"Max! Follow that frog!"

Christmas is fast approaching. At least for Ellie it’s fast approaching. Even though it’s still three months away, that’s what happens when you work nights half the time and your belly is the size of a Geo Metro and fast approaching Geo Tracker size. Plus we plan to be a little busy come Christmas time this year either caring for twin newborns, in the hospital delivering twins, or running around the house wondering how we’ll ever fit two newborns into our already cramped quarters. If we don’t shop for Abbie then she’ll have to settle for whatever toy we grab off the shelf in a potentially drowsy haze.

With that in mind, we spent last night doing some toy shopping for Abbie. This involves taking her to a toy department, letting her run loose, and following her from toy to toy. This is the same technique used by scientists to track migratory patterns in animals except they employ homing devices to track the animals while we only wish we had access to such technology because Abbie in a toy store moves much faster than any migratory animal.

We visited Toys Backwards R Us for our experiment. We chose this store partly because any store with the word “toys” in its name has to have a pretty good selection. Mostly we went because we knew they had a toy we were considering buying her on sale. It’s the Fridge Farm Magnetic Animal Set, and here’s a picture:



Technically this toy isn’t on sale. The specific deal is buy two of this company’s toys, and get a third one free. At first I thought this was a great deal, but then I remembered that LeapFrog makes this toy, and such a purchase would mean bringing three LeapFrog toys into our home.

I don’t like teeing off on specific companies, but I feel the need to do so here to warn any other parents about the dangers of allowing LeapFrog toys in their homes. LeapFrog is easily my least favorite toy manufacturer, well behind second-to-last place Baby Einstein. At least some Baby Einstein toys don’t use batteries, I can’t say that about LeapFrog. I hate LeapFrog because all of their toys use batteries to play very loud, very annoying electronic music. I hate LeapFrog because they use voices from incessantly chipper children who sound like they’re on a perpetual meth high. Mostly I hate LeapFrog because they compensate for marginal entertainment value by cramming in meaningless “educational” features. It’s not enough for a toy to play music, they have to program it to sing a song about phonics and festoon the case with letters. Not that the child has any idea how to independently operate the toy or what the significance of all those sounds is. It all feels about as forced as NBC’s Thursday night line-up.

Especially infuriating to me is their LeapPad toy, which I don’t own, but I feel qualified to comment on because I’ve read the box. This toy operates by plugging special (i.e. expensive) books and activity cards into the base. Once activated, the child can touch special areas on the page, and the toy will say the objects name, play music, or give some other reward. The toy can also ask the child to touch an object on the page, and give a similar reward when she succeeds. Basically it does the exact same thing a parent does (or should do), assuming that the parent runs on batteries, repeatedly says the exact same thing in the exact same way, and costs $29.99 plus the price of additional software. Rarely do I see parents leaving the LeapFrog section without an expression that says, “I guess kids enjoy really annoying toys nowadays.” Even more rarely do I see kids actually playing with toys in the LeapFrog aisle.

That’s enough of that rant. Now go buy some quality LeapFrog toys, like their Fridge Farm Magnetic Animal Set. This appears to be a fairly innocuous toy, push an animal front and back into the base. If it’s a match, the toy will say the animal’s name and do other animal-specific things, like make the animal’s sound. If it’s not a match, it makes up a name. Since it’s a LeapFrog toy, if you push a button it plays a song. That’s it; no seizure-inducing flashing lights, no creepy animal motions, and no phonics to smack her upside the head. As a bonus, it’s all magnetized to attach to the fridge, giving her something else to do in the kitchen besides throw pans all over the floor.

I can live with this toy. Ellie picked it out for her during her limited free time. Now all we have to do is wait for somebody to put it on sale, preferably by itself, and snatch up a copy. We have almost three months to wait.

Do You Expect Me to Talk?

I’m nearing panic mode with Abbie and her lack of communication. All the parenting resources say she should have been talking by 12 months. She still doesn’t talk except for a “mo” sound we interpret as “more” that she says only while we feed her, and in recent days she’s even stopped saying that. She doesn’t babble much, saying only a handful of sounds when she does babble (ay, uh, buh, ma, and mo). She doesn’t even point. To be fair, Ellie claims she points, I say she just grabs at things she wants. She communicates less than Brittney Spears does about her new baby.

We decided it was time to consult our pediatrician about her speech. Fortunately Ellie works with our pediatrician and can ask him questions every day. This is only fortunate for us; for him it’s the equivalent of spending every day at a Mormon dinner party with a giant “pediatrician” sign around his neck. Everyone can ask him piddling little questions about their children and hear daily updates. “Should I be worried that my child has had a cold for a week?” “What do I do when my child cries?” “My child’s nose is still stuffed after 10 days. Now what do I do?”

Not that our question is piddling or little. Our question involves communication, the very backbone of Abbie’s development. She’s already several words behind her peers; without some serious catching up, she’s on pace to spend her post-high school years living at home, sponging off her parents, and doomed to a life of unfulfilling career choices. Worse yet, she might even spend that time attending Florida State.

I shuddered thinking of all the things the pediatrician could recommend. Maybe she has hearing problems that require surgery at great expense and stress to our family. Maybe she has a learning problem that will hinder her mental development throughout her life. Maybe she doesn’t hear enough language throughout the day and I’ll have to read to her even more than I already do, a move that would seriously cut into my shower time.

What was our pediatrician’s advice? Stop coddling her. He explained to Ellie that, far from being mentally deficient, Abbie is actually a lazy super-genius, kind of like a 35-year-old electronics store clerk who’s figured out how to wire a 15x10 bedroom with a 2500-watt surround sound system, but hasn’t yet figured out how to move out of his parents’ basement. It seems that she’s smart enough to figure out that we will usually give her what she wants if she whines. Therefore she has no incentive to put forth the effort to learn a word when whining works just as well. If I don’t stop this behavior now, it will continue to worsen until one day when I find myself writing paper for her at Yale Law School.

I have no idea if our pediatrician always blows this much smoke or if we’re special because Ellie works with him. Either way, the part about her not talking because she doesn’t see the need to do so makes sense. Why learn to say “book” when daddy will read anything thrown at him? Better yet, why say anything when you’re bored when you can just whine and daddy will find something entertaining to do for you?

I no longer accept whining as a form of communication. At mealtime I require her to say for “more” before I give her another spoonful. I also accept her grabbing the spoon and bringing it to her mouth as a form of communication. No doubt this will lead to some meltdowns of epic proportions, but so far she has acquiesced to the power of the spoken word with minimal crying.

Whining while bored is a less successful. Sometimes she decides reading would be tolerable and holds a book out for me to read. I started asking if she wants to read this book, and she started saying “book,” a move that’s as refreshing as a 60-degree day to cap one of the hottest September’s I can remember. She actually says “buh,” but that’s close enough. Sometimes she refuses to say “book,” and I stare and ask what she wants. This situation often degenerates into whining, which often degenerates into biting, which her way of communicating “I just threw a book in your lap, what do you think I want? Jackass.”

Biting lands her in her crib. I wait out the screaming until I hear her calm down. At that point I walk up to her crib and ask what she wants, and she always raises her hand to signal “up.” When trapped in a crib, she has no time to wait for me to guess what she wants. I can only hope her future Yale professors also employ such strict time constraints.

"I have to go to the dentist. I have a carroway seed caught under my bridgework."

Abbie visited the dentist yesterday. You might think there’s little for a dentist to do with a 16-month-old, look at the teeth, poke around, clean a little, and shove us out the door in five minutes before she even has a chance to cry, but you’d be wrong; he didn’t even do that much with her. And boy did she have a chance to cry.

I set this appointment months ago. Six months ago to be exact, right after her last appointment. She was still in two-nap-a-day territory at that point. When the receptionist asked what time I wanted her appointment I didn’t even think about her constantly adjusting nap schedule, or possibly I was stuck in a fantasy that Abbie’s nap schedule would always allow me to nap twice a day myself. Either way, I set the appointment for 1pm thinking that’s the optimum time for a stranger to poke around her teeth; well-rested right after her morning nap and too stuffed from lunch to care.

Today she’s firmly on a one-nap-a-day schedule, and 1pm just happens to be exactly the same time that she regularly goes down for her one nap. I knew that if the dentist tried examining Abbie when she was ready for her nap that he would be about as successful as a Chicago Bears quarterback. I tried compensating for her nap time by letting her sleep in that morning until she woke herself up instead of barging in her room with lights on and radios blaring at precisely 7:30am to wake her. She slept in all of about 15 minutes. This was enough time for me to write an extra paragraph, but not nearly enough time for her to significantly adjust her nap time. I tried to fool her by moving everything back 15 minutes including her noon lunch, but when the clock struck one she was sleepier than an Arizona Cardinals fan.

I brought her into the dentist five minutes early hoping he would squeeze us in early. Instead he gave us an extra five minutes to explore her diaper bag, discovering that her duck pond toy will indeed slide under the office’s radiator, but it will be really hard to get back out. When they called her name, two other people who walked in seconds after we did were still in the waiting area. Suckers.

Examining having the dentist and I sit facing each other knee-to-knee, sitting Abbie on my lap facing me, and then leaning her back so her head rests on the dentist’s lap. At this point Abbie was vaguely concerned about her welfare, but willing to see what happens next before crying, like a Hawkeye fan waiting to see if they lose to Illinois this weekend before suffering a meltdown.

Then the dentist looked in her mouth. Abbie doesn’t like me looking in her mouth when she’s in a good mood, let alone a complete stranger prying open her mouth when obviously she hasn’t even stuffed any dog food in her mouth. Recently.

