Fuzz

Lyla has been playing with her toes for a couple weeks now. Once the socks come off, the toes are up for grabs.

This evening marked the first time a toe entered her mouth. It was a momentous occasion, complete with sucking.

We still give her baths only once a week because she's still immobile and therefore pretty clean. It is worth noting, though, that this toe suck occurred seconds before the bath, in other words the dirtiest moment of the week.

Probably should've checked her mouth for fuzz.

Spelunking

We own a bucket-load of binkies, but every once in awhile we realize that they're all gone. Then one of us (always, always me) has to go binky spelunking under Lyla's crib. Deep within the dusty nooks hide all the Nuks.

Last night I found six of them down there. I don't know if she flings them absentmindedly, or if she chucks them angrily in the first fussy moments of a nap, or if she hocks them out of her mouth like loogies.

Eventually you can teach a child to pick up her things. I say this with a degree of awe because we have two dogs who are decidedly incapable of such tricks. It's not like I wish I could make my baby daughter crawl under her crib to retrieve her own binkies, but it fascinates me that there will be a day when we can say to her, "You can't find it? Well, it's in your room somewhere."

Ooh, and chores. She'll be able to perform all sorts of chores around the house. Julie and her sisters experienced wood day when they were younger, which in rural Wisconsin is exactly what it sounds like. We'll have equivalent days, surely, such as mop day and Windex day.

For the foreseeable future, though, I'll cheerfully endure binky spelunking day.

Pear

Today I bought some pear juice for Lyla. A friend of mine who is a pediatric nurse (and blogs here) suggested mixing an ounce of pear or prune juice with milk. I haven't done it yet. I'm waiting until tomorrow to let the fireworks fly.

It's not that she's totally plugged up. She's just been grunting a lot, grunting with a definite agenda. (Are you still reading this? Is it because you yourself are constipated and searching for a solution?)

I wanted prune juice because it's more disgusting than pear juice, but I couldn't find prune juice at Target. See, Lyla is like a taste bud blank slate. Why introduce her to the tasty tastes before the nasty tastes, thereby prejudicing her for life? I'm telling you one thing, she's not getting bananas until she's had every vegetable imaginable.

Plus, bananas are constipating. I'm just saying.

Irregular

This is what it looks like to get choked by a five-month-old.

Today was a high-volume laundry day. It was Lyla's fault.

In no particular order, she:

- Spit up all over us
- Peed all over us
- Spit up all over us

This may or may not be related, but I think some combination of the rice cereal and formula might be constipating the young lady. They have different formulas, and they have barley-based cereals instead of rice, so I'm thinking about changing it up in the coming days.


Stay tuned for exciting developments, which I'm realizing is not the cleverest euphemism for bowel regularity.

Buckets

Julie and I are getting serious about swearing less. I mean shit, this kid's going to imitate everything we say.

Habits die hard, though, and quitting anything cold turkey is not pleasant. Julie has finally landed on the perfect word to stand in for all those fu...pesky swear words. The word is buckets, and it's got versatility, impact, and meaninglessness.

Ouch, I just hit myself in the face with a spatula. Buckets!

Oh holy buckets, that person is driving like a buckethead.

("Holy buckets" is not original, obviously. Stop being such a bucket.)





Apparently no one has told Lyla that rice cereal tastes like buckets.

Decoy

When Lyla sees the spoon of rice cereal approaching her mouth, she wants to help but doesn't always know the best way how. If we could convince her to open her mouth and keep her hands at her sides, then less food would end up on her face. But maybe she likes food on her face. Maybe her forehead has taste buds.

One of Julie's coworkers told her an amazing trick. She got this trick from her son's pediatrician, who coincidentally happens to be Lyla's pediatrician. (And the pediatrician is spectacular, so you can imagine our collective disappointment that she's leaving to teach doctors at the hospital.) But the trick is to give the baby a spoon to hold while you use a different spoon for the feeding. The baby's hands are happy, so more food goes in the mouth, less on the face. A decoy spoon: genius.

My brother suggested a spoon camouflaging technique. Sit in a blue room, for instance, paint yourself and the baby blue, and use a blue spoon. Also genius.

Scoop

I wrote before that Lyla favored tilting her head to the left and that we took her to a physical therapist. Well, after a couple appointments and after performing the stretching exercises at home, we solved the problem.

Now she tilts her head to the right.

