Charmageddon

NJ apparently has decided that 2011 is the year she'll devote to honing her personality. And, judging by the last week of 2010, so far so good.

Her curious case began last Wednesday night when I was assembling our new kitchen island, an intricate little number that, early on, frustrated me no end. (Frustration at the end, too, when one part didn't work properly, but that's a boring story for another time.) To give you an idea: It took five minutes short of a solid hour just to unpack the thing from its box. Once that was done, there was some shaky assembly time (it called for two people); The Wife was busy with dinner and couldn't hold things upright so screws could be inserted and fastened. I fumed and steamed over this while NJ sat in her high chair watching. Suddenly, over the sound of the iPod buds in my ears, I heard her exclaim "Oh!" and laugh. Then she laughed again, longer and louder. And again. Waving arms, too. I pulled the earbuds out and she did it again -- it was fake laughter. "She's trying to cheer you up!" The Wife said. I smiled weakly at the kid and replied, "It's not working." The Wife chastised me for being a grouch and took NJ out of her chair. The girl immediately toddled over to me, beaming a smile, and latched tight onto my leg with a hug for the ages. Even a practiced sullen dork like me couldn't fight that. I didn't curse or grouse until NJ was fast asleep and we turned our attention back to the kitchen furniture.

Fast-forward to yesterday: NJ grabbed her ridiculously wide-brimmed Worcester Nor'easter rain hat and marched around the house putting it on and pulling it off her head, babbling her babble. Then, the booming, fake laughter again -- I don't know if other young children do this, but I've never seen it before. It's really something -- she does it and looks at you with a grin, and if you laugh back she breaks into the real thing. It looks like this:

Batten down the hatches, matey!

Then, it was on to the Seattle Aquarium. She's been there before, but yesterday she was ready to make the place her own. Once she got over an initial awe-struck phase, NJ was jabbering and pointing and staggering around, pointing at fish and watching enraptured as a diver fed them. We rounded the corner to an exhibit that features a wave simulator (and the requisite explosions of bubbles) and a lot of fish at her eye level. This one we couldn't get her away from for a long time. Finally we were able to convince her to move on, although we stopped there on the way out and she forced her way to the front (right) with the confident aplomb of a groupie at a rock concert (which I hope never, ever, never, never, ever, never ever comes to pass). Lots of other fish exhibits captured her attention, and the high point of the trip for me was when The Wife put her on the floor and she immediately and swiftly toddled toward an aquarium waving her arms and shouting "Ah-pee ah-pee ah-pee" to no one in particular. I think she learned "happy" at day care -- she certainly didn't learn it from me on kitchen island assembly night.*

*UPDATE: I'm reliably informed by The Wife that she taught NJ "happy."

Last night came the clincher. At our New Year's Eve dinner table, I noticed NJ looking at me and squinting her eyes, with her mouth in a weird half-open position. I dimmed the lights a bit, but she did it again and I thought maybe she got a bit of food in her eye or something. "Is she making fun of me?" I asked The Wife, getting a little defensive about my own squinty-eyed visage (although, as the man said, All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes). "Maybe so!" she replied, so I made the face back at NJ -- who gave me an approving arm-wave and laughed heartily (not that Ed McMahon overdone stuff, either). We made faces at each other for a little while longer, before I resorted to my usual dinner-is-over routine of juggling three clementine oranges for her before clearing the table.

NJ's always been a charmer, but it's fun to see her kick it up a notch or two. She's also won over Zeus, the timid dog who's scared of his own shadow. She's upstairs with her mom right now, but if she was here she'd want me to wish all of you a Ah-pee New Year!

Nip Imp

NJ is scarfing down solid foods like nobody's business -- tonight: quinoa with vegetables, chicken and a little kalbi beef -- and The Wife is slowly phasing out the breastfeeding. One session in the morning, and one right before bedtime -- as much for comfort and routine as for nourishment.

She may pick up the pace on that phasing out, though, because NJ's newest big laugh is to not even bother to feed so much as just to bite. Those two little front bottom teeth, still nubbins but sprouting a tiny bit more every day, apparently are razor-sharp. NJ assumes the position, and mere seconds later The Wife is howling and pulling back while the kid giggles away. What used to take quite a while now ends abruptly, with a couple of calls of "Ow! Hey, no!", muttered recriminations, and baby laughter.

I sympathize with The Wife, but I do admire the kid's sense of humor. It's got an edge to it.

Ballard Of A Sunday Afternoon

The kid's big achievements of the week have been lifting up so she's standing flat on her feet and hands (is standing next?) and deftly honing her mood swings. The former is self-explanatory, right? So: The latter.

