Abbie & Ian & Tory Update

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

The Big Oh-One

Too many hours of planning and obscene amounts of money culminated in a first-rate first birthday for Abbie on Monday afternoon. We, and by “we” I mean “mostly my very helpful father-in-law,” grilled hot dogs and burgers in our communal park on a beautiful Memorial Day. We actually managed to serve an appropriate amount of food, as we had a manageable number of leftovers. Especially popular was my Oreo Fluff ™.

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Here we see my dad filling Abbie with nutritious formula before we filled her with not so nutritious hot dogs and birthday cake.

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Here you see Abbie with her new rubber duck. We gave all of the kids rubber ducks as per the party’s theme, and Abbie got her own personalized duck. Abbie is showing her appreciation in her own special way.

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Here are a couple of the character balloons we bought. Ellie found a whole bunch of these balloons on the internet, so we can unfurl a brand new Sesame Street balloon for every one of Abbie’s birthdays until she scolds us for treating her like a little kid.

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Here you see the authentic Mexican piñata we, and by “we” I mean my late mother-in-law on a trip to Mexico, found for Abbie’s birthday. As luck would have it, our neighbors have experience in piñata operation and knew how to pull ropes to make it dance while singing the piñata song. Abbie gave it her best whack. She did not break it.

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Here’s the piñata in its last moments of life. Only one child was hurt in the ensuing scramble.

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Here’s the last we saw of one of our beautiful balloons. Apparently cheap ribbon cannot hold a helium-filled balloon. The idea was to deflate the balloons after the party so we could reuse them for future parties, but I guess it’s a good thing I took a picture when I did.

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Here’s Abbie being very frightened by the singing of Happy Birthday.

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Here’s the beautiful cake my wife made pretty much by herself. I would have helped more if she would have asked.

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Here’s another picture that will likely turn up again at some potentially embarrassing point in Abbie’s life.

All in all, I have to say it was a pretty darned good party. The memories will last a lot longer than the frosting sugar buzz did, and even longer than the sunburn will last.

Monday, May 30, 2005

Giving Abbie a Traditional Zooish Upbringing

We arrived at the zoo shortly after 1 on Saturday. We probably should have arrived much earlier since I would estimate the crowd visiting the zoo that day to be approximately 5% of the total population of the Omaha metro area, assuming that the metropolitan area includes cities like Council Bluffs, Lincoln, Des Moines, Denver, and maybe some of the western suburbs of Chicago. The zoo boasts an annual attendance in the millions, and I assume that all but maybe 100,000 of those visitors chose Saturday as the day to visit, and most of those people tried to enter at they same gate we tried to enter.

It took about 20 minutes to work our way through into the zoo, partially thanks to an agonizingly slow credit card machine*. We decided to make our first stop a lunch stop. I hoped that we would be in off-peak concession hours, but it turns out that peak concession hours basically coincide with the zoo’s hours of operations. We went to the main café first, looked at the line, and, after ensuring that we hadn’t laughed hard enough to wet ourselves, decided to try a small food stand. We found a suitable stand, but after waiting for literally 20 minutes without moving, realized that, gosh, we’re not really that hungry after all, and left to wait in line for an actual attraction. An hour after driving into the zoo’s parking lot, we finally saw our first live non-Midwestern animals in the rainforest exhibit.

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Here you see Abbie and Ellie looking at a waterfall. Something about these waterfalls frightened Abbie, and I think it was the “fall” part. Hearing the loud noise and seeing that we’re about 30 feet above the jungle floor sent her crying I believe.

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Here are the giraffes that the zoo used to successfully scam several families. A sign next to the cage said, “help us train our giraffes.” For only $1, you could buy a short branch with about half-a-dozen leaves. I guess the idea was to help the zoo train the giraffes to eat from human hands. As you can see from the picture, the giraffes were not sufficiently motivated to move near enough to eat from our hands in spite of the several nearby children jumping up and down and screaming wildly in an attempt to draw the giraffes’ attention. Just outside their cage was a gift stand where you could buy all sorts of giraffe paraphernalia as a souvenir, as if a dead branch wouldn’t always remind you of the time an entire giraffe herd ignored you.

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Here is Abbie and Ellie looking at the penguins. The penguin tank is mommy’s favorite exhibit, and I think Abbie liked it too.

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Here is Abbie and Ellie looking at the spot where the garden eels used to be. The garden eels used to be daddy’s favorite aquatic life, but I guess daddy needs a new favorite.

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Here’s the shark tunnel. Abbie enjoyed this, especially the part where she could bang on the glass and taunt the sharks. There seemed to be more sharks than I remember. Maybe they got into the garden eels exhibit.

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Here’s the jellyfish tube. Abbie liked the cool lighting and the fact that they’re more active than the big cats.

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Here’s Abbie levitating above the new gorilla valley. Actually she’s standing in a bubble window overlooking the valley. The new valley was very impressive. The Omaha zoo put a lot of effort into expanding their primate exhibit, possibly spurred on by Des Moines’s new primate center, where their apes have jammed with Peter Gabriel.

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I’m pretty sure this picture will turn up again at some potentially embarrassing point in Abbie’s life.

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Here’s Abbie watching the mongooses**. They were very active, and Abbie loved watching them frolic in potential snake training for snake assassination.

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The petting zoo was Abbie’s favorite exhibit. This makes sense considering Abbie loves petting our animals, plus the zoo’s animals didn’t run away in terror. Ellie loved taking Abbie around to all the animals. I loved watching her (Abbie) pet the goats, until one of the goats darn near stole our precious Tasteeos. Lousy goats. Bonus observation: A sign near the entrance said, “Do not pick up the baby goats.” Presumably the adult goats, like the one who tried to filch our Tasteeos, were fair game.

After the petting zoo, we took our very sleepy baby and went home, ending our zoo excursion. Tomorrow, I’ll give a similar treatment for Abbie’s first birthday today.

* Regarding the problem, I’m sure someone in zoo management said, “What are they going to do about it? Not go to the zoo?”

** Other potential plural forms of “mongoose” include “mongeese,” “mongoose,” and “mongi.”

Sunday, May 29, 2005

The Half-Hearted Zoo Post

Abbie’s birthday is tomorrow, and I need to devote all of my time and energy to making her first birthday party an event she’ll remember forever, assuming of course that she’s forming long-term memories already, which she most certainly isn’t. So I guess it’s pressure from the wife that’s making me devote all of my time and energy into the party. Either way, I need to cut some corners in other areas of my life to ensure Abbie has a first-rate first birthday while I keep my sanity. Blogging is pretty firmly on one of those cut corners, so no zoo post today, either. Someday, possibly soon, I’ll regale my loyal readers (aka Adam) with the thrilling story of Abbie’s first trip to the zoo, but not today. Here are a couple of quick zoo pictures in the meantime.

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Here’s Abbie finishing up her animal crackers. Animal crackers are the perfect zoo snack, like eating circus peanuts at the circus, or apple cider when touring a cider mill, or tryptophan at a NASCAR event. Think Abbie has made a mess of her stroller? Don’t worry, the friendly neighborhood goats will clean it up.

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Ha ha. Those goats are so friendly, in fact, that this picture was taken just seconds before one of the goats found Abbie’s Cheerios in her diaper bag. Ha ha. I had to fight that goat to keep her Cheerios. Ha ha. Now I know why they had a sign near the entrance telling you to treat the animals with respect. When they show me respect, I’ll show them respect.

