Step Child

Our condo has changed. It turns out a small child is like a cyclone. They start out innocently enough – they’re small, not too destructive, can’t travel very far – but then they grow. A box of toys they could barely pull themselves up to see inside, becomes an arsenal of squeaky obstacles and battery-operated ankle-twisting mines.

Hurricane Finley made landfall Saturday afternoon around 11am. Her path of destruction can be followed from just east of the sectional moving westward across the living and dining room into the nursery. Barnyard animals were left strewn about several feet from Old McDonald’s Press and Play Barn. One survivor, known only as “Tickle Me Elmo” could only repeat to himself frantic cries of “AGAIN, AGAIN!” Most of the inhabitants of The Hundred Acre Wood were left unharmed, but physically shaken.

This is what happens when you combine a short attention span with mobility. By the time Finley hit her noon nap, she had looked at and/or tasted every toy she owns. Not satisfied with the things allotted her, she began to go after things that she’s not to supposed to mess with. Things like the fireplace and the DVD player and speakers. Things we say “no” to, that when translated to the baby vernacular come across as “Not while we’re looking.”

Now, normally you might think that her going after things a bit dangerous or breakable would be a bad thing – and it is – but acting on her curiosity is actually helping her get smarter and it’s teaching her to walk.

In her mind, the fact that we don’t want her to touch something means she has to touch it all the more. And the things that are way off limits are the ones we go to extra lengths to keep her out. Whether it’s the little gate that leads to the kitchen or the plastic cover on the DVD, she wants to know what the big deal is and her little brain is trying to figure out how to break in.

She’s learning to try and move things in her way. She’s studying the barriers in front of her, searching for a crack in the shield. And Heather and I both know if we let our guard down at all, she’ll slip right through. She’s like a Navy Seal Cub… Except she’s kind of noisy. If she gets through an opening in a door, for instance, she’ll squeal with glee, blowing her cover. Giver her time though, and she’ll figure that out, too.

But the thing she’s learning the most is balance. Many of these taboo items are out of her reach which makes her resort to pulling herself up to a standing position to try and reach. And as she reaches, she’s starting to rely less and less on objects and more and more on herself. When she’s not thinking about it, she can stand in one place for quite some time. This standing is leading to walking.

The speed crawl is still her transportation choice, but every now and then she’ll venture out with a step or two before plopping down on her diaper-padded bum. Despite the fact we will probably regret this in the long run, Heather and I have been playing with her and getting her to take more steps. In fact, just tonight she doubled her previous record of four and made eight steps before dropping to the floor in front of her toys. (You can watch it right here)

So now our little mess maker is about to go bipedal. She’s on the verge of becoming an upright-walking ape and discovering the world from the soaring height of two feet. And as much of a great accomplishment that is, something tells me that as a parent, I’ll be bent over a whole bunch trying to catch a small girl who’s running off with my shoes and giggling furiously.

Which means Hurricane Finley will begin to leave and even longer and bigger path of destruction. Which means we’ll have to teach her to pick things up. But as they say, it’s all one step at a time.

Charles In Charge

Why is it that the two most brilliantly thought of family-oriented destinations are ruled by rodents? No one can deny that the place on the top of every child’s list for places to go is Disneyland®. Mickey and Company have had a handle on happy for decades. But this weekend, we took the princess to another Mouse Kingdom. One that falls way short of being the resort destination that Disneyland® is, but achieves pretty much the same amount of kid satisfaction at a much cheaper price. This weekend we went to Chuck E. Cheese.

I don’t know who this Charles Cheese guy is, but after spending a few hours in his cage of chaos, I determined he is a genius. This place is basically a kid asylum. You are admitted, stamped with a number and let loose to run around with the other loonies. It’s daycare without the rules. And Chaz Cheese is raking it in.

It really is a brilliant idea. You take crappy food, sugar-flavored soda water, a giant mouse robot, mix in a hundred video games and you have kid mania. But here’s the best part: Your staff is all under eighteen, which means you don’t have to pay them minimum wage AND they have absolutely no people skills.

So, when it takes an hour for your pizza to get to you, just send Andy Acne out to take the heat from the parents while they give their kids more money to pump into the video games. Because that’s what we will do. We will wait and wait. Oh, we’ll complain, but during that hour wait, the kids get antsy listening to the cacophony of clanging change and video klaxons so we just give them more money to keep them entertained. Brilliant. I may not enjoy my time there - in fact I’ll probably say I’ll never go back again, until next time – but you can’t deny it’s a great idea.