NJ has been a giggling, smiling, delightful delight for the past several days. Except when she's been a screaming, crying feral creature. Ever since we returned from Oregon she's done a lot of wailing to get attention. Lately, I haven't been clued in to the fact that her nap is over by the sweet, lilting sounds of her jibber-jabber over the monitor, as per usual; it's been zero-to-sixty crying. Same when we put her down -- crying, not talking. And as often as not, the middle of her nap has been punctuated by a short wailing burst. Nothing is really wrong, of course, but she's really perfecting her crying-as-attention-getting skills.

Otherwise, she's been a dream. Her latest move is to look at a toy, hold it up to me or The Wife, and flash a big, toothy, "I love this thing!" grin. ("Toothy" meaning "two tooth nubbins.") It's pretty cute. Also pretty cute: stream-of-consciousness jabbering that would make James Joyce proud. No longer does it come simply in spurts -- now she talks in sentences, only with words that make no sense (to me, at least). "Baden," "daden," "doy" and "ooooyyeeee," which is something of a wistful sigh, are her favorites. In her mind, they are probably all swear words directed at me.

Today was a big day for NJ. We went to a toy store to buy some new toys, toys that she can't have for another week when we fly to New England. Hopefully, brand new things to play with on the airplane will keep her more happily occupied than the tired old things she's currently got strewn all over the house. It'll buy me some time before I have to invoke the It's My Turn rule.

NJ with an anonymous toy store patron.

After that we hit Ballard for the street market, where NJ saw another girl in a stroller who has co-opted her "antique telephone" method of thumb-sucking (thumb in mouth, other hand clutching ear). We got lunch at the extremely kid-friendly Old Town Alehouse (the first place we took her to, I believe, back in the fall). Her wailing was on full display as she scarfed down a lunch of roast beef, fries and bread dipped in minestrone:




Nom nom nom. Waaahh! Nom nom nom. Waaahh! Nom nom nom ...

Finally, at the end of the meal, NJ gave it her hearty seal of approval.

I'll smile for the camera, but I won't let you see my tooth nubbins.

A Day In The Life

A typical day at Casa de Dad Solo, compressed to its 3-second essence.

She Probably Thinks This Blog Is About Her

Can it be that NJ is turning into a little narcissist? Or at least she's really working on her vanity, right along with her vocal and motor skills.

A couple of weeks ago we had a photographer in for a wide-ranging Vanity Fair-style photo spread of the child. NJ playing in a pile of toilet paper, NJ looking pensive in her great-grandfather's rocking chair, NJ looking slyly through the slats of her crib, NJ thumbing through her big cloth books. You know, the typical up-and-coming Hollywood star stuff. When the photos were done, The Wife and I were clicking through them on the computer here and NJ caught a look at the screen. She laughed and The Wife asked her if she recognized the kid in the photo. She laughed a little more, and I clicked on to the next shot. NJ was delighted when the next photo of herself materialized -- arms waving, beaming smile, adorable giggle. This continued, and escalated, with each new photograph. After a while I expected her to lean over and whisper "Let's use that one for the head shot, send it to Miramax stat" in my ear.

Over the weekend, NJ's fascination with herself spiked even higher. I've talked about our stops in front of the hallway mirror before, but a few days ago I noticed that it's no longer about me making a funny face, or the adorable juxt of big, beefy Dad Solo and his tiny, cute-as-hell daughter. No, it's all about her: NJ squeals, flaps her arms like a bird, kicks her legs and generally goes nuts, staring at herself. And just when I think it can't get any worse, she almost falls out of my arms reaching out to touch herself in the mirror. I guess I'd better not take her to the lake any time soon.

Oh well. I suppose it's hard to blame her. Who could resist this? She's not made of stone, after all.

NJ's David Lynch to My Warren Zevon

The Wife was out of town Tuesday night, and my second round of Super Soloing with NJ went well, up to a point -- that point being mid-afternoon Wednesday. That's when things turned a little bit David Lynchian. Odd, steady whimpering. Angry eating. Refusal to eat. Wild mood swings. Sweeping, seemingly arbitrary rejection of previously established norms. It only lasted about four hours, but it seemed like an eternity.

The face of cruel, unyielding defiance

Sure, there was a delightful moment in the midst of the Meltdown that involved fart noises, stomach-poking and infectious baby laughter (see: Wild mood swings, above), but overall it was like running clean for the first two-thirds of a NASCAR race before getting rammed and sliding around the oval for the rest of the race. By the end of it all I was happy to drive into a wall just to end it. That wall was The Wife, finally coming through the door. NJ was so happy to see her that I had a hard time convincing The Wife how bad it all was. Their reunion was sweet enough under normal circumstances; to me, The Wife's arrival was akin to that of a Marine kicking in the door and releasing the hostages.

