When Animals Attack

On Tuesday afternoon, the new neighbor’s Dalmatians wandered by our backyard window. Our dog Chloe saw their dogs and a barking contest ensued. Our other neighbor’s Golden Retriever often does the same thing to say he wants to play with our dog. When this happens, I throw Chloe in the backyard, she runs up to the Retriever, they sniff each other, then both forget why they were barking and return to normal dog activities like eating grass and finding exciting new things to roll in. Expecting a similar result with the Dalmatians, I threw Chloe in the backyard. This wasn’t Chloe’s first exposure to these Dalmatians. A day before one of them moseyed over to Chloe, they sniffed each other extensively, and the Dalmatian ended up laying down and rolling over and being generally submissive, so I assumed everyone would be nice and friendly and get along great. Chloe darted after the Dalmatians, and the Dalmatians chased her with more of a snarl in their voices than a friendly bark. After a few seconds tearing back and forth, one of them pinned Chloe against the house, barking and snarling in her face while she whined. I yelled at the Dalmatian a couple times to knock it off to no effect, and wound up grabbing its collar, my first exposure to the animal, to pull it off Chloe. She recovered and scrambled back in the house when I opened the door with my free hand. I let go of the Dalmatian’s collar; it glared menacingly at the door, and then continued on with its business.

And so we experienced our first dog attack. I should mention that Abbie was safely inside the house the entire time. That was an eye-opener for me since, from my experience, whenever dogs bark and growl at each other, no matter how ferocious they sound, they always end up just sniffing each other and returning to whatever they were doing. There’s one neighbor dog Chloe does not like, probably because she bites when she plays and Chloe is a giant chicken, and Chloe usually barks in her face until she leaves her alone. Otherwise, Chloe always ignores other dogs once she’s acknowledged their presence, and the other dog returns the favor. This time the other dog decided to assert its dominance. Chloe’s wounds, if you could call them that, are pretty minor: She has a small cut under one eye and I think she’s pretty bruised in her hindquarters since she randomly shows pain back there, but otherwise I think her pride is the only thing that’s hurt. She’s also walking a little funny sometimes, like something is caught in her fur by her tail. I took her to the vet, and he couldn’t find anything specifically wrong besides the cut. He gave me some doggie Tylenol and told me to watch for any other signs of injury. I’m not sure that the Dalmatian ever actually bit Chloe; she may have just sustained her injuries in the chase. To their credit, the Dalmatian’s owners were very apologetic, and have promised to reimburse us for the vet and keep their offending dog tied up and muzzled while in the backyard.

Bringing the blog to Abbie, I now have to watch her closely and keep her away from Chloe who has been awful mopey and grumpy since the incident. I have no reason to think she would ever harm Abbie, but I’d rather not find a reason the hard way. This is difficult since I’ve discovered one of my main tricks for entertaining Abbie is to let her chase Chloe. She gets to laugh, the dog gets to exercise, I get to rest, and everyone wins. Now she just stays put with a look of terror when Abbie approaches, which is unfortunate since I could use some rest to fight this cold, which Ellie officially labeled a “viral infection” today. Sorry about the seriousness of the post. I promise more mucus related talk tomorrow. How’s this for levity? “Dalmatian” can almost be rearranged to spell “Dammit Lana.”

"They love! They share! They share and love and share!"

The good news: Abbie is recovering well from her unfortunate cold and is close to normal. The bad news: I now have her cold. With all the snot and drool I had to wipe up, I knew it was just a matter of time before I caught it. I’ve felt this thing slowly coming on for several days now. Saturday I woke up with a tickle in my throat that disappeared as the morning progressed. Sunday the tickle stayed in my throat all day, and progressed until last night when I could officially label it a “sore throat.” I’m now on a strict regimen of throat lozenges and throat spray to keep the pain down to a dull ache, similar to the pain one might feel from hearing pieces of a Tom Cruise interview playing in the background.

The strange thing about whatever germs are presently attacking me is they’re affecting me in a completely way from Abbie. Aside from a raging sore throat and a slight up tick in mucus, I feel pretty normal. Sure, I’m tired most of the day, but I spend my time chasing a sick 13-month-old around the house, so like I said, I feel pretty normal. In Abbie, the germs caused a mass of snot to gather in her sinuses. She’s had snottier colds, but this one still plugged her nose to the point where I had to use the nasal aspirator to clean her out a few times.* I also had to affix a bib around her neck to soak up the drool that comes as a byproduct of her temporary mouth breathing ways. My cold has left my nasal passages pretty clear, and I don’t drool any more than usual. It has left my voice scratchy, though, which causes all sorts of problems. This cold makes me warble and squeak while I sing, and lullabies generally lose their effect if I sound too goofy to make a child sleepy. It also hurts to talk, and that’s not a pleasant thing to fight through when I’m trying to expose her to as much language as possible to encourage her to talk. The pain keeps our reading sessions short, so I need to find alternate ways to entertain her. Vocally scolding her when she misbehaves hurts more since I have to growl admonishments, but I could probably save my voice by recording “don’t bite” and “don’t eat dog food” and replaying them at the appropriate times. The only bright side I found is I can take my voice many hertz lower, which opens up a whole world of new sounds to make for her, like the collected works of Barry White.

I also feel generally crummy, but I do my best to fight through it. Nevertheless, my mood finds ways to manifest itself. Some of Abbieupdate’s more observant readers have noticed an alarming surge in typos on this site recently. I’ll just have to pop another throat lozenge and buckle down to ensure the high quality of writing my loyal readers have come to expect expect.

* Long tangent alert: Babies seem to have a reputation in popular culture of bringing much joy along with some minor annoyances like dirty diapers and nighttime feedings. To that I say, “baby spit.” Suctioning out a young child with a nasal aspirator is one of the most traumatizing experiences I can imagine, for her and me, and I know traumatizing after spending a summer detassling corn. To find any joy in suctioning out a young child, you have to really love kids, or possibly really hate them. Also, nighttime feedings are much worse than the vaguely humorous way television generally portrays them, but that’s another tangent.

"On closer inspection, these are loafers."

I consider shoes to be a fairly integral part of my day. When I go outside, I need shoes. When I workout on my stair climber, I need shoes. When I scoop kitty litter, I don’t really need shoes, but they’re highly recommended if I want to keep tiny clay chunks and other things from embedding themselves in my socks. Abbie, though, shuns all kinds of footwear, and will actively work to remove shoes and socks, preferring that her feet go au natural. We’ve had a few struggles, some involving biting, where I attempt to reattach shoes while she attempts to re-remove them. She’s always done her best to reject any sort of covering in general, kind of like Paris Hilton with better taste.

I remember in the hospital when she was born, the nurses would tightly swaddle her after they completed their latest series of pokes and prods, and Abbie did not seem to enjoy her situation. Granted, Abbie didn’t enjoy much of anything those first few days (weeks … months … years), but being swaddled seemed to especially tick her off. This was all just as well since I couldn’t swaddle a comatose newborn howler monkey, let alone a ticked off newborn human. I’d do my best to emulate the OB nurses (they must know what they’re doing, right?) and wrap Abbie as tightly as I could before setting her down to sleep. Kicking her way out of my “swaddling” must have been the first thing she did, after she stopped laughing at my handiwork of course, because I would always find her with her legs splayed out from under the sheet. This behavior continued at home when we put her in a full-body gown for sleeping. These gowns have elastic around the bottom meant to enclose the feet and give the wearer a warm sense of comfort. Naturally Abbie always managed to spurn this comfort by kicking the elastic up around her waist and exposing her legs by morning. To her credit, she never tries to remove pants or other clothing besides exposed socks. The result is she usually goes barefoot.