It’s everything Farrell’s was when I was a kid, except those penny arcade machines have been replaced with race car simulations and ticket-spouting games of chance. And there’s the next great part; the ticket redemption carrot on a stick. You see, you’re not just getting your kids to kill time waiting for the pizza to arrive, you’re teaching them about capitalism. There are several games at this place that “reward” you for your play by giving you tickets that you can then redeem for any one of hundreds of worthless toys and/or candies. Of course there’s a catch. You need literally THOUSANDS of these little tickets to get anything good – “good” being a relative term – and that means dropping more coins into the machines to get more tickets. It’s a racket within a racket. Once again, brilliant.

Oh, don’t forget you can have your kid’s birthday party there for a mere $250. They’ll even throw in a few hundred coins to loosen the slots for ya. Because that’s what this place is… It’s Vegas, Jr. The only good thing is that when I go to Vegas, I don’t have my parents there to make me stop. I might have to try that next time.

But, this is supposed to be about Finley. Luckily, she’s way too young to really get the whole game and ticket thing. But we know its coming. Right now, a place like that is a bit over stimulating.

Give her a few years and she’ll be running up to me because she ran out of coins then we’ll have to help her decide on what piece of crap toy she can get with her 50 tickets. “The fake plastic eyeball is 75 tickets, honey. We have to get something different.” Until then, I’ll just have to come up with my own rodent-driven family experience extravaganza. Maybe something that can teach a value or two. “Randy the Rat’s Waterslide and Household Chore Ranch.” “Shoot the tube on the Cannonball slide then make your bed in Mattress Mountain.” Or, “Compete with your friends in the Take out the Garbage race.” I’ll have to give it some more thought.

Little Miss Petri Dish

My advice to those of you thinking about or on the brink of becoming parents… Stock up on cold medicine. Not for the little one, for yourself! Besides, there’s not really any cold medicine you can give your little germ trap.

Now, you have to remember that we chose to put Finley into daycare at four months of age. Those parents out there who have a different set up may not have such an exposure to the sicknesses. But, the good thing for us is that this exposure - especially for her - is more than likely going to keep her a little more healthy when she gets older. At least we hope that’s the case.

It doesn’t make worrying about her any easier(I’m not sure anything would, anyway). The thing is that we can deal with the occasional cough and runny nose. It’s the fevers and the non-stop coughing that start to take its toll… On her AND us. There’s nothing worse than laying her down in her crib for the night and hearing heavy, rasping breathing.

And we’re limited to what we can do for her. That is, until we think it’s bad enough that we have to go see a doctor. She can’t have cough syrup or lozenges - I’d really like to see her try one of those. She’d either try to swallow it whole or play with it for an hour – The best we can do for her is a saline spray in the nose (which constitutes torture, in her book) or some children’s Tylenol.

The worst part is that she can’t tell us what’s wrong. The only clues we get are the runny nose, the cough, the raspy breathing and an unusually long bout of grumpiness. In her own way, being especially cranky means, “Hey guys! I’m not feeling very good, here.”

So, we wipe the nose a hundred times (payback, I’m sure for all the times my family had to wipe my toddler nose) and give her just a little extra love at bedtime(That’s the easiest and best part!) And she sleeps, for a while. Hopefully she’s not dreaming of giant Kleenexes® covering her face.

If she has a cough, it usually gets her up a few times in the night. But for the most part, her little immune system is cranking away while she sleeps, pushing out all the bad germs. Usually this means that the Momma or the Poppa will take on the cold - Someone in our party of three will have a cold once a week – or it will just lie dormant inside her, waiting for one of the other germ carriers at daycare to slobber on a toy or sneeze into a face and start the whole thing all over again. Gesundheit.

Happy "No" Year

So, now that we’ve survived last week’s ills, chills and spills I can return to my regularly scheduled diatribe on the evolution of Finley…. The “Finolution,” if you will.

The last part of December and early January saw marked improvement on her mobile abilities. She has become and expert crawler and can pull herself up and zip around the coffee table with no problems. Her vocal skills are also changing and she has added many more sounds to her already growing incoherent vocabulary. But an all new ability has reared its head in our household and we’re not sure we like its arrival. It has come to our attention that we are raising a Diva.