After checking her mouth, he announced that all four incisors on both the top and bottom have ruptured along with the two canines up top. That’s a total of ten teeth poking through the gum line ready to mash food, shred burp clothes, and penetrate my shirt when I ignore her. He also said her two front top molars are ready to erupt, and when they do I’m sure Abbie will erupt as well. He also may have said something about me doing a good job keeping her teeth clean, though at that point she was screaming too hard for me to decipher him; he may have just said something about lean meats, or possibly Reece’s Pieces. Regardless I’m sure the people in the waiting area were sufficiently concerned about whatever horrible torment we were inflicting on that poor little girl.

That was all he did; no cleaning, no tips for keeping her teeth clean, not even a sample toothbrush. For simply looking at her teeth to verify they exist, he can charge the insurance company $46,281,032.85. On the way out I made a new appointment, but first thing in the morning this time.

Abbie fell asleep during the five-minute car ride back home. She whimpered when I pulled her out of her car seat, and fell back asleep in my arms. She woke again when I set her in her crib just long enough to optimally position herself, and fell asleep for good. It was cute enough to make me forget the screaming she did in the dentist’s office. Briefly.

"It's like they saw our lives and put it right up on screen!"

Abbie cycles through her books, constantly picking a new favorite. One week she’ll designate “My Little Color Book” as her favorite, and every time she toddles into the kitchen whining in misery because I’m ignoring her for a minute to make her dinner, she will hold her color book. Her intention is to stop me from doing something as frivolous and selfish as working in the kitchen, and start entertaining her.

Fortunately I memorize her favorite books within hours of picking favorites. That’s a byproduct of her tendency to sit and read her favorite book in every conceivable style in one sitting. She can read a book normal, backwards, upside-down, as fast as possible, stopping and staring at a page forever, skipping the end, skipping the beginning, skipping page 2, skipping page 4, skipping pages 2 and 4, or any combination thereof. With this kind of repetition, memorization is easy. It’s also essential when she uses the “as fast as possible” style. Memorization allows me to simultaneously fill the vegetable steamer and recite her book while she turns the pages accordingly. Most CEOs would kill to achieve that level of multi-tasking proficiency. In fact, some CEO may be on trial for such a murder right now for all I know.

Last week her favorite book was “Dinosaur Roar.” This is a thrilling portrayal of the world of dinosaurs and how some are big, some are tiny. It lists opposites in rhyming groups of four sentence fragments, such as “Dinosaur roar, dinosaur squeak, dinosaur fierce, dinosaur meek. Dinosaur well, dinosaur sick, dinosaur disestablishmentarianistic, dinosaur antidisestablishmentarianistic.” The text is somewhat maddening since almost every other word is “dinosaur.” It breaks the monotony on the last couple pages, but before then 19 of the first 44 words are “dinosaur.” By the time she burns through the book in “as fast as possible” mode for a few rounds, “dinosaur” starts slurring worse and worse until I just give up and omit the word, just saying the opposite word. The Cubs used a similar strategy this year when the games just game too fast and omitted the effort against everyone but the Cardinals.

Accompanying the insightful text are pictures of fairly realistic dinosaurs juxtaposed with vaguely human faces; it’s like a Disney animator who worked on Aladdin, not the good movie but one of the bad sequels or possibly even the animated series, lost his job and is now putting food on his table by drawing children’s books with Disnified dinosaurs.

I never expected Abbie to like the dinosaur book. I found it at a garage sale and picked it up for the twins. I know boys love dinosaurs because they’re big and scary and probably capable of beating up big sisters. I always assumed that girls had little interest in dinosaurs because they’re big lizards, and what girl likes lizards? It turns out my wife likes lizards, or at least did. She liked dinosaurs so much when she was little that she wanted to be a paleontologist. So if Abbie is anything like her mother she will have a strong interest in science and she’ll be a snotty know-it-all child.

This is a new week, though, which means her new favorite book is “Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?” Instead of documenting the lives of dinosaurs with opposites, I now illustrate the wonderful world of sounds we inhabit with moos and buzzes while steaming her vegetables. “Dinosaur Roar” is relegated to her room. She’ll sit and read it through it several times with me if I hold it for her, but she usually doesn’t choose it on her own. Maybe someday it will cycle back to her favorite book. That would be right after “My Little Color Book” takes another turn at the top I guess.

"...Get a good job with good pay and you're okay..."

Money is tight for us right now. Technically speaking money will be tight when the twins come. Right now we can continue in the free-spending ways we enjoy with Ellie working full-and-a-half time to support a family of three, one of whom is still too young to ask for anything. As enjoyable as it is to eat at Fazoli’s and Quizno’s in the same week, now is the time to save money for an uncertain future. It’s like that fable, “The Tortoise and the Hare,” where the Tortoise challenges the Hare to a race. The Hare accepts the race, and is so confident he’ll win that he spends the entire summer goofing off while the tortoise gathers nuts for the long winter. When the race begins, the Hare finds a thorn in his paw. Unable to remove it himself, he wants to hire a mouse to pull it out, but since he has no savings, he can only limp through the race and watch the Tortoise beat him. We need to be like the Tortoise who was smart enough to save for the future and find an easy mark to beat.

The twins could come literally any day now at this point, though hopefully not for several more weeks. They’re medically viable outside the womb right now, which is a scary thought since I could be caring for twins by this time next week. Of course when I say “I” I mean “the NICU,” but I’d have to pay for it. Of course when I say “it” I mean “the insurance deductible and co-pay,” but even a fraction of several weeks worth of NICU bills is enough to dwarf Ashton Kutcher’s alimony payments when he splits with Demi Moore.

Then there’s the prospect that Ellie could wind up on bed rest for weeks. She’d be unable to work, and we’d have to survive without her income. Even worse for her, she’d be unable to watch cable while lying in bed all day because that would be the first bill cut from the budget. Oh cruel irony.

Facing an uncertain future and tenuous finances, we spent yesterday doing what any rational couple would do: We went on a shopping spree. The nearby K-Mart was having a fall clearance sale, which they advertised with signs at major intersections held by men of varying levels of disheveledness. Contracting with the apparently homeless, or “Bumvertising” as “The Daily Show” taught me, worked since that was the fullest I’ve seen the store since Martha Stewart went to prison.

Inside we found five racks of clearanced baby and toddler clothes. A goodly amount, but I’m not sure it warranted the extensive Bumvertising. Ellie picked through the racks picking out several items while I chased Abbie through the boy’s underwear. While in the store we also picked up a pack of newborn diapers that was on sale because it’s never too early to stock up, and a potty that wasn’t on sale because, hey, I can dream, can’t I?

We also stopped at a classier (higher-priced) store while we enjoyed a wild Sunday afternoon on the town. Ellie peeled through the clearance rack, found nothing, and went straight to the Carter’s sleepers, which as luck would have it were on sale. She wanted to pick up some newborn sleepers. I told her that we already had a drawer full of sleepers in the 0-3 month size decorated with neither princesses nor flowers. She informed me that these were newborn sleepers, which are suitable for babies up to 8 pounds, which should last about two to four weeks. Unable to argue with that logic, I had her pick up a pair.

We stopped at the toys on the way out. There we picked up a $30 toy set clearanced for $10. It’s for ages 18 months and up, but that’s okay since we’re going to save it for Christmas. Even if mommy ends up stuck in bed and the twins land in the NICU for weeks, Abbie will still have something to open on Christmas morning. And since she’s too young to remember us buying it right in front of her, it will be a complete surprise.

"Heh heh. Allllll riiiiiightt."

One of the greatest things I can hear from Abbie is laughter. Of course, since she still can’t/won’t talk, laughter is the only pleasurable sound she makes. In a pleasurability contest between laughter, whining, and crying, laughter wins; it isn’t even close, like a football game between Iowa and Ohio State.

Until she belts out a “dada,” laughter is the best thing I can hear from her. Laughter is good, it lets me know that she’s enjoying life at the moment as opposed to the rest of the day that she spends in stone-cold silence or whining in response to the horrible agony that is being denied access to the dishwasher. Laughter lets me know that occasionally I do this parenting thing right.

Fortunately I recently found a nifty new ways to make her laugh and validate my parenting. All I have to do is announce “giggity giggity giggity” in front of her. This is the same catchphrase used by Glen Quagmire on “Family Guy,” which makes it a vaguely disturbing thing to say to a child if you know anything about Quagmire. I discovered this tactic while swinging Abbie in the park. I talk to Abbie constantly throughout the day in an effort to expose her to as much language as possible and show her that all the cool people talk. While swinging her, I generally declare, “swing” every time I push her in the hopes that one day she will put two and two together and say, “swing” when she wants in the swing. Or she can say, “swing” when she wants a drink of milk, or to point out the cat; the important thing is she learns to say something.

After exclaiming “swing” for the 8,173,725th consecutive time in under five minutes, my speech starts to slur and my mind starts to wander. Having watched my “Family Guy” DVD earlier in the day, the term “giggity” popped into my head. I don’t remember exactly what I saw Quagmire do or say, but I’m pretty sure it (a) was amusing, and (b) ended with “giggity giggity giggity.” So I started saying “giggity” every time I pushed her, and instead of her normal emotionless expression like she was indulging my wild fantasy involving swinging my daughter, she chuckled. Intrigued, I started exclaiming “giggity giggity giggity” every time I pushed her, and she thought that was pretty funny. Then I just started saying “giggity giggity giggity” without pushing her, and she thought that was hilarity rivaling even her dancing stuffed lamb.

Now when I take her to the park, I wait for her to look like she’s not paying attention to me, like when she’s trying to decide between the swing or the slide, I walk up to her and declare “giggity giggity giggity,” and watch her collapse into a laughing ball of toddler. For maximum impact, I can tickle her while saying the magic words; she laughs hard enough to pee her pants, which is okay since she’s wearing a diaper anyway. If I ever need a laugh, I can prompt Ellie to say “giggity giggity giggity,” which usually comes out as “giggity gig e gigy dammit.” I laugh hard enough to pee my pants, which isn’t okay since I’m the one who does laundry in our house. At least my laughter lets her know that she’s doing the parenting thing right. And it stops me from saying “giggity giggity giggity” for a minute.

