Grace's Thoughts on Lost

Almost everybody I know is a loyal viewer of Lost, Grace included.  Since it's the topic of the day, she wanted to throw her two cents in.  I'll transcribe, as her typing skills are still a bit rudimentary.

"What in the hell was that?  I dedicated 10 weeks of my life to this show - which is all of the weeks of my life by the way - and you give me an ending that I have to interpret?  How about after 120 hours of mystery you give us 1 hour of unambiguous, concrete answers.  To get closure, I shouldn't have to work my way through obscure references and subtext.  I don't even know what subtext is, I'm a friggin' baby! 

I appreciated the ride, the depth of the characters and the beauty of the story, ending included, but please just come out and tell me exactly what the smoke monster was. Tell me for sure whether or not everything that happened on the island was really real life or purgatory (which I predicted five years ago back when I was just an egg), and please tell me that the whole entire thing wasn't just Jack's St. Elsewhere style dying daydream.

That said, it was still way better than the ending to The Sopranos, whatever that was."

Anything for a Laugh

Before I became a parent, I thought it was important for parents to speak normally to their children rather than resorting to babytalk.  Even though babies can't understand what you're saying, their neurons are building connections and they're always picking up something about language, facial expressions, emotions and more.  While I still believe that, and talk to my daughter as normally as I can as often as I can, I've had a change of heart since becoming a father.  Mainly because Grace doesn't get my jokes.

So, in the spirit of tailoring my comedy to my audience...

What Baby Knows, What Baby Doesn't Know - Part 2

Grace is nine weeks old now and grows more sophisticated by the day.  I couldn't be prouder watching her discover each new small piece of the world, even if she doesn't get her head around all the details right away.

What Grace Knows - How to Take the Binky Out of Her Mouth

In its most basic form (spitting it out), Grace has known how to expel her binky since the first day we gave it to her.  And while that's still her favorite method of de-binkying, she's added a new wrinkle to her game.  Over the last week she's learned how to grab the edges and handle of the binky with her right thumb and forefinger, hold onto it and take it out of her mouth.

Baby Yoga

Wiener dog pose, first position.

Our Little Zoolander

Even though she's only 2 months old, Grace is starting to master certain skills.  For example, her ability to move from burp position to feeding position has gone from a tentative roll to a full-on daredevil trust fall.

There's only one problem with her technique.  Like Derek Zoolander, she can't turn to the left.

Poop Watch 2010

Epic baby poops are a recurring theme in this blog, described regularly in their amazing, disgusting detail.  I'd imagine that from reading those stories, you'd think that the messes are the worst part of dealing with my daughter's digestion issues.  You'd be wrong.

Grace went from Sunday afternoon to late Monday night without pooping, and let me tell you, a backed up baby is a very unhappy baby.   I'm talking Birthers on Obama's inauguration day unhappy.  Every Mets fan over the past four years unhappy.  SEVERELY unhappy.

Sleepytime: A Retrospective

First nap, first smile

Mommy bed

On the couch after a tough day

Lounging on the Boppy

Baby burrito

Daddy's little doppelganger

Up close and personal

How sweet is life?!

Lights out

Superbaby!

Grace's Favorites Power Rankings - Week 7

A quick rundown of Grace's 10 favorite things.  Individual people are excluded, though that would make for a fun and deeply contentious post.

1. Feedings - Bottles are king in Gracie's universe, holding down the top spot in undisputed fashion.
2. Ceiling Fans - As her vision improves, Grace is learning to focus on shapes and colors.  So far, her favorite visual discovery are the fans, since she's looking up when she's being held and they make for a sharp contrast against the ceiling.  I'm afraid that when we finally turn one on, we're going to break her brain.
3. Kitchen Faucet - Even though she can't figure out what it is or where it's coming from, the sound of running water hitting the sink is the best way to soothe an apoplectic Gracie.  Combined with the kitchen ceiling fan, it's a killer calming combination.

Sleeping in her mommy bed.

4. Sleeping on People - People beds good, real beds bad. 
5. Baths - The fastest riser in the Power Rankings, Grace has enjoyed her spa days in the baby tub much more than the horrors of sponge baths on the changing mat.
6. Binky - She'd rather be sucking her thumb, but since she usually keeps her hands balled into fists Grace settles happily enough for the binky, especially if it means Carrie and I need to stay close by to keep giving it back to her whenever she spits it out.
7. Bugs - Not real bugs thankfully, but the cartoon bugs in her playset and her musical bumblebee.  And who could blame her, the bee is definitely makes better music than bands like Nickelback.

8. Silly Voices - A red hot up-and-comer, silly voices have scored big over the past few days, getting big smiles and a laugh or two out of Gracie.  On the downside, mommy and daddy's embrace of baby talk likely marks the end of our time as people that can function in an adult conversation.  Oh well, we had a good run.
9. Getting Burped - Getting burped is still getting held, so Grace is down with it, but it's not getting fed or getting to sleep, so she's increasingly quick and skilled at wiggling her way into a more desirable position.
10. Baby Swing - How the mighty have fallen.  After two weeks, the baby swing looked like a long-term panacea, often putting Grace to sleep in less than a minute.  Now though, four times out of five she begs out immediately after getting strapped in.  Baby swing is going to have a tough time staying in the rankings by the next update.