I wonder if you can guess what the physical therapist is having us do now. If you said, "Do the stretching exercises but on the other side," then congratulations. You are now qualified to be Lyla's physical therapist.

The proportion of a baby's head to its body reminds me of an enormous ice cream scoop on a tiny-ass cone. And if you've ever lost your scoop to the terrible forces of gravity, then you understand how a baby's head might tilt for awhile. Is it necessary to bring a physical therapist into the mix, or is it okay to just wait until the baby's cone grows and catches up to its scoop?

It seems that in this case, we could've done without the professional help. So what will happen the next time we wonder if Lyla is developing normally? Will we wait it out and let nature take its course, or will we neurotically call in the pros?

We'll neurotically call in the pros.

Solid

Last night we gave Lyla her first solid food. It'll be awhile before solids are her main form of nourishment, but the experts say it's best to teach her how to slurp earlier than later.

I read somewhere that there's a specific ratio of breast milk to rice cereal you're supposed to use. It's ridiculous, something like three teaspoons milk for every molecule of cereal, but I guess it makes sense to ease into things. However, when I saw Julie mixing the concoction willy-nilly, she said, "I mean, in the olden days they just mixed their rice with some milk. They didn't have 'teaspoons' or anything." She emphasized the word teaspoons with air quotes.

"They didn't have teaspoons? When exactly were teaspoons invented?"

"Lyla, Daddy's being a toolbox. Help me feed our daughter. Her bib is getting more to eat than her mouth."

Babies' reflexes tell them to push things out of their mouths with their tongues. With Lyla, there was some of that, but we also sensed that she was thinking, "More food! More, damn you, more! Faster!" I think she'll be a good eater.

Figure

When I'm out and see a woman with a baby propped on her hip, I feel a twinge of envy. If a man's shoulder was built for the butt of a rifle, then a woman's hip was built for the butt of a baby.

If I bend sideways at the waist as though I've just hip-checked someone, I can form a barely passable place for Lyla to sit. It's very difficult to walk this way, though, and it looks asinine. The old V-8 commercials come to mind, with all those crooked people who haven't had their V-8 this morning.

Maybe I could modify one of my belts into a hip extender, tie on a small sitting plank, perhaps. With an artificial waist, I could easily hold Lyla on one side, letting her face outward and experience the world, all while leaving my other hand free to do other things, such as bowl. But that would look asinine too.

Oh well. Despite the occasional inconveniences, I am thankful my figure resembles a grandfather clock instead of an hourglass.

Solitary

Three nights ago Lyla decided sleeping through the night was no longer fashionable. This is normal, actually, due to teething discomfort, need for more food, and increased desire for mobility. So the last three nights, Julie has done a 2:30 AM feeding and then tried, with minimal success, to fall back asleep.

Last summer we moved our bedroom upstairs so it could be across from the nursery. The downstairs bedroom is now the guest bedroom, and some of you have slept there. Now the guest bedroom has morphed into the special bedroom, and the rule is that if you become sleep-deprived over multiple nights, you have to spend a night in the special bedroom.

It's like solitary confinement, only relaxing. There are no baby sounds, no middle of the night responsibilities, and no tossing and turning spouse. And you get a story read to you.

Last night Julie was sentenced to one night in the special bedroom. I fed Lyla a bottle at 2:30 AM, and Julie never woke up until her morning alarm. The only trouble was that it took me two hours to fall asleep after the feeding. Now I'm kind of a zombie, but cup of coffee number three has promise.

Ferber

I got into the habit last week of using the Baby Bjorn (a baby front-pack) to lull Lyla to sleep at nap time. It's an effective method but not a great idea because you don't want the girl to only fall asleep that way. Ideally you put her in the crib awake, and she peacefully puts herself to sleep.

This is easier said than done. Believe it or not, Lyla does not welcome the opportunity to sleep when I place her in the crib. Reasoning with her does no good, as she does not believe she is tired and doesn't know the word tired yet anyway. So what do you do? Pick her up? Leave her there to shriek? You're screwed, so you search for alternatives like the Bjorn and dread the day when she's 50 pounds heavier and still can only get to sleep that way.

I haven't studied Ferber extensively, but I know he developed a method to teach babies to put themselves to sleep. From what I understand, he could've titled it "Letting Your Baby Cry Herself To Sleep." That's not quite accurate, of course, but the method does involve leaving the baby in the crib for specific lengths of time before comforting her, and then gradually lengthening those lengths (good grief) until the little cherub learns that crying doesn't get her more than a pat on the head every ten minutes or whatever.