If she stays indoors, she can go barefoot all day without a problem. Until she started walking a couple of months ago, we could go out around the town without shoes as long as the weather was warm enough. When it was cold, I found a nifty pair of snowman slippers to attach to her feet that were tight enough that she couldn’t remove them. Now that she can and often insists on walking, I don’t feel right letting her stomp her germ-encrusted bare feet around public spaces. Years of enforcing the “No shirt, no shoes, no service” policy at the local Dairy Queen will do that to a person. The snowman slippers are now too small and seasonally inappropriate, so I need to find some real shoes. Our first test shoes were a couple pairs of sandals. These seemed like a good choice since they were very cute* and the Velcro fasteners made them easy to put on. Of course, the Velcro also made them easy to take off. Plus, that nifty ripping noise Velcro makes practically encourages her to remove her shoes. After several bouts of reattaching sandals while sitting in the car with the motor turned off and the sun blaring through the windows, I decided she needed footwear that was a little more difficult to detach. So she now has a wonderful new pair of actual shoes that, even though they also use Velcro, are much harder to remove. I tested them today on a vigorous afternoon of shopping for Vital Supplies (the new boxed set of The Daily Show) and they passed with flying colors; only one shoe came off! Now if I can just get her to stop biting, life will be perfect.

* They were cute according to my wife; I can’t tell the difference between genuine cute and a steaming pile of baby spit

"I just want attention."

When they want to bring something to your attention, I think most toddlers will point at it. They might vocalize an “uh, uh” as well, or even, if they’re sufficiently advanced, say the object’s name. Balloons and animals are particular favorites to point out, and balloon animals are just too crazy to fathom. While carrying Abbie around, I’ve noticed children also love pointing out babies as near comatose toddlers suddenly wet their pants with excitement* pointing and vocalizing, trying to draw attention to the baby I’m carrying.

That’s only how most toddlers and possibly Michael Jackson react, though. My toddler will grab my hand and fling it in the direction of the interesting object in an attempt to make me point at it. I usually try to oblige her by accurately pointing at the object of interest and saying its name. “Dog. That’s our dog. Can you say dog?” I might say as I point at our dog while Abbie stares stoically in the dog’s direction. I’ll then continue to point out other things in our backyard like the fence, the grill, the tree, the other tree, another tree, and yet another tree. By doing this, my hope is to teach Abbie to point and vocalize at objects herself so that she may be able to interact with her surroundings on the same level as, say, Paris Hilton. We perform much the same routine while reading. Generally if I stop speaking for a few seconds, she will grab my hand and thrust it at brightly colored object on the page, and I’ll dutifully describe it. She’s even doing something similar with her toys, grabbing my hand to make me play with it.

I used to think this routine was very cute, plus I was teaching her communication skills. Honestly, it still is very cute, but I now believe I’ve become more of a crutch that needs to be removed. I feel like whenever she wants to draw attention to something she relies on me to do it. Pointing at stuff should be her job. My job should just be to describe things and eventually answer questions like “why?” or “why not?” or “what does (insert curse word here) mean?”

In my first attempt to remove the crutch, I did my best to not point when she tugs my arm. This proved too difficult to do since she can be very insistent on making me point at something, tugging my arm repeatedly until I crack. Once she even grabbed my foot to make it point. Plus we don’t clip her fingernails as often as we should, and they can get mighty sharp. Now I relent and point at things when she seizes my arm, but I don’t vocalize anything except encouragements for her to point. When she does something that I can generously describe as “pointing,” I make sure to explain it for her. She’s learning, and sometimes she tries to point, but the usual result is I point while we both stare stoically into the distance. That may not sound impressive, but remember that she’s still cognitively ahead of Paris Hilton.

* Possibly literally

Doesn't Play Well with Others

Like I said, I feel it’s important to take Abbie to a playground where she can interact with other children, lest she grow into a weird unsociable adult who’s incapable of leaving the house at age 18. She’s still a little young to play with other children, though. Most of her interactions on the playground consist of operating as a speed bump while the other children bounce around the playground like Tiggers on meth with speed and agility that Abbie can currently only dream of. I have to give those little kids a lot of credit; for people with such limited walking experience, they do an outstanding job of avoiding Abbie while they scamper through the play area with the perpetual motion of atomic particles. I can only remember one occasion when a child bumped into her and knocked her onto the ground. A boy of about 3 jumped off one of the playground’s scaleable padded objects and landed close enough to bump her. He didn’t bump her hard, his forward momentum carried him into contact with her, but since she’s about as steady on her feet as Colin Farrell at 4am, down she started. This boy, realizing the horribleness of his actions, grabbed Abbie in an attempt, I hope, to steady her, but since he was none too sure-footed either, they both fell to the ground with him on top. The boy looked mortified, certain someone would scold him for that one. I walked over stood up Abbie before he could “help” her any more, and reassured him everyone was just fine. His guardian never even reacted.

Another boy was not so lucky. This one, aged about 2, ran up and pushed Abbie, not hard, but hard enough to knock her to the floor. I didn’t see any nastiness in his actions; I think that was just how he played. I was a little perturbed, Abbie looked unfazed, but his mommy rushed in with furious anger to scold him on the sidelines. A couple of minutes later, the same boy wandered over to Abbie to try playing again. After he realized that she was fairly non-interactive, he started walking away, stepping right on Abbie’s leg. He appeared more oblivious than malicious, and again she looked unfazed, but again his mommy rushed in for a stern scolding. The woman explained to me that she’s a stay-at-homer, so her son doesn’t really know how to interact with other children. I told her I’m in the same boat, and not to worry too much since he’s still young to realize what he should and shouldn’t do. Most children don’t grasp right and wrong until about age 3, and many politicians don’t grasp the concept until late middle age, if ever. The boy learned his lesson, though; he stayed far away from Abbie the rest of the time.

Then there’s the 2ish girl that tried sharing her books with Abbie. This girl had two books she wanted to read, and handed one to Abbie when she wandered near. That was a very nice thing to do, and some day I hope Abbie learns the same value of sharing. Right now, though, Abbie shares almost as well as Corey Patterson draws walks, and demanded to see the book the other girl had, attempting to turn pages and rotate it to her perspective. I snatched her up mumbling important lessons about sharing, and dropped her off 15 feet from the sharer. Abbie bolted back to the girl attempting to commandeer an obviously fascinating book. I grabbed her again, and decided it was time to leave. I made sure to apologize to the girl before leaving, because if I can’t teach my child important lessons about playing with others, hopefully I can teach someone.

"Well, sir, where should we dump this batch of nuclear waste? Playground?"

Abbie is still sick, and wearing my patience thinner than the Cubs playoff hopes. Naturally, I’m doing the only responsible thing I can do: Head to child-packed shopping malls. Not so much for the mall part because I hate malls. I hate almost everything about them: The crowds, the crass commercialism, the Gymboree stores. I do enjoy their playgrounds, though.

Mall playgrounds are bliss for children 42 inches and under. They exist within the perfectly climate-controlled weather inside a mall, allowing for year-round play without the need of mittens, sunscreen, or bug repellent. They’re extremely child safe. No pea gravel here, they use heavy padding on all bumpable surfaces meaning Abbie can fall repeatedly while trying to walk without being hurt. Of course, Abbie falls on concrete repeatedly while trying to walk without being hurt so maybe I’m being a little overcautious. They lack anything smaller than a book for Abbie to shove in her mouth, and I know I’m not being overcautious with that. They have close access to shops selling all sorts of sugar-infused foods, though that’s more of a plus for me right now.

I used to think that malls had playgrounds to indoctrinate children, to teach them at the earliest ages that malls are fun places to be so they can grow up to be teenagers and maybe even young adults who spend obscene amounts of time and money at the mall. I now realize that theory gives way too much credit to the malls’ marketing departments, but I’m hyperaware of commercial messages*. These playgrounds exist to attract parents, who generally have much more disposable income than their young children, to the mall and hopefully buy something. I’ve outsmarted the local mall the last couple of days by bringing Abbie to the nearest mall’s playground without buying anything. I hope she spread her cold to a minimal number of children, but if she did infect a significant chunk of Des Moines’s youngest citizens, like I said, my patience was wearing thin.