Not That Many, But More Than You Might Think

I never know what I’ll find at a garage sale. Sometimes I find clothes, toys, and books in great condition. Sometimes I find great prices. Sometimes I find both at the same garage sale, though that’s pretty rare. And then sometimes I find a garage sale proprietor who, upon seeing me approach with Abbie toddling at my side, says, “You can come and look if you want, but I don’t have much for little girls. I have twin boys.”

“Gee, what a coincidence…”

To think I almost skipped this garage sale. I have a rule of thumb to never stop at a garage sale unless I know they have children’s stuff. I usually determine their stock by combing through the newspaper classifieds. The listings are organized by neighborhood, allowing me to find garage sales in the appropriate areas, whereas “appropriate” is defined as “close and/or wealthy,” and then search for the words “baby,” “kid,” “boy,” “girl,” or ”day care.” Especially enticing are mentions of name brands, along with the words “desperate,” “must go,” “nothing over a dollar,” or “nothing over a quarter.” I can usually quickly eliminate the longest listings and anything that proclaims “estate sale;” these usually have massive amounts of beautiful and expensive antiques and other pretty things that have little value to me, partially because we can’t fit anything frivolous into our home, and partially because I expect most objects in our home including the pets to be marred by crayons or other coloring paraphernalia in the next six years.

There is no law requiring garage sales to advertise in the newspaper,* and many choose to advertise on the nearest street corner and save their $20, which is probably smart since $20 is about what we grossed from our one pre-Abbie garage sale. This is the route the mother of twins took. Usually I drive right past these signs with my tunnel vision focused squarely on the next advertised sale that promises “tons of baby items.” These signs generally just say “garage sale” with an address or arrow; the flashier ones might have balloons tied to them. Too often they point to lame garage sales offering obsolete college textbooks, dusty dishes, videotapes of movies that stunk when they were new, and more of the same type of junk we tried selling at our garage sale. These sales aren’t worth the time it takes to drive off-course and rubberneck as I drive past to discern their wares.

This mother was smart and put several target words on her sign that caught my attention; words like “crib,” “stroller,” and “high chair.” “Desperate” may have also been on her sign as she had several name brand garments at give away prices. She said she was moving soon and didn’t want to move so much stuff with her, and I was happy to help.

We had a nice conversation about what her situation and what I could learn from it. Her boys are now 3-years-old and in preschool, which explains how she had the time to sit at a garage sale leisurely reading a book.

She suggested making a T-shirt with common questions and answers written on it because I was going to be saying the exact same things everywhere I went. She said this several minutes after she asked if our twins were identical.

She warned that the first few weeks would be rough, but things would get easier. Sometimes I feel like I’ve waited 16 months for this advice to kick in with Abbie.

She asked when they were due, and I gave one of my favorite answers: “January 15th, but you know how twins are,” knowing that she indeed knew exactly how twins are early. I then said we want to make it until Christmas, but ideally we just want the twins to stay out of the NICU. She said her boys came almost six weeks early and spent ten days in the NICU. It would have only been three days, but one of the boys didn’t want to eat and needed intensive coaxing. So now I have a reference point to fret over.

It was good to meet and talk to another parent of young twins. There aren’t many of us out there, though it’s more than I think sometimes. We enjoyed a symbiotic relationship for a few minutes; she gave me advice, and I gave her money for her old clothes. I also gave her one of the most precious gifts a mother of twin boys can receive: A little girl to play with for a few minutes while I looked for deals.

* H.R. 2651 “The Register Needs More Ad Revenue Bill” died in committee last year.

How I Spent My Mid-Week Vacation

Ellie has had a rough week. She worked a standard hectic day on Monday, and then worked consecutive 12-hour days on Tuesday and Wednesday. This is on top of being sick, being pregnant with twins, and growing in size by a couple zip codes recently. Plus we visited the grandparents this past weekend, an experience that trails only hurricane evacuations in stressfulness. So she’s about as tired as a “Lost” fan waiting for some actual answers.

Then Thursday came like a beautiful gift from a reality TV show; one of the good reality TV shows too, not the kind where they make you eat steamed bull testicles. Thanks to a scheduling quirk, she had the entire day off. It was a nice day too, one of the first days in this ridiculously warm September where the high temperature never even reached 80. It was the kind of day where ten years from now she might spend it golfing, assuming that she takes up golfing some time in the next ten years. To celebrate this gift from God, or the schedule, or a reality TV show, or whoever, we naturally spent the day running around town taking care of pregnancy related details instead of doing something constructive, like napping.

At least we spent the afternoon on pregnancy errands. Ellie spent her morning off from the hospital working at the hospital. She had some clerical matters to address concerning her license. When you’re a doctor, apparently the state doesn’t just take your word and that of your employer and school your proficiency at practicing medicine in perpetuity; they insist that you complete a few hours of busy work on the computer every few years to prove your competency.

Having satisfied the state, we left for Ellie’s latest ultrasound appointment. We set Abbie down for her nap before leaving, giving the baby monitor to our neighbor in case a closet monster attacks in our absence because she shouldn’t wake up before we return. This ultrasound proceeded much like the previous one, except quicker since we already knew most of what they pointed out. The fact that a fire alarm didn’t go off like during the last ultrasound also help speed the process.

Both little guys are doing fine. One is 1lb 4oz, the other is 1 lb 6oz; both are the ideal weight for a single-birth pregnancy, which helps explain Ellie’s girth. Both are adding meat to their bones, meaning they look more like humans in facial shots, and less like aliens (or dogs if they’re using the fancy mode). They confirmed that one of them is a boy with a shot that certainly violated child pornography laws.

We left their office feeling filthy, returned home to find that the closet monster did not attack, and found Abbie still sleeping. Once she awoke I stuffed her full of applesauce and we left again as a family, this time to fill a prescription for Ellie. This wasn’t a prescription for something normal like amoxicillin or methadone; this was a prescription for special support garments, and when I say “special” I mean “expensive.” She picked up a back brace and pair of stockings specially made for pregnant women who have developed a discernable gravitational pull. These are sturdy garments meant to bear the full load of her full load, and are possibly reinforce by diamond fibers woven into the fabric that, although impractical, would help justify their price.

We bought these garments in a little specialty store, the kind you would never know existed if you never visited it. It was filled with garments and accessories designed to assist women who have medical issues like uber-pregnancies and mastectomies. They accordingly expected young children to accompany these women as they had a chest full of toys to entertain the offspring while mommy finds the right size. If the toy chest failed, they had a few backup forms of entertainment, like suckers or, if they’re desperate enough, rubber boobs. They had a very nice staff that eagerly offered Abbie the sucker when they wanted to watch a 16-month-old eat a sucker, and then helpfully offered the use of their bathroom when she drooled sucker juices all over herself. I would certainly look forward to seeing their smiling, sucker offering faces again if the need would ever arise, which it already has arisen since Ellie left her insurance card at the store. That’s the kind of forgetfulness that happens when she’s that tired.

Allergens Redux

This blog’s regular readers will remember my recent post complaining about my allergies. In case you don’t devote segments of your brain to remembering minutiae from my life, scroll down a couple pages or read my quick review: My nose was simultaneously stuffed and running. It sucked.

A week later I can look back and say, “allergies? Not so much.” In the ensuing time, first Ellie then Abbie contracted colds leading me to think that, while allergens contributed to my misery, cold molecules caused most of it. On one hand this is a relief because I feared that I had suddenly gone from mildly uncomfortable to tragically snotty in the presence of pollen. It’s good to know that this time next year I’ll be just irritated enough to be unexplainably slightly grumpier, though I’ll also be raising three children under the age of three at that time so no one may notice a little extra grumpiness. On the other hand, I wish I would have known that I was actually sick so I could have taken some steps to dealing with it, like take some of my sweet controlled medicines containing pseudoephedrine (shh, don’t tell the authorities) or call in sick to my job, and when I say “job” I’m of course referring to this blog. Oh, and had I known I was sick maybe I wouldn’t have transferred germs to the rest of my family. That’s important too.

Ellie came down with my cold at the best possible time during her residency. She’s on a couple of relatively easy rotations giving her plenty of time to rest. Had this cold struck a few weeks sooner or later, she would have been on “Medicine,” a brutal rotation requiring lots of running around and little sleep. I believe “Medicine” earned its name because of the powerful drugs many residents have to take to survive it. Of course when you’re pregnant with twins no time is a good time for a cold, especially if you’re trying to work at the same time. The past couple weeks have been especially harsh for her as her pregnant body has grown in size from “two-bedroom loft” to “three-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath ranch.”

Abbie is accepting her affliction surprisingly well. The last time she was sick I remember her being exceedingly cranky, even more so than usual. She’s been in a fairly good mood the past couple of days in spite of her snot-encrusted sinuses, possibly because she’s still too young to remember happier times and nasal breathing. In fact, yesterday was one of her best days in a long time as she was content to busy herself with her books and staircases while I did important work like cleaning out our messy basement and cleaning out my messier e-mail account.

I suspect her suspiciously pleasant demeanor of late is related to the powerful* cold medicine I’m giving her before bedtime that lets her sleep extraordinarily well. The medicine is basically a 12-hour children’s version of Benadryl. Benadryl is a super decongestant, drying out sinuses to the point where you may start licking used dishes in an attempt to contract another cold to moisten things back up a bit. Not that this drying out has much of an effect on Abbie; some medications have no effect on children, especially very young children. What Benadryl does do to all human beings regardless of age (except for my mother apparently) is make them very sleepy. There are many ethical questions revolving around the practice of giving young children medicine that does nothing for them but put them to sleep, but I have no time to ponder those questions while enjoying a full night of sleep myself instead of comforting her every couple of hours.

