The Party's Over

Turn out the lights, the party's over
They say that all good things must end

Certain NJ-related developments around the household have that chorus running through my head at seemingly regular intervals. (It's usually Dandy Don Meredith's voice in my head, what with me being a football fan and a child of the '70s and all, but Willie's version is just so damn smooth. You're welcome!) The kid that I used to rave about, well ... oh, I'm still raving. But things aren't like they used to be. To wit:

Crying and whining. The kid was pretty good about this for a long, long time. Now, though, she's learned that crying and whining gets results. It really started during the Daycare Sickness Jubilee, and who could blame her for crying and whining then? Not me. But -- and it seems like some sort of world record -- she's been illness-free for at least a week now. The crying and whining? It's survived. Long ago, I think it was in NJ's first week, someone warned us against bending to the will of a baby who would "manipulate us." It was premature advice -- I didn't think a one-week-old knew much from manipulation -- but now I'm starting to get it. Particularly when she throws a loud, blubbery six-second fit and then calmly, coolly inserts her thumb in her mouth and clams up. Plotting her next move, no doubt.

Sleeping. I said once before that the contently sleeping infant who made us the envy of new parents all across north Seattle was long gone, and it's still true even though the daycare colds and bugs are gone. She can be counted on to wake up once per night these days. Thankfully it's not as bad as when she was sick -- last week, her nose was so stuffed up that when she sucked her thumb, she couldn't breathe. I imagine that was pretty frustrating for the little kid. Again, though, it's better now that -- for the moment -- she isn't sick. Also, I'm sure this can be blamed in part on her teething: Her teeth took their sweet time showing up, and now they're making up for lost time -- three are coming in now on the top, maybe even four. So we coasted for a while there on the teething front, and now it's catching up to us. This is a factor in the crying/whining, too, I'm sure.

Eating. NJ is no longer the Hungry Monkey who'll eat whatever is put in front of her. The first thing she struck off her to-eat list? Broccoli. She seems to get pickier by the day. And worse, she's started holding out for the things she likes best. A couple of evenings ago I made the mistake of saying the word "yogurt" aloud, and she was inconsolable (see "Crying and whining," above) until The Wife was shoveling creamy, peachy goodness into her mouth.

Preferring her mom to me. This one is the toughest to take. NJ's shown a decisive preference for The Wife, as compared to Dad Solo. The Wife brings her upstairs in the morning and she can't put her down on the bed with me to get dressed because NJ starts crying. The Wife goes into the kitchen to make dinner and she can't leave NJ with me because the kid starts crying; instead, she sits in her high chair in the kitchen and watches her mom. It's not that she dislikes me or anything -- she just was practicing standing up and beamed at me every time for approval -- it's just that she is into her mom right now and makes it clear. She's playing favorites and right now I'm lagging. The Wife spent an hour at day care last Friday for some pumpkin-carving goings-on, and a couple was there with their kid. The mom left and the kid started crying in dad's arms. The Wife leaned over to another father and said, "I wish my husband was here to see this, he'd feel better." The man (allegedly) replied, "Happens at our house, too. It's normal." I put a year into caring for her exclusively, you'd think I'd have some good will stored up by now. But: No. I still have to earn it every day.

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!

"This Single Parenting Is HARD!"

On the last day of my last Super Solo stretch with NJ, I was IMing with a co-worker, B, and complaining about getting up so early that day. I was thinking about the past three days and all the work I put into them, but at this point in our text conversation I had only mentioned that day's waking hour, then followed with "this single parenting is HARD!"

B, who has a daughter in college and a son in high school, responded: "laughing"

Well, yeah, I thought as I saw that she was typing more, I am pretty funny! Then she followed up with a short story about her friend who left town with one of their kids and left the other with her husband. B offered to help out, and her friend replied, "Oh, one is nothing."

"if you had 2 you could do this in yr sleep"

Ah. Not laughing with me, but at me. Got it.

So yes, perhaps I'm a little bit of a wuss for complaining about juggling a job, day care and a 13-month-old kid for THREE WHOLE DAYS. But I have no frame of reference for multiple children -- this is all I know, and all I will know. So I will lay out my experiences here and you feel free to snicker away. I've had a taste of single parenthood, and to me it looks like a pretty tough gig.

NJ's health. Her smoker's cough roared back with a vengeance the first night The Wife was gone. Exactly four minutes after I switched off the television and double-checked the alarm clock, she started hacking up a lung downstairs (Note to self: The baby monitor doesn't have to be set at maximum volume.) I booked downstairs and rocked her for a while, and after singing about half of the "Born to Run" album to her, all was well and she was nodding off again, cough-free.

NJ's sleep. The little girl who sleeps like a lamb and never has night issues, the one who was the envy of all the other parents we know, is gone and did not leave a forwarding address. Putting NJ down used to mean a kiss on the forehead, handing her one of the eleven stuffed animals, and leaving the room. But or the past few weeks, no matter how tired she is, putting her down is immediately followed by her rolling over, crawling to the side of the crib, standing up and shout-crying. A rocking-to-sleep session is now mandatory -- again, the Springsteen songbook was invaluable -- and middle-of-the-night wake-ups are common (although they usually don't happen after midnight, huzzah).

My sleep. The Wife gets up before I do and takes care of NJ in the mornings -- because she gets up earlier than I do anyway, and also so she can spend as much time as possible with her daughter before leaving for the office. So getting up early was a change, and a challenge -- particularly when I couldn't manage to fall asleep early at night to compensate. I ended up doubling my coffee intake, and anyone who knows me and the strength and amount of coffee I like knows that is a big deal. My innards are still reeling.

My job. It was a lot easier back when I was at home. The Wife would leave, but my day was already tailored to fit NJ's, so the adjustment ended up being not all that huge a deal. And hey, her nap time was my nap time if need be. Now, I've got a big chunk of work in the middle of taking care of NJ, so I'm expected to be sharp and active and alert and not napping or doing other mentally unchallenging things like building tall stacks of blocks and knocking them down. Add to that the sleep issues above and it wasn't pretty.

My time. I had none! Well, check that: From 8.30 p.m. to whenever I could manage to fall asleep, that was Dad Solo Time. The morning was all about NJ. The day was all about the job. The evening was all about NJ. Once she was in bed, I cleaned up her various messes, packed her next day's lunch, and performed a couple dozen similar tasks before I could sit down with a free mind. And then I was too tired to do anything except go to bed (and then fail to go to sleep). Oh, there was the one evening I worked late: Woo-hoo! I had no opportunities whatsoever to sit and stare at the wall, or inspect the hairs on my forearms. No Me Time at all.

NJ's whining. Still rocking her cold -- or, more likely, rocking a brand new cold -- and not napping long enough at day care, most evenings NJ was as whiny as I am in this blog post. As described here -- I used the phrase "a little irritable" to be polite to the kid. She turned it on and off like a spigot.

Oh, for crying out loud. Don't make me break out the world's smallest violin.

This is all a long-winded way of getting around to a shout-out to all the single parents