Abbie loves these playgrounds. She can toddle by herself, exploring the heavily padded, climbable objects, trying to grab the attention of complete strangers, and looking for the playground exit to explore the rest of the mall. Being a stay-at-home child, this is also about the only opportunity she has to interact with other children, which I feel is important to prevent her from growing up and exhibiting weird, anti-social behavior like Tom Cruise.

Of course, not every mall offers playgrounds. I entered a swankier (i.e. more western) Des Moines mall and asked guest services if they had a playground. The clerk said no, but she cheerfully offered to rent a stroller to me. “Gee, Abbie, sorry you can’t run around, but how about you sit while I push you around? It’ll be just like you’re back in the car! Without the risk of fresh air!” See if I let my kid spread germs around their mall again.

* That’s one reason I don’t let her watch much television; I’ll be darned if I’m going to buy her stuff because commercials packed around Dora the Explorer brainwashed her into believing she needs overpriced toys and snacky treats, especially when sporting event advertisers who make fine products like sports drinks and athletic apparel could use my money so much more.

Cold Playing

Abbie is sick with a cold, or at least I hope it’s just a cold. Whatever it is, it involves plenty of coughing and an increasing quantity of mucus. It could be just about anything: pneumonia, Legionnaires, lymphagioleiomyomatosis. I’m pretty sure it’s just a cold, though.

Kids are exceptional at contracting diseases, and I wonder where she caught it. It could just be a side effect of her body coping with the change in weather as the onset of her cold coincides nicely with the onset of a nasty heat wave; the kind of heat wave that can make birds explode and farmers wish for the cooler weather they fretted over a couple weeks ago. She might have caught something from the boy who she played with Friday night while mommy and daddy attended the resident graduation dinner, but I’d rather not think about that since it would just discourage us from using a babysitter in the future. Maybe she just touched something in the interstate rest stop crawling with pujolser roleneus.

Whatever it is, it’s moving through her rather slowly. The first sign of any disease came early Monday morning as we stayed with my parents and Abbie started an unusual ten-minute coughing fit in her sleep that woke the entire house. I had no idea what caused it, though my mother thought it could be allergies. I figured it was a little late in the season for allergies to suddenly manifest like that, but it was possible considering we were in a different environment and I’m allergic to just about everything that isn’t food. She never showed any other sign of illness while I was with my parents besides increased coughing, so I didn’t think much of it.

That night, Abbie took a turn for the cranky, so very cranky. She was also coughing more with increased snottiness, so I began to suspect and fear a cold coming on. Of course, I could also explain crankiness by saying she was just worn-out from all the traveling and tired from a lack of sleep. Earlier I made the foolish, almost newbie mistake of waking Abbie early from her morning nap in hopes that she’d sleep longer for her afternoon nap. Ha! In the real world, nothing guarantees that Abbie will have a short afternoon nap like trying to coax her into sleeping extra long. So Abbie cried even more than usual because she was tired, and all the crying opened the snot floodgates. Unfortunately, the next day she was still cranky, and then the next day the snot started pouring, though the crankiness rescinded to the point where she could entertain herself while I did important work around the house like vacuum the floors or watch a pivotal sporting event. She’s still pretty irritable, though, and nothing saps my will to parent like hearing her perpetual whine in spite of my best efforts to entertain her by helping her play with her toys and muting the television even though there’s still a chance the Cubs can keep it close if Mitre can just get Rowand to ground into a double play … never mind. Let’s just go read.

Battling Seizure Balls

My father found quite possibly the world’s greatest toy for Abbie. It’s a little rubber ball that fulfills all the criteria necessary to be a great toy. First, it’s simple. Second, it’s cheap. Third, it can be immersed in water. Fourth, and maybe most importantly, it doesn’t make much noise.

You may be wondering, what makes this rubber ball so special? Its spectacularly attractive color scheme? The toddler equivalent of catnip infused within? Magic elves living inside whom grant wishes for her and clean up the place for me? Actually, the thing simply has a couple of lights embedded inside of it. Throw the ball, and the lights flash in a rapid succession that’s optimal for attracting young children and triggering epileptic seizures in rare cases. I now call it the epilepsy ball. As a bonus, its shell is a patchwork of semi-transparent bright colors creating an uneven surface that, when dropped, can send the ball careening randomly, kind of like Carlos Zambrano’s fastball.

My father found this ball on a recent camping trip. One night, while everyone sat around the campfire, one guy began throwing his epilepsy ball. Its flashing lights instantly captivated every single camper, possibly because they were all camping in the middle of nowhere and desperate for any sort of artificial visual stimulus. My father, seeing the epilepsy ball’s effect on a group of middle-aged campers in various stages of inebriation, realized its entertainment potential for a 12-month-old and decided he must have one. The epilepsy ball’s owner revealed that he found it at a convenience store a few miles down the road for only $1.99. Less than 24 hours later, the convenience store’s stock was depleted, and flashing lights in primary colored hues illuminated the entire campground like a G.I. Joe battlefield.

Upon returning from his camping trip, my dad gave his epilepsy ball to Abbie, and we stood back to watch the fun. I wasn’t exactly sure what Abbie would do with it. Perhaps she would just chew on it, or maybe she would examine it for a second before dropping it to resume her previous activity, chasing my parent’s poor cat that didn’t quite know enough to hide someplace where Abbie couldn’t get her. To everyone’s delight, especially the cat’s, Abbie took the ball, threw it, watched with much pleasure as it flashed, and chased after to retrieve it, giggling the entire time. She repeated this for about an hour until her naptime arrived. I then went with my dad to the baseball game, leaving grandma to watch her, so I don’t know what happened the rest of the night, but I’m pretty sure it involved lots of throwing and chasing. The next morning, I had some heavy-duty cleaning to do on my parent’s computer as helpful “programs” with names like “home shopping assistent (sic)” and “startpage” and “kewl kasinoz” had heavily infected it. Abbie dutifully chased her epilepsy ball until I cleaned the computer to the point where it could both print documents and access non-gambling related webpages. Then Abbie decided it belonged under the couch and stuffed it under there. It may be under a couch right now for all I know because I can’t find it. Otherwise I’d post a picture of her with her ball. If only that thing would make some sort of noise…

Toilet Humor

Traveling with Abbie has many difficult issues, mostly involving sleep that I must resolve if we’re to have a successful journey. I define success here as arriving at the correct destination at a reasonable time with minimal crankiness. I have to leave at the correct time to ensure maximum car napping. I have to pack a bag full of car toys and keep it within arm’s reach so I can hand her new toys to keep her entertained as she hurls old toys to the ground. I have to pack a few jars of baby food so she can have something resembling a nutritious meal before we proceed to shovel the Calorie-Infused Nuggets we ordered from the restaurant where we’re eating. On our latest trip to see my parents, I discovered a new pitfall to navigate; a pitfall so treacherous it could cause me great physical pain while throwing Abbie’s entire sleep schedule into chaos. How do I go to the bathroom with her?

About two hours from my destination, the urge to make a restroom stop struck. I could probably avoid most of these pit stops if I would stop drinking 32-ounce beverages at the start of the journey, but how am I supposed to resist the temptation of a gas station with more than a dozen fountain choices, with cherry and vanilla flavorings to add, and with a choice of crushed or cubed ice? Hmmmmmmm? If I’m with someone who’s capable of watching her, using a public restroom is as easy as taking turns entertaining Abbie while the other one takes care of business in the quiet serenity that is a public restroom.

When it’s just Abbie and me, like it was on this trip, she needs to come into the restroom with me. This creates a problem in that Abbie likes to touch stuff, and numerous scientific studies have irrefutably concluded that public restrooms are icky places filled with stuff that’s covered in bacteria with nasty sounding names like enterobacter pseudomonas, or darius kasparaitis, or even the dreaded pujolser roleneus. The solution is to take her into a stall, preferably the handicapped one, and let her wander while I work quickly and hope she doesn’t touch anything too hazardous or, god forbid, put something in her mouth. I suppose I could run into problems a little later with bringing a girl into the men’s room, but I’ll worry about that when she’s old enough to ask “what’s that?”