Saturday, May 28, 2005

"I'll just busy myself in this cabinet."

Not much time to blog tonight. We still have a lot to do to prepare for Abbie’s birthday party in two days, and we accomplished very few preparations today because we spent most of it on a visit to the Omaha zoo. We had fun, but I want to devote a proper posting to our day when I have more time, hopefully tomorrow because I always have more time tomorrow. To whet your appetite, here’s a picture of the most common thing we saw today:

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Lines! Lines everywhere! This line is at the concession stand where we wanted to have lunch but gave up after waiting for about 20 minutes. It turns out half of a bag of animal crackers makes an adequate lunch when you’re sick of waiting.

Here’s a quick non-zoo Abbie story. Abbie loves playing with the kitchen cupboards. The game she usually plays is Throw Everything Within Reach on the Floor. This is a complicated game that involves grabbing objects AND throwing them onto the floor, resulting in a pile of resealable plastic food containers and lids suitable for chasing across the kitchen floor, or possibly tripping daddy. Tonight she got stayed with the step of opening the cabinet door. For some reason, she deemed watching herself open and close the cabinet door to be high entertainment. She would open the door, and turn her head to look at the door, and then close the door, and turn her head to look at the door again. She would then repeat the process, moving the door faster and faster. Her head turning kept the pace at first, but soon she just started moving both hand and head as fast as they could go. So the door went back and forth at one speed, while the head flipped back and forth at a much faster speed. Soon she realized that the two were not moving in synch, and returned to moving both at a slow but increasing speed. This cycle repeated a few times until Abbie, possibly being incredibly dizzy, gave up. Ellie just called her our Exorcist baby.

Friday, May 27, 2005

"Dad, you're babbling."

Abbie is now babbling. This important milestone has developed over the past week. Before, her entire means of vocal communication was “ahh,” which she usually said while screaming. Now, she has a whole list of words to express herself, words like “ahzibah,” “guhbahzi,” “aygumayguh,” and, most puzzlingly, “stopplayingthatwretchedsesamestreetmusic.”

She doesn’t babble all the time, or even often, yet. A favorite babbling time is mealtime. Between bites of chicken and squash, sometimes she’ll cut loose with a string of babbling, running as many as ten or more nonsensical syllables together into some imaginary word, like pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis.* She may be trying to communicate in her infantile way that she’s pleased by the meal, or maybe she’s still sleepy from her nap, or maybe she’s humiliated by my insistence on her wearing a bib and strapping her into a chair. I’m not sure Abbie quite grasps the relationship between words and whatever object, action, or concept they represent, so her babbling may just be the end result of her body’s desire to interact with the world in the only way it knows how. Ellie behaves in much the same way by watching VH1* to unwind after work; it doesn’t make much sense, but you got to do something.

I generally encourage her (Abbie, not Ellie) babbling by babbling right back at her. She’ll babble, and then I’ll try to repeat it. Then she may babble more, and I’ll continue to repeat. Then she stops, possibly because I’ve said something insulting in baby-ese. But what could insult a baby? You don’t know naptime from bedtime? Your daddy doesn’t know how to dress you? Ahzhigumaybabah?

* Fun fact: This word is in Microsoft Word’s spell-check
** Fun fact: This word is also in Microsoft Word’s spell-check

Stomach Update

In case you're curious, my stomach was feeling so good tonight, that I went ahead and ate a regular dinner. And now I kinda wish I hadn't...

Thursday, May 26, 2005

"Stomach... churning!"

I’m still sick. I feel a lot better than I did yesterday, but that isn’t saying much considering I spent most of yesterday flat on the floor complaining about my gut. Today I can at least sit up while complaining about my gut. I swear I could feel every individual food molecule as it bounced around my stomach at blazing speeds, like my belly was a little skate park for food molecules, and I was the crotchety old man complaining about how those food molecule hooligans were going to ruin the place.

I’m not sure what I’ve got. It could be a bug, but those generally affect more than just the stomach. Bugs usually make your whole body miserable, much like a student loan collection officer. It could be food poisoning, but nothing I ate seemed any moldier than usual. If it is food poisoning, I really hope the source isn’t the cupcakes I made for the neighbors. Botulism seems like a poor reward for watching our cranky kid. Anyway, that frosting may have been in the refrigerator for a while, but it wasn’t that old.

Being too sick to move makes supervising Abbie more interesting than usual. Like I said, I spent most of my day flat on my back, which limited my field of vision to directly above me. Without being able to see Abbie, I relied on sound to make sure she stayed away from any object that could cause injury worse than a first-degree rug burn. As long as I could hear her doing things like pressing buttons on electronic toys or tearing pages in books, I knew she was safe. If I was really smart, I would put her in her room and lie down in the doorway, ensuring that there was absolutely no chance she could leave the safety of her room without my knowledge unless I fell asleep which I only did once but that was just for a minute and I knew exactly where she was and what she was doing the whole time. Otherwise I would lay in the living room, which is also pretty baby-proof as long as I hear her constant movements. Failure to do so may result in this situation:

“Abbie? Abbie, where are you? You’d better not be in the dog food. (rustling noise) No, Abbie, babies don’t eat dog food. (pause, then more rustling) Abbie, get your hand out of there! (rustling, then quiet) There, that’s a good baby. (continued quiet) Wait, you didn’t put some in your mouth, did you? (I finally lift my head to see her mouth unusually bloated) Abigail! (I scramble to my feet, and then fall to my knees as the blood rush and the stomach cramping makes me light-headed) Abigail Leigh, if I don’t pass out, you’re in big trouble.”

Another disadvantage to my flat position is it leaves me exposed to the other living entities in the house. Abbie is in a phase where she likes to hit things. She doesn’t hit things to be malicious; she just likes to hit things to hear the sound they make. I don’t mind if she hits my arms and legs, but my over-sensitive tummy is completely vulnerable to her poundings. Also, lying on the floor leaves me at risk of being viscously licked by my dog. Lousy dog.

See, I told you I could sit up while complaining.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Sick and Tired

I’m sick with some sort of stomach bug. Fortunately Abbie doesn’t seem sick. Ellie also has whatever I’ve got, luckily not as bad though, so we can take turns resting in bed while the other one lays on the floor in Abbie’s general vicinity “watching” her. Writing take too much effort, so abbreviated posting today. Abbie didn’t do anything cute today anyway. At least, I didn’t see her do anything cute.

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

"Who wants a bathtub mint julep?"

Abbie’s new favorite play-area is the bathtub. I believe she discovered the joys of wandering over to the bathtub while chasing a cat (the fat one). It seems Charlie, the cat whom we lovingly refer to as “the fat one,” wants desperately to escape from Abbie’s fur-yanking hands when she starts chasing him. The bathtub serves as an excellent place to wait out of her reach until she loses interest and returns to looking for dog food. Plus, by hopping into the nearby bathtub instead of tearing all over the house, he can conserve the energy he needs to maintain his 18-pounds of cat-ness. You might think a cat, with it’s stereotypical hatred of water, would avoid a bathtub like George Lucas avoids compelling dialog. Charlie, though, enjoys a moderately damp bathtub, so much so that he will immediately follow a good moistening with lounging on heavily used furniture, such as the bed, so that we all may share in his localized humidity.