It seems to me that if you try this method, the baby's mother should stay at a hotel. I tried a modified nap time method today. I put Lyla in her crib, kissed her, rubbed her head, sang the sleepy song, and left her. By my third step, she was expressing serious reservations about napping. Downstairs, I set the timer on the microwave for five minutes, approximately my threshold for listening to a baby crying.

She sobbed the entire time. As soon as it beeped, I charged up the stairs, picked her up out of the crib (which you're not supposed to do, apparently), calmed her, and repeated the process. This time, the sobbing started on my first step out of the room. I set the timer downstairs for another five minutes, and ground my teeth.

During the fourth minute, the crying stopped. She's been sleeping soundly for the last 45 minutes. I still feel like an asshole.

Pool

Lyla and I are taking swimming lessons in late June. I know how to swim already, but Lyla's out of practice since her triumphant exit from the womb.

I was thinking about the color wheel today, specifically the way blue and yellow make green. How do infant swimming lessons not result in green water? I can't just say to Lyla, "Time to go bye bye to the OOL. Notice how there's no P in it? Try to keep it that way."

A friend of mine (who blogs here) will be in our class. She claims that there's a product called Little Swimmers, diapers for little swimmers to wear, hence the name. Still, like when we took Daisy to puppy kindergarten and almost got kicked out, I worry that Lyla will treat this pool as her personal dumping ground.

Oh well. It's actually the same pool where I took swimming lessons as a kid. I hated every second of it, so I might feel some vindication if Lyla decides to leave her mark in there. I'll make sure she's well fed.

Eyeball

Baby eyes are not like adult eyes. I'll get water in Lyla's eyes during a bath, and it's like she doesn't yet possess the nerve endings to be bothered by it. Little globules of water just sit there like carbonation in Coke. The other day she had an eyelash matted to her eyeball. She didn't care. She just looked around like nothing was horrifically, uncomfortably wrong.

Thank goodness. You take a creature with no hand-eye coordination, a low tolerance for discomfort, and sharp fingernails, and it's a recipe for blindness. Either that's the way God makes them, or cave people thousands of years ago who scratched themselves blind in infancy were less likely to have active sex lives as adults; thus, eyeball numbness became an evolutionary advantage.

I suppose I could research this and learn the real answer. Meh. When Lyla starts asking every question that occurs to her, I'll have to make stuff up, so this is good practice.

"Daddy, why is the sky blue?"

"Smurf paint, honey."

Fanfare

I've mentioned that I'd like to get a present for Mother's Day. Not that Julie shouldn't as well, but you know, I'm like motherly and whatnot. This was her reply when I last brought it up: "Mother’s Day...let’s talk about Mother’s Day. I kind of feel like this Mother’s Day will set the precedent for years to come. And 20 years of bad ties for Father’s Day – is that what you want? So let’s talk about Mother’s Day."

Was that a threat? I don't mean about the ties. But 20 years? What's she going to do to me in 20 years? I'll be 49 then and she'll be 50. I'll have to keep my guard up and not make too many half-century jokes.

So the other thing I have to think about is what she means by precedent. Does it mean she wants lots of fanfare since this is her first Mother's Day? Or does it mean I should keep it small so that I don't feel pressured to live up to it every year? I think we all know the answer to this question.

And I do have a gift in the works, but for obvious reasons I can't reveal what it is. What's odd is that Julie isn't my mom (well, my mom's name also happens to be Julie, so I guess...oh shut the hell up) so I just have multiple moms to think about now. Multiple Julies.

When Lyla's old enough, I'll pass her the Mother's Day torch. She can buy Julie the new spatula, the $2.00 pearl necklace, the gigantic bottle of perfume, and bring her breakfast in bed made from Play-Doh.

What's important to remember, regardless, is that Mother's Day sets a precedent for Father's Day.

Preparing

When filing our taxes yesterday (yes, yesterday) I appreciated the tax cut Lyla gave us. Even though she was born late-November, the deduction was for the whole year. I suppose we still had baby-related expenses (crib, rocker, changing table) and pregnancy-related expenses (pizza rolls), but it was definitely advantageous from a tax perspective to give birth late in the year.

Not that you should use this line of reasoning when deciding whether to conceive. Talk about terrible foreplay.

