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Lyla played with her first toy today, quite a milestone. Soon she'll be building Lego towers, mastering the Speak & Spell, and drawing spirograph masterpieces. But today she reached out and touched the toucan thing on her jungle chair. If you'll excuse me, I have a press conference to get to.

Babies are not famous for eye-hand coordination, so the simple act of reaching out for a toy is something you look for during the third month. I'm glad because we have all these toys from baby showers or from our own impulsive shopping, but no one except Julie and me to play with them.

And they're pretty boring, honestly. I mean, how many times can you press the octopus's different-colored legs and hear the robot woman say what color it is? It's like electronic octopus color flashcards, and it's not challenging at all.

But I suppose a short way down the road after learning to play with toys is learning to make demands at the store. The ability to look at an object and anticipate the fun that could be had with it is a milestone that can take its time. "Dat! Dat! DAAAAAAAT!" Lyla will scream as we pass those dolls that look like prostitutes.

Which I guess is when we'll practice the word "No."

Whine

I have one week left of school before my parenting leave starts. I don't know why I'm struggling to wrap my head around it. I'm tempted to just write something stupid today at some attempt at humor or whatever, but that wouldn't be truthful. So bear with me--or better yet, don't.

Here it is: I genuinely love my job, and a large percentage of my identity is wrapped up in it. And spring means school; it has since I was five years old. I can't help feeling that something doesn't feel right.

But what's more right than staying at home with your kid? Plus, I'll be back to teaching in the fall, so what's the big deal? Well, there's no big deal; it just hasn't happened yet, so it's like this in-between purgatory where I'm supposed to be psyched about staying home, yet I have 140 papers to grade and this sneaky feeling that I'm going to miss teaching.

Boo hoo. You don't need to read about this. Here, look at pictures. I'll get over my pissy little whine-fest and be back tomorrow.

Unreal

Julie just mailed a letter to Senator Amy Klobuchar advocating an update to the Family Medical Leave Act to at least make it compete with most third-world countries. It's a great letter, well crafted and researched, and of course written from the perspective of a new mother coming to terms with her own maternity leave ending.

She also posted the letter on her Facebook page and has gotten several comments from people, all positive. However, one of her "friends" emailed her that he "completely disagrees" with her, that "they should get rid of maternity leave all together," and that he would love to "get together and debate this topic over coffee or lunch."

I don't think coffee or lunch is going to happen.

I'm trying to imagine, especially as a man, finding myself compelled to initiate a debate with a woman about maternity leave while she's on maternity leave. If Julie ever does take him up on his offer, I might lurk behind a newspaper in the corner of the cafe, just to see if he's real.

Crunch

When I come home to find Lyla fussy, I lack the finesse to quell spousal rage. Stupid decisions disguise themselves as smart decisions, and soon I find myself as Private Dan getting chewed out by Sergeant Julie.

This afternoon, for instance, I chose the wrong time to crunch a mouthful of Cheerios. I walked in the door starving and asked Julie, who was struggling to get fussy Lyla to feed, whether she wanted a snack.

"I want cereal."

"Word."

So I poured two bowls and brought hers with the milk carton to the livingroom. I didn't pour her milk because I always overdo it; she likes about 1.5 teaspoons, and I refuse to measure. Then I retrieved my own bowl, returned to the livingroom, and poured my own milk. And you see where this is going. Lyla was crying in Julie's arms, and I started eating my cereal. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

But you wouldn't necessarily think it was stupid, would you? There's nothing inherently stupid about eating Cheerios. Yet in this particular situation, I learned, the infraction was severe.

And now that I think about it, I guess it sort of makes sense. But it didn't at the time. How are you supposed to know when you can't eat Cheerios? I mean, she requested Cheerios. I thought that meant I had clearance to also eat Cheerios.

Women are weird.

Rhetoric

For the past few evenings, Lyla has shed her calm baby facade and become a snarling, hissing, nostril-flaring beast. It's like she's that cute little dinosaur from Jurassic Park, and I'm Newman from Seinfeld just before he gets poisonous ink shot in his face.

That was a bad analogy. The girl wants milk, can't get enough of it. Watch out for her. If you lactate, you are not safe.

So anyway, during Obama's state of the union address, I fed Lyla a bottle. She had so much to drink that the new stuff caught up with the old stuff in her digestive tract and she massively, massively pooped her pants. It was just after Obama's point about parents being responsible for their child's education, and a long standing ovation followed. I swear to you, she was encouraged by it; she thought they were clapping for her.