So Abbie followed Charlie to the bathtub a few times. While he sat and soaked, Abbie pounded on the outside of the tub, and discovered that it made a wonderful hollow sound, kind of like the sound produced by hitting her toy box with a TV remote battery, but even more metallic. Soon I found her next to the bathtub pounding away despite not having a cat cornered. Then, possibly be watching our rotund kitty move lithely about the room, she realized that round objects travel well on the bathroom’s hard floor. Soon she was tossing all sorts of round objects around the bathroom and watching them skitter about. Her fun ends when she accidentally tosses things into the bathtub, and has to wait until I retrieve them. So far in the bathtub, I’ve found Tupperware,* Weebles, Peek-a-Rounds, and Rockin’ Roundish Rhomboids. I have to get these items out of the bathtub because Abbie doesn’t climb yet and could never ever get into the bathtub by herself unless her mother does something to jinx the situation like say she can’t get into the tub by herself. Fortunately her mother has only jinxed the situation once. Once Abbie does start climbing into the bathtub, though, things could get dangerous. Not dangerous for Abbie, mind you, but dangerous for Charlie as the bathtub walls will no longer stop the fur-yanker.

* I’m serious about finding Tupperware in the bathtub. Where does a baby get Tupperware in the first place? The kitchen.

Monday, May 23, 2005

Picture Posting

Here are some photos from this weekend's birthday party, which ended up being little more than an excuse to get a present from her grandmother and some cake. Take note of her deceptively gentle appearance with a kitten. Also notice that she may be the world's only one-year-old to prefer using a fork to eat her cake instead of digging in with her hands.

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Horrifying Adventures in Babysitting

We went to see the new Star Wars movie today.* By “we” I of course mean “the people in our household over the age of one.” If you recall my earlier rant, there was no way I would take an impressionable child to such a violent spectacle that was in no way related to a sporting event. Plus I didn’t want to subject a number (29) of other patrons who attended that weekday matinee to my screaming child. Instead I subjected my neighbors to my screaming child for the whole time.

We’re not real big users of babysitters. Mostly that’s because I love my child and can think of nothing in this world that I would rather do than exclusively interact with her for hour after hour, day after day, without end, until I get so sick of yelling “no Abbie, babies do not eat dog food” for the eight-thousandth time that I just want to roll up into a whimpering ball and shut out all outside stimuli until Abbie leaves for college. Also, babysitters usually expect to be paid, and, well, I’m cheap. This was a special occasion, though. This was Star Wars: Episode Three, the absolute final time to see a brand new feature-length Star Wars film unless George Lucas needs more money really bad, and more money than yet another repackaging of the original movies will generate. We decided to indulge in our last chance to see some sweet lightsaber action on the big screen, and the neighbors were nice enough to take Abbie for a few hours. Our neighbors are have several children, and are very nice people, so nice that they would never accept payment for a chore as potentially scarring as babysitting. So I whipped up some cupcakes as payment, because while some people will turn down money, nobody turns down cupcakes.

Watching Abbie this afternoon should have been a simple chore. They take her, read to her for a few minutes, let her roam freely about the house with the other children for a little while, lay her down for a nap, feed her some formula when she wakes up, then we return to a happy and refreshed baby with cupcakes in hand. Abbie, not being a fan of making anything simple, greatly complicated things by screaming pretty much the entire time. She started when we left, continued through the time she that should have spent napping, and ended when we returned. Actually, the screaming ended three hours later at bedtime because nothing makes a baby crankier than missing her nap. This behavior was very agitating since we’ve surrendered Abbie to babysitting before without incident. The behavior does tie into the personality she’s developing, specifically the “I know what I want, and if I don’t get my way I’m going to scream until I get it” trait. I’m anxiously awaiting the day when her response to not getting her way softens from screaming to sulking. I was so mortified by her behavior at the neighbor’s that I made sure to throw some M&M’s on those cupcakes.

* Quick review: The dialog generally ranged from bad to downright laughable. The fighting and exploding stuff was cool, though.

Friday, May 20, 2005

On the Road One More Time

We had a very busy night. The Abbie Update principles spent most of the night at a cookout. This was a very challenging activity since whenever Abbie see someone eating, she thinks she should be eating. Cookouts generally have a poor selection of food for babies (or anyone for that matter) to graze on all night, unless of course I want her to forage on potato chips all night.* Fortunately they also offered raw vegetables, and since Abbie usually doesn’t care what she eats as long as it’s something, she spent the night gnawing on carrots and celery. You wouldn’t ordinarily think of a piece of celery as a particularly messy food, yet somehow Abbie found a way to drip celery innards all over herself.

When we returned home, we spent the night packing for our weekend trip to see the grandparents. I’m always amazed at how the amount of stuff we must pack for a trip is inversely proportional to the size of the person traveling. As a full-grown guy, the only things I really need to pack for a successful overnight trip are my wallet and car keys. I can forage for anything else I might need, living off the land much like the noble Native Americans of years past. This leaves pretty much the entire car uncluttered, which is good because Abbie, in all her 23-pound glory, can fill an entire car with her stuff. For just an overnight trip, we need to pack diapers, wipes, changing pad, formula, solid baby foods, sippy cups, baby spoons, booster seat, regular clothes, dressy clothes, pajamas, entertainment things for the car, entertainment things for the destination, playpen, and, if we have room, Abbie.

If you’ve read this far, you’re a fine human being, or possibly you’re Adam. Either way, thanks for reading, and take note that we will be out of town all weekend. That means no new posts until probably Monday night.

* I don’t.

Thursday, May 19, 2005

"Hey, you! Where did you get that saxophone?" "...Sears." "Get him!"

The staff at Abbie Update chose tonight as the night to take Abbie’s one-year-old pictures. That means we made a trip tonight to the portrait studio in Sears, where, thanks to their recent merger, they combine a mall’s prices with K-Mart’s panache. Since Abbie’s birth, we’ve gone to Sears every three months for her formal pictures. We purchased their Smile Saver plan, which means we pay no sitting fee for our photo sessions. How does Sears make any money with this incredible deal? They sell add-ons! They can make a picture black and white! They can give it a sepia hue, or a blue hue, or a pink hue! They can give it a border! They can do all sorts of junk that I can do at home with Photoshop! And they only charge a few extra dollars to do it! Per photo! Plus tax!

Our local Sears upgraded to an all-digital photography system, an improvement over the magic elf based system they used on our last visit. The main advantage of the new system is it offers a whole bunch of new borders and mattes that we can dump on top of our beautiful pictures, for an extra charge of course. Another advantage of their new system is it prints high-quality proof sheets, which are basically collages of six different photos that Sears can print for us to take home that day. The last time we bought the proof sheet, they used very old magic elves with poor eyesight and blunt coloring instruments to create it, making the final product more of an artistic interpretation of the various poses than a realistic reproduction. The proof sheet we bought tonight, though, looked clear enough to give our friends and family a good idea of what the final product will look like without having to squint. Yet another advantage of their new digital system is that, since everything is digital and can quickly and easily be transferred electronically, we no longer have to wait three weeks to see our final pictures. Ha! Just kidding! That’s only an advantage that you would think an all-digital system would have. We still have to wait three weeks to see our final pictures. That way they can easily convince us to add to our order while we anxiously wait. If we’re really desperate, though, they can now print the sheets in the store for us to take home that day. And they only charge a few extra dollars to do it! Per sheet! Plus tax!

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

"Come to Abbie's BBBQ. The extra B is for BYOBB."