On this particular journey, Abbie threw another curve ball at me. By the time my vanilla-infused, aspartame-sweetened goodness filled my bladder to critical status and I found a rest stop, Abbie had just fallen asleep, and we still had two hours to travel. I had several potential paths of action to rectify this situation, none of which were particularly appealing. I could have stopped right then, waking Abbie to take her into the restroom with me, and hope that she falls back asleep, even though she’s notoriously bad about falling back asleep after waking early from her nap, even if she only slept for a few minutes. I decided that two remaining hours were way too many to risk her being awake the whole time. I could have just stopped and ran into the bathroom leaving Abbie locked in the car, but that’s just wrong on so many levels.

So with no good options, I just kept driving and hoped she’d wake up before I absolutely had to stop. I heroically managed to last about an hour before stopping, but I thought the whole way about the Renaissance-era scientist who died after holding it too long at a dinner party and something burst. I believe he contracted pujolser roleneus.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

That break was a bit longer than I had hoped. I spent most of the past week editing about an hours worth of video then authoring it all to DVD for the resident’s graduation dinner festivities. It seems that before they graduate from slave labor to filthy rich doctor, residents take a moment from their busy schedules to savagely mock each other because, hey, we’ll never see those guys again, except for the doctor who’s taking a full-time position at the same hospital, but that’s his problem.

I spent pretty much every minute that Abbie slept piecing together jokes involving colitis and systoles, except for those brief moments when I actually slept, too. I had to hit the timeline hard while she slept because she doesn’t tolerate being ignored during waketime. If needed, I could leave her in her playpen with some toys while I hacked away on the computer, but only for a few minutes. After that, her screeches for attention drown out the audio. Oddly, she tolerated being left in her crib much better. I could set her down with a burp cloth, turn on her aquarium lights and sounds toy, and she would be adequately entertained for several minutes watching the aquarium toy, shredding the burp cloth with her teeth, and generally wandering back and forth. The problem with that approach is Abbie apparently has a finite amount of patience for self-entertaining that she can use in every waketime period. By spending her entire patience reserve in one 15-minute span, I then have to deal with one cranky toddler until her next nap. I get the same way if I have to clean the house for more than 15 minutes between naps.

I could manage an extended editing session if someone could watch Abbie for a while. The obvious person to watch her is mommy. Unfortunately, she’s on one of those hectic rotations where the most she could hope to accomplish in her free time is to shower, and maybe if she manages her time really well she could wash her hair too, but that’s only on post-call days. Even though mommy was too busy to watch Abbie much for me, one of the neighboring residents with three of his own young kids practically insisted that he watch her for a night so I could work. I imagine I reacted in much the same way a military commander would react to a soldier volunteering unprompted for a suicide mission: The price is just too high for me in good conscience to allow you to do that, but okay. I happily hacked away in peace for little more than an hour, and then picked her up with red, puffy eyes. He told me that she didn’t cry the whole time I was gone, and that’s not a lie as long as we both believe it.

The day after the dinner, several residents moved away. I helped a little in hopes of pilfering someone’s abandoned deck and dragging it to my back door, but it turns out decks are heavy and generally attached to something. So we still have no deck. Then the next day I took Abbie to see my parents in Sioux City. The highlight of that trip was seeing a baseball game with my dad on Father’s Day. We left Abbie with her grandmother because lord knows a baseball game is tough enough for adults to sit through. The game involved professional players, and when I say professional I mean only that they were paid to play, not that they were necessarily any more talented than you or I or Abbie. The star of the visiting team was The Slowest Known Professional Baseball Player, who was possibly even slower than Vladimir Guerrero. Sioux City surrendered three runs in the top of the first and trailed for the entire game, but managed to score two in the bottom of the ninth in a thrilling comeback that meant they only lost 18-3. Then the next day I came home. Then the next day I blogged. That pretty much takes us up to the present.

I'm Taking a "Vacation"

I'm working on a project that comes dangerously close to qualifying as "work," and is taking a lot of my time. I need to prioritize to fit everything in; I can only do nine things at once, and that tenth thing is killing me. I've already given up lower priority things like television and hygiene-related activities, and now I'm up to blogging. I'm going to take a break for a few days until I finish this project. I should be up again this weekend or early next week.

"Welcome to Uncle Moe's. Aw, look at the cute little minors."

Abbie is now getting very insistent about walking. No longer content to just be carried everywhere, she can kick up quite a fuss when she wants to use her newfound abilities to toddle across open spaces. We can only hope that she’ll be this excited over potty training.

We went out to eat for lunch yesterday, and the service was embarrassingly slow. In the interest of fairness to the restaurant since I’m sure a majority of patrons, possibly as high as 60%, enjoy better service than we did, I’ll refer to the restaurant by an anagram of its actual name, the Iowa Endemic Hash. We waited about ten minutes for Hostess #1 to tell us where to go for a table, and that’s a perfectly reasonable wait since we were on the tail end of the post-church crowd. Abbie spent this time happily toddling up and down the cobblestone walkway outside the Iowa Endemic Hash entertaining some patrons while being in the way of other patrons.

After Hostess #1 directed us to another area, we stood in line for about five minutes while Hostess #2 found tables for us and the groups ahead of us. This should’ve been my first clue that maybe the various factions of the Iowa Endemic Hash were communicating with each other about as well as Russell Crowe communicates his displeasure with the hotel staff. Abbie spent this time marching back and forth and acting none too pleased that she was confined to the three-foot area I had carved out between groups.

Keep in mind that no one, including Abbie who doesn’t like waiting for anything, had eaten lunch yet. When Hostess #2 sat us at our table, I assumed the hard part of entertaining a hungry toddler was finished since I could give her some milk, and by the time she finished that we’d have some actual food to give her, or at least bread. Unfortunately Hostess #2 sat us in the Forgotten Section, which got its name from the fact that no one else sat near us until we were almost ready to leave, so I’m pretty sure the wait staff forgot we even existed. That’s rough, but at least we weren’t in the Insect Section, or even the Searing Gas Pain Section. Abbie finished her milk in about two minutes flat, and we spent the next 15 minutes reading and rationing Tasteeos until Ellie tracked down someone to say no one had even stopped by to say hello yet. A couple minutes later an exasperated manager-looking person stopped by to take our drink order, and seemed genuinely surprised that, gosh, everyone knew what entrée they wanted to order.

The food arrived quickly enough, and they even comped our appetizer. After finishing the meal, though, we waited another 15 minutes before tracking down a bus boy to say we needed our check. By this time, Abbie had thoroughly gorged herself, so we passed the time by strutting about the mostly empty dining area. Abbie had a whee of time walking to one end, then letting me turn her around so she could walk to the other end. We repeated this several times while hopefully minimally annoying the few surrounding diners, until we paid the check and probably left too much of a tip. I lifted Abbie to carry her to the car, and she complained vociferously. So I let her walk until she came to a curb, the bane of Abbie’s adventures. Abbie doesn’t climb, so she let me carry her the rest of the way. As we drove away, I wondered, “Isn’t the Iowa Endemic Hash the place that spilled red wine on me once?” Oh, yeah.

Purple Monkey Dishwasher

For the first time in almost a year, we can say “we have a dishwasher” without adding “we call him ‘Matt.’” We picked up our brand new, year old dishwasher yesterday, and gave it our inaugural wash that night. The verdict is it works.