If you watched the speech, you know that it was full of standing ovations. Well, Lyla kept going, pooping in time with each of the President's big talking points and pausing for the applause. The girl understands rhetoric.

It must be the growth spurt common in three-month-olds. I hear her crying upstairs now, so I better go assist. I don't want Julie to suffer the wrath of the Lyla-saurus alone.

Pillow

I've invented a game similar to peek-a-boo to teach Lyla about her hands. It's called Pillow, and it's asinine.

You put Lyla in her chair and then ask her if she will be your pillow. Regardless of her response, you then put your head on her stomach/torso region and begin to snore loudly. Eventually, she will grab your head with her hands or pat it a couple times on each side. After a few moments of this, you lift your head, face her, and say "Good morning!" with all the enthusiasm you can muster.

Repeat. And that's the game. You could also play it with a very, very good friend.

Lyla is almost to the point of reaching out for things, and I figure that this game is an apt bridge. Plus it is truly amusing to see her reaction when she discovers that you were the one snoring all along. I can picture her telling the cow picture on the wall, "Well, everything was going normally today, and then Daddy taught me Pillow. Have you played it? Blew my frickin' mind."

Lyla nearly got to keep a fistful of Julie's hair, too, so really the game is fun for the whole family.

Oscar

I've always thought football players should wear different colored shirts depending on their position. Then I could hold a color-coded cheat sheet with descriptions of what each player was responsible for. There's the nickelback, who is supposed to...let's see here...(okay I just wikipedia-ed nickelback and I'm still mystified). But you know what I'm saying.

If our next kid is a son, I'm in trouble.

The Super Bowl has always been just another day to me, but the Oscars--the Oscars! Now that's an event. And tonight will be Lyla's first Oscars, at least until we put her to bed. Julie and I have a lot riding this year. If more of my picks are correct than hers, then she has to take me to the Brazilian steakhouse downtown and applaud my gluttony. If she wins, then I have to go shopping with her and "be good," meaning walk into stores with her, wait outside dressing rooms, etc., without complaining.

So it's vital that I win.

We'll see how it goes, and regardless of who wins, the band Nickelback sucks.

***Update***

I won by one category. Mmm...steak.

Grounded

I'm ready for Julie and me to take a short trip together. Grandparents could babysit. We have milk in the freezer. A four-hour plane ride would find us in Mexico and on the beach by noon. Then two or three days later, we'd be home.

When I proposed this idea to Julie, I learned that it was her current worst nightmare.

"I dream about waking up away from the Goo."

"So?"

"So she's not there. She's somewhere else, and I have to find her, and it's a horrible dream."

"The Goo would be fine. We have like 17 gallons of breast milk. She'd have fun without us."

"Absolutely not. Plus, what would I do, pump on the beach every three hours?"

"Um, well, the pump could be your carry-on, right?"

"Talk to me in December."

I guess she's right. I'm just the dad. My breasts are not useful at all, so there's no competing with the mother-daughter bond. Generally I'm smart enough to know when a subject should be dropped.

She'll come around. And until she does, maybe we can go camping in Iowa or something.

Three

Lyla is three months old today. In the next month, we should see her roll over and giggle. Both of these milestones will make her even more fun at parties. At least to us. "Guys, she's rolling over again! Guys?"

She's starting to get that back-of-head bald spot that so many babies get from sleeping on their backs. They should make aerosol spray-on hair for babies. Maybe we'll start combing it over back there. Other babies will be like, "OMG, that's the worst comb-over in the history of babykind."

Anyway, three months seems like a big deal for some reason. I guess when you look at a very early picture of her...


compared to a recent one...


you can only conclude that three months is an extraordinarily long time when you're that young.

Insensitive

The enthusiasm of a dog when you walk in the door is delightful when you're childless. You romp about the room to celebrate simply being together again. But now I come home and Lyla's the one I'm excited to see, not them. It's like I'm the dog, she's the owner, and Daisy and Tulip are just the competition.

They get in my face as I'm trying to get in Lyla's face, and it's all I can do to not snarl and shove them out of the way.


Great, now I seem like an asshole. I bet I'm not the first dog-owner-turned-parent to experience this. Dog owners tend to treat their dogs like humans, but when you actually create a human, the dogs become dogs again.

I do get the feeling that they're too relaxed and/or dumb to care. They horse around (dog around?) all the time with each other and generally seem in high spirits. Still, I feel a little guilty that their social status in our house has plummeted as of late. I'll buy them some toys this weekend. One of those ugly on-sale stuffed animals from the Disney Store will be fun for them to kill over and over. The rat friend from Ratatouille lasted months; parts of his husk still live in our couches. Stupid dogs.

