Bon Appétit!

... and Happy Halloween!

I will not tolerate smart-alecks in my kitchen. No imitation crab meat and no smart-alecks!

Book Learnin'

When I picked NJ up from day care today, her minder pointed out something The Wife and I had noticed at home -- the kid loves her some books. She spends a little more than half her play time with the other kids, I was told, and the rest of the time she likes to hang out on her own. And when she goes solo, it's almost always in the corner of the play room where the books are always strewn about -- "the library" -- and she thumbs through books and yammers as though she's reading out loud (I think she's talking about -- or to -- the illustrations).

NJ does the same at home. Her drum, blocks and 2.1 million other toys now take a back seat to her 1.5 million books. She's got many of the standards, like 'Where the Wild Things Are' and 'Goodnight Moon,' but also some other stuff, like a book with a story told in Magritte paintings (my favorite) and another one featuring Monet. (I can't be more specific at the moment because they're most all in her room right now, and she's asleep, and, to me, most of them blend together into a mishmash of talking animals and trains and mother-child discussions.) Most of the time she thumbs through them looking at every page, but occasionally she'll speed-read through book after book until a pile of them has been systematically moved from her left to her right. And nowadays, when The Wife or I (mostly her) read to NJ after bath time, she pays a lot more attention to the story and illustrations and spends less time looking around and pointing at the dog.

So, for now NJ's taken a scholarly path. I don't have the heart to tell her that books probably won't be around much longer.

I also read catalogs. Hey, um, Daddy -- can I borrow a credit card?

Goodbye, Barking Frog; Hello, Dr. Maze And Red Robin

We drove to Redmond today and stopped at the intersection of Willows and 124th, right where the big fields open up. I could have turned left there and we would have been heading toward the wineries of Woodinville, which are just a couple of miles up from there. After hitting two or three of our favorites, we could have lunched at the Barking Frog before a leisurely drive back across Lake Washington to the city.

Instead, though, we drove straight through that intersection and pulled over to Dr. Maze's Farm for Pumpkin Patch Day! Because, you see, unlike those halcyon winery-going days of yore, now we've got the kid. I think photographs of adorable kids sitting amongst pumpkins are fine and dandy, but not nearly to the extent that, apparently, everyone else in the world does. I'm incredibly easy-going, as everyone knows, so when The Wife brought up earlier in the week, I got on board.

You know who didn't get on board? NJ. She didn't get on board. She just got "on bored." (Zing!) The first thing she did was get behind a wooden cut-out of Dr. Maze's truck and try to make her escape (which actually elicited the best smiles of the patch outing):

See ya, Daddy, wouldn't wanna be ya! Mommy and I are OUTTA HERE!

She showed a little interest in the goats and alpacas, but she'd seen farm animals just a couple weeks earlier and it was a bit old hat.

Yeah, yeah, I'm close to an exotic animal and he's cute. Whatevs. Anything more interesting over there?

Then, the pumpkin patch. A few days ago The Wife bought a couple of pumpkins to autumn-ize and Halloween-ready our front porch, so we were just about the only folks there not wheeling pumpkins around in wheelbarrows. I broke out the camcorder, but NJ was still pretty bored (also, she's been a little bundle of cranky joy lately, what with three teeth coming in at the same time). I must have hit wrong buttons or something, because when we got home this was all I had:


Nice job, Dad! You're a regular Francis Ford Scorsese.

Aaaaaaannnnddd ... that was pretty much it. We took some shots, but NJ didn't look at the camera much; her heart just wasn't in it. Here's just about the best of the lot:

That's your father, NJ. Act as if you like him, please.