That’s right. Forget the first tooth or the first steps. Finley’s new thing is to sport an attitude. Okay, so she’s a baby and she really doesn’t know any better(or does she?), but when our little angel becomes "Prissy Missy," it’s not a lot of fun.

Of course, this was all inevitable. In her first ten months of life, she’s pretty much gotten everything she wanted, when she wanted it. But now that we’re actively taking things away or keeping her from things, she’s got no way to respond other than to let the tears fly. If you look at it from her point of view, it’s all she’s got. She can’t ask us for anything. She can’t understand why we’re taking the TV remote from her or why she can’t stick her hands in the DVD player. So why not do what she does best… (Well, aside from pooping, anyway) …just furrow up those little brows and scream bloody murder.

Most of the time, we can replace the object of her affection with a new, shinier and/or noisier object. But if she gets on a roll, it may take a bit to calm her down. I have a feeling that if someone were to one day create a device to translate babies’ cries into words, tirades like hers would only be safe on cable television.

It starts out innocently enough. One of us sets something, like a remote, on the table. In her little mind, she’s thinking “That thing MUST be very important if the big people always have it… I wonder why they grab it so much and more importantly… I wonder what it tastes like?” So off she scoots, crawling and pulling herself up to the coffee table. Then suddenly, the big daddy hand comes in, snags the new prize and replaces it with the same old building block she’s been gumming all day.

Right away, it’s the end of the world. It’s not just a cry, but a wail of pain. “How could you do this to me? ME! I will never be the same if I don’t have that shiny thing.” If you’re not quick enough to respond to the first leg of the tantrum, she’ll move on to the more dramatic round… the big, deep breath portion of the tear fest.

This particular feat can be part scary, part funny. This is where she sucks in so much air between cries that she can’t quite let it out - My sister perfected this act as an infant to the point where she would pass out from not letting any air out. Scared my parents to death - But once, she comes around and gets that deep breath cry out it’s quite a doozy. It’s got that touch of revenge that says “Now look what you’ve done. I’m letting the whole world know how mean you are to me.”

My favorite part is the final part, as she begins to calm down. The breathing returns to normal, but there are little pockets of anger like she’s saying “Okay, I’ll be calm… but don’t EVER do that again! Things are fine, I’m better now… HOW COULD YOU DO THAT? I’m good. Let me catch my breath. MEANIES!!!”

Of course if you get her what she wanted she turns into the sweet little thing that would never dare shed a tear or show anger. You know, the kid she is around every one else.

So now we’ve begun the journey into the land of “No.” She doesn’t quite understand it… We think. She’ll crawl up to the DVD player and one of us will sternly say “Finley… No.” And she does what kids for centuries have done… she turns to us slowly and smiles. This is why I don’t totally believe she doesn’t know what “no” means.

And every five minutes, she’s back up to the DVD player. And every five minutes we’re pulling her away and plopping her down amidst her toys. Sometimes she is fine. Sometimes she’ll let out a little whimper. Obviously it’s a bit frustrating to do all of this over and over again, but it’s more frustrating to me that I can’t explain WHY I’m moving her away from this highly interesting thing. But she’s terrible at speaking and I’m not fluent in baby talk, so we’ll just have to meet halfway.

And that’s how we learn. Both the parent and the baby. As much as I hate hearing her cry and curse us in baby language, we’re at the delicate point of making sure not to spoil. So sometimes you just have to let her go to town. And it’s really not that bad. She’s not constantly freaking out, because there really isn’t that much she can get into. It’s just the idea that this is only the beginning. Right now, I can deal with her little tirades and tantrums. At this age, she’s fairly easy to distract and can turn the waterworks off pretty quickly. Plus, most of the time, she’s just tired and cranky. And scooping her up and setting her in her crib is not only a bit of a time out, it can lead to a much needed nap.

But talk to me in thirteen years. We’ll see how well I can deal with her tirades and tantrums. AND, we’ll see who will want to lay down for a nap when she’s done. My bet… It’s this guy.

Sick Day

I had this blog all planned out. I was going to write about Finley’s first Christmas and the past few weeks, which saw many great advancements in our little girl’s development. But in FinleyWorld, plans have a way of being re-worked – often on the fly.