Hip

This evening Julie attended a hip-hop dance class with her sister at Lifetime Fitness. Before she left, I reminded her to wave her hands in the air like she just didn't care.

"You're dumb."

"Is Kris Kross gonna make you jump jump?"

"I'm going to be late."

"Are you going to the mall afterward to try to get discovered?"

Lyla and I had fun while she was gone. We did baby sit-ups, took a nap on the couch, watched American Idol, and she nearly cannon-shat a hole in her diaper and then had bath time.

Now Julie is home and Lyla is talking to her from the crib. She sounds vaguely like a baby girl Pacino from Scent of a Woman: "Hooah, hooah, hooah."

And now it's silent except for the classical lullaby CD and the fan.

Bite

People tell us that soon Lyla will discover her feet and begin to suck on them. That's disgusting.

Currently she can almost cram her entire fist in her mouth. When she does, the sucking sound is similar to when you try to suck the last bit of a purple-flavored Mr. Freeze out of the plastic wrap.

If Lyla's fists lactated, then she could self-regulate her food intake. She's in for a world of disappointment when she discovers her feet and gets her hopes up before realizing that they don't produce milk either.

I bit my toenails until around age 6. Actually age 17, which I can tell the truth about now because I'm no longer trying to score dates. I quit biting them for reasons of inflexibility (along with the obvious reasons that somehow eluded me before). I know it's wrong to correct the behavior of a three-month-old, but I'll be tempted when I see her foot in her mouth to say "No" in hopes that she doesn't become a toenail biter/social pariah.

Of course, all of this makes me curious about whether I could still reach my foot to my mouth. I haven't had occasion to test it in the last 12 years, you see. When I try, I'll be sure Lyla's not watching, lest I reinforce the behavior before it even happens in the first place.

Valentine

After a successful double-date on Friday, which involved sushi followed by Chatterbox (bar with board games--we played Balderdash and I totally kicked no one's ass), Julie and I went on a second date today. Julie's mom leaves tomorrow, although slashing her tires has crossed my mind.

So we saw the movie He's Just Not That Into You, a romantic comedy that is neither romantic nor comedic. I'm definitely not a movie snob; I'll laugh myself stupid at just about anything. This movie, however, was cynical about love on a level that is difficult to describe. Then at the end of the movie, it pretended to be heartwarming, which just showed the filmmakers' cynicism about us in the audience.

You won't find spoilers here, but let's just say that it surprises me not at all that on Valentine's weekend, this movie got trounced at the box office by the Friday the 13th remake.

So anyway, what does all this have to do with Lyla? Well, I guess it's safe to say that Lyla is lucky to have parents who found so little truth in this rat turd movie.

Elevators

At the Mall of America, I have to scale a set of stairs to reach the mall entrance from the parking ramp. If I'm alone with Lyla and her stroller, I heave it all up those stairs while taking care not to dump her out. The alternative is an elevator that is slow, dirty, and outside.

Inside the mall, I've discovered elevators off the beaten track. The Gap has one between floors one and two, Macy's has a nice one, and there's the freight elevator next to the east exits. The main elevators I avoid at all costs because inevitably I run into the laziest people in America.

I'm not talking about people with strollers of their own; I'm not talking about the elderly or the physically disabled. I'm talking about the people who stand in packs with their extra-large Orange Juliuses and their giant crepe stand desserts and wait for the magic box to haul them up to the food court. Never mind that there are escalators 50 yards away. If they can get there by simply pushing a button, they'll do so oblivious of the guy with the stroller who won't fit in there with them.

It's always tempting to bring the stroller up the escalator. In addition to signs prohibiting the practice, our stroller is a three-wheeler and would be difficult to balance on those moving stairs. If we're headed up and I lose grip, and everything tumbles downward at the same rate the escalator ascends, then Lyla could fall forever--an intriguing concept but not a happy one.

The whole dilemma is merely inconvenient, but it's made me realize something. If I ever find myself in a wheelchair, I will be absolutely belligerent on a daily basis.

Zipper

What do you stand for? What's important to you? I am all about the zippered onesie. My dignity as a man just took a hit by writing that sentence, but I don't care.

The alternative is navigating 137 snaps. And you never get it right; you always have to unsnap half of them and start over so Lyla doesn't end up looking like a crack baby. Meanwhile she's squiggling around, getting fussy, doing her best to thwart your efforts. Contrast this exercise in madness with the ease of the zipper. Make sure her limbs and skin folds are contained, and zzzzip, done.

