head calipers. I'm not joking. You see, if a baby lies on one side of the head more often than the other, the head can become lopsided. Haven't you seen people walking around with smooshy heads? Probably not, as they almost never leave the house. Well it's important to make sure your baby's head is absolutely symmetrical, and it's almost impossible to do so with the naked eye. You need an expensive caliper. Plus, they'll sell you a tab that you move back and forth in the bassinet or crib to remind yourself which head side the baby slept on last night. NEVER go two days in a row with your baby sleeping on the same head side! They say that's the mistake Jeffrey Dahmer's mother made.

And tummy time. All babies need tummy time for 10-15 minutes every day, or else they'll never crawl, and they'll probably never walk or poop in a toilet either.

Julie's friend's son hated tummy time, just hated it. Now he is about a year old and--this is kind of odd--he crawls all over the place! How did he do that? Must be extremely gifted. Perhaps they'll publish his case in a medical journal.

Or maybe, just maybe, those charts exist in part because some people wanted to write their dissertations. Perhaps it's not necessary to freak out over how your child matches up. Perhaps individual children are not statistics.

Lyla will sleep on the left side of her head tonight, just in case.

Move

Lyla has begun to wake up once per night, usually at around 2:00, to feed. Otherwise she sleeps like a, well, baby. So we're attempting to move Lyla to the crib tonight. Her bassinet is becoming like Bruce Banner's shirt seconds after he gets really angry.

Once you see her in the crib, though, she looks ridiculously small.


I'm not sure this will work. What if she's agoraphobic?

I am distracted at the moment. Currently the weather forecast calls for temperatures of 20-below tomorrow with wind-chills exceeding 30-below. Schools all over are closing (the night before!), but mine has not. I keep clicking over to another window to refresh a local news school closings page. Nothing yet.

All I know is that if Lyla was in school, I'd want them closed on a day like tomorrow. Of course, I'm biased as a person who wants the day off. Perhaps other parents in the district would prefer to throw their kids in snowsuits and kick them out the door to get frostbite in under three minutes. I doubt it. I bet they're all at their computers or watching the news, waiting, waiting.

Still nothing! I can't believe it. Oh well.

[Sigh.]

Still nothing.

Boo.

Waste

I have changed roughly 700,000 diapers since Lyla was born. Maybe that's a slight exaggeration. I've written previously about how newborn soiled diapers don't smell since breast milk does not yield nearly the type of waste that you'll find with formula or, good heavens, solid foods.

Upstairs in the nursery is a simple plastic trash can with a foot pedal that opens the top. Into this trash can go diapers and wipes, change after change after change, until finally nothing more will fit. By that time, friends, I assure you, there is a smell.

For some reason, all garbage-related matters have always fallen to me in this relationship. In fact, I don't think Julie has touched a garbage bag since 2002. I'm not sure she's aware that the giant garbage bin is kept in the garage, or that the men in the big trucks come to pick it up every Tuesday. I think she lives in a world of fairies and leprechauns, where garbage disappears and coffee pots fill themselves.

Anyway, this morning I pulled the bag out of the diaper bin, and it bulged dangerously as I eased it down the stairs. Outside I gingerly slung the bag over my shoulder and hauled it, like Santa in your worst nightmare, to the end of the driveway where the stuffed garbage bin already sat waiting for the men in the trucks. I thought to myself, I hope this is the day that a hooligan digs through my trash to steal my identity.

As Lyla's diapers continue to transition from smelling like nothing to smelling like the hot breath of Lucifer, we may need to buy a fancier can, perhaps airtight or with electronic perfume spritzers. And at that time (or before), I propose that Julie take over the duty of disposing of the doody.

Nicknames

Today I was daydreaming about Lyla's first day of school. In the daydream she was kind of a smart-ass, which I'm sure won't be the case in real life.

"And Layla? Is Layla here? Layla? L-Y-L-A?"

"You say it LIE-la. My daddy told me to be wary of people who say my name wrong. He said they might be illiterate."