Despite her relatively good mood this time, I can easily infuriate her by trying to wipe her nose. She’s always hated the nasal aspirator, but this anger at the tissue paper is new. Her fury may be related to the abrasion that she suffered falling off the steps the other day. Now when I try to wipe away the snot oozing out her nose, I apparently irritate the raw patch on her nose and she reacts like Jeff Gordon suffering a race-ending accident. Thanks to this blog, she’ll be able to remember forever about the time how she got a cold and had her nose wiped at 16 months, and it sucked.

* “Powerful” here is defined as “expensive.”

Stairway to Kittens

I walked out of the bathroom yesterday. Nothing unusual there, but the first thing I saw upon opening the door was Abbie standing on the couch, and whining in agony that she was unable to climb down. “Oh,” I remarked, “I guess she can climb up on the couch by herself now.”

Climbing up and down things is Abbie’s newest passion. To heck with frivolous pursuits like reading books or learning to talk, climbing on things has real-life applications; it’s the key to reaching all those exciting objects that mommy and daddy leave just out of reach, like the remote controls and the telephone. I knew that she had been trying to climb on the couch because every time someone tries to lie on the couch and selfishly eat potato chips or some other snacky item without sharing, Abbie attempts to scale the cushions and collapse into your lap in order to share her pain as close as possible to you. You might not comprehend the mammoth misery that is not eating a potato chip if she simply whines at your side. She had never successfully climbed onto the couch before, possibly because her anguish crippled her. Fortunately our new bed is higher than the couch, so we can still snack in bed without worry of being bothered (physically at least).

As much fun as it is to ascend furniture, especially when a kitty is resting on top of said furniture, she especially loves climbing stairs. While visiting her grandfather’s house this weekend, she shunned all of the wonderful non-childproofed objects left within her reach, like the computer and the computer accessories, in favor of climbing up and down the stairs. Preparing lunch at home is a harrowing experience that involves softly banging around the kitchen, pretending that you’re not doing anything interesting. If Abbie discovers that you’re actually steaming the most delicious peas imaginable, she will torturously howl until offered a pea, or at least a Tasteeo. Cub fans behave in much the same way once they sniff success only to see it simmering just out of reach, the difference being Cub fans have gone 97 years without a championship, Abbie has gone closer to 97 minutes. At grandpa’s house, though, Abbie doesn’t even notice the hash browns crackling in the frying pan, not with a steep set of stairs to drag daddy up and down.

She mastered her ascending technique long ago. If I’m around, she grabs my hand and uses it to pull herself up one step at a time. If I’m busy chasing the dog in the backyard or blogging downstairs, she doesn’t let a little danger slow her down, she crawls up the steps using her hands on a higher step to pull her legs up. More than once I’ve sat down at the computer to search for important information (Cubs game recap) and turned around to see her halfway up the basement steps with nothing but a concrete floor to catch her should she fall. I rescue her as soon as I see her in this precarious position, waiting until she’s safe to learn that Patterson went 0-4 with 3 K’s.

Her descending technique is new and what I believe she is working so diligently to improve. She will sit down near the edge of the step, with “near” being a relative term as sometimes she sits several inches behind the edge, kicks her legs out in front of her, and then slowly pulls herself over the edge until her feet are solidly on the next step and she can stand. She greatly prefers to have me near so she can grab my hands and pull herself forward, dragging the seat of her pants in an attempt to ruin them and ensure that no one else may wear them when she outgrows them. If I’m not near she generally whines until I approach her with hands outstretched. Yet sometimes I wonder where she learned to whine as her primary form of communication.

She loves practicing her stair techniques that when we go in the backyard, she will climb up and down the steps instead of finding rocks to shove in her mouth. This is a great relief to me as stair climbing is safer than rock chewing. At least that’s what I thought until yesterday morning when she lost her balance on the steps and fell face first onto the concrete landing right in front of me. Now while shopping for Vital Supplies, strangers get to guess if I’m an abusive father, or just neglectful. “Oh,” I thought while comforting her, “I guess she’s not as steady around the steps as I first imagined.”

"You promised to take me to the apron expo today."

We went to a baby expo at our hospital of choice this weekend. A baby expo is a convention for the expecting to tour the hospital’s birthing facilities and communicate with non-profit organizations that want the best for your future child and businesses that want to sell you goods and services you never knew you needed. Ellie wanted to see the rooms where she would spend several days virtually bedridden. I wanted to collect all the free stuff the businesses were giving away to attract you to their booth.

First we toured the birthing facilities. This being our preferred hospital, and when I say “preferred” I mean “only option,” we wanted to see the layout of the rooms, find out what kind of accommodations they offer, and investigate the food I’ll be eating while Ellie recovers. Even though we still live in the same area, this is not the same hospital that delivered Abbie. We have four hospitals in Des Moines, but Ellie works at one of those hospitals and delivering there would be weird. That leaves three hospitals, but Ellie’s OB group only works at two of them, eliminating another before we even have a chance to evaluate its food offerings. Ellie chose the hospital to deliver Abbie from the two remaining options because of some bad experiences she had with the cabal that operates the other hospital. We enjoyed our experience at that hospital as much as possible with a horribly painful life-altering event, but we’re stuck delivering the twins at the hospital that jerked Ellie around in the past. Twins have a high probability of needing care in the NICU,* and the NICU at the hospital where we delivered Abbie consists of a nasal aspirator and a warming table with a power switch that must be jiggled just right to turn on. Forced into her last choice of hospitals, this was Ellie’s chance to evaluate the facilities and determine if a couple bad experiences mar the delivery center.

It turns out, they do. Unlike the hospital for Abbie’s delivery, this hospital will shuffle us between two rooms during our stay; one for labor, and once the twins are born they move us into another room, the post-partum room, which I see as a clinically cold name that unfortunately reminds me of post-partum depression. There could be a third room if you count the C-section room that Ellie will likely have to visit. Ellie was miserable over the multitude of rooms we’d have to visit, but I was pleased that the tour’s hospitality room offered a fruit tray to keep Abbie occupied during the expo, and some awesome frosted sugar cookies.

We took the elevator down and traversed a long and winding hallway to the vendors and the rest of the expo. Along the way, we realized that having the expo spread over four floors on two different wings was a depressingly accurate premonition of the room shuffling we’d have to do. Since Abbie is young and the horrors of her first year are still fresh in our minds, I wasn’t looking for much information on having a baby. I hoped to find some information on multiples, but all we found when we mentioned twins were a lot of joy and even more sympathy.

My main goal was looting as much free stuff as possible from the vendors. Most booths had candy like Tootsie Rolls or Hershey Kisses to attract people, not realizing the obvious superiority of the frosted sugar cookies upstairs. We collected a decent board book from a toy booth, a two-pack of diapers, formula samples which aren’t our brand but are in single-serving travel pouches so I will find a use for them, and breast pads aplenty. Two area dairies had booths at the baby expo for some strange reason, but I was glad they came because one handed out samples of yogurt to entertain Abbie, and another handed out ice cream on a stick to entertain me. One of the neatest items we found is a dry-erase board for the fridge where we can write instructions to the babysitter should we ever feel wealthy enough to hire one to watch three children under two. It has spaces for us to write down acceptable snacks (“None. Well, maybe one animal cracker. One.”), bedtime (“9:15. Sucker.”), and special instructions (“We know exactly how much is in the change jar so don’t even think about it.”). We picked up a few pamphlets too, such as one on tooth development so when I fret over her teeth erupting late I can have a baseline to compare it to. We also gave away our private information to vendors in exchange for a miniscule chance of winning a prize in a drawing that may or may not ever actually happen. The only thing we didn’t find was coupons, so I’ll just have to keep building my collection through flyers. I compensated for my coupon deficiency by heading back up to the birthing center for a couple more frosted sugar cookies on our way out.

* NICU is a Latin word meaning “the place for really sick babies.”

"Each trip's a trip to paradise, with my baby on board."

We’re back from visiting the grandparents. The parenting highlight of the trip was discovering that Abbie is outgrowing her stranger anxiety. No longer does she break down into hysteric tears when approached by grandparents or other unfamiliar people who may have intentions of forcing horrible things on her, like clipping her fingernails or teasing her with an open dishwasher only to slam it shut when she approaches. Now she simply looks uneasy when a grandparent looms near, like she’s ready to burst into tears at the first sight of fingernail clippers, but is willing to wait until such implements appear before doing so. This behavior is good for her self-preservation because crying at her grandparents will put her on their bad side, and if she wants any hope of being spoiled she’d better stay on her grandparents’ good side. Heaven knows she has no chance of her parents spoiling her.

The parenting lowlight of the trip was discovering that Abbie will no longer sleep in the car for much more than an hour. If she were a year younger, short naps would be no big deal; simply stop long enough to feed her, let her explore the outside world long enough to forget the confinement of her car seat, and drive (hopefully) the rest of the way home as she drifts back to sleep and we rock out to the sounds of “Now 16.” Now she’s on a one nap a day schedule, which means that when she wakes up one hour into a three-hour car ride, don’t bother stopping because that simply delays the arrival, and the sooner we arrive at the destination, the sooner we can stop listening to either her incessant complaining about being trapped in the car or, possibly worse yet, the incessantly repeating Sesame Street CD that’s the only thing preventing further complaining.

She woke up after about an hour nap on both the departure and return trip, but we took two different routes so she awoke under very different circumstances. When we left Des Moines to see my family, we took the shiny interstate for the entire rural portion of our travels. In an effort to minimize waking events, we kept as quiet as possible while she slept: No radio, no talking, just stone-cold silence as if one of us (probably Ellie) was really mad for something the other one did (probably me) when we were actually really frightened of the wrath we might incur should the little one awake. After an hour of napping, her eyes popped open with no unusual outside stimulus: No sudden stops, no loud noises, just the rolling nothingness that comprises I-80. We spent the rest of the trip (about 90 minutes, she fell asleep about 30 minutes down the road) shoving toys in her lap and singing along with Ernie while I could only wish to hear a college football game on the radio.