So why are these things so difficult to find? Are there that many more snap factories than zipper factories? Is there a large faction of snap-happy parents that I am unaware of? I can understand if you had a little boy and felt zipper-neurotic, but I can't think of a reason why the girl onesies aren't exclusively zippered.

"We get them in, and they sell out right away," reported the savvy motivated employee at Carter's, one of Julie's favorite baby stores.

You'd think she was asking about a Wii.

Feet

Part of the folder the hospital sent home with us was a kit to capture Lyla's footprints. This kit didn't require Lyla to get her feet inky; you were just supposed to press them on the pad, sending an impression of her footprint to the paper behind.

Well, we never did it. Whoops.

Does it matter? I don't remember why we got on the subject of Lyla's feet, but somebody told me that the hospital is supposed to do the footprints for identification purposes. Like if all the babies somehow spilled onto the floor together in a confusing baby-heap, they'd simply match each one to his or her footprint. It's a hell of a lot cuter than a DNA test.

Maybe the hospital did do it. A nurse at one point took Lyla out of the room to give her a shot or something, and perhaps she snuck in a footprinting too. In retrospect I should've gone with her in case she turned out to be a baby-cannibal asylum patient impersonating a nurse.

Anyway, maybe we'll use our footprint kit this weekend. Then when Lyla's older, we can mess with her head by telling her the footprints are actually from the day she was born. "They were gigantic freak feet, honey. We almost sold you to the circus."

I wonder if Lyla will be mad at us later for never capturing her teeny feet. Hey, someone I work with just had a baby girl. Maybe she'd let me borrow her daughter's feet for a couple minutes.

Math

Lyla is 12 weeks old today. I realized this after visiting my cell phone's calendar feature and counting back. Then I had to edit some past posts because I had incorrectly reported her age. See, after you get to 10, you run out of fingers, and I always make mistakes when I count on my toes.

Twelve weeks sounds like three months to some people, but this is fuzzy math. Only February is divisible by four weeks without a remainder. Julie keeps saying Lyla is three months old, which is inaccurate as she was born on the 20th, not the 12th. It seems Julie's undergraduate degree in mathematics allows her to fudge numbers, just like my English degree allows me to invent words.

This topic makes my head feel kersplooshy.

Anyway, Lyla is 84 days old today (quoth the calculator). Place the present on our front steps.

Grunge

Last night I put Lyla on our bed and folded clothes while she watched. Undershirts seemed to be her favorite; when each no-longer-white shirt billowed above her, she stared in amazement.

And she had a lot to say about socks. I showed her the white ones and the gray ones and some brown ones, too. She liked it when I draped socks over her legs or torso. I reminded her not to tell her mother about this sock activity, for she would not have approved.

"But they're just clean socks, Daddy," Lyla cooed.

"Yes, but Mommy thinks anything that has ever touched a foot is dirty."

"Is that why she gets mad when you turn off the TV with your foot?"

"That's a lie, honey. Daddy has never done that."

"But I saw--"

"Shh."

I was totally into grunge during the late part of middle school and early part of high school. At least I thought I was. If fashion continues to be cyclical, then Lyla might be into retro-grunge once she hits that age. She'll be like, "Look Dad, this flannel shirt is so grunge."

And I'll be like, "Do you even know what grunge is?"

"Yeah, it's like, whatever."

"Hey, do you remember when I used to drape socks over you when you were a baby?"

She'll make a face. "Dad, that's grunge."

Power

When Lyla cries, it's an instinctual response to a need that's not being met. She doesn't quite understand the usefulness of that response: her crying gets stuff done. I feel that we are mere days away from the moment that Lyla realizes the power she possesses, when she truly comprehends the power of her voice.

I'm afraid we'll never shut her up.

We have read, and I have mentioned in previous entries, that you can't spoil a baby until four months of age. Perhaps the reason is that four months is approximately when babies begin to understand the potential impact of their shrieks. And like any human being, they will exploit that new power for whatever it might get them.

That's maybe where the real parenting comes into play. You have to determine when to not give in to their demands--for at four months I expect they can be tricky, conniving little buggers.

I'll enjoy our remaining time with a near-three-month-old whose cries are always trustworthy, and hope that once her secret power is revealed to her, she'll mostly use it for good.

Countdown

Julie has four weeks remaining on her maternity leave, which means that I have four weeks remaining before my leave starts. It's a complicated household when one person is looking forward to the same day that the other is dreading.