"Illiterate? Do you know what that word means, young lady?"

"Yeah, stupid or something."

"Class, quiet down. LIE-la, we don't say stupid; it's a swear word. Do you have a name you'd prefer to go by?"

"You can call me Goo, the Goo, or Goo Baby if you're not into the whole brevity thing."

"Goo Baby?"

"Or Squirty-Loo. You know, like what I used to do in my pants when I was little."

"Class, settle down. SHHHH! Class! Don't make me flick the lights."

"Or I also go by Buddy, as in 'Hey little buddy.' My parents are weird."

"What do you prefer?"

"I'd prefer you say my name right."

And the room gasps.

Man, I can't wait! When a teacher calls to notify me of classroom hijinks, how will I suppress my temptation to chuckle? Since I was little, I was always sensitive to teachers' methods; I knew who was good and who sucked, and I wasn't always polite to the latter. Then I became a teacher, so go figure. As a teacher, I understand the importance of parental support, but as a parent, I might think my kid is hilarious and the teacher idiotic. That'll be tough. In the end, I suppose I'll tend to side with the teacher, at least outwardly.

But if they mispronounce my daughter's name on the first day of school, then they're on their own.

Table

Seven years ago, we bought a kitchen table and four chairs for $129. When Daisy was a puppy and we thought she could be left alone to roam the house, she proved us wrong by gnawing gouges out of each chair and the table itself. To put a price on it, she ate roughly $37-worth of the set.

We finally got around to shopping for a new set. All over town, kitchen sets we saw were hideous in their own way, whether it was their $3,500 price or their faux-European, modern-retro-chic poser style. In the fanciest store, Lyla showed her displeasure by screaming and turning her ass-faucet on high. Sorry for the crassness; snobby furniture causes me to overcompensate in the other direction. Believe me, I was tempted to change her on that $3,500 table.

Instead, we did the diaper changing and breastfeeding in our car in the parking lot. Were it not for our tinted windows, an employee might've walked by on a smoke break and sniffed haughtily.

Then we went home and bought our kitchen set from Target.com. So really in the past seven years, we haven't changed much.

I wish we would have known this morning that our ultimate destination would be at home on the computer. It would've saved time, energy, and Lyla might not have spit up into Julie's shirt in the back seat of our car. Let's keep our fingers crossed that the animals and baby in our house collectively decide that our new kitchen set looks unappetizing.

Date

Last night Julie and I went on our first date without Lyla. Julie's mom and sister babysat, and we saw Slumdog Millionaire and ate at McCormick & Schmick's. If you haven't seen the movie, then drop everything now and go. And if you haven't eaten at M&S, then...well same thing.

I was told by several people, ruefully, that during our first date sans baby, all we'd do is talk about the baby. I thought that sounded pretty depressing, as though everything that defined our relationship, all the quirks and history, would be suddenly and irrevocably erased.

"So, can you believe the volume in her diapers lately?"

"Totally. Like, they're so absorbent."

"Yeah."

"You know, you bought perfumed baby wipes at Target the other day. I thought we talked about that."

"I think they smell nice."

"Well, they're full of chemicals."

"Other babies are fine with them."

"Other babies?"

That wasn't us, but that's what I pictured when I was warned about what I should expect. On the contrary, what we both found was that our conversation, despite being Lyla-centered, was utterly fascinating. We have an utterly fascinating baby, you see, so it makes perfect sense.

They say having a baby changes you, and I suppose that must be true. Really it just adds to your history and realigns your perspective. But I'm still the same guy, basically. We're still the same couple. It's just that we're working on this crazy, gargantuan project together, and that broadens the possibilities for discussion. Lyla is currently the most interesting topic, but maybe one day that'll change. I sure hope not.

Chat

Lyla is starting to goo, gurgle, and grunt more frequently, so Julie and I are teaching her about conversations. We read that it's better not to talk at babies; rather, you should wait for them to say something before you reply, and then it's their turn, etc.