Our new dishwasher is a portable model, which I had never heard of before we bought it from an outgoing resident. When I heard “portable dishwasher,” I imagined something you could carry with you anywhere. Just throw it alongside your tent and sleeping bag and enjoy another comfort of home while camping, or bring it to your next dinner party and let it do the work instead of your host. In reality, the dishwasher is “portable” in the same sense that a fully loaded 72-gallon fish tank is portable since there’s nothing physically preventing you from moving it. Like a fish tank, our dishwasher lacks many of the amenities generally associated with portability such as a light weight, independence from water and electricity, and handles, though it at least has wheels. The instructions tell you to place it in a location capable of supporting 180 pounds. This must be referring to your weight as you stand in front to load it, because as I carried it into our house, I figured no way it weighs less than 200 pounds empty. It’s smaller than a normal dishwasher. Of course, the new Hummer H3 is smaller than the H2, but it still won’t fit in my kitchen. If the dishwasher were another quarter-inch wider it would have permanently resided in our doorway. It’s still big enough to displace our kitchen table, meaning we now eat meals off the counter on top of our dishwasher. This new arrangement has a couple drawbacks in that we lose valuable clutter storage space without the table, plus our food is now approximately at eye-level while sitting. This is all a small price to pay for having a dishwasher.

Much to my surprise, we now use enough dishes to run it almost everyday. The last time we had a dishwasher, it was still basically just the two of us. For the month that we had a dishwasher and Abbie, she ate from nothing but bottles. Since we didn’t have enough bottles to last the entire day, I had to wash those by hand twice a day anyway, which was okay since we didn’t have enough pumping supplies to last the entire day either with Ellie pumping approximately 30 times daily. So without contributions from Abbie, we could only fill the dishwasher full enough to run it every two or three days, and even then in order to finish the load I occasionally had to scrounge up extra items, like oven burner covers or curtain rods. With our new dishwasher’s smaller size and Abbie tearing through three meals a day plus a bedtime milk snack, I can fill it and run it everyday. That’s great because we have exactly one day’s worth of sippy cups, and the consequences of running out of sippy cups would probably be immense and involve a lot of whining.

The best part about the dishwasher is it saves me time. No longer will I have to stand in the kitchen washing the dishes by hand while Abbie whimpers with boredom at my feet. Now I can do Important Work while Abbie whimpers with boredom in another room. That’s the joy of having a dishwasher that isn’t me.

"I'll have you know I wandered off from the tour."

In just the past couple of days, Abbie took some huge steps forward in the field taking steps forward. I think that her dominant locomotion changed from crawling to walking Thursday night. She continues to crawl a lot, especially when moving short distances like from book to book or from TV remote to stereo remote, or when speed is necessary such as when chasing a runaway kitty. Still, in most situations she now prefers walking. She enjoys walking so much that she occasionally takes off walking without paying much attention to where she’s going or why she’s doing it, kind of like Jerry Hairston Jr. playing centerfield.

Wandering off isn’t much of a problem at home. Thanks to our cozy living quarters that are smaller than most garages, storages sheds, and some laundry baskets, she can’t wander very far. It’s like we keep her in a hamster cage, only without the wheel for exercise so she has to keep moving in circles. The biggest problem is if she wanders out of our sight, she can get lost in the mountains of junk dotting our home’s landscape. A toddler of her size could easily hide for days between Mount Dirty Clothes and Week-Old Newspaper Peak. We also have to be careful that she doesn’t do something naughty if we leave her alone for a second. In the time it takes to run around the corner to grab something we need, like a pen, or a burp cloth, or yet another toy, she can be across the room with the TV remote in her mouth and drool all over the 4, 8, and #. She’s slow to start walking, but once she gets a full head of steam on her feet she can make the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.

When we’re away from home, her wandering off is a bigger problem. In a crowded store, the trouble with her wandering away is obvious as she could be harassed by all sorts of unsavory characters, like carnies or Cardinal fans. Fortunately I usually have a cart to strap her into in a store and a bag full of toys to distract her. Our frequent visits to garage sales create a different problem. There, I have no cart, so when she starts squirming in my arms because she wants down I usually have to set her down since there’s no way I’m giving up the chance to find 25-cent tops. The garage sale owners, who usually have their own children, generally love seeing and entertaining her for a couple minutes while I determine if the faded tag says 12M or 2T, so I don’t have to worry much about strangers. Garage sales do tend to be in garages* though, or at least driveways, so when she inevitably falls on the ground, her hands wind up covered in icky automobile leavings that she tries to eat. I also worry about her hurting herself falling on the hard concrete, but she hasn’t done so yet. In fact, when I put my foot in her walking path to prevent her wanderings she usually trips and falls anyway, so I just let her go and hope for the best.

Now that she’s more mobile she wears me out faster. That’s not good because I still have a ton of Important Work to do. Most of the time I have to concentrate on my work while she meanders about the room, looking confused as she searches for something to do. She still moves better than Hairston.

* Duh

"We figured out we could just park them in front of the TV. That's how I was raised and I turned out TV."

I have some Important Work to do on the computer right now that is far more critical than my daily internet regimen of blogging and trying to shoot the duck, so Ellie watched Abbie while I worked last night. Ellie was “post call” which is doctor lingo for “I just worked a 36-hour shift so don’t expect much out of me for the rest of the night and probably most of tomorrow.” While working, I noticed that Abbie had lasted an abnormally long time without screeching, and decided I had better check out the situation. I thought there’s a good chance Ellie had fallen asleep on the couch leaving Abbie to silently chew on the remote, which isn’t the worst thing she could do, provided the batteries don’t fall on the floor, but we’re pretty sure Abbie’s drool caused the “4” button to temporarily malfunction, and since both Comedy Central and VH1’s channel numbers start with 4, both of us felt the pain for a night. I peeked into the living room, and Ellie’s eyes were wide open and watching Abbie, though she was horizontal on the couch. Abbie’s eyes were also wide open, and watching television* in the glazed eyes, slack-jawed, expressionless manner of stereotypes.

I try to limit Abbie’s television exposure. During the day, I play the role of a Good Parent and never even turn on the television unless an extremely important event is being broadcast, like a Cubs game or the rare college basketball tournament game. At night I usually don’t turn the television on either, and thanks to reality television, I don’t feel tempted to do so. I never felt guilty about depriving Abbie of the television either because she never showed much interest in it before last night.

Now I fear I may succumb to letting Abbie enjoy it in moderation, much like fruit juice. Television causes so many maladies, though, like obesity, ADD, eye cancer, and general smart-aleckiness. And there’s no way I will tolerate her learning to say “Dora” before “dada.” Still, television, when used in moderation with careful parental oversight to ensure that she watches only educational, age-appropriate programming, can make a wonderful babysitter, and I do value my free time. Plus she might learn something from it.

Ellie used it properly last night. At first, Abbie marched about the room like she was trying to dance to the music, and dancing is a welcome first. When she wore out, Ellie grabbed her rocking chair and sat her in front of the TV. That’s where I found her, transfixed on the tube, although to be fair, she may have just been unable to get out of her chair. Either way, I still have Important Work to do so more experimentation with television is likely in Abbie’s future. I leave you with a cute dramatic reenactment of Abbie in her rocking chair.



* Ellie insists that I point out Abbie was watching a Sesame Street DVD, and not the countdown of America’s sexiest celebrities that Ellie was watching on VH1 earlier in the night.

"If you haven't asked your parent's permission, naughty-naughty! But Krusty forgives you."

Abbie is now hitting the point where she has some bad habits that we really need to stop. At first, she could make us happy just by showing some initiative to move on her own. “Oh look,” we might say, “Abbie is standing all by herself. How cute. Now she’s playing with the glass doors on the entertainment center, wildly swinging them open and slamming them shut. Awwwwww.” Now the novelty is gone, and it seems like every time I turn my head she wanders off to do something naughty.

Since she’s too young to understand anything more complicated than “Abbie,” I suppose the way to stop bad behaviors is to limit her access. We easily secured the entertainment center doors with a rubber band stretched across the doorknobs out of her reach. Now when she pulls on the doors, she quickly realizes that she can’t play with the doors or the exciting electronic equipment behind the doors. The only downside for us is removing and replacing the rubber band can be quite a pain when we need to open the doors to watch a movie, but Abbie helps us with that by keeping us too busy to ever watch a movie again.