This morning I prepared Lyla's bottles ahead of time, something I've never done. Previously, we'd be playing and she'd start whining, I'd look at the clock and realize it was feeding time, and I'd have to piss her off further by fiddling around in the kitchen. To Lyla, I was the breast-deficient other parent. But now I'll pull a bottle out of the fridge, heat it for a couple seconds under the faucet, and be a hero.

Why didn't I think of this earlier? I have no idea, but that dusty part of my brain is probably adjacent to the part that compels me to file taxes on April 15th.

Comfort

I'm pretty sure Lyla is teething. The time is right, she's drooling like a St. Bernard, and everything she finds in her hands ends up in her mouth. Plus, she's crabby. It sort of sucks. Then Julie comes home, and wouldn't you know Lyla's mood improves a bit.

Hey, I'm comforting the kid the best I can. "No pain, no gain! Shake it off! Rub some dirt in it!"

Moms are not inherently more nurturing than dads. However, I wonder how many of us remember getting hurt or sick as a kid and screaming "I want my daddy!" Not many. Why is that?

Breasts! No, hear me out. See, for babies who are breastfed, the breast is the first object that the baby associates with comfort and safety. Dads can't compete, not that it's a competition. As time fast-forwards, I suspect it becomes a pattern, with the child then associating the mother with comfort. It's not that the child doesn't think of the dad too, but in the direst moments, they think of Mom first.

Wimps.

Reality

Lyla is having one of those days where she's only happy if she's eating or if I'm holding her. Julie has those days too.

I decided to take Lyla and our two Bobama-lookalike dogs on a walk in hopes of being discovered by a reality show casting agent. But all I saw were 50 or so lawns in better shape than ours.

The walk did put Lyla to sleep, a sleep that I hope will stretch for an hour or so, or at least through the end of this post.

I had grand plans to clean today, but I don't see it happening. It's amazing how we can sit around during the evening and I'll say things like, "Oh yeah, I'll just put the goo in the Exersaucer tomorrow and clean like mad," and completely believe myself. As I type this, what truly makes sense deep in my heart is that the cleaning should occur tonight, perhaps during American Idol's commercials.

Oops, I hear her. Reality calls.

Proud

Okay, check it out. Squint your eyes and scroll down fast. It'll be like a baby roll flip book. A flip book of a flip, if you will.











TA-DA!

Easter

Happy Easter. We had brunch at my uncle's house, and Lyla regaled everyone by rolling unassisted from her stomach to her back. Then we put her in a giant clam shell, which she wasn't crazy about.

Formula

Today Lyla tasted her first baby formula. I think Julie expected the experience to result in Lyla's first words: "Mama, what is this shit?" She would at least have the courtesy to wretch it all up.

But two ounces formula mixed with two ounces breast milk had a completely anticlimactic effect on Lyla. She grunted, burped, and fell asleep.

Julie's not judgmental about what any other mother decides to do, but she judges herself freely and enthusiastically. I know she sees using formula before six months as a kind of motherhood failure, which is, as you know, astronomically ridiculous. She knows it too, deep down, but that doesn't change the fact that formula contradicts her instincts.

Lyla's almost ready for solids anyway. When we eat, she watches us as much as the dogs do. She says things like "Mmmm bwah!" which means "My steak!"

Julie will continue to breastfeed Lyla while at home and pump while at work, but we'll supplement her milk with 4-6 ounces of formula per day. I'll let you know if Lyla suddenly starts to care.

Fishies

I took Lyla to the zoo today and met my mom there. Here she is looking at the only thing she really looks at when we go to the zoo: the fish.


They move slow, they're colorful, and the water reminds her of the womb. Maybe. Anyway, being Good Friday and all, the zoo was a zoo. I had to assertively squish my way between two kids so Lyla could get a spot at the tank, all the while hoping no one stole my stroller, which I had ditched on the back wall.

When Lyla gets older, I picture taking her to the zoo and trying to teach her the animal names.

"This is a Malayan Tapir, Lyla. Can you say Tapir?"

"Puppy!"

But for some reason, I have a premonition that Lyla won't ask us to take her to the zoo. She'll ask us to take her to the fishies.

Missed

Julie and I decided fairly last minute that I would go without her to my cousin's funeral in Duluth. It's not the appropriate venue for introducing everyone to your new baby, you know? Tough decision, but I think it was the right one.

Anyway, I got home today, and here is what I missed:






It's important to take pictures.