"Ah-gooooo."

"You like the San Diego Chargers?"

"Unh. Ahhhnh."

"But they were 8-8."

"Ahhh waaAAAAAAH."

"Yes, they beat the Colts. You think they'll beet the Steelers?"

"GOOOOOOO-waaa."

"Yeah, I'm not so sure either."

"Mwwaaaaaah! WAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

"Okay, you're hungry now."

"Eh eh eh goo."

"Oh, you pooped your pants?"

"Ahh eh uhh."

"You're hungry AND you pooped your pants."

"EH EH!"

"And you want your mother to change you and feed you."

"WAAAH."

"And Daddy gets to play video games."

"Goo."

Spilled

I’ve already mentioned that a fear we have is that we’ll drop Lyla. The bigger and sturdier she gets, the less likely it seems that she’ll slip through our fingers. But I wonder whether the fear of having butterfingers extends beyond dropping the child. My current fear is dropping the pumped breast milk.

Julie pumps four or five ounces a day, and Lyla drinks most of it during her nightly fussy times. Preparing the bottle is generally my job, and I’ve determined that it is statistically improbable that I will survive Lyla’s infancy without at least once spilling the milk. And this is spilled milk that I will cry over, friends, because Julie will beat the shit out of me.

If you know how much work is involved with pumping milk, then you know how important it is to not eff it up while transferring it to the bottle. One false move could send hours of milk backlog splashing across my good standing. The stuff is like oil: white gold. Truly, I shouldn’t be trusted with it.

Cowgirl

When lifting Lyla's legs during a diaper change, you grab one calf and then the second one in the same grip. Her legs automatically cross, and it's a tad strange. After reading the baby book, I learned that she's bowlegged, which makes me think of someone who's spent significant time atop a horse.


Baby bowleggedness is normal, a result of womb posture and the birthing process. It almost always goes away by itself. You can ask your pediatrician to take a gander at it, but you end up looking like a Chicken Little parent.

And speaking of her legs, I didn't realize that it's possible that she won't learn to crawl. Since conventional wisdom changed about sleeping position, babies spend significantly less time on their stomachs. As a result, their crawling muscles develop later, sometimes so late that they're ready to walk by the time they're ready to crawl.

But does bowleggedness go away even if babies don't crawl? If not, then I suppose Lyla has a promising future on the rodeo circuit.

Attuned

In college Julie was in a science lab chatting with some people, when suddenly the conversation turned to spinal surgery. Moments later, after Julie regained consciousness, she learned she had fainted and hit the back of her head on a doorknob. The person next to her had then interrupted her trajectory, cradling her head before it could bounce off the concrete floor.

Fast-forward ten years and you see why we skipped the parenting class where epidurals were on the syllabus. Julie handled the epidural itself remarkably well, but I did nearly punch the anesthesiologist because he wouldn't stop talking about it.

Shots aren't fun for anybody (except weirdos), but Julie is more resistant than many. Today she was scheduled for a tetanus shot, arguably the worst kind of routine shot. They stick the needle in, you barely feel it, and then it's like they're injecting a thundercloud into your arm. For the next couple hours, it feels like a lightning storm.

Julie sat in the exam room with Lyla nearby in the car seat. "Which arm do you normally hold the baby with?" the nurse asked her.

"I guess my left," Julie said, damning herself to a shot in her otherwise dominant right arm.

"Take a deep breath," the nurse said, poised with the needle.

And Julie realized she didn't care. She remembered child birth and concluded that this puny needle could not possibly compare. She relaxed; the needle entered her arm, and in that instant, from the other side of the room, Lyla screamed bloody murder.

More

I think she's growing. We're due at the doctor again in a couple weeks, so that's when we'll get specific measurements, but it does seem like Lyla is ballooning a bit. Clothes aren't hanging off her as much, and last night her toes nearly touched the end of her little baby bath thingy.

And the bath itself took longer. There was more of her to clean.