Then, lunchtime. We drove around Redmond a bit until it struck us that we'd be eating at Red Robin; it's made for parents and kids. The last time I ate (I just typed "hate" by mistake; paging Dr. Freud!) at a Red Robin was in July 2009, when The Wife and I were on our way to the Oregon coast for our last pre-NJ trip. We were starving for lunch, and Red Robin was the only thing we could find at the next exit. We were seated at a table next to a family with a couple of kids who were having some loud fun, and The Wife -- who looked like this then, great with child -- said "Get used to it, we'll be going to these places a lot pretty soon." Fifteen months later, there we were. NJ was immediately interested when she saw kids leaving Red Robin with balloons, which she's already on record as being partial to. As soon as we got in, she was given a red balloon and her attitude noticeably spiked to "fun."

You can stuff your pumpkins in a sack, Mister, because THIS is a party!

NJ feasted on chicken, steak fries and a little broccoli. She also learned that she likes ketchup, thanks to me dabbing it on my finger and sticking said finger in her mouth. There were tons of other kids there, including a five-month-old boy sitting at the next table who cried until his mother pulled him in underneath the public-breastfeeding blanket, a sight that brought back fond memories of The Wife putting that cape-like thing on and hustling NJ underneath for a quick, inconspicuous meal. Now, we're thrusting mashed-up steak fries at her and swabbing the inside of her mouth with ketchup. Once we got home, NJ and Dad Solo both hit their respective beds for nice, long naps.

So thanks, Red Robin, for turning our afternoon around. Even though the burger I ate five hours ago is sitting in my gutty-works like an unmovable stone right now, and it actually feels like it's getting bigger and bigger.

It's their signature blend, so you KNOW it's gonna be good!

Saint NJ's Infirmary

What's worse than having a stomach virus that makes you throw up a lot?

Maybe having that virus travel further through your intestinal tract, and dealing with the fallout from that?

And what if you added not one, not two, but three new teeth making their gum-breaking debut simultaneously?

And then, let's say, all three of those conditions hit at once. And on the weekend you turned fourteen months, too boot. Is that something you might enjoy?

Yeah, NJ's not enjoying either, let me tell you. Tired, whiny, no energy. The kid's scuffling.

The patient, in happier times (almost a month ago).

To be fair, though, NJ's whining has not escalated from her whining that I've been whining about lately. She's been sick on and off for about a month now, and she's been going to day care for a month and a half -- do the math there -- and when she had a stuffy head you could tell it frustrated her not to be able to breathe through both nostrils without all the snot and snot bubbles. But this is the first time I've seen her really look sick: pale (except the red cheeks from teething), wan, and a sort of tired, resigned. "when will this be over?" look in her blue eyes. She's been smiling some, too, but it's a little weary. There's might even be a little resignation to it (that I'm probably projecting). She's drinking water and Pedialyte and eating yogurt, and hopefully will graduate to Jello tonight. I put a bland rice-and-broccoli lunch in front of her today and the look she shot me was best described as "exasperated desperation." "You have got to be kidding me, old man!" her eyes said.

And the teeth: All on the top ridge, in various stages of unveiling. She's had only two teeth for so long now I'd almost forgotten more were due to debut. Two are through the gum and the third is right behind, so hopefully the worst of that is over.

All that said, NJ is a tough little tyke. She's still standing up and looking around for congratulations, crawling around the basement (a little slower), chortling at her dad's "anything for a laugh" act, and doing brainy things like putting a soft round block into a soft square block that has round hole in the center, and then popping it out again. She's down, but she ain't out.

Stand And Deliver 2: Stand And Deliver Strikes Back

I was wrapping up work this afternoon when The Wife brought the kid down to my basement lair and said she had just stood up with no help at all -- no mommy's hand helping her, no pulling up by grabbing the coffee table. Just free-standing free standing.

Of course, she didn't do that once they got down here. All this happened, though:



My favorite part? Oh, that's easy -- the hands-in-the-air joy. And yes, there was a little drumming at the end. You're welcome!

Of course, once the camcorder was safely put away NJ did exactly what I was hoping she'd do while the 'recording' light was on -- she stood up without using mommy or anything else. You'll just have to trust me on that.

Stop me if you've heard this before, but: It's about time I finished up that baby-proofing.