On the return trip, we left from the farm owned by Ellie’s family in rural Iowa, and therefore returned home via the finest two-lane highways northwest Iowa has to offer. This meant lots of outside stimulus as I decelerated into turns, stopped for stop signs, and cringed as we thundered over rumble strips that are ironically designed to wake up sleepy drivers as they approach stop signs. Abbie fell asleep fairly quickly, and I was very proud of my driving as I had kept the car in constant motion for the first hour of the trip despite the presence of multiple stop signs. Then Ellie decided she wanted an ice cream cone. I asked if she was crazy, she swore by her sanity and insisted the stop wouldn’t wake Abbie. I insisted it would, but decided to pull over; Ellie is incubating twins and deserves all of the ice cream she wants.

I rolled into the parking lot, and stopped next to the restaurant door after mulling the option of letting Ellie hop out of a moving vehicle. I told her to be quick and quiet, but before she could click the door I saw bright eyes peering around the back seat. I told her to hop back in and we’d just take the drive-thru.

I spent the next half-hour seething, burning the moment into my head when I was right and she was wrong. Sure she might have been about to wake up anyway, but I don’t want that fact to get in the way of my recollection. Years from now, when the twins are out of the house and Ellie and I have nothing to do but argue about minutia from past events, we’ll have an argument about what color the neighbor’s house used to be, and I’ll triumphantly state that I must be the one who’s right (it was yellow) and she must be wrong (it was off-white) because that one time I correctly predicted that Abbie would wake up if we stopped means I’m right more often than she is.

Then I had to come back to Earth because Abbie was whining and Ellie couldn’t reach any more toys. No time to burn spiteful memories, I spent the next two hours concentrating on grabbing toys and singing along with Ernie. Our future neighbor’s house will probably be brick anyway.

Everybody's Working for the Weekend

Not to brag or anything, but we’re planning an exciting weekend featuring hours of time in the car, mountains of equipment to load and unload, and prayers that Abbie takes a decent nap in the car or else everyone is going to be in trouble. That’s right, we’re making a road trip to see the grandparents, which means no new posts on here until probably Monday night.

Papa's Got a Brand New Bed

No doubt the regular readers of this blog have one question: What happened to your bed? As you may recall, Ellie decided we need a new bed since years of resting on an ancient set of box springs transformed our old mattress from comfy to lumpy. Under normal circumstances, I’d simply laugh if Ellie suggested we spend a few hundred dollars on a new bed; we have more important things* to spend money on. Ellie would in turn respond by spending a couple hundred dollars at the mall, giving both of us the satisfaction of kind of getting our way. That’s called compromise, and you might want to remember it because it’s the secret to a marriage that’s almost lasted long enough to bring three children into the world. In one of life great ironies, right up there with Marc Antony claiming to bury Caesar instead of praising him, or Alanis Morissette performing a song titled “Ironic” that doesn’t actually have any irony in it, the twins are simultaneously the source of our impending fiscal black hole for which we every spare cent must be devoted, and the impetus for Ellie needing a semi-extravagant purchase of a new bed. As much as enjoy squirreling money away for future needs like nuts being stored by a, um, squirrel, Ellie is the mother of my children, and is therefore entitled to all of the extravagance necessary to keep her upright and working.

Ellie did the nice thing and decided she wanted one of the beds we saw at an outlet store. This bed was about two-thirds the price of the comparable beds from the fancy stores that waste their money on luxuries like multiple sales personnel, adequate lighting, and insect control. It could be even cheaper depending on how serious they were when they claimed to be flexible with the price. Her biggest concern with it was she thought it might be too soft for me and my firm mattress preference. While Ellie tried it out in the store, I was too busy corralling Abbie and preventing her from chewing on the floor displays to lie down, so I missed my chance to feel it. When she told me we could save enough money on the bed to buy the nicest Pack ‘n Play made, the kind God would use for His baby’s sleeping quarters if He lived in a really small house, I decided to buy it as long as I could tolerate it in the store.

Abbie and I ventured to the furniture store alone because mommy had to work and she wanted her bed now. I found our target and waited for the lone salesman to work his way over to us. Once I verified that this was the bed Ellie wanted, I set my awesome bartering skills to work:

Me: How much is this bed?
Salesperson: $X
Me: We were in here earlier and they said you were flexible with the price. Is that still true?
Salesperson: Yep.
Me: Will you take $Y?
Salesperson: Yep.

Obviously I should have thrown out $Z as a starting price, but we got our bed. That night while Ellie was still at work, I picked up the new bed, set it up in our bedroom, and disposed of the old bed (stacked it in our living room) by myself. It was hard work, but I figured I needed to do something special for her, especially after saying that she spends a couple hundred at the mall when I say we can’t afford something even more expensive when I know very well that she never spends nearly that much and she only buys clothes which she needs, especially maternity clothes, because she rarely buys clothes anymore. We’ve slept on it for a week now, and Ellie’s random pains are gone. After an adjustment period of a couple days where I barely slept, which I blame more on the allergies than the bed, I like it as much as the old bed. I know the cats like it too because they pooped all over it the first morning we had. They’re not allowed in the bedroom anymore. Fortunately I noticed it quickly, or at least noticed that the dog had noticed it quickly, so the only thing they ruined was the sheets. Even after buying new sheets, we still saved enough money to buy God’s Pack ‘n Play.

* Two of them in fact.

Immobile Diversion

When a family brings a baby into the world, there’s a lengthy list of essentials needed to care for that baby. If you’re not sure what should be on that list, fine retailers like Babies “R” Us are happy to provide you with one when you register. That way you know exactly what to acquire to give your child every advantage in the world, unless of course you don’t love your baby enough to want a decorative switch plate cover for the nursery.

One of the most extravagant items on such a list is the stationary entertainer. We usually call these monstrosities “exersaucers,” but it turns out that’s a brand name people use to refer to a category of products, like when people say “Kleenex” to refer to “tissue paper,” or “Vaseline” to refer to “petroleum jelly,” or “Band-Aid” to refer to a “band-aid.” People use these brand names because the product’s descriptive name is clunky and difficult to say and write, which I’m going to prove by using the term “stationary entertainer” throughout the rest of this post.

Stationary entertainers come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Sometimes they look like animals. Sometimes they look like cars. Sometimes they look like rocket ships, which is appropriate because they look like you need to be a rocket scientist to operate them. (Here is a link to Amazon’s stationary entertainers page if you want to see what they look like.) Because we love her, here is the one we bought for Abbie:



It has lots of toys including the small pieces of plastic produce seen on the bottom level, and a seat that rotates easily so the child can easily reach everything of interest. At least the modeled pictured has those features. We bought ours used at a garage sale so it’s missing some of the loose pieces, but the chair still rotates easily so long as there isn’t anything heavy like a child sitting in it and weighing it down. Besides those issues and the expected grime build-up on all used baby equipment, it works fine, and it’s a great way to prove my love for $10.

I had high hopes for this stationary entertainer. My dream was Abbie would spend her days building dexterity and coordination while I worked on important projects at her side. My fantasies were buoyed by reviews for other stationary entertainers that read like “My son loved this from the moment we set him in it! He spends all day in it and has the time of his life! In fact, he complains when we don’t put him in it! He starts classes at MIT this autumn, and this is the one thing he wants to bring with him!”

Alas, Abbie did not enjoy her stationary entertainer. I tried putting her in it while I worked on the computer, but she usually started complaining before the screen saver even disengaged. She showed very little interest in the squeaky lamb, the spinning cow, or the chewable scarecrow. We did however manage to manage to use it heavily for a month by filling the interior track with Tasteeos, letting her chase and gum them to death while we ate supper in peace by her side.

It’s disassembled now in her room, waiting for use from the twins. We left the top portion with the toys on the ground, and occasionally she wander over to it to squeak the lamb or spin the windmill before she realizes she’s stuck in the seat and whines until we can rescue her.

We also left the tractor detached from the base, which is the one part of her stationary entertainer that she enjoyed. She still loves it because when you push its smokestack, it plays one of 12 songs and the front grill twinkles. The songs are all children’s favorites like “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” “She’ll be Comin’ Round the Mountain (When She Comes),” and “A Tune I Don’t Recognize But It Must Be a Children’s Favorite (Or Else Why Would They Include It?).” When I need to rest my eyes after a session of extreme reading, I hand her the tractor and let her push away, singing the songs I know and humming the ones I don’t.

While she was playing with the tractor last night, the batteries started dying. I know when the batteries need to be changed because the sound becomes distorted and the music drops in pitch by a couple of keys. I took it from her hands to change the batteries because even if she didn’t notice, I did care that “Mary Had a Little Lamb” was keyed for a baritone. Of course as soon as I took it from her, she started screaming, and she screamed until I handed it back to her after changing the batteries. She gave me a headache, but at least the tractor stopped annoying me. She looked a little sullen afterwards, but perked up after I pointed out the Rainbow Fish switch plate cover in her nursery as proof that I still loved her.

...Please don't take a picture...

Some days raising a child are pure magic; Abbie is a perfect angel shunning all naughty forms of entertainment, like stuffing foreign objects in her mouth or playing in the dishwasher, in favor of playing quietly with her toys in the living room, or peacefully reading books in her room, content to play with me or go solitaire, allowing me to accomplish chores as needed. Maybe she’ll even show off a new trick like hopping safely down the stairs on her butt or speaking a new word. Then there are days like yesterday where my sole motivation is the knowledge that naptime or bedtime is only X hours, Y minutes, and Z seconds away.