She's up a size in diapers, from hamster to groundhog or whatever those sizes are. And where she used to fuss during every diaper change, now she just looks at me as if to say, "This again? Yeah, whatever."

We're trying to get as much wear out of her smaller clothes as we can. Last night I stuffed her into her Santa pajamas. It was January 4th, yes, but there's no way she'll fit into them next month much less next Christmas. We'll pass her around next December, though, and we'll pass around the old pajamas too and be like "Remember when?"

Babies grow so fast that I hope you don't harm them by putting them in clothes that are nearly too small. Put a fish in a small tank, and you can hinder its growth. Can you do the same with a baby? What if Lyla is scheduled to grow a certain amount some week, but her pajamas are a bit tight? Should you always keep your infant in clothes that are a half-size too big simply to encourage maximum growth? I guess it's good that fabrics stretch. Well, we haven't reached that point yet, but the day is coming when we'll have to open the second drawer, where all the non-newborn clothes live.

In their second month, many babies start smiling at things. We're not quite there yet, so I'm hoping she won't be a below-average smiler. Just in case, I'll keep acting goofier and goofier. "Is she smiling yet?"

"No Dan, get off the unicycle. Quit juggling the dogs."

Napping

I've been off for the past two weeks, so we've gotten a bit lax on Lyla's sleep schedule. She's also six weeks old now, and if you look around the internet, you'll find plenty of wide-eyed mothers who say their little six-week-old darling sleeps through the night.

I do not like these people. I think they are baby-druggers who cheat on their taxes and spill pop in movie theaters.

Julie and I also hear the occasional comment like, "I put Frankie-kins down for his nap right after I feed him in the morning" and "We start his bedtime routine at 7:00." And these are things that make us go "Hmm."

My perspective is that a baby that young is going to sleep when she's tired, no matter what you do to try to influence it. And this bedtime routine? For a six-week-old? Our doctor said there is nothing you can do to spoil your child until they are four months old. If you think about what spoiling actually is, it's getting your child accustomed to a routine that's inconvenient for the parents and/or harmful to the child's development. If you can't spoil a young baby, then is it even possible to accustom her to a routine?

You might say yes, but I'd argue that it's the parents who become accustomed to the routine, and the kid is along for the ride. Not that that's a bad thing; once the kid is older, the routine will already be in place, and they'll start to comprehend it. Until then, though, your baby doesn't sleep at a certain time because of a routine but because she happens to be tired then.

I might be talking out of my ass. I think one mistake Julie and I have made is not putting Lyla in her bassinet during the day. During the day Lyla is held, fed, played with, and put in her bouncy chair. Those positions are all more comfortable than lying in that hard, lonely bassinet. No wonder her first impulse is to cry. But what we're doing now, actually literally right now, is putting her down for a nap in the bassinet during the day when she's tired, when we know she'll sleep. This way, she'll start to associate the bassinet with sleep rather than with abandonment and discomfort.

But assuming she'll make a positive association with the bassinet is like assuming she comprehends routine, isn't it? Good grief, now I need a nap. I'm comforted that every time I see somebody, they always say, "So, are you sleeping?" with a doubtful expression. Maybe it's my red eyes and overall dishevelment, but maybe it's also that everyone expects new parents to struggle with their child's sleep schedule, and there's no amount of routine that will contradict what nature has in store.

Maybe I should just read Lyla this post every time I want her to go to sleep.

Cantaloupe

Babies are like scissors: you shouldn't run while carrying them. Both Julie and I are worried about tripping while holding Lyla.

I maintain that if I was walking along with Lyla and tripped, I would instantly sacrifice my body to protect hers. If I fell backwards, then for weeks I'd have to sit on a donut to heal my shattered coccyx, but Lyla would be fine after bouncing gently on my gut. If I fell forward, then I would spin mid-fall, wrench a spinal disc or two out of place, and again shatter my coccyx into a million pieces.

I'm not so sure about Julie, though. She might trip and toss Lyla into the air, expecting me to dive to catch her, risking life and coccyx.