I keep telling Julie that going back to work will be fine. All it means is that she'll have a better balance of activities that exploit her strengths. She'll get to do all those officy things like managing efficiency and strategizing collaboration to achieve synergy. Then she'll get to come home and be a mom. Perhaps it'll be the best of both worlds. I've been working this whole time, and I haven't minded it.

But let's talk more about me. In four weeks I will answer only to a daughter and a wife. True, they are the two most demanding women I've ever met, but there's something to be said for the simplicity of expectations when you're a stay-at-home dad. If Lyla and I do fun things together and the house stays clean, then I will be deemed successful. If Julie arrives home from work to a clean house, a satisfied baby, and I've taken a shower, then it's bonus time. I think I can handle that.

I bet there will be days when I'm just itching to get back in a classroom.

Ha! That's hilarious. I like teaching and all, and I really dig my students this year, but when that door closes behind me this March and I'm off until late August, you will not find me looking back.

Sponge

We try to prevent Lyla from watching TV. We know it does her no good at all, and it's not like the shows Julie and I prefer to watch are baby-appropriate. Maybe it would be different if each night we nuked a bowl of popcorn and settled in for an hour of Baby Einstein or Teletubbies. But it turns out that those shows make me want to staple my lips to my eyelids.

After an evening feed, when Lyla is near comatose and we want to watch something, we put her in her chair and face her away from the TV. The other night I noticed that she was fixated on the fireplace. Turns out she was watching a rerun of 24 through the reflection in the fireplace glass. Since babies' brains are essentially sponges at this age, Lyla will grow up knowing how to dodge machine gun bullets and judo-chop terrorists in the neck.

And the award for best parenting goes to...not us.

Cave

How do babies learn to say Mama and Dada? Are parents supposed to refer to themselves in the third person? Or do they just refer to each other a lot when talking to the baby? "Lyla, just wait until your Dada gets home," and somehow she picks up on it?

Am I supposed to say to Lyla, "Dada is here, Lyla! Dada! Me Dada! DA DA DA DA." It seems awfully self-important.

I think I use too many pronouns. It's not like we can sit Lyla down and explain, "You are Lyla, Goo Baby, Peanut, and sometimes you are You or Her or She, depending on context. And I am Dada."

Plus, I have mixed feelings about whether I want Lyla to say Dada first, or Mama. Competitively, I'm all about Lyla singing a chorus of Dadas and following up with Mama a day or two later. Realistically, I am not a primary food source, I suck at the bedtime routine, and I'm not as good at reading Green Eggs and Ham. Plus, saying Mama before Dada seems more traditional and more fair. If Lyla learns my name first, then Julie might poison my oatmeal.

But regardless, it's time to start talking like cave people. "Dada here to tuck in Lyla," I'll say while pointing to myself and then her. And with mind-numbing repetition, I guess it'll just fall into place.

Plan

Julie and I have another date night approaching. We're not going out on Valentine's Day, instead opting for the evening before, which happens to be Friday the 13th. We considered sushi, but do you really want to eat raw fish on a notoriously unlucky day?

Julie's mom and sister will babysit tag team that night. We've already talked it over with Lyla, who promises (though I'm not sure she understands the concept) to behave herself.

Scheduled date nights have a certain added pressure now. We can't take them for granted because they happen so infrequently. It's the same thing that every new parent experiences, so it's not a profound or surprising topic. Still, I find myself a week in advance thinking about possible restaurants and what to do after. What movies are out? Should we do dinner and then movie, or the reverse? Is that too boring? When will another date night come along?

Perhaps there should be bowling. Lame.

I came home from school and Julie said, "We have to figure out what we're doing next Friday. It's stressing me out."

We need to chill. Date night can't turn into New Year's Eve, so over-planned and built up that it's ultimately disappointing.

But I should definitely get a haircut. Wash the car. Buy flowers. Make reservations. Polish the bowling ball.

Knuckle

Lyla slept through the night again last night. Here's the secret, for anyone taking notes.

Ready for it?

Okay, here it is: Baby NyQuil. I'm kidding! Good grief, we would go to hell. No, the real secret is that we have no clue. It's luck.

We do play a classical lullaby CD and run a small fan in the room, not so that it blows on her, but for white noise. Maybe that's the secret. I can be across the hall in bed doing the most scintillating of crossword puzzles, and that combination of noise puts me right to sleep. Plus, since Lyla discovered the resemblance of her index knuckle to a nipple (say that ten times fast), we don't have to replace the binky as much when it falls out.