The excitement started early when Abbie demanded liberation from her high chair before finishing her milk. Usually she sucks down her milk and a few handfuls of Tasteeos while I prepare my breakfast and Abbie-proof the house by closing the basement gate, closing the dog’s kennel with her food dish inside, closing the bathroom door, and generally making the entire house off-limits except for her room, which has books, and the living room, which has toys. Yesterday though she wanted down with half her sippy cup remaining and before I could add milk to my cereal. I shrugged, set her down, and sent her on her way with sippy cup in hand. Since mommy had an usually late arrival time and was wandering the house preparing for the day I figured she just wanted to spend time with mommy, whining for her attention.

My first big clue that yesterday would be rough was when mommy had already left for work and Abbie hunted me down to try to coax me into reading to her before I finished breakfast. Usually I enjoy a leisurely breakfast and read the newspaper while she softly does something that doesn’t involve my input. She’s usually so well behaved during the lovely first 90 minutes of her day that I have enough time to not only eat my breakfast in peace, but clean up the breakfast dishes along with a few other assorted clutter piles before she seeks me out to entertain her. Yesterday though she was whining at my side with book in hand before I could slurp the remaining milk from my cereal bowl. I did my best to ignore her, but her steady needling prodded me to slurp quickly.

I read to her for a little while, and then returned to the kitchen to clean up and empty the dishwasher. There are two sounds in the world that will send Abbie running with delight to its source: The sound of the front door closing when mommy comes home, and the sound of the dishwasher door opening. Naturally Abbie came running into the kitchen as soon as the door swung open to grab utensils (nothing new there) and put them in her mouth (that was new). I don’t mind when she pulls clean dishes out since I have to put those away anyway, but pulling dirty dishes out doubles my work load since I have to put them away twice, plus they’re dirty and likely covered with germs making them potentially harmful to handle and chew in spite of their immune system building capabilities. I tell her “no,” which she hears, processes, and decides to keep playing in the dishwasher anyway. She may have learned this behavior from the dog that does the same thing when I tell her “no.” Obviously if I want Abbie to respect my authority I need to crack down on discipline with the dog.

After much knocking away of hands and screaming in frustration at the closed dishwasher, I lead her into her room for a relaxing reading session. Abbie grabbed a book, and I started reading it. I tried folding some clean laundry while reading since I have most of her books memorized anyway, but that did not please her. For the entire time I folded laundry, she whined to grab my undivided attention in case something needed pointed at. When I did focus on her books, I quickly realized that she was not interested in leisurely reading where she turns a page, I read the page, she scans the page for objects of interest, and we repeat the cycle until I need to wander off to take care of something important like a ringing phone, a boiling pot, or a vomiting cat. She was interested instead in extreme reading, where someone (me) must be pointing at and reading something at all times. Should the reader take a break to rest his eyes, clear his allergen-impacted sinuses, or inhale, Abbie would immediately commence whining in horrible anguish as if I had done something atrocious like step on her feet or brought two baby brothers home from the hospital to torture her for the next 16 years.

With a lot of patience and some extra snacks (for both of us), we made it to nap time. Fortunately she took a nice long nap that gave me enough time to half-complete the sudoku puzzle in today’s paper before realizing that I made a mistake somewhere and completely ruined the puzzle. Unfortunately she was in no better mood when she awoke. This child who happily eats spinach every night for supper refused to eat her afternoon applesauce, which could be a first for her, not counting the time she had the flu although I think she still ate then, she was just very unhappy about it and threw it up later.

And so I coped with her grumpiness for the rest of the night, reading to the extreme when I could, and listening to her whine when I couldn’t. Ellie had a busy night at the hospital, sparing her exposure to most of the bellyaching. She said she wished she could stay with her because it sounded like Abbie needed her mommy, or possibly the other way around. I told her not to worry about it, that I could handle her for the next 2 hours, 36 minutes, and 39 seconds.

"I'b allergic to everythig here."

My allergies are hammering me right now. When I say “right now,” I mean literally right now as another stream of watery snot trickles from my nose. I’m amazed that the mucus in my head can plug my sinuses so completely, yet be so liquid as to drain from my nose like milk from an improperly assembled bottle. The weather has been unusually hot for this time of year, also known as “football season,” which makes my allergies even worse since every plant is shedding its offending allergens as fast as possible in an effort to keep cool.

Abbie seems unaffected by whatever allergen that’s forcing me to reach for a tissue once every 1.684 minutes. While I’m happy for her current naturally histamine-free lifestyle, my seasonal allergies never kicked in until I was almost a teenager, so there’s still plenty of time for my genes to afflict her. Of course by that point she’ll be old enough to take care of herself which means I won’t have to do anything more than point to where we keep the Claritin and make sure we have sufficient stockpiles of tissues.

Reading to Abbie is a problem with my allergies. Having to blow my nose every 1.684 minutes means I must take frequent snot removal breaks while trying to read to her. If I’m quick and make my escape while at the right moment, like while she’s trying to turn the page or lift a particularly stubborn flap, I can blow my nose, dispose of the tissue, and return to her side before she has a chance to wonder how many pancakes are on that page (13). If I take too long or her patience is too short, she degenerates into tears and I’ll need another 1.684 minutes to console her to a condition where she can read along with me without whimpering, at which point I’ll have to blow my nose again and restart the process all over.

With all that mucus running down the back of my throat, much of it lodges in my speaking equipment, which means talking to her requires extra effort. I’m ordinarily a fairly quiet guy, so conditioning myself to jabber endlessly about everything surrounding us in an effort to coax a little speech out of her was difficult enough. Now that I have to exert a little extra effort and occasionally some phlegm to produce speech, I’m content to sit silently while she plays, assuming she’s not doing anything disgusting and/or dangerous like sticking rocks in her mouth. When she wants to read, I suck it up, cough it out, and read to her with some difficulty. When she insists on reading, I do try to steer her toward books about opposites with one word per page and away from storybooks or anything else with a high ratio of words per interesting picture where the main thing keeping her interest is the sound of my raspy voice warbling its way through “The Little Engine that Could.” I’ve outright hidden anything that incorporates a button that plays a song when pressed because it depresses me too much to hear my mucus-impaired vocals sing their way through an entire song on one pitch.

I try to limit time outside in an effort to limit my direct exposure to allergens. This is difficult because it hampers two of my main forms of entertaining Abbie: Letting her wander around the backyard or playground, and shopping for Vital Supplies. I don’t mind spending less time shopping for Vital Supplies since it can only lead to spending less money on Not Quite Vital Supplies, which frees up more money for frozen custard. Not running around various yards though is too difficult to completely surrender. When I see a choice between feeling even more congested than usual and hearing her whine even more than usual, I know which option is more palatable; I step outside and watch the nearby trees peel off their layers of stifling pollen.

Talk Show

Abbie is not a talker. I consider her capable of saying “more,” which can lead to some conversations that read like an Abbott and Costello routine,* but that’s pretty much the extent of her audible vocabulary. She babbles a little bit, but instead of stringing various sounds together to form sounds like real words (“ayahguhbahjuhwoo”), her babbling tends to be the same thing repeated over and over (“ayayayayayayayay”). In pediatric terms, this is called the Hollywood Studio Executive phenomenon (“teen comedy teen comedy teen comedy”).

Most of her vocalizations come in the form of shrieks. Generally she yells when she becomes excited. If we set her on the ground to wander around a store, so will become so exuberant with the possibility of finding completely new objects to pull off of shelves and chew on that she will begin shouting at a volume generally only heard from humans at sporting events, and even then only when something exceptionally good happens like trainers carrying the opposing team’s star receiver off the field with an ACL tear. She also screams a lot while we feed her; apparently that the joy that is mashed banana can so overwhelm her senses that she must yell to prevent bursting with pleasure. She also likes to yell while I’m listening to the radio, especially on full-count pitches with at least one runner in scoring position.

Since the spoken word is progressing slower than we’d like, I’m trying to teach her some signs. Supposedly children can pick up sign language before they can pick up spoken words, just like how children can learn to say curse words before they learn almost every useful word. I used to think that teaching children sign language was just some sill new age theory that another language helps build a child’s mind. Other brain-building theories I scoff at include playing classical music, any toy that boasts about its brain building potential, and Flintstone’s Chewable Vitamins. Now I see the inherent value of teaching a child to sign. If she can sign when she starts whining for something, I’ll have an idea of what she wants; instead of having to ask, “What do you want sweetie?” I have to ask, “What do you mean you want to read the cat?”

Ellie has been working hard to teach her to point up when she wants us to pick her up. Currently when she wants up, she grabs onto our pants and whines while trying to attach the bottom of her foot to our leg in the hope that she will somehow find enough traction to walk up our pants. This is not as gentle a form of communication as pointing up, but it gets her message across just as effectively. Sometimes she understands “up,” like if we ask if she wants up she will throw her hand in the air to say “darn right I want up.” Then other times she’ll start whining and trying to crawl up our pants and we’ll ask if she wants up, but she just degenerates into a howling blubbery mess.

She has yet to give us the “up” sign without us saying the word “up.” When she shows some initiative, that’s when I’ll consider this signing thing a success. Until then, I’ll just try to keep guessing what “ayayayayayayayay” means.

* “Abbie can say ‘more’ now.
“Like what?”
“’More.’”
“I know she can say more, but what words can she say?”
“She doesn’t really say much, just “’more.’”
“That’s what I want to know.”
“Know what?
“What does she say?”
“’More.’”
“I know that!”
“Then why do you keep asking?”

Copyright Expired

One of Abbie’s first Christmas presents was a set of ten books adapted from some of Disney’s most beloved animated films plus “Pocahontas.” These board books tiny, much smaller than the Cubs’ playoff hopes, about 2-inches square on the front and almost as deep even though each book is only ten pages long. They came in a handsome cardboard carrying case suitable for display or kicking under the crib and losing for months on end. Open the book, and every page on the left has a full-color drawing that appears to be lifted straight from the film and would be breathtakingly beautiful if it weren’t shrunk down to a 2-inch square space. Every page on the right tells the movie’s story in short, simple, plot-deficient sentences. As an example, I will copy the entire text of the “Pocahontas” book at great risk of incurring the wrath of Disney lawyers:

“Pocahontas lives in the forest. Her friend Meeko is always hungry. Her friend Flit is very small. Percy likes to chase Meeko. Grandmother Willow takes care of them all.”