I think we should run tripping drills just to see what we're made of. I'll buy two cantaloupes and write "Lyla" on them with a Sharpie. We'll each carry one for a weekend and try to trip each other when the other least suspects it. I don't know where the real Lyla will be during these drills; perhaps she'll stay with relatives. Anyway, if one of our cantaloupes breaks due to selfish falling, then--I haven't gotten this far yet. What would be the punishment for breaking your cantaloupe? Well, we'll cross that bridge when Julie comes to it.

I know I shouldn't joke about any of this, but what can you do? I suppose as Lyla gets older, starts crawling, walking, driving, and dating, we'll always be neurotic about something, and one day we'll tell her that our biggest worry used to be that we'd drop her.

Fixation

Lyla sleeps in a bassinet by our bed, which is fine, but I don't want her there when she's 12. She won't fit. So if she's not staying there forever, then when is the time to move her? We have this beautiful crib in the nursery, right across the hall, and its only purpose so far is for storing stuffed animals.

Mothers seem to have differing views on where babies should sleep. One friend told me her first-born slept on her chest for the first six months. Another friend's baby, nearly one now, sleeps in the bed. They've put the bed frame in storage and leave the mattress on the floor just in case the little guy should fall off. Yet another friend's child sleeps outside in a tree, perched upside-down like a bat. Okay, that last one's a lie. Point is, the experts don't matter; parents do what works for them.

So what will work for us? Well, Lyla has the unfortunate combination of an oral fixation and oral klutziness; that is, she wants a binky at bedtime, but then the damn thing falls out of her mouth. When she cries, Julie rolls over and shoves it back in her mouth, and she's happy until it falls out again. If we moved Lyla to the big-girl crib, then we might have to tie the binky around her head. The experts say that strings and ropes in the vicinity of the neck are a no-no, and I'm inclined to agree with them on that one.

But where does that leave us? Must Julie be on binky-patrol forever? I can picture Lyla as a teenager: "Mom, my gum fell out of my mouth again. WAAAAAH!"

Perhaps I am expecting too much out of my six-week-old. As a teacher, perhaps I am too inclined to want to teach binky self-reliance rather than wait for nature to do the same thing. I still wonder what would happen if tonight was the big move to the crib. Would Lyla feel rejected? Would it cause her to need a binky forever? I shudder at the thought. Yikes. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go find a lollipop or something.

*Update*


Look who I just found upstairs in the bed, napping next to her mother. The binky has fallen out of her mouth, but she's perfectly content. This is trouble.

Bib

At night, Julie stuffs Lyla with so much food that the young lady's brain surrenders, unable to function beyond "First burp, then sleep," kind of like me on Thanksgiving. After burping, Lyla becomes a lazy, slumbering lump of a baby when I lay her down in the bassinet--but then suddenly she spits up, and it's all over. Nothing, nothing pisses off an infant like stripping her wet clothes off and stuffing her uncooperative limbs into a new onesie.

Then some friends of ours gave us seven bibs, each with a different day of the week and animal that starts with the same letter as the day. Tuesday - Turtle, Wednesday - Whale, Saturday - Sasquatch, etc.

My first thought was, oh these will be awesome once she's in a high-chair and splurting Gerber and Cheerios all over herself. About three days passed as Julie and I changed outfit after outfit, then tried to re-calm the screaming child, before the proverbial light-bulb went off and we thought, "Well, perhaps a bib?"

The bibs are now a vital part of Lyla's outfits. We now say things to each other like, "Oh holy God, don't forget the bib." We do less laundry, and there are even some days when Lyla makes it to bedtime in the same outfit we put her in that morning.

And today marks the first day that we've correctly lined up the day of the week with the corresponding bib. Yesterday was Wednesday, but we had her in the Turtle Tuesday bib, which I cropped out of yesterday's pictures to avoid confusing you. But today, the first day of 2009, we've gotten it right. It's Tiger Thursday, and it's grrreat.