Today marked the culmination, the conclusion, the climax, if you will, of the invitation phase for Abbie’s birthday party. We spent the afternoon walking (I walked, she rode) from door-to-door in our complex handing out invitations to our neighbors and Ellie’s co-workers. I rang lots of doorbells and handed out lots of invitations, kind of like door-to-door evangelicals, except that instead of offering a guarantee for eternal salvation*, we were offering cake and ice cream in about a week and a half. Believe it or not, the process of creating the invitations was so involved that I would like to share the process here, and in excruciating detail if necessary.

First we needed paper. We had already decided that we are too cheap to buy the glossy, archival-quality, gold-plated, pre-made invitations you find in stores, but we thought that printing invitations of plain white paper would look wrong and send the wrong message, namely “we’re cheap.” I found a nifty middle ground by buying that plain paper with the fancy pre-printed border. It sends an acceptable message of “we’re not cheap, we’re just the eccentric type who enjoys doing things ourselves.” At first I thought I would buy the kit that comes with envelopes and is actually intended to be used as invitations, but it turns out that those kits use paper that comes from the treacherous paper mines of Coatzacoalcos, and is therefore prohibitively expensive. Then I would thought I would stick to the party’s theme and buy paper with a Sesame Street border, but I couldn’t find any, so evidently plain paper with a pre-printed border is the one product Sesame Street has yet to license characters onto. I ended up buying paper with balloons and ribbons on the border, paper that sends the message “these would be choking hazards if our child were any younger.”

With paper in hand, the next step was to find ridiculously high-quality Sesame Street based picture on the Internet that would look fairly good printed on paper. After filtering out all of the porn sites, I found one.**

Now I could begin writing the invitation. I started with:

“We invite your family to join our family as we celebrate Abbie’s 1st birthday.”

The wife and I immediately ran into disagreement, as I wanted to say, “… celebrate the 1st birthday of Abbie” so I could end the sentence with Abbie’s name in a big fancy font. Ellie thought that sounded too formal (as if the balloon border wouldn’t negate that). Ellie won, though, so “Abbie” is big and fancy while “1st birthday” is small and homely, awkwardly dangling by itself at the end of the sentence. The next part reads:

“Monday, May 30th @ 12:30 in the park (in case of rain, we’ll move to the neighbor’s basement.”

Thanks, neighbors! Also, the joy of our complex is I can say “the park,” and everyone knows what I mean.

“Lunch and dessert will be served”

That sounds clunky, but I didn’t know how else to word it without including the whole menu. It’s not just “cake,” it’s “cake and ice cream,” and saying “lunch and cake and ice cream” is just silly.

“RSVP by Friday, May 27th.”

Ha ha! As if anyone actually RSVPs anymore.

“No gifts, please.”

This was tough to word. We didn’t want people to think they had to bring a gift because that just starts the vicious cycle of exchanging five-dollar birthday trinkets that the kid probably won’t want anyway, and since most surrounding families have more than one child, we’d lose that game. Likewise, if people genuinely want to bring a gift, who are we to discourage them? We went through several permutations. “No gifts are expected” was too jumbled. “No gift required” was too presumptuous. “No gifts, please” discouraged people who genuinely wanted to bring a gift, but screw it, I’m tired.

“BYOB.”

I swear that the invitations for Abbie’s first birthday party contained that acronym. It sends the message “I know you doctors like your alcohol, but we’re too cheap to buy it for you.”

* Offer is not actually a guarantee
** You can view it at http://www.rockpaperscissors.biz/rps-media/Elmo.jpg, but be warned, it’s ridiculously high quality.

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

I Will Not Celebrate Meaningless Milestones

Abbie hit two important milestones today. First words? Not yet. Walks more than crawls? Not quite. Potty trained? We wish. Her milestones are actually just two more tiny steps in her 18+-year quest to become a self-sufficient, fully functioning adult, an adult who definitely will not choose to live with her parents.

The first milestone really has nothing to do with any conscious action she may have performed. Today is the day we decided to move her up a size in clothes, from size 9-12 months into size 12-18 months. We moved her up a size two weeks earlier than the clothes said we should have to do. The time felt right since her pants fit more like capris, and her bottle-belly had started hanging out the bottom of her shirts when she stretched. Today’s milestone meant it was time to switch the clothes in her dresser, giving me the opportunity to evaluate our (my) clothes rummaging. We did pretty well, especially with short-sleeve shirts and dresses. We’re a little low on shorts, as well as colder weather things like toddler pants, toddler shirts, and toddler turbans,* but this just gives me an excuse to keep taking advantage of people trying to clear out their basements. We’re dangerously low on pajamas, but I think that’s because some time ago clothes manufacturers for some reason, possibly out of spite, stopped creating sleepers for children older than 12 months. At least it seems like they stopped creating them because I have a hard time finding new sleepers in stores. Therefore I tend to snap up any used sleepers I find regardless of size. I sure hope she likes that Backstreet Boys sleeper I found for her to wear in nine years.

Her other milestone, the one that actually involves conscious effort on her part, is giving up the bottle in favor of sippy cups. I had toyed with this idea for a few weeks seeing as all babies are supposed to be off the bottle by 12 months, but never took the plunge until today. While preparing her lunch today, I thought “hey, I’m already inflicting one trauma on her today by switching her entire wardrobe, what difference could another trauma make?” So I prepared her lunchtime formula in a sippy cup, and haven’t fallen back to the bottle since. Abbie transitioned well, at least so far, possibly because she cares more about the food than about the method of delivery, kind of like caged lions that are willing to eat their dinner despite the fact that it just showed up pre-killed. It all tastes the same, so who cares? The main problem right now is Abbie still hasn’t mastered the fine art of drinking while sitting upright, or really in any position besides lying flat on her back. The result is I spend a lot of time picking up her cup after she mistakenly threw it thinking it was empty. To be fair to her, I imagine I would have a tough time drinking from a cup with one hole almost in the center of the lid. Our next step is to work hard on reaching the milestone of picking up after herself.

* She has to keep her head warm somehow

Monday, May 16, 2005

Point That Thing at Me

My faithful readers, also known as “Adam,” will recall my quest to teach Abbie to point at things. This was because an important looking development wheel said she should be able to point to things by 12 months old. The implication here is that if she fails, she’ll fall behind the cognitive development of her peers before even entering preschool with no hope of ever catching up, meaning that in the future she’ll only be able to enroll in inferior schools, like UNO, and will end up living with her parents until age 39. Since I already decided she would be out of the house permanently by age 18, I’ve been working hard to teach her to point.

My efforts are paying off as she now points at things, sort of. When I say “at things,” I mean “in the general direction of things.” Also, when I say “points,” I don’t mean “points with her index finger,” I mean “extends her arm a little and opens her hand with the palm facing up and all five fingers somewhat extended like she’s holding a ball.” So I guess I should say Abbie now extends her arm a little and opens her hand with the palm facing up and all five fingers somewhat extended like she’s holding a ball in the general direction of things. The important part is she’s learning, though I suspect she may be holding back on me. She may just be trying to con me into believing that she understands less than she really does. That way I don’t discipline her when she misbehaves, making it easier to accomplish the no-nos she desires, like munching on that sweet, crunchy dog food.

She doesn’t seem to quite understand why we point, either. She just points randomly so far. For example, when I read a counting book to her, I point at each object as I count it. The result is (point) “one,” (point) “two,” (point) “three. Three malignant melanomas!” From this highly repetitive action, Abbie has determined that she should point at things while reading; she’s just not sure what. The result is when she reads by herself, she will point to a page about two to six times, then turn to another page and repeat. That sight is so cute it makes me want to barf.