It doesn’t exactly ruin the movie for those that haven’t seen it. Some of the books do a better job of telling the story than “Pocahontas,” which seems more designed to sell Pocahontas, Meeko, Flit, and Grandmother Willow action figures, but none of the books accurately recreates the movie experience. That’s just as well since such a board book would have to be about 84,512,017,021 pages long, making it far too large to fit both it and Abbie in my lap simultaneously. Their current size is just big enough for Abbie to read the same thing several times in one sitting, providing a premonition of what she’ll do with the Disney movies over the course of several hours once she figures out how to operate the DVD, which I’m guessing will happen sometime around her second birthday.

These books were a big hit when she first saw them. We would read them together several times every day. Of course, when she first saw them she was still mostly a blob at the mercy of whatever I chose to read to her, so she didn’t have much say in what we read. Eventually she lost interest in those books as the pictures grew a little too familiar, the words a little too dull, and the corners a little too worn from her constant chewing.

After spending several weeks at the bottom of her book bucket, I recognized that she hadn’t looked at them recently and cycled them up to the top of the rotation. Abbie has since rediscovered these books, and spent much time going flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, turn over, and repeat. “Bambi” especially enchants her, particularly one set of pages showing an opossum family hanging upside-down accompanied by the words “The opossums like to hang upside-down.” She will pick the “Bambi” book off the floor, flip through the pages looking for the opossums, go back through the pages after she missed them the first time, struggle to separate the opossum pages since they’re glued together by some substance likely of Abbie origin that I’d rather not think about, and then grab our fingers to point out the opossums to us.

I generally oblige her by reading the words to her. When that fails to satiate her I count the opossums, one, two, three, four. When she stays transfixed on the opossums, I try describing them to her. They’re hanging upside-down, just like how Abbie likes to hang upside-down. There’s a parent opossum, and three young opossums, just like our house will be like in a few months when mommy is at work, or when daddy is out of the house “resting.” They want to be Bambi’s friends. They want to help Bambi after Bambi’s mother was, er, that’s a plot detail I want the movie to reveal to you.

Star Trek XII: So Very Tired

Last night was bath night. Usually baths are a pleasant time when I clean Abbie and she passes the time chewing on rubber ducks and soap, and tries to pull our pressure-mounted shower caddy down in an attempt to find more things to chew on. Last night started well, but degenerated into heavy duty whining before I had a chance to rinse all the shampoo out of her hair. I obliged her whining and removed her from the tub as quickly as possible, yet the whining continued through the drying, and the dressing, and the tooth brushing. It subsided when I read her bedtime books to her, but resumed when I tried to put her down for the night.

I shut the door, thankful that her intensive moaning was finished until morning. Then morning came even earlier than usual as she woke up an hour before she normally does. When she wakes up in the morning, she’s usually content to play softly in her room until I rescue her from confinement, assuming that I don’t stop for a bowl of cereal or something and take too long to saunter into her room. This morning, though, she picked up her complaining right where she left it the night before. When I checked on her, she was laying in bed with her eyes closed, moaning away, as if even in her dreams her parents are oppressing her with boredom. I watched her for a few minutes, and picked her up when I decided she wasn’t going to fall back into quiet slumber. I calmed her and comforted her until the moaning stopped, then set her back down in hopes that she’d fall back asleep until her normal wake time. She didn’t.

You might think this early wake time would mean she would take a nice long nap this afternoon, but you’d be as wrong as anyone who picked Iowa to cover the spread, or even win outright for that matter. So after an early wake time and a short nap piled onto a busy day, I’m tired. That’s all I’ve got for today.

All work and mo play makes Moe a moe moe.

We may have a major breakthrough in the language department. Yesterday I said that I didn’t think Abbie was speaking yet. Sure she can say “ma,” which Ellie interprets as “mama,” but I interpret that as random vocalization since she says it when mama is nowhere nearby. If Abbie would run to the door screaming “ma” when Ellie comes home instead of just giggling and shrieking, that I would see as speech. As it stands, when she says “ma” when I lay her on the changing table, I don’t believe she’s saying that she wants mama, much as I’d like to guilt Ellie into believing that Abbie really wants her to change her this time.

Sure she points a lot as well, which can be a form of language. Pointing says, “I want that,” or “hey, look at that,” or “that pile of diapers is what your parenting skills are equivalent to.” I still say that Abbie doesn’t point very much. She randomly points in her ham-fisted way while reading, but I think that’s more of an imitation of me pointing while reading than any desire on her part to point out interesting elements on the page. When she wants something of inherent interest to toddlers left just out of her reach, like the telephone or scissors, she stretches in an attempt to reach it, and whines when she fails. I don’t consider that communicating. If she would sit back and point and say “da,” or at least “ma,” or at the very least babble the toddler equivalent of “I want to chew on the screwdriver,” that would be communicating.

In an attempt to encourage her to start talking, I’ve developed a feeding ritual where before giving her a spoonful of toddler glop, I declare, “what do you say? More, please.” My intent is to force her to ask for more before every spoonful, which is a lesson that goes a lot smoother when she isn’t howling in protest because I’m delaying the administration of mashed banana. As a bonus, I’m teaching her the word “please” early in life so she can politely ask for things in the future, such as “can I chew on the toilet brush please?” I started this ritual over a month ago, and have since encouraged any sort of vocalization on her part with praise generally associated with puppies urinating outside the house for the first time.

Finally a couple days ago she rewarded me with a sound that definitely resembled “more.” It sounds like “mo” with a hint of an “r” at the end, and it comes at the right time. This pleased me more than seeing Corey Patterson held out of the starting line-up. I affirmed her attempt at communication, and repeated, “more, please” to keep the magic phrase fresh in her mind.

She got the hang of it pretty quick, and was soon intoning “mo” as fast as I could feed her. Little did I realize the demanding monster I was creating with my attempt to make her talk. Not only that, but the word “please” seems completely lost on her. I should have realized that toddlers don’t start with multi-word phrases, but my dreams of a well-mannered child interfered with reality. Instead, I give her a spoonful, and before she can even swallow she says “mo.” I support her with a hasty “that’s right, you want more” and spoon up more glop as quickly as possible while she keeps repeating “mo” every few seconds. Although now that I think about it, she may be saying “ma,” meaning she indisputably wants Ellie to feed her.

"I haven't had a medicino check-up in ages."

Abbie is 15-months-old, and that means two things: Time for her 15-month check-up. It also means an increase in whining as she gains a better understanding of what she wants without being able to communicate it, but I prefer not to think about that since I can actually do something about her 15-month check-up.

I enjoy taking her to check-ups because they’re a chance to validate my parenting skills. When her size and weight are right on target, it means I’m feeding her the right amounts of the right foods. When she shows off her top-notch walking abilities, it means I’m doing all the right things in encouraging her motor skills development. Even when she fails to do something important like talk, it’s okay because all children develop at their own pace. It’s like being back in kindergarten where everything is praiseworthy, and I can do no wrong as long as I stay away from the obvious stuff like flinging finger-paints at the walls. Of course I’m likely setting myself up for a crushing disappointment by deriving my self-worth through Abbie’s achievements, but I’ll worry about that when her grade school soccer team is shut out.

The first order of business was to measure Abbie’s height and weight. Measuring her height involves laying her on the examination table, stretching her out, using a pencil to mark the bottom of her feet on the protective paper lining the table, making another mark at the top of her head, and finally measuring the distance between the marks as her height. This process is usually repeated after the initial measurement reveals that her squirming moved the marks producing a completely ridiculous result like 159 inches tall when obviously 159 inches is the highest point that daddy can leave an object that Abbie can still manage to grab and put in her mouth. The nurse measured her at 31 inches on the first try, and that sounds reasonable enough to write down.

Next came the weighing. When she was still too young to effectively fidget, weighing her involved setting her in a container on top of a scale to measure her weight down to the tenth of an ounce, like what we might do with small livestock or very tiny semi-trailers. Now that she’s a big girl, or at least big enough to stand, weighing her involves having her stand on a normal person scale. She weighed in at 24 pounds. It would have been closer to 25 pounds, but we stripped her naked removing even her diaper right before they took her weight. Naturally Abbie proceeded to pee all over the scale once we removed her diaper, possibly because she wanted to drop that last ounce of water weight.

When the doctor saw her, he asked if we had any concerns. I figured I’d start with the easy one and ask if there was any problem with her only having six teeth, the same number she’d been stuck on for about four months. He said not to worry, that every child develops at her own pace, and she’ll start walking when she’s ready…wait, did we say we were worried about teeth coming in too slow? Find something important to worry about for crying out loud.

Then we sprung the big issue on him, the part about her not talking. This is an area where Ellie and I have disagreements; Ellie says she can say “more,” “mama,” and gesture for “up,” and that she points at things; I say she just whines and grabs at things a lot. The doctor listened to our concerns, verified that she at least appears to hear well, and told us not to worry, that every child develops at her own pace, and she’ll start talking when she’s ready. He also offered some suggestions to encourage her to talk like asking her questions especially while reading, and since none of them involve reducing my time spent blogging I’ll give them a shot.

Speaking of shot, Abbie got one during her check-up. Her first set of vaccinations threw her for a loop for about a week, but since then she’s recovered from them pretty quickly. This time was no exception as we gave her some pain reliever and quickly forgot that she had a shot. Of course she screamed her head off when poked by the needle, which was a little distressing. On the bright side, her screaming gave us a chance to look in her mouth and discover that a new top tooth had recently broken through the gum line, so there goes one concern.

Can't sleep, clown'll eat me...