Thwarted by a rubber band on the entertainment center, she’ll move on to something else she shouldn’t touch, like the marine fish tank*. This tank’s stand is mostly enclosed with a single glass door for access. Hidden inside the stand are all of the electrical wires, food, and highly toxic chemicals needed to keep healthy fish, or, to put it another way, lots of stuff we don’t want in her mouth. There’s nothing to attach rubber bands to here, so instead I placed a large bucket weighted down with salt in front of the door. That ends a lot of my worries since in order to play with the door and everything behind it, she’d first have to move two to four times her weight in salt, which she can’t do, but if she could lift something that heavy, I’d probably have much bigger things to worry about.

Then there’s the dog food. I feel that I’ve mined that forest dry, so for more discussion of Abbie’s fixation on dog food, see just about any previous post. I now completely remove the dog’s food dish when Abbie is awake and roaming the house. That effectively prevents any temptations she might have to munch on a few kibbles. It also prevents the dog from eating most of the day, forcing her to subsist for excruciatingly long intervals on nothing but forsaken Tasteeos flung from the highchair.

That pretty much takes care of Abbie-proofing the living room. Now there’s absolutely no way Abbie can get in trouble in the living room. Unless maybe she tries to discover what happens when a Weeble hits the television screen**. Or what happens when a Weeble hits the china cabinet***. So everyone is safe, at least until she performs the cute action of climbing on furniture.

* We have two large (55 and 72 gallon) fish tanks, but the only one she’s ever messed with is the bigger marine tank. She’s never shown any desire to mess with the smaller freshwater tank, even though it’s in her room. Maybe that’s because it’s on a completely open wrought-iron stand without a glass door to entice her.
** Answer: Probably not much.
*** Answer: Daddy and especially mommy cry.

"...the biting with the teeth and the hurting and shoving"

Abbie bit me yesterday, hard, and I have a mark to prove it. She bites things a lot, but this is the first time in a long time that she’s actually bitten me, not counting times when she’s trying to give me a kiss* or when I stick my finger in her mouth to remove something foreign like shredded paper or dog food. I don’t believe there was any malicious intent involved when she bit me, she just tried to chew on my shirt and got a little overzealous, kind of like how a baseball player can get overzealous carrying groceries and wind up breaking a bone. After she bit me, we had a screaming contest with me screaming over the searing pain of having baby teeth pierce my shoulder and her screaming over the traumatic pain of being sat on the floor. She won.

Abbie chews on everything that goes in her mouth. When I say, “chew,” I don’t just mean the “open mouth, insert everything” mentality that every young child, especially Abbie, has where all objects must be tested on multiple occasions for ingestibility. I mean everything that goes in her mouth gets chomped hard, and she puts just about anything in her mouth: Loose papers, burp clothes, doorknobs. The malleable targets like paper ends up in moist tatters on the floor. Abbie is dismantling her burp clothes a few threads at a time. Harder prey made from materials like plastic, rubber, steel, or adamantium, wind up deeply gouged. The mouthpieces on her sippy cups look like we left them in the chinchilla cage for a few weeks.

I wish I knew why she insists on grinding everything into slimy grist. A friend says that children who lose the pacifier early bite longer. This applies to Abbie since the only time she ever took a pacifier is if we put it in her mouth and held it in place. I don’t know what difference a pacifier would make, though. Maybe all babies have a finite amount of biting they need to do, and if they don’t get their biting done on a pacifier at an early age, they have to make up the difference later in life on whatever they can: Clothes, furniture, or their own teeth**. Maybe the reason is as simple as children who already have pacifiers in their mouths can’t bite other things. Or maybe that’s just a myth cooked up by the pacifier industry to guilt parents into buying more pacifiers. Regardless of the reason, the point is moot since Abbie wouldn’t take a pacifier, unless it was flavored with something she really likes, but where would I find a dog food flavored pacifier, anyway?

The solution to not getting bit is to just watch her closely since she’s a bit young for reason. When I see her doing something naughty and tell her to stop, she looks at me with an expression that says she’s trying to understand what I’m saying, or maybe the expression is just meant to distract me with her cuteness, and then she goes back to whatever naughty action she was doing. I’ll have to warn other people that she’s a biter. If they don’t believe me, I’ve got the bruise to prove it.

* She’s still working on the concept of puckering.
** Abbie is also very fond of grinding her teeth.

Other People's Screaming Children

Abbie and I went to our nearest Mega Mart store the other day. Sometimes we make these trips to purchase Vital Supplies like diapers that are on sale or newly released CD’s. Other times we make these trips because I’m bored and have run out of ideas to entertain Abbie so I let the car ride and the cart ride entertain her for me while I look for something that we’re getting low on like, oh, I don’t know, um, transmission fluid. On this particular day, I genuinely needed the Vital Supply of shaving cream because I had run out and my facial hair had reached a dangerous length where Abbie could pull on it. Plus, Ellie wanted something in the snack cracker family. As long as I’m out.

When I walked in the store, a woman was pushing her cart with a boy of about 2 years strapped inside and throwing a full-bore temper tantrum. Ten minutes later as I walked out holding a bag bursting with shaving cream and snack crackers, the same boy was still throwing the same temper tantrum. I know he was still working on the same temper tantrum because everyone in the entire store could hear his shrieking the entire time.

“Get me out of here,” the woman behind me at the register exclaimed as I grabbed my bag of Vital Supplies.

“I know,” replied the cashier. “I can’t wait until my shift is over. Why can’t he be like her?” she asked while pointing to Abbie who, at the moment, had decided to fool strangers into believing she was a calm, quiet, cooperative child.

I try not to pass judgment over strangers with screaming children. I figure it’s one of those moments where There But for the Grace of God, and Abbie, Go I. In fact, I’m pretty sure that one day There Will Go I as I scurry through the store to find something like laundry detergent while dragging a screaming Abigail behind me. So I give that haggled mother the benefit of the doubt that she was doing all she could to calm the boy while finding her family’s Vital Supplies. The screaming didn’t bother me very much anyway since I’m developing that selective hearing parents need to maintain their sanity. Still, I know the boy is too young for reason, but is it too much to take the boy outside for a couple minutes and let him scream himself out? Just a thought.

In the future, I promise to keep an open mind when visiting the Mega Mart stores because, as the saying goes, don’t judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes listening to his kids whine the whole way. Now, I believe the new Coldplay album is available for purchase.

Eat with the Animals, Drink with the Animals

Abbie has a special attachment to our pets. We watch the fish before she goes down for her nap. Her first smile went to the dog, and her best giggles still go to the dog. Her best walking episodes come as a result of hunting kitties. There’s a good chance she’ll grow up to be someone who works with animals regularly, like a veterinarian, or a Vegas novelty performer like Siegfried and Roy. Abbie now has a couple of new animal related behaviors to discuss, at great length if need be.

I mentioned in earlier posts Abbie’s obsession with dog food, as well as her new favorite game, Putting Stuff in Its Place. Abbie has a new variant of this game called Dumping Stuff all over the Floor that she loves playing with the dog food. She will sit next to the dog food dish, dig out a baby-sized handful of kibble, and open her hand to dump it all over the floor. She’ll then stare at her handiwork for a few seconds admiring the effects of gravity, the grab some more dog food and repeat the process. The first time I saw her do this I hoped she had found a source of perpetual entertainment by alternately playing Dumping Stuff all over the Floor and Putting Stuff in Its Place, but sadly she hasn’t discovered that she can chain the two games together yet. Dumping Stuff all over the Floor usually ends when she gets bored and wanders off to chew on a toy. It also often ends when she tries eating some kibble, and I deposit her far away from the dog food. Either way, the result is I pick up dog food while grumbling about our dog and her slow eating habits.