For another example, when I read to her, I sit silent and let her flip back and forth through the pages at her own pace after I finish reading the book. She will take this opportunity to point at things some more, but sometimes she doesn’t seem to quite know what to point at, so she will grab my arm and make me point at things. That sight is so cute I have to choke back my own bile. It also encourages me because it means she knows about asking for help, and asking for help is one of the many important life skills she will have to learn if she’s to escape a future at UNO.

Sunday, May 15, 2005

"A round of applause for... this inanimate carbon rod!"

Abbie’s latest trick is clapping. This is one of those learned behaviors that I’ve been working hard to teach her since birth by vigorously applauding various accomplishments, like pointing, walking, or opening her mouth to eat. I have a low standard for dishing out applause.

I haven’t noticed anything in particular that triggers her clapping. While I applaud whenever she does something I like, right now I think she applauds just for her own entertainment. She generally claps while just sitting around with nothing better to do. With hundreds of dollars worth of equipment in the house scientifically designed to amuse babies, she chooses to ignore all of it and use only her hands for fun. Sometimes, possibly to make me feel better, she does amuse herself by banging two objects together, though these objects tend to be things she pulls out of our cabinets.

And with that, I believe I will bring today’s post to a close. I’ve had a rough day that involves taking care of the baby AND doing work around the house, so I’m going to treat myself to a full nights sleep for a change. I’m applauding myself for tonight’s effort.

Random, Non-Abbie Observation

Here's a more or less exact quote from the TV show "Lost" this week: "No self-respecting man in Iowa goes anywhere without beer."

Actually, that's more Wisconsin than Iowa. Here in Iowa, there are way too many cheap guys (like myself) who would never shell out the money to keep a never-ending supply of beer with them at all times. Between this line and the fact that CTU on "24" couldn't track a nuclear warhead through the "mountainous terrain" of eastern Iowa, I'm beginning to think that Hollywood doesn't have a very good grasp on what Iowa is like.

Saturday, May 14, 2005

"Every day will be like a road trip... with your dad!"

Abbie and I took a road trip today. An infant road trip differs from the college road trip in that instead of spreading beer-fueled mayhem, we spread formula-fueled joy and general grumpiness. The huge volume of cargo is similar, except we carried various baby paraphernalia (diapers, books, millions of Tasteeos) instead of various college paraphernalia (i.e., beer). We drove to Omaha to meet my mother for her birthday.

Traveling with Abbie by car can be quite challenging. For short trips up to about 30 minutes, she just needs to be kept content, which I can easily accomplish by putting a toy in her lap before leaving, playing her Sesame Street CD, or putting down the windows. The main challenge on short trips is keeping her awake. If she falls asleep, even for five minutes, she may not take her next regular nap, meaning she’ll be tired, cranky, and wide-awake for hours, while I’ll miss valuable internet time that I should’ve benefited from during her nap.

Car rides longer than 30 minutes start getting tricky. No one activity will keep her entertained for that long, so I have to keep reaching into her diaper bag and stretch from the driver’s seat to the back seat to hand her new toys. This is only a stopgap measure, though, since each new toy lasts only about half as long as the previous one, so she’ll stay content for 20 minutes, then 10, then 5, and so on until the only entertainment she derives from a toy is to see how quickly she can banish it from her sight. At this point I can start handing her Tasteeos one at a time as long as I don’t mind cranking my arm backwards into the back seat and holding it there until she grasps her ring of dried oats.

Once the trip hits at least an hour, then she can nap provided I timed the trip correctly. Timing a car ride so she can nap is a multifaceted process that involves planning the arrival so it coincides with the end of her nap, at which point she expects a meal, and you will suffer if she doesn’t get it promptly. Timing trips to coincide with naps means that there are currently two and only two small windows to leave every day. Car naps are a wonderful time when I can stop the Sesame Street CD’s endless repeat and divert my attention from entertaining Abbie to more relaxing and less important activities, like driving. The only danger is if she wakes up early and expects her meal. This usually doesn’t happen as long as I avoid loud noises along with starts and stops, meaning I will sometimes drive a little longer than necessary on the interstate just to keep her asleep. A little extraneous gas is a small price to pay for a fully rested baby.

Today’s trip to Omaha* took slightly more than two hours, which is about the upper limit of her car tolerance. The ride combined entertaining and napping, a complex combination that required the full application of my college degree to implement. Fortunately I learned much about road trips in college.

* Our final destination was Village Pointe, a new upscale outdoor mall that’s pretentious enough to warrant its superfluous “e.” While I’m sure an outdoor mall is very pleasant during the two non-contiguous months of nice weather Omaha enjoys every year, I did not enjoy it with today’s cold and wind.

Friday, May 13, 2005

I'll be imagining that General Grievous is actually George Lucas

I just finished the novelization of the new Star Wars movie, Revenge of the Sith. It was an entertaining read full of excitement and surprises. Who could have guessed that the final epic battle between good and evil would come down to Cliegg Lars and Watto? If you’re looking forward to discovering the identity of Anakin’s father like I was, though, you may want to lower your expectations. Now that I’ve read the book, I have a serious beef with George Lucas; a beef that has nothing to do with Gungans; a beef that, believe it or not, actually relates a little bit to Abbie.

Lucas has described his new film as darker than its predecessors. It snagged a PG-13 rating, so it has the rating to back up the talk. If the novelization accurately describes the violent visuals from the movie, this will be nothing young children should see. It contains many scenes of graphic, even gory violence, especially just about every scene with General Grievous. Lots of limbs, heads, and other various appendages are dismembered. Innards splatter. Children die. And I don’t even want to know what Anakin looks like just before being fitted with the Darth Vader suit. Like I said, this sounds like nothing young children should see. Lucas, to his credit, has mentioned in interviews that parents will want to leave young children at home. Good for him. So why is this violent movie being marketed so aggressively to young children? To be fair, I have a problem with all advertising to young children, but more so if the product is something said children shouldn’t consume in the first place.

Go to the supermarket, and you’ll see Star Wars characters on all sorts of creatively spelled kid-friendly sweet and/or salty snacks. M&M’s. Cheez-Its. Unkle Rhobb’s Sweeeet Nukular Tchunks. Stroll down a toy aisle and you’ll see acres of Star Wars toys, though to be fair it’s debatable for which age group these toys are aimed (somewhere between ages 3 and 50). What really annoyed me was a commercial I saw on Nickelodeon during SpongeBob SquarePants for the Star Wars toys now available with Burger King kid’s meals. These toys appeared to be cutely deformed Star Wars characters with some lifelike action, such as the bigheaded Yoda with realistic back flipping action. Not pictured was a Neimoidian with realistic brain-splattering action.

Thanks to a superhuman ability to release versions of his movies that are just different enough from the previous release to make them desirable, Lucas already has more money than God. Would it hurt that much to ease up on the juvenile oriented marketing for one film? Even though Abbie is too young to want to see it, I’m dreading the day when someone, possibly Britney Spears, targets something inappropriate directly to Abbie’s demographic. Sorry, I’m getting off my soapbox now. I can’t wait to see the hilarious scene where Jar Jar is promoted to padawan.

Thursday, May 12, 2005

"...And that man's name was... I forget. But the point is... I forget that, too."