A pregnant woman is entitled to a lot of special treatment from her husband; foot rubs, back rubs, and reduced teasing are all fair game. Now when you start talking about women who are pregnant with multiples, those women are entitled to special treatment, expensive gifts, and pretty much anything else they need to survive, and with minimal complaining on the husband’s part. In our case, this means Ellie gets a new bed.

Can we afford to buy a new bed? Not really, but the appropriate question to ask should be “can we afford not not to buy a new bed?” As the primary (only) source of income in our household, we need her to work for as long as possible to keep those big residency bucks flowing in so we can purchase necessary baby items like bouncers and garage sale clothing. Ideally, we’ll have Ellie work right up until the start of her planned maternity leave, working during the day and entering the hospital for an induction (not a c-section, we’re thinking positive here) that same night. For this plan to work, Ellie needs to stay healthy and away from afflictions with names that even sound painful, like sciatica, for as long as possible. A bed should be the place for her to recover from those grueling 36-hour workdays, caressing away the round ligament pain. Our bed is not one of those places. It has springs of assorted softness, from the kind that caresses to the kind that angrily pokes back when we dare ask it to support out weight. When an angry spring jabs me in the arm, I simply roll to the side, taking the covers with me if need be. Ellie, hindered by the presence of the parasites and their support system, is significantly less mobile than normal and therefore more susceptible to the proddings of the angry springs.

Our current mattress isn’t very old, no more than eight years. Ellie believes we ruined it by resting it on top of box springs that are older than her, and could potentially be old enough to provide the earliest evidence of man’s understanding of the concept of a box. She found the mattress heavily discounted back in college, and when a college student has the choice between blowing enough money on new box springs to buy 56 one-topping pizzas or using old box springs made in a time when springs were still mostly a theoretical concept, the choice is obvious: You splurge on two-topping pizzas.

Off we went to find a replacement for Old Pokey. We checked the area’s major furniture stores and discovered that when all of the used car lots transformed into classier pre-owned car lots, their old salespeople needed new jobs selling things, which the furniture stores were happy to provide. We made many new friends who each assured us that they were the only ones telling us the truth. We also discovered the law mandating that all mattress companies must begin their names with an “S.” There’s Sealy, Serta, Simmons, Stearns & Foster, Spring Air, and Tempur-Pedic, which doesn’t technically begin with an “S,” but they’re Swedish, which does begin with an “S.”

After we verified that they all wanted too much money, we lowered our standards down to the furniture outlet stores. These people were also happy to see us, though not in an “Oh boy, I can make a commission off these suckers” way. It was more of a “Maybe these people will help us make room for those slightly moist mattresses Sears is trucking in today” way. We found a few mattresses at a reasonable price and with minimal odor, though one of those mattresses was encased in plastic making the odor difficult to discern.

Not satisfied, we continued lowering our standards down to a consignment store. This place had much of the merchandise that the outlet stores decided they were too good to display. We didn’t find any mattresses of acceptable plushness, though we did find a few suitable sparring partners for Old Pokey if he ever wants to work out some aggression. When Ellie decided it was time to leave the consignment store, we left without any complaining or coercion to buy something from me, because that’s what the mother of my children deserves. Then we stopped at the grocery store to pick up some potato chips for supper, because that’s also what she deserves. Someday soon we may even pick up a bed for her.

Irony Defined

Isn’t it ironic that we’re busiest on our days off? Not that I had a day off today; stay at home parents don’t have days off. Ellie had the day off (mostly) so we spent the day running around town running errands, accomplishing things far beyond my mortal chores of acquiring Vital Supplies. Hence today was a too busy to blog kind of day.

Olivia!

Abbie has a set bedtime routine. I change her into pajamas, brush her teeth, read to her, and set her down at exactly the same time every night. I imagine prisoners are treated in much the same way except their bedtime song is less cheerful.

I read two books to her every night. It used to be the same two books every night, but some time back Abbie’s intelligence level surpassed that of a goldfish and she started recognizing that her first book, a flap-filled treatise on the game of peek-a-boo, signaled an imminent bedtime. In response she began doing everything in her power to stall me and impede the approaching lights-out. While I tried to coax her into lifting a flap to determine where the baby was, she would turn her back to me busily searching for a new book to read. She would find the oddest books to read; books she had no interest in touching the rest of the day suddenly became enthralling reading. She would grab books with regular paper pages instead of her normal thick cardboard pages that are almost destructible unless she chews on them, which she inevitably does. She would open up books intended for grade schoolers with far more words than pictures on each page and sit there engrossed in the sheer magnitude of words as if she understood them all. She will occasionally grab my finger and point it at something trying to cajole me into naming an object from the non-bedtime book. Meanwhile I would sit patiently waiting for her to lift a flap so I could exclaim “peek-a-boo” and continue the march to bedtime.

Now I’ve given up on the peek-a-boo book; I declare the first book she grabs at night to be her first bedtime book. This way I can sneak her bedtime up on her, winding her down for the day with a little reading without tipping my hand to the impending bedtime, like shining a light in a frog’s eyes to paralyze it before capture. I still read the same second book to her every night, though. Long ago I chose the book “Olivia” to be her bedtime story, and until she tells me she wants something else using actual words, that’s what I’m going to keep using. I want to use the same book every night as a signal that bedtime is coming, like I’m saying, “quit your whining” with enchanting tricolor charcoal drawings. For non-breeders or others who have somehow escaped knowledge of the book, “Olivia” is about a girl pig named Olivia* who would be about 4 in human years, but is still well short of prime pork chop age in pig years. It tells the story of her life, about her family, her trips to the beach, and her hatred of naps. The story is told in short sentences that meander from topic to topic, exactly like a book a four-year-old would write if she could complete several grammatically correct sentences and then engage in an aggressive marketing campaign that includes related merchandise like calendars, plush dolls and spin-off books about counting and opposites.

I chose “Olivia” as her final bedtime book because the last few pages deal with Olivia’s bedtime routine, which feels more appropriate than the 20 flowers or the zizzer zazzer zuzz on the last pages of her other books. I’ve stuck with “Olivia” as the final book even though Abbie now recognizes it as the final horseman of the bedtime apocalypse and furiously searches for anything to obstruct its reading: Toys, stuffed animals, novels I left on the floor. I keep reading because I know she can’t resist the story of Olivia’s life. To prove it, I’ll hold the book up to her after finishing a page and she’ll usually look up from her toy, turn the page, then return to her toy. After finishing the book, she redoubles her efforts to find stall time, but when Warden Daddy says lights out, it’s lights out.

* Duh.

Looks Like We Got Us a Reader

Abbie’s reading habits are changing. I used to sit with her in the rocking chair and read book after book with titles like “My First Counting Book,” “My Little 123 Book,” “My First 123 Counting Book.” Usually I would grow bored long before she would, and off we would go to find another way to kill time before her next nap. Of course, this was when Abbie was powerless to move and express her displeasure, so maybe she was bored with the books too.

Now I don’t even bother with the rocking chair since her increased mobility means she can effectively squirm her way onto the floor when daddy bores her with a book. She’s old enough to know what she wants, or at least old enough to realize that she can do something more exciting than read whatever lame book daddy placed in front of her, so I just sit on the floor with her and read whatever she grabs. The advantage of this tactic is she takes control of what she reads, which teaches her decision-making. She decides which book she wants to read, she decides when she’s done with that book, and she decides which book to read next. Hopefully she will soon decide that she wants to leave the dishwasher alone while daddy is filling it instead of being scolded every time she reaches for a fork, or maybe she’ll decide that she wants to help daddy pick up the floor when he’s trying to vacuum instead of pulling every toy out of the box as fast as he can put it back in. The drawback to the sitting on the floor technique is I usually sit facing Abbie, forcing me to read the book upside down. This can lead to some dyslexic moments as I mix the order of letters and words.* Fortunately I have most of her books memorized, allowing me to fall back on memory if I have trouble reading since I know “seven houses” comes between “six hats” and “eight donuts.”

When I allow Abbie to decide what to ready, she usually elects to read the same book again; just flip it over, and it’s like a completely new book filled with pages to read again for the first time. To keep my sanity as I read the exact same thing for the 14,517th time (713th consecutive time) I have to let my mind wander to find new things to grab my attention. Some of the things I’ve noticed about her books are:

- One of her books misspells “weird” as “wierd.” I realize that all she concentrates mostly on the pictures while reading, but the first time she writes “wierd,” this book will be the first thing that comes to mind. How they could misspell “weird” when I have to fight Microsoft word to correctly type it incorrectly is beyond me. If her first choice of colleges rejects her, I may sue.

- I think the only reason that every child recognizes a xylophone is that it’s one of the only things that begin with “X.” As an adult, I‘ve rarely had to deal with xylophones, much less than apples, babies, and cats, yet almost every alphabet book that needs to show something beginning with “X” relies on the xylophone, or possibly the x-ray. One alphabet book cheats and uses objects that end in “X” (“fox,” “box,” “sux”). Creative uses aside, is it too much to find new words to introduce to children that begin with “X?” They could use “xanthan gum” and teach kids about processed foods. Or they could use “xiphoid process” to teach kids anatomy. Or they could use “xenon” to teach kids about chemicals. They’re missing tons of teaching opportunities.

- I applaud the efforts of the alphabet book I own that uses “vegetables” for “V.” Familiarizing children with vegetables can only lead to a reduction in their inherent hatred for vegetables. However, the vegetables they pictured are a yellow pepper, lettuce, tomatoes, squash, a mushroom, and cabbage. Correct me if I’m wrong, but by my count that’s technically three fruits, two vegetables, and a fungus. I’m having a hard enough time teaching her to talk that I don’t need some ignorant book teaching her the wrong word for a whole class of foods. I may need to dump “First ABC” in favor of “My Little ABC Book,” or possibly “My First ABC.”

* “The god eats food good.”