After I leave Abbie far away from the dog food, sometimes she works her way into the kitchen where she can play Dumping Stuff all over the Floor with the Tupperware in our cabinets. Once all Tupperware within reach is strewn across the floor, sometimes she will wander over to the pet’s water dish. We have a fancy water dish for our pets with an electronic pump to constantly filter the water, and a large reservoir to hold enough water to theoretically keep our pets hydrated for an entire 24-hour period. I say “theoretically” because our cats have discovered that they can play in the running water, batting at it and knocking it out of the dish, and it will almost never run out of water. The result is 20 hours after I filled it, the dish will be dryer than a can of Foster’s in Russell Crowe’s recycling bin, a large subdivision of the kitchen will be a dangerously slippery water hazard, and the offending cat will be camped in the bathtub looking for a new source of water. Abbie recently discovered the joys of splashing water out of dish herself. This is very bad because she can cup her hands to drain the dish faster than Colin Farrell can drain a bottle of Guinness. Abbie also soaks herself when she splashes in the dish. This creates a prematurely saturated diaper, a slippery baby, and a need for a change of clothes. The cats will also soak themselves when they play in the water dish, but this is less of a problem since they can lick themselves dry, or even use Ellie’s side of the bed to dry themselves if needed. I’m not happy that Abbie apparently learned from the cats to play in the water dish, but I would be happy if she would learn from the cats to dry herself. I will be concerned, though, if she learns to incorporate the cats into a magic act.

We Can Use It to Play "Baby Elephant Walk"

Abbie received many nice gifts for her birthday. Several people gave her books, providing her the opportunity to disfigure completely new tomes. Her grandmother gave her a walker that she doesn’t walk with so well, but it does have a ball game attached to it so Abbie can play her new favorite sport, Putting Stuff in its Place. A neighbor girl, possibly not realizing how long it might take, gave her money for her first Barbie when she’s ready. A few people made donations to her college fund generous enough to buy five entire seconds on campus, but, with prudent investing, I’m confident that we can raise enough cash to buy upwards of nine seconds of college when the time comes.

Then there’s the elephant organ. Her great-grandmother gave this to her with some other very nice gifts. The elephant organ is easily the most hideous toy in Abbie’s arsenal. Its premise is innocent enough. It’s shaped like a blue elephant with an octave’s worth of white and black keys, which are red on this toy, splayed across its abdomen. A pair of eighth notes appears on one key, with a different animal head gracing the rest of the white keys. Press a key, and it plays a song or a corresponding animal sound while a small light flashes.

I can hear you saying, “Gee, Matt, that sounds like a wonderful toy to me. It introduces her to music. It teaches her what sounds different animals make. The flashing light prepares her for a culture filled with epileptic-inducing attention grabbers. Most importantly, it entertains her. Aren’t you just being a weenie by whining about something to give you something to write about for today?”

The answer is, no, this thing is genuinely hideous for several reasons. First, this thing makes animal noises in the same sense that the Kansas City Royals play baseball; if you use your imagination, you can tell what it’s supposed to be doing. If a race of vaguely intelligent robots descended on our planet, abducted our animals, and replaced them with hastily made robot animal clones that make sounds similar enough to fool their alien auditory sensors into thinking it’s the same sound, that’s the kind of animal noises this thing makes. Most of the sounds are indecipherable without looking at the picture. The “cow” sounds like a siren. The “grasshopper” sounds and looks like an alien until you realize it has to be a terrestrial animal. Second, three of the seven animal keys are birds. To its credit, it’s three different bird noises, but that’s still pretty lame. It’s not exactly sophisticated enough to identify bird species by its replicated call. Third, the “black” keys do the same thing as the white keys a half step below, making the “black” keys superfluous and very lame. Forth, the song it plays is “It’s a Small World,” and once the song begins playing, it won’t stop for several minutes unless someone presses another key. Last and most importantly, it’s loud. It’s very loud. It’s ear splittingly, door rattlingly, parent crying inducingly loud.

Naturally, Abbie loves this thing, and she found a way to make it even more annoying. The other day, Abbie spit up on it, which caused the contact under the song key to malfunction resulting in it rapidly repeating the first note of “It’s a Small World” into infinity. To recreate the effect at home, try holding a smoke detector about 9 inches from your ear, then hit the “test” button. My only remedy was to remove the batteries, a task that required a screwdriver that I couldn’t find. While storming through the house in search of a screwdriver the infernal machine, Abbie kept trying to tug on my leg as she vocalized her displeasure in losing access to her beloved elephant organ. After this rare opportunity to directly compare the two noises, I could honestly say I’d rather hear Abbie scream than her elephant organ. I’d even take the Baby Ben Stein toy over the elephant organ.

An Ambling Preamble

The world before Abbie’s birth was a wonderful place where I had a perfect plan in place for raising a child. Some elements of my plan, like no fried foods as long as she lives under my roof, are still in effect. Other elements, like me working on the computer while she plays quietly in her playpen, we’ve dropped like so many Tasteeos.

One of the first aspects I dropped was not letting her have anything that makes noise electronically. Before Abbie, I couldn’t imagine any sound more annoying than a cartoon character giggling or the song “It’s a Small World After All” played over and over the way children like to do. Then Abbie was born, and it turns out that, compared to her screaming, anything that keeps her happy sounds like a Mozart concerto, albeit a concerto played by inhumanly chipper cartoon characters. Plus, toy manufacturers seem obsessed with cramming some sort of noise making chip into everything they make no matter how unnecessary, possibly because it gives them one more Brain Building feature to tout on the packaging. Apparently some people are concerned about the educational value of a set of stackable blocks unless they play “Row, Row Your Boat.”

So I’ve relaxed my anti-noise stance. It was hard to enforce anyway since people, and by “people” I mean “people who won’t have to live with the consequences,” like to give her gifts of toys. Most of these toys are actually much less irritating than I thought they’d be, perhaps because I’ve resigned myself to hearing their infinite chimes. Some toys, though, are just too grating for me to let her use. One specific toy plays about a minute long Beethoven excerpt when activated. I don’t want to sound off against specific companies here, so let’s just say a company known as Baby Ben Stein produces it. This Baby Ben Stein toy plays the beginning of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony* when activated. Beethoven’s Fifth is already an oddly intense musical choice to use in a baby’s toy, but the musical tone emanating from it is harsh and angry, like the recording reflects how Beethoven would feel about having one of history’s greatest musical works condensed into a cheaply made child’s toy. The good people at Baby Ben Stein, upon hearing this enraged tin can rendition, decided that if they couldn’t make it sound good they should at least make it sound loud. The end result being that whenever the toy is activated, usually because someone inadvertently knocked it on the ground and stepped on it, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as Varese would interpret it fills the entire house at a volume roughly equivalent to three jet engines for a full two minutes, because of course the toy doesn’t have an off switch. We usually keep this Baby Ben Stein toy out of her reach to prevent instilling an appreciation of classical music in Abbie so deep that she huddles into a whimpering ball upon hearing it.

Believe it or not, I was actually going someplace relevant to today with this post. I’ve already hit my self-imposed daily limit, though. Now I could either give you the reader a little extra bonus in your daily Abbie update, or I could just end this post with a stupid joke and finish the story tomorrow.

“Edgard Varese” can be rearranged to spell “Ravaged Reeds.”

* If you don’t recognize this piece by name, it’s the one that begins “Da da da duuuuh, da da da duuuuh.”

Putting Dog Food in its Place

Raising a child usually involves small, almost imperceptible developmental steps. Abbie might be able to drink from her bottle a little quicker than the last meal, or walk a few inches farther than yesterday, or scream a little louder than her last diaper change. On rare occasions, Abbie will take a giant developmental step as she does something that seemed impossible just minutes earlier. The first time she pulled herself up to standing was a giant step. The first word is a giant step, or at least that’s what I’ve heard from parents of Talkers. Today, Abbie took another giant developmental step. This step was so big, so monumental, that I couldn’t be more proud of her if she suddenly wrote a doctoral dissertation on how the day’s outfit that I dressed her in is wrong on four different levels.