Sometimes in the middle of the night I'll stir and hear her whimper and wonder whether it'll become a full-fledged cry, but seconds later the whimpering becomes intense knuckle suckling (again, ten times fast). The girl self-soothes. It's luck.

But on a day like today, which found Lyla fussing for food constantly, probably in honor of being an 11-week-old big girl, I wonder if her sleeping streak will be broken. Time will tell, but no matter what happens, Julie and I both anticipate an insomniac hellion anarchist for our second child.

Goo

Lyla is becoming a little more aware of her hands. She doesn't comprehend all the things her fingers could accomplish if they worked together, but she's aware that she has these two protrusions that she can use for reaching.

If I put my head a few inches from hers, she'll reach out her fist as though she wants to punch me. She's not coordinated enough to touch my face on her own, but I make her think she is by moving my face to wherever her fist is. On the horizon is the day when she yanks out a chunk of my hair, but for now she's content to lightly punch.

I feel like she's on the edge of some major changes. They say the three-month mark could find her moving with less random jerkiness, noticing her hands and fingers and becoming fascinated by them, and reading chapter books. Right now we're relishing her sleeping habits and knowing they probably won't last. I believe she's gone five consecutive nights without waking up, but it could be more.

And the hair. That hair on the top of her head stands at attention like the whole world is one big drill sergeant. The longer it gets, the more I think we'll start to see at least a slant, but it seems destined for space.

Oh yes, and she uttered her first real phrase several weeks ago: "Ah goo." I think it means "Daddy is a rock star," but I'm still working on the translation. I'm looking forward to when she starts to say "Ah goo" while she's punching me in the face.

Idol

Tuesday is bath night. It makes sense because American Idol is on and the bath comes after. Who doesn't feel unclean after watching American Idol?

After the bath, I wrapped Lyla in a towel, dried her, diapered her, and pajama-ed her. She was the cleanest baby in America for approximately 12 seconds, but at that moment a biohazard the size of Ryan Seacrest typhooned into her pants.


And a couple minutes later, Paula followed. Maybe tomorrow we'll do bath night again. Hopefully she won't Simon all over me.

Groundhog

The movie Groundhog Day is brilliant. It's not mindless, light comedy; it's a comment on how we live our lives.

Bill Murray's character starts out as a conceited jerk, unable to connect with anyone. Throughout the movie, he learns that he is capable of changing the course of his entire life in the span of one day.

Groundhog Day reminds me of parenting because certain elements of every day tend not to change. Lyla wakes up, needs to be changed, fed, put down for a nap, etc., and I can see how days might start to feel the same.

Except that they don't. Just like the movie, we get to make adjustments each day to make it better than the previous one. Julie puts Lyla down for a nap after her first feeding. Then is a good time to work out. Showers are best just after lunch. And we always plan so there's lunch food in the refrigerator. The kitchen must remain clean for a sane existence. They're little daily changes, but they lead us ever closer to the perfect day.

Watch Groundhog Day again sometime during the rest of this long, long winter--because yes, good old Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this morning.

Chef

We're eating out less and less. It's partly due to the hassle of hauling a carseat into a restaurant, hoping then that Lyla will nap through the meal. And partly it's due to our one-paycheck existence now that Julie is well-immersed in the unpaid part of her leave.

If we spent the better part of our 20s eating out, then will our 30s be the decade we learn to cook?

For my part, I'm learning how to make pizza. I got a dough recipe from a friend of mine, and as I type this I'm waiting another 20 minutes or so for the 500-degree oven to heat the pizza stone. I'm worried about transferring the pizza from the peel (wooden pizza spatula thing) to the stone. I guess it takes a perfect flick of the wrist, but it occurs to me that if my wrist fails, then my oven will eat pizza and we'll be left to...well, order pizza I guess.

Twelve minutes until the oven is ready. I hope I didn't spread out the dough too early. It's sitting on the peel now, probably sticking to it. God. I should've just preheated the oven and then afterward prepared the pizza. But I was too eager to use my new rolling pin, you see. Too eager to chop the mushrooms. Man, it'd be great to not screw this up utterly on my first attempt. The Super Bowl is tonight; if we have to order delivery, it could be hours.

Cooking is hard. I just left the computer to sprinkle on the cheese. Six minutes until launch. When Lyla's older and I make gourmet pizzas at her slumber parties, she'll never know the anguish I experienced with the first one. On second thought, she will because I'll tell her all about it, bore her to oblivion.

*Update*

My my. This is going to be tasty. We may never eat out again.