Here is another observation I have about people’s interaction with Abbie, and when I say “observation,” I of course mean “complaint.” Between graduations, weddings, and random outdoor celebrations of the nice weather, we’re in the thick of party season. Parties lead to preparations, which lead to guest lists, which lead to fights about guest lists, which lead to accusations that you don’t want any of my friends to come, which lead to “why do you always have embarrass me?” which lead to “if you want to talk about embarrassments let’s talk about all the times your father came to one of our parties and ended up hitting on one of my sisters,” which lead to time apart to determine what we really want, which lead to extravagant parties to spend everything before it disappears in the divorce, which lead to invitations. Sometimes, not all the time, these invitations are made out to “Ellie, Matt, and Abby.”

I wish I could notify everyone through legal means that her name is spelled “Abbie.” We settled on the spelling of her name shortly after choosing her name. Ellie decided she wanted to distance the name from the abbey of nunnery fame, possibly fearing a future where Abbie, after being constantly reminded of the survival of these “abbeys” throughout her entire life, attempts to eliminate all existing abbeys through potentially violent means. On the other hand, I thought it was cool to continue the pattern found in her mother’s name of vowel, double-consonant, i, e. If we continue this pattern through any potential future children, their names will have to be Allie or Eddie, or possibly Kitt or Maxx. When we choose the spelling, I had no idea that we rebelling against the spelling norms that would subject our daughter to a lifetime of a misspelled name. It’s not like we dropped a silent “n” in the middle of her name. (Abbnie?)

I know this really shouldn’t bother me. People have no way of knowing how her name is spelled. I should just be happy that people remember her name. Abbie doesn’t exactly go walking around with her name printed on her chest.

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Abbie doesn’t exactly go walking around all the time with her name printed on her chest.

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

"Why is that man in pink?"

Abbie and I went to the store recently. To be precise, we went to the Salvation Army Thrift Store, which is basically a large indoor year-round garage sale. The clothes at the store are generally things that their original owners couldn’t unload at their own garage sale* so the stained quotient tends to run higher than typical garage sale merchandise. Nevertheless, I can still find quality, mostly stain-free clothing at sub-garage sale prices, especially since one clothes tag color is always half-price (the price tags are color-coded, I assume so they know how long the merchandise has been hanging on the racks). As a bonus, the cashiers often can’t remember exactly which color is supposed to be half-price, so I occasionally get my entire haul for half-price.**

On this particular trip, I found about a half dozen choice articles, and proceeded to wait in line to purchase. While in line, I heard another customer ask my most dreaded question: “How old is he?”

Think back to an earlier post where I discussed dressing Abbie in clothing emblazoned with Coded Gender Stereotypes. I originally decided against doing so, but after being aggravated by people assuming she was a he, I flip-flopped and adorned her with all manner of pink items. She doesn’t wear pink everyday, but this day she did, and this woman still barreled along assuming she was a boy, kind of like a telemarketer barreling along oblivious to the inherent problem involved in asking people in the middle of the day if they’re tired of their 9 to 5 job. I can understand someone not noticing the pink highlights on her white sandals. I never notice footwear, something my wife can verify. What mystifies me is this woman thought Abbie was male in spite of the pink tank top she wore. When I say the tank top was pink, I don’t mean it was striped with pink and enough other colors to fill a Crayola box, even a preschool oriented Crayola box. I mean this tank top was straight, flat, Strawberry Shortcake caliber pink decorated with deeper pink hearts just in case someone missed the message. The only way her tank top could have said “girl” any clearer would be to literally write “girl” on it.

I know this shouldn’t bother me. These people mean well, and it’s not like they know us, not that I would want to know such dangerously oblivious people. I imagine these are the same people who commit oughta-be-arrestable driving offenses like failure to use turn signals or driving through a light that’s clearly red just because the car in front of you went. It just irks me when I concede principles for naught. I was nice when I replied to her, though, simply making sure to work “she” into my response.

“Oh, she, I’m sorry,” the woman answered. Then she continued with “Hey! This merchandise is used!”

* No exaggeration there. Sometimes I even find garage sale price tags still attached.
** And I promptly drop the mistaken difference into the nearby red kettle. Part of it at least.

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

"Point to Your Tiger on the Chart"

Think back to an earlier Abbie Update entry where I discussed Abbie’s development of fear. She showed fear of two and only two things: an alphabet book filled with dog pictures and a book about tigers. I have new developments to report, kind of like how that one American Idol guy now has creepy cell phone messages form Paula Abdul to report.

I left Abbie with mommy for a while the other night for some reason which may or may not be related to an ice cream run. I can’t remember. During their time together, Ellie discovered that disturbing distorted photos of dogs and being chased by tigers no longer frightens Abbie. Ellie read both books to her with no consequences worse than a multi-inch long streamer of drool, which probably was not dog or tiger related. I learned about this new development when I noticed both books were on the floor with the rest of her regular reads. The books she doesn’t read, either because she doesn’t like them or because their pages are easily shredded regular paper, are banished to her bookshelf. Ellie confirmed that they had read the books together without incident.

A couple of days later, I forgot that the books had been elevated to “enjoyable” status and deposited them back on her bookshelf, and Abbie promptly pulled them back off the shelf. Now that she can stand unsupported, she loves pulling things off heretofore-unreachable heights, like books off the shelf*, remotes off the couch, and pots and pans out of the cupboards. The process of pulling things off involves dropping them to see if any further interesting elements manifest, and if not she reaches for more objects. When she drops pots and pans, they clang and clatter but nothing else, so she reaches for more pots and pans. She can clear an entire cabinet in 49 seconds flat. When she drops remotes, batteries tend to appear, and those are fun to munch so the pulling stops. When she pulls books, they tend to open to appealing pictures, so she stops pulling and starts reading. This is how I found Abbie, with both previously frightening books open at her feet. I decided to read both to her, starting with the dog alphabet book. She looked less than excited to see this one again, but she never screamed and that’s close enough to success for me. Then I read the tiger book, and as sure as LaTroy Hawkins blowing a one-run ninth-inning lead, she cried when we arrived at the final page and its hungry tiger.

So to recap, reading the book with mommy elicits no crying, reading the book alone elicits no crying, but reading the book with daddy opens the floodgates. I might as well take it as a compliment that I bring her books to life. Kind of like how that American Idol guy can take it as a compliment that he can elicit phone calls from Paula Abdul.

* Oddly enough, Abbie never pulls the books at ground level off their shelf. Go figure.

Monday, May 09, 2005

It's How Fozzie Gets Around

Abbie’s latest developmental advancement is what I believe others call the “bear crawl.” The bear crawl is done on the hands and knees, generally in a festive atmosphere, as the overly inebriated attempt to move from bar to bar in order to … whoops! My mistake, that’s actually the “beer crawl.” Abbie’s “bear crawl” is done on her hands and feet with her face down and her butt in the air. She moves her legs like she’s walking, but since she still has all the balance of a co-ed on a beer crawl, she moves her hands like she’s still crawling for stability. I know wrestlers can run drills using the bear crawl, so she may be headed down the path of becoming a wrestler. I’m in a lot of trouble if she puts a barzegar on me.