This site’s regular readers, or Abbieupdate’s Daily Audience Members, know that Abbie enjoys eating dog food, possibly more so than the dog. On this day, Abbie was playing on the floor near the dog’s cage while Ellie watched her so I could wash dishes. As Abbie roamed the living room searching for stray remote controls she found some stray dog food kibble on the floor near the dog food dish, so she picked up a few pieces. At this point, if I had been watching her, I would have knocked the kibble from her hand while scolding her then whisked her off to her room to read to her in an effort to stop her from crying. Ellie wanted to experiment with a different parenting style, or maybe she was just tired after a looooooong day at work, and decided to watch her and see what happens. Abbie took the dog food in her hand, and, now this is the magical part here, dropped it in the dog food dish. Ellie cheered so wildly that I rushed to her side thinking some wonderful sports moment, like LaTroy Hawkins being traded, had happened to warrant such enthusiastic cheering. Ellie explained what had happened. I thought it might be a fluke occurrence, like Hawkins pitching a 1-2-3 inning, and stayed to watch her. Abbie picked up some kibble, and dropped it in the dog food dish. “YAY!” Abbie again picked up more kibble, and dropped it in the dog food dish. “YAY!” Abbie once again picked up more kibble, and dropped it in her mouth. “ARGH! No, Abbie, that’s dog food, not baby food! No, Abbie, don’t cry!”

I couldn’t be more proud of her. First, Abbie realizes that vagrant dog food belongs in the dog food dish. Then she understands that she should put the dog food in its place. Then she discovers that she can lull her parents into complacency by correctly putting the dog food away before sneaking some in her mouth. Next I’m going to give her a pen and paper so she can write an exposition entitled “Mismatched Colors, Worn-out Fabric, Wrong Size, Wrong Gender: Why My Daddy Should Never Dress Me.”

Abbie's Best 12-Month Physical Ever

When I took Abbie in for her 12-month physical, the nurses swooned over her cuteness. I didn’t think that made a whole lot of sense considering these are pediatric nurses who see nothing but babies all day, and, while Abbie may be extraordinarily cute, I’d say she’s only in the 90th percentile for baby cuteness, 95th tops. I would think their reaction would be more along the lines of “Hey, another patient. Just wait in room #3. Hey, Olga. Did you see Desperate Housewives?” Instead they came in gushing about how sorry they were that they would have to give her four nasty shots today. I explained that it’s okay since she’s been extremely cranky so far today despite her deceptively calm current demeanor, and that made everything better. No one likes to make a happy child cry, but making a crying child cry a much more is acceptable, like making the boyfriend/husband pick up tampons is acceptable as long as he’s going to be at the store anyway.

First the nurse took her vitals. Sure enough, as soon as I laid Abbie on the exam table for her probing, she began screaming. This made obtaining her vital much more challenging, but at least it planted a small desire for revenge in her for when the time for shots came. Abbie is 29 3/4 inches tall, and weighs 22 pounds. I’m not so sure about the accuracy of that weight, though, since we used the big person scale on which Abbie stood properly for approximately .000000001 seconds. We then ran down a list of Things Your Child Should Be Doing at This Age If You Want to Call Yourself a Good Parent. “Points?” Check, though she doesn’t always seem to point directly at whatever interests her. “Pinches? Cruises? Walks?” Check, check, check, though she’s not much of a cruiser. “Says 1-3 word plus mama and dada?” No, but I hardly think it’s fair to check her language skills when the grammar displayed on this checklist is so obviously inadequate. “Understands ‘Give it to me?’” That’s not fair, I’ve never said that to her in her life. “Appears to hear and see well?” At least we can salvage those two.

The nurse left us, and I proceeded to calm down Abbie with a rigorous routine of reading and singing. Just about the time the whimpering stopped, in came a young man who identified himself as the student doctor. Unlike the nurses who wanted nothing more than to coddle Abbie, this guy was obviously very uncomfortable around young children.* Back on the table she went for more probing, and back came the screams. Wanting to quickly end the horrible screeches piercing his brain soon, he started moving as swiftly as possible, which is an obvious mistake since nothing makes a baby scream harder than letting her know that you don’t want to be here either. That just gives her hope that, with a strategically timed series of shrieks and kicks, she can make you stop whatever you’re reluctantly doing. To his credit, the student doctor soldiered through the rest of the check-up, including a peek inside her ears so brief that it couldn’t have accomplished much more than verifying that she does indeed have ears. We then ran down the list of Things Your Child Should Be Doing at This Age If You Want to Call Yourself a Good Parent again, and he also fretted over the lack of talking. We also ran down a list of Things You Should Be Doing for Your Child to Maintain Any Semblance of Competent Parenting, which led to the following communication-impaired exchanges:

Dr: She’ll start showing increased (mumble)ependence.
Me: … Did you say dependence or independence?
Dr: (mumble)ependence
Me: So she’ll be even clingier?
Dr: What? No, she’ll start wandering off on her own.
Me: Oh, independence.

Also…

Dr: What are you giving her for milk?
Me: Formula.
Dr: What do you give it to her in?
Me: A sippy cup.
Dr: All right, you’ll want to move her off of that by 15 months.
Me: (Startled and a little frightened) I should make her start using a regular cup?
Dr: No, you’ll want to switch her from formula to milk.

Eventually the student doctor left, and I returned to calming Abbie back down. The regular doctor came in shortly. We had a quality discussion about Abbie’s current non-talking status. He said his own child never spoke until 15 months, and it’s nothing to worry about since many late-talkers progress normally and some even go on to graduate from middle school. We also discussed the pros and cons of using a Next Step formula instead of milk. Near as I could tell the pros centered around the fact that I could stay brand loyal, while the cons revolved around me being a moron for wasting money on it since milk costs a third as much at most.

Finally came the main event, the reason for coming, the, if you will, raison d’etre (literally translated, “the four shots”). At first the nurse was apprehensive since Abbie was still in cute mode. As soon as I laid her on the exam table, though, she screamed loud and hard. This made administering shots much easier since there was no discernable change in her behavior while being injected. The four shots pierced her quickly, and we soon left, with me comforting her all the way.

“Oh, you’ve been crying,” remarked a woman on the elevator as we left.

“Yeah, she got her shots today,” I explained.

“That’s too bad, sweetie,” she said before turning to her companion. “Hey, Betty. Did you see Desperate Housewives?”

* Ellie later explained that he wants to be a surgeon, which is good because he already has the necessary people skills.

"Wait, I need closure on that anecdote!"

Abbie is now 1-year-old. She commemorated the occasion by giving me a little reminder of what life was like one year ago: She woke up in the middle of the night screaming. This was her first 3 am screeching session in months. After thinking way too hard about letting her just cry herself back to sleep, I got up to check on her. I was hoping to find an easily remedied cause for her crying, like a radio that needed turned off or a monster that needed punched. Unfortunately, the cause was a poopy diaper, or, more specifically, a poopy diaper that had dried on the skin and caused a rash angry enough to function as a nightlight once the diaper was removed. Changing the diaper required much scrubbing with baby wipes and the application of Butt Paste ™ *, which sent Abbie from being angry about waking up in the middle of the night to being flat-out pissed off about having her nether regions wiped and pasted. A year ago I would have put a bottle in her mouth to soothe her back to sleep. Of course, a year ago I would have also gotten back up 90 minutes later to repeat the process. With Abbie being a 1-year-old, though, she should be past the point of needing a feeding in the middle of the night to soothe her back to sleep. So I sang to her. Now, if anyone reading this wants a good laugh at their human fallibility, try waking up from a deep sleep at 3 am and singing. The ensuing “music” will use only one normally inhuman pitch and have all the warmth of that squeaky voiced teenager from “The Simpsons.” Fortunately, my Darth Vader-ian crooning still worked to soothe Abbie. After several minutes of excruciating song, I set her back in her crib, and she went back to sleep with minimal fussing.

Late night crying sessions are a pain that keeps hurting, though. That morning, I woke her up a few minutes later than usual, and she was in a sleep-deprived state of major crankiness. Normally, this is just my problem, but today was the day of her 12-month physical. That’s a story for tomorrow, though, because I’m also in a sleep-deprived state of major crankiness.

* Yup, that’s really the diaper cream’s name.