One of the things you learn as a parent is how immune to most sicknesses you really are. I, for one, have taken only one sick day from work in the last fifteen years. I rarely get sick – knock on wood. I get the occasional cold or a queasy stomach now and again, but it’s never anything that knocks me completely out of commission. And if I do get a whammy of a flu or something, it usually hits me, ironically, on a day off or a weekend. But for the most part, I haven’t been really sick since I was a kid. And that’s because kids haven’t built up their immunity.

The great stat we read is that in the first year of daycare you can expect your child to have twelve colds and the parents to have six. That’s because when they’re not running around with a runny nose, they’re acting as carriers to whatever germ hops from one of their classmates to them. So, as a parent, you read the stats, you deal with the sniffles and the coughs and the mucus… And although it may be a bit icky at times, it’s perfectly normal. But that’s just a cold. I was not quite prepared for what happened tonight.

Finley is nearing 11 months and has had several colds that have passed to Momma and me and back again. For the most part, we see it coming. She has a little cough or her nose starts leaking. Then her little throat gets a frog and she sounds like a pug when she sleeps. She gets a bit cranky and even sneezes a little. Momma pulls out the Vicks® vaporizer and we stand by with tissue in hand. Pretty standard stuff. Of course, just when you think you have a handle on reading the signs of sickness, you get a call in the middle of the day… Like we did today.

It was just after noon when the daycare called me to say that “as a courtesy,” they were letting me know that Finley had a rough morning, refusing her food and coughing a whole bunch. They had taken her temperature and it read 99 degrees. At 100 and above, the parents are required to take the kids home. So, they were basically giving us a head’s up that we might have to come get her. They were laying her down for her afternoon nap and would check her temp again when she woke up. After discussing with the Momma, we decided that even if she didn’t reach 100, we’d pull her out of daycare early so she could at least be at home. I checked with the daycare about an hour later and they said she didn’t sleep very long, but was up and playing. No need to get her right away, but a few hours later I was at the daycare picking up a very sleepy little girl and taking her home.

She seemed pretty tired and a little cranky, which is not a surprise. Her nose was running like a faucet, which makes things even more miserable because when we wipe her nose, you’d think she was being tortured. This girl does not like to have her face messed with. We can’t wipe food off of her cheeks or go after a stray booger without a little drama. According to her, it’s the worst thing that has ever happened to her and after we’re done, the waterworks may have stopped, but she goes on cursing Momma and Poppa in her little baby language.

So, I manage to wipe some snot while she screams bloody murder, making her poor, tired little face look even redder and more tired. Momma comes home and helps clean her up a bit and we decide to see if she’ll have dinner and then maybe a bath will help clear her chest and make her feel a bit better.

She does her best to eat but is not quite up to her usual hungry self, Momma notices. Obviously something must be wrong if she’s not eating. And then the coughing begins.

At first I wonder if something is caught in her throat because it’s not your typical cough… it’s more of a hacking/gagging sound. I’m just about to get up to see if I need to administer the baby Heimlich when someone, somewhere turns on a power hose and the contents of my baby’s stomach come shooting out her mouth onto her tray.

And then again. And then a third time. I had heard that kids are masters of projectile vomiting, but you don’t believe it until you see it. And where did all of this come from? Her stomach is maybe the size of a large orange, but it just kept coming.

The thing is, we have all been there. We have all been sick like that. And for the most part, it’s the best thing you can do to start feeling better – get rid of whatever it is that’s making you feel bad. But after you finish you feel weak and shaky and you just want to collapse. This was the first time this little girl had ever gone through any of this and it was just SO sad.
Of course, the first reaction is to get her out of there and cleaned up. And as I’m unhooking her from the high chair, she’s beginning to cry and look at me like “What did I just do?” The poor thing. It was hard to keep the tears back.

But thank goodness for kids and their short-term memory. Once we got her into the bath, it was like it never happened. She was playing in the tub and splashing like it was a normal night. Wouldn’t it be nice to move on from tragedy like that? It’s still playing in my mind. I keep seeing her little face looking at me wondering what just happened.

So, tonight as we laid her down for bed, we gave her a little extra loving. She may get the long rest she deserves, but it will be hard for Momma and Poppa to sleep. And for all of us – the baby and the parents – this is just the beginning. This won’t be the last time she gets sick and this won’t be the last time we lose sleep over it. The only real good thing is that as she gets older, she’ll hopefully only have a few bouts of illness. And for us… well maybe we’ll learn to take turns worrying and try to plan who gets to stay awake each night. But we know what happens when you make plans.