A lot of it is her missing her mom, of course, and there's also a gradual weaning process in progress. ('Process in progress' -- say it five times, fast!) I think NJ's not too happy with gradual dominance of formula over breast milk, and I'm not sure I blame her because this formula stinks something terrible. Her formula burps are almost as bad as our dog's.

The other thing at play is NJ's recent realization that sometimes, when she's being put in her crib or on the floor mat on her own, she can elicit the beginnings of a crying jag and one of her parents will swoop in to her rescue, picking her back up and lavishing her with love and attention. I'm wise to this and have started to ignore it, so now there's the initial bleat of crying at being put down, then another as she realizes that the first bleat isn't bending me to her will. Then (I imagine) she sighs and shrugs her shoulders, because almost instantly she's shaking a rattle or batting a squeaky bird around. But I still think there's resentment there. It'll probably finally boil over when she's 35.

The weaning and the manipulation ("The Weaning and the Manipulation" -- isn't that an old Truffaut film?) have me a little worried about next week, when The Wife goes to New York City (the town so nice they named it twice -- the other name is "Manhattan") for four days. Call it Super Solo: Armageddon. If I haven't blogged my guts out after two days, pray to your god and send lawyers, guns and money.

Let's Do It Again

My parents were here last week, so Dad Solo wasn't so solo. In fact, I got to sleep in every day while my mother handled NJ after The Wife went to work, came and went as I pleased, and often handed off a cranky baby and just left the room for a while. And sometimes I practically had to wrestle NJ away from my mother; she's quite smitten with her granddaughter. My parents went home today after a nice Christmas holiday (NJ's new toys are strewn about the living room), so I take over again tomorrow. The two-day run a few days ago went so well, I'm sitting here Sunday night with a short, neat Talisker at my elbow thinking that things can only go downhill from here. I'm probably wrong about that: I was wrong a couple of weeks ago when I braced for disaster. But one thing I've learned from being a sports fan is that pessimists have more to savor when things go well. An ass-backwards way to live life, perhaps. It works for me, though.

Also, here's some video evidence of NJ laughing and smiling. You're probably thinking that a mere three days after I took to the Internet to declare her camera-shy, she indignantly set out to prove me wrong. Not necessarily so: The Wife got her to laughing up a little storm, and I surreptitiously leaned over the coffee table and captured the moment with my iPhone. A hidden camera trick that worked.



A happy NJ absolutely slays me.

My Daughter Is a British TV Janitor

On the (superior) Brit version of 'The Office,' about once every two episodes a janitor going about his business will move into view in the background. He'll stop whatever he's doing and stare into the camera with a severe case of Red Light-itis. The poor guy freezes, totally unable to move. The camera usually lingers on him a moment, then pans away or cuts to another scene.

NJ may have a future in cleaning suburban British office parks. She does the same thing.

Her smiles range from big, beautiful, open-mouthed beamers to wry little grins that see her lips pressed together in a light-hearted, innocent smirk. (She's too young to have her father's sarcasm, right? Maybe not -- she also does a single, arched Belushi eyebrow.) Recently she started really laughing, particularly at a language I made up specifically for the purpose of provoking guffaws. But whenever the camera, camcorder or iPhone is pointed at her, she clams up and looks at the device like it's the weirdest, most fantabulous thing she's ever seen (maybe it is, I don't know). And smiley NJ turns into curious, serious NJ. So for every photo we get like this:


There are a dozen or more in the series that look like this:


The smile photo is usually toward the end of the series. There's eight or nine shots of serious NJ studying the camera, then one with the beginnings of a smile, then a smile, then two or three like this one where she's past smiling and on to wondering why her mom and dad are acting like fools two feet away from her. Because to get that smile shot we end up really turning on the baby talk and silly behavior. (That usually means at least one good smile shot will be blurry because Dad shook the camera as he bounced around like a meth-addled chimp.)

The smile photo sessions usually start with a parent playing with NJ and realizing that she's laughing/smiling like a fool and rushing off for a photography device of some sort to capture the moment for all eternity. But retrieving the camera costs valuable time, and involves motion and maybe baby displacement, and once we're back the Red Light-itis sets in. It's like capturing lightning in a bottle.

On 'The Office,' it's a recurring gag that started off as a lark: The actor is the father of Stephen Merchant, who created the series with Ricky Gervais, and they just thought it would be funny to get his dad a bit part. What started off as a goof ended up being something 'The Office' fans ended up looking for expectantly, sort of a visual catch-phrase.

Here at home, I hope NJ grows out of it. I feel like I gain an extra ten minutes on my overall life span every time she laughs or smiles at me, so I'd like to see more of them. And one day when she's a sullen teen who sneers at every word that comes out of her father's mouth, I can remember a simpler, more innocent time when I could make her smile with a stream of jibberish.