Abbie can move very well with the bear crawl. I set her on the ground tonight at the store to look at greeting cards for the plethora of birthdays and graduations we’ll be attending soon, and before I could separate the preschool graduation cards from the high school graduation cards, Abbie had bear crawled to the end of the aisle. I pulled her back to her original starting point, and off she went again, this time giggling the whole way. Heaven help us when she actually starts to walk. I may not even have time to find the graduation cards at that point.

Here’s a picture of Abbie using her walking toy. The picture is a couple of weeks old, but it’s still applicable. The only difference is Abbie no longer need to lean on a wheeled toy to move across the room at disturbing speeds. In case you’re wondering, the dog is eating behind her, not snarling.

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Sunday, May 08, 2005

Mr. Mom & Ms. Dad

Today was Mother’s Day. This was our first real experience with the holiday here at Abbie Update. Last year, Ellie was 8+ months pregnant for Mother’s Day, and could only dream of the terrifying wonders Abbie would bring. This year, Ellie looked at the past 11+ months, at the screaming fits that felt like they’d never end, at the joys of firsts like the first laugh, at the midnight (and 2am, and 4am…) feedings, and declared “I want a ring for Mother’s Day.”

Shortly after Ellie opened her ring, I went to reading the morning paper, and realized just how different our family roles have evolved from most other families. Tributes to mom filled the comics pages, some of them involving the kids or husband doing mom’s jobs around the house, like cooking, vacuuming, and laundry. A little later I realized that I do most of the cooking, vacuuming, and laundry in this house. When I turned to the front page of the newspaper, their cover story on mom’s day was about how the kids might do a few extra household chores for a day, but they’ll leave mom to do the chores for the rest of the year. Once again, I do most of mom’s traditional chores around the house. The story wasn’t completely filled with gender stereotypes as it also contained handy tips for putting your children to work as young as 12-months-old, giving me visions of raising my own Cinderella, except that Cinderella actually had enough free time to go to the ball which will never happen in my house. I started wondering why the newspaper industry assumes that if there’s work to be done around the house, mom does it. That’s probably because it’s mostly true, but not in our house. It makes sense to me that if mom works at a revenue making job all day, while I stay at home and take care of the kid, that I could slip in a few chores while Abbie plays nicely on the floor. That, and I need to do something to earn my allowance.

Next month will be my first real Father’s Day since Abbie was only a few weeks old for the holiday last year and I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Which of my fatherly duties will the media celebrate? Being handy around the home? Handy is not a word commonly used to describe myself. Mowing the lawn? We don’t even have a lawn, though I’d be the one to mow it if we did. Grilling meats? I’m pretty ambivalent toward grilling; Ellie is the one that loves to grill, I’m just happy there’s something easy to be made for dinner that she’ll want to eat. Sitting in front of the couch all day watching sports? Well, I can only do that if the laundry is done.

Following up on yesterday’s gardening story, here’s a picture of Abbie standing in front of the tiny plot we’re calling a garden and wearing a pretty dress for the first and probably only time before she outgrows it.
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Saturday, May 07, 2005

"I'm a doctor, not a gardener."

It’s springtime, and if there’s one thing I can expect to do, it’s listen to the Cubs lose a lot. But if there’s another thing I can expect to do, it’s plant stuff. Last year we planted very little because we moved into our new home too late to start much gardening. That and the fact that Abbie was a newborn meant that we only averaged 49 minutes of free time combined each day, and darned if we were going to waste it gardening.

So off to the greenhouse we ventured to waste our free time today, and it turns out a crowded greenhouse is not a good place to take a baby. The first problem was Abbie loves to grab all sorts of things: toys, books, dog food, and apparently anything green and leafy. I’ve known about her plant fixation since she was about three months old and would stare at trees with a level of fascination babies usually only bestow upon shiny metal objects. When she learned to grab a couple months later, I could entertain her by holding her up to a tree so she could yank and shred leaves. Knowing this, I should have realized that mixing Abbie with plants sticking their foliage into packed aisles would create problems. Abbie would grab a plant, and before she could damage it, I would step back, putting her within reach of another plant, and I’d take another step back, making sure she was out of reach of any other plants. Eventually, though, I would have to move closer to a plant to inspect it, and when I did, she grabbed one, probably an expensive one, and knocked it on the floor, because if something doesn’t exist for her enjoyment, why does it exist at all?

At this point I wised up enough to strap her into a cart so the only plants she could grab were ones we intended to purchase. A few simple pot rotations, and all vegetation was out of her reach. Unfortunately, pristine potting soil was now within her reach. I should have realized that a baby who’s willing, nay, eager to eat spinach would also be willing to try a little dirt. Alas, I turned my back to inspect a particularly ravishing specimen of celosia, and when I turned back to the cart, Abbie had dirt smeared on her hand and around her mouth. I spent the rest of our time in the greenhouse watching Abbie closer than dog watches her when she eats, and drops, peas.

The rest of the trip went fairly smoothly and productively. We bought several new-to-us varieties of plants, including tomatoes and peppers. I thought I would try something different this year and grow some vegetables. Heaven knows the Cubs won’t be doing anything different this year.

Friday, May 06, 2005

"That is a girl's bike." "You're no girl, you're a boy."

Abbie and I spent this morning, like most Friday mornings, rummaging. This is an intense process that involves encroaching on complete strangers’ garages, lairs if you will, in an attempt to purchase junk that the owner no longer wants. While perusing said just I generally must engage in small talk with the owner, fielding questions like “aren’t you cute?” or “how old is she” or “how did you get to be so cute?” Today, however, the questions tended more toward “how old is he?” I’m not exactly sure why so most people thought she was a he. Abbie wore jeans and a white onesie decorated with a bluish design, which apparently telegraphs “boy” in spite of the shoes with pink highlights she also wore. Either that, or since everybody seemed to have boys’ clothes today, everybody assumed I had a boy.

While Abbie was gestating, I thought I would never bathe Abbie in pink outfits. No enforcer of Coded Gender Stereotypes would I be. The downside to that thought-process is no one can tell the gender of a baby without clothing sporting some sort of Coded Gender Stereotype, like blue (boy), pink (girl), construction machinery (boy), or Indigo Girls (girl). I assumed that people instinctually knew the gender of babies, like they were born carrying a sign saying “I am a boy. I like trucks.” Maybe I assumed everyone would simply ask the gender, then compliment me for being a wonderful father that destroys Coded Gender Stereotypes. Turns out in the real world people just take a wild guess. I know it shouldn’t, but when people guess the wrong gender, it really grates me, like when people assume that I’m a Nebraska Cornhusker fan just because I’m wearing the Nebraska Cornhusker t-shirt I got for free on a business trip.

So, long story short, as soon as we got home, I put a pink bow in her hair.

Bonus Not-Necessarily-Abbie-Related Observation: I got a phone call today shortly before noon. After answering, a recorded voice asked “are you tired of your 9 to 5 job?” I have little patience for telemarketers, especially non-human ones, so I promptly hung up, then started wondering how much sense it made to call people at home in the middle of a weekday asking if they’re tired of their 9 to 5 job.

Thursday, May 05, 2005

A Girl and Her Dog

For the first time in a couple of weeks, it finally warmed up here enough that we could spend long stretches of time outside. It’s important that we play outside now because in a couple more weeks I’ll be complaining about the heat and humidity.

Our back door opens to a spacious enclosed yard of a couple hundred square feet. That’s one of the advantages of our communal living arrangement. One of the disadvantages is this is a shared yard that’s often shared with multiple dogs and everything that comes with dogs. I imagine that these dogs spend their days challenging each other to see who can leave the biggest lawn biscuit*. “That’s not a bad one Max,” Nick might say through a series of grunts and growls, “but I’ve been saving this one for a few days.” They’ll then emit doggie chuckles and spend the rest of the afternoon rolling in the yard and rubbing against as many surfaces as possible. Not that I’m complaining about dogs, mind you. We have a dog, so I’m legally forbidden from complaining about instinctual dog behavior.

As I was saying, Abbie and I spent much time today in our backyard playing one of her favorite games, “Let’s get the Dog Food.” No wait, that’s one of her favorite games that we don’t let her play. The game we played is just “Let’s Get the Dog.” This game involves me hoisting Abbie on my shoulders while I walk after the dog chanting (are you writing this down?) “let’s get the dog.” Hopefully millennia from now when future archeologists pinpoint the exact root of the downfall of our current civilization, they pinpoint something other than parents devising very uninspired names for the games they played with their children. So I chase our dog while incessantly chanting, and our dog usually cooperates well enough to run away as soon as I get close, all the while Abbie finds this infinitely amusing and squeals uproariously every time the dog scampers away. Sometimes our dog, possibly distracted by an exceptionally disgusting spot in the yard, won’t run away when we approach, in which case I borrow one of the communal dogs (the golden retrievers are always happy to fill in). I usually get too tired to continue after a few minutes, but once Abbie can chase the dog herself, the dog is in trouble.

In case you were wondering about the dog food game, that one involves her finding and trying to eat dog food. We don’t let her play that one, and have to battle pretty hard sometimes to keep her away from the dog food. I’ve made several allusions to her love of dog food on Abbie Update, and perhaps you think I’m exaggerating. Here’s photographic proof of our intense skirmishes.

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That’s mommy locking horns with Abbie like a couple of mountain rams fighting over territory. The battles can get pretty intense, especially since the dog sometimes eats very slowly, possibly to give Abbie a sporting chance. So I do my best to move Abbie away from temptation and to a different location, like outside where there is no dog food, just lawn biscuits.

* “Lawn biscuit” can be rearranged to spell “I saw cub lint”

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Please? You can make this my birthday and Christmas presents.

The staff at Abbie Update is running frantically trying to set up a first birthday party for Abbie. We only have 26 days left. Our situation reminds me of the fable involving the ant and the grasshopper, where the ant realizes winter is coming and spends all his time storing food and preparing his home for the season, while the grasshopper wastes time doing whatever it is that amuses grasshoppers until winter arrives. Then the grasshopper, realizing that there is no more food to be found and his home offers no protection from the cold and snow, kills the ant and takes his food and home. If only there were an ant hoarding supplies for a child’s first birthday that we could hunt down.

How much work could it possibly be to plan a birthday? Ha! First we need presents. This is made very difficult by the fact that she shows no preferences for any particular toys. If she loved some TV show, then we could buy any toy and be confident that she’d love it as long as it was plastered with the image of a licensed character from that show, like Elmo, or Ernie, or Emeril. Instead we have to try to think like a one-year old to find something she’ll like. Adding to the pressure is the fact that we want her first presents to be something she’ll remember, which is ironic since she won’t be forming any memories for a couple years yet. Today I took a wild guess and bought her a toy with a name like The Brainy Baby’s Cranium Cramming Block of Edutaining Fun. This toy is so full of tiny brain building activities that it’s almost guaranteed to teach Abbie that it’s a really lame toy and she should go back to finding dog food to chew on.

Then there’s the party. Every good party needs a theme, and picking a theme is also difficult because of Abbie’s aforementioned lack of preferences. We’re taking a stab at a Sesame Street theme, partly because we often play a CD full of Sesame Street songs that she doesn’t seem to hate, and partly because Sesame Street, in lieu of accepting advertising revenue, supports itself by splashing its licensed characters on a dizzying array of products designed to gouge clueless parents. So we have necessary birthday supplies like plates, balloons, and fire extinguishers all sporting Sesame Street characters. We have yet to assemble treat bags for the guest children, but you can bet they’ll scream Sesame Street just as soon as we figure out which neighbor kids are coming, and what kind of treats would appeal to children ranging in age from 9 months to 27 years (some sort of sharp object would be my guess).

I can’t forget the cake. Abbie needs her own special cake to dig her mitts into. Ellie decided a rubber ducky cake (as in “you make bath time lots of fun”) would be cute, and has been experimenting with a recently purchased cake mold to determine the optimal process for creating said cake. Have you ever wondered what a rubber ducky cake looks like?

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Now you know. And now I need to go ant hunting.

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

The Abbie Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Walking

Learning to walk is a series of tiny accomplishments. You must be able to stand, then stand unsupported, then walk with support, then take a few small steps without forcing mommy and daddy to ruin their backs bending over to hold you. Tiny achievements. As the saying goes, you must learn to walk before you can run out into traffic.

Abbie’s latest walking success is standing and taking about six unsupported steps for no reason. This was a remarkable feat because 1) she rose from a sitting to a standing position without grabbing anything for assistance, 2) she had absolutely no prompting from me, I just turned my head and saw her walking, and 3) she was holding onto a toy at the time. I think she just held the toy to show off. After her six steps, she fell flat on her butt, and I applauded wildly.

My baby is growing fast. Want further proof? I like to carry Abbie on my shoulder, like this:

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She’s easier to carry that way, provided she doesn’t squirm off my shoulder in an act of kamikaze, hara-kiri, or even seppuku. I’ve been able to parade her about the house like that without fear of bumping her head on any low objects, until yesterday when I tapped her head (really, it was just a tap) on the doorway. Yep, she’s growing fast, like bacteria on a forgotten bread loaf left in the hot car window. I like to think that growing big enough to bonk your head on a doorway whilst being lugged about on your father’s shoulders also counts as an accomplishment.

Monday, May 02, 2005

I Wanna Go Home

I stumbled back home last night almost 36 hours after I left. I spent the weekend in northern Minnesota working on a freelance basis for my former employer. Now I can say I’m contributing more to the nation’s economy than just buying slightly stained and possibly burned clothing secondhand. This was by far the longest stretch that I have spent away from home and away from Abbie since her birth, which can be quite a shock considering I take care of her for virtually every waking moment. The only other significant time I spent separated from her was when Ellie took her to see her family for a few days, but at least I was home and could stick to a routine then. This weekend I stepped back into a childless world that previously only existed in memory, like revisiting the world before the fall of the Berlin Wall or the world before Britney got married.

Most of the differences between the worlds revolved around the fact that I could do stuff without being interrupted. We did a lot of driving, and instead of needing to stop every couple of hours to feed her or change her, we only had to stop every couple of hours to eat or go to the bathroom. Okay, that’s a bad example, but trust me when I say the stops were much shorter. Here’s a better example, I could eat a meal in peace without being interrupted to do things like grab another course for Abbie, refill her Cheerios again, or extinguish the napkin that caught fire when she threw it on the stove top. Being able to sleep in would be an even better example except I had to wake up even earlier than usual while on the road.

I’m glad to be back home where the pillow on my bed is familiar and the milk on my cereal is skim. Did I miss Abbie? Absolutely. Upon returning home, she was the third person whose weekend I asked my wife about (the pecking order went my wife, my mother, who was nice enough to help out in my absence, then Abbie). Now I can return to my normal routine of caring for Abbie and contributing sales of ingredients for homemade baby food to the national economy.