On Hiatus

Sorry it's been a while since I've posted. Now that the holidays are over, I'll put something new up on Monday, January 7th. See you then!

Early Christmas

Yesterday marked Finley’s 10-month birthday. And in celebration, we had a big family get together, where we exchanged gifts. No, not really. We, in fact, celebrated Christmas a bit early with my family. It turned out that my nephew, who lives in Hawaii, was able to sneak home a little early, so in order to have the whole family there at the same time, we moved Christmas up a bit and it just happened to be the same day Finley turned 10 months.

Now some of you may be thinking that if she’s 10 months old on December 16, that would make her 12 months on February 16^th, not March 11^th, which is her actual birthday. It turns out, when you’re keeping track of babies that just like during pregnancy; everything is in weeks, not months. And since several months have a little more than four weeks in them, it throws things off a bit.

This means that when Finley turns a year old on March 11th, she will actually be just over 62 weeks old. Those of you who want to do the math can add 10 weeks to every year of your life (a month and a half) and figure out how old you REALLY are. I’m not sure this works when trying to prove you can buy alcohol, but it’s certainly a conversation starter.

At any rate, this weekend, although a bit premature, was Finley’s first foray into Christmas festivities. Of course, this meant that Momma was prepared with a little outfit that turned out to be several little outfits once we showed up to my sister’s house. Sandy, it turns out, just became a grandma in October and when she realized not just one but TWO babies would be experiencing their first Christmas, she designated herself “Official Outfitter of Baby’s 1^st Christmas, 2007. “

You would think the babies were sisters instead of second cousins, but matching outfits were the plan of the day and after several thousand photographs, we got down to business with baby gifts.

Predictably, the wrapping paper and bows were far more interesting that what was neatly wrapped inside. But once the safety measures, shoplifting devices and other packaging gauntlets were breached, we were able to hand over the prizes to Finley who’s first matter of business was to decide how each and every gift tasted.

Once the gift satisfied her palate, we spent the next several moments showing her how to play with the darned things. We really should have known better, because all of her toys, now matter how big or small, loud or quiet, colorful or bland have three main purposes:

1. To be tasted.
2. To act as some sort of drum for her to beat on.
3. To be knocked over again and again.

Anything beyond these basic principles is really just an added bonus.

For instance, she received a neat little farmhouse from our friends in Portland, Tony and Michelle. It has a little barn door that plays “Old McDonald” whenever you open it. She doesn’t quite yet know how to make it play music, but whenever one of us sets the song off, Finley bops her head and then her whole body along to the tune. It’s pretty funny. And even funnier if she hears music when she’s pulled herself up to standing. Then the knees and the rear get into the act. But the thing she’s learned to do, that I find most fascinating, is that she’s beginning to play catch with her old man.

She has this little plastic ball that’s been a chew toy for her for quite some time. The other night, I wanted to see what she would do when I got on the floor with her and rolled it her way. She immediately got the idea and in her pre-toddler way, attempted to roll the ball back to me. There were actually a few times where she rolled it to me perfectly, and as I told her “Hooray!” for each time she tried to push the ball to me, she would bop her head back and forth and smile. She could tell it was a game and she could tell she was doing it right.

Now I know that it’s not exactly catch and really just a tail and a slobbery tongue away from being considered “fetch,” but it’s the beginning of something. She knows that the ball will be coming from me and she knows she has to try and send it back to me. She’s learned the basics of action and reaction. I think that’s pretty cool.

So as we head toward the actual Christmas holiday, I know we can expect a few more toys and a few more outfits. We will have several hundred more photographs to be taken and possibly multiple wardrobe changes. I’m enjoying watching everyone watching her and seeing what I’m lucky to see everyday; this little girl who’s crawling and climbing and growing. It’s cool to see how amazed everyone is by what she’s been able to learn in just a few short months. I’m amazed every day. Not just by the things she’s learning, but by the things she’s teaching me.

It’s not only the ultimate lesson of learning to crawl and taking things slowly, but it’s a lesson in how much joy even the little things in life can and should bring. Every single thing she does makes her smile and I envy that. But then again, every single thing she does makes ME smile. So my gift this Christmas is just watching and enjoying her. It’s the greatest gift I could ever ask for.