Maiming Gracie

We've already covered how I've managed to scar Grace emotionally.  Last week, for the first time, I scarred Grace physically.

Like most daddy screw ups, it started off with me trying to do something good for my daughter, cutting her nails.  In typical baby fashion, Grace constantly grabs at her face, and since baby nails grow like weeds she ends up scratching herself.  Because of this, nail clipping has to happen every two or three days, or else it'll look like we put Grace to bed with a feral cat in her bassinet.

Carrie and I approached nail clipping with extreme trepidation.  Baby nails are adorably, terrifyingly small and Grace is very wiggly, so this endeavor was obviously fraught with danger.  Since I have the steadier hands in the family, I got first crack with the clippers.

The first time I cut Grace's nails was a nerve wracking success.  It took the better part of 20 minutes, but with determined patience and extreme delicacy, my daughter made it through the ordeal unscathed.  And thus, I got to add another permanently ongoing responsibility to my daddy resume.

The weeks went on and I got the hang of things.  20 minutes became 15, then, well, stayed around 15.  Cutting nails is hard.  Nonetheless, I got better at it.  Then I made a fateful mistake.  I got cocky.

Outwardly, I seem like a pretty easygoing, humble guy.  But as anyone that really knows me (or at least played poker with me) will attest, I've got a pretty deep arrogant streak running through me.  It only takes the slightest bit of knowledge for me to turn into an overconfident know-it-all.

So, with a track record of nail cutting success in the books, I started to drop my guard.  The fear of messing up, which had help keep me cautious and precise, had diminished.  I became too quick to clip.  With my sleeping sweetheart lying in my lap, I nicked her thumb.  Grace woke up with a spine chilling scream, torn away from her rest by a never-before-experienced pain.  A trickle of blood dripped from her finger, and I fell to pieces.

One of the toughest things about being a dad is seeing your child in pain and not being able to help them.  It's absolutely heartbreaking.  For example, in the hospital the morning after Grace was born, she sneezed for the first time and started to cry from the surprise.  I was powerless to help her understand what had happened.  It seemed at the time that no amount of comforting would help her understand that sneezes were normal and nothing to be afraid of.  Things like that happen all the time.

This was different though.  This pain was all my fault.  It may seem like a little thing, there'll be plenty more cuts and bruises in the months and years to come, but knowing that the first one was because of something I did killed me inside for the rest of the day.

Carrie did her best to console me, through compassionate teasing, as is our way.  At least during that first night.  The next day, she dropped the compassionate part and was letting me have it pretty good, leaving me with two burdens to bear.

As a postscript, Grace has fully forgiven me, though she got her revenge that night by peeing on me the next time I changed her diaper.  Meanwhile, Carrie received her comeuppance for her reign of joking terror.  Two days after my mis-clipping, Carrie was playing airplane with Grace and things got a bit too turbulent.  Grace threw up from the bumpy flight, leaving my wife as the quivering, puke covered emotional wreck behind our daughter's momentary misery for the rest of the night.

One Poop to Rule Them All

Even though she's only 7 weeks old, Grace has already demonstrated a knack for making a grand entrance, dating back to the day she was born.  Carrie was due on April 4th, but three weeks before that her water broke.  During a dinner party we were throwing for her parents.  During a tree-uprooting, hurricane level windstorm.  It was truly an epic introduction to the world.

Over the weekend, Grace had another opportunity to make a memorable first impression.  The three of us went to a party where a bunch of our childless friends were meeting our baby for the first time.  We fed Grace before we left home, then packed in the car and headed off.  Since the trip took about 45 minutes, we knew we'd have to change her diaper as soon as we got there, so after saying hello to everyone, we woke Grace up, took her out of her car seat and got ready to get to work.

Immediately upon lifting her up, we learned that we had a situation on our hands.  Grace had a blowout.  For the uninitiated, that's when a poop manages to escape from the leg holes or the top band of the diaper.  Normally, that sounds worse than it actually is.  It happens once or twice a week and is only a little more messy than a run of the mill changing.  As seasoned parents, Carrie and I were initially unperturbed.  Of course, everyone else was wildly entertained by our apparent misfortune.

We took Grace inside, set up the travel changing pad on the kitchen table and, with our host and hostess looking on, got started.  The four of us opened the diaper to reveal the worst thing I've ever seen, and I've seen I Know Who Killed Me.  Carrie and I were taken aback.  Our host and hostess were outright staggered. 

Every single bit of the diaper was saturated with mustardy poop.  Poor Grace's butt, legs, back and tummy were covered with runoff.  Even worse was the smell.  There were literally visual stinklines rising up from the mess.  To get a sense of the vileness, imagine if a wet dog had a baby with the Staten Island dump, then covered it in poop.

Cleanup was obviously no picnic.  Baby wipes weren't going to be enough to handle this, so we opted for an immediate emergency sink bath.  Fortunately, our friends were still in a state of shock (and I'm sure coming to the conclusion that they're never, ever having children), so I don't think they noticed us wrecking their bathroom.  From there, we dealt with disposal, a double bagger if there ever was one.

In the end, I'm glad it happened.  I was excited to introduce Grace to so many of my friends, and because of her flair for spectacular entrances I'm fairly positive that it'll be a day they'll never forget.  Even with extensive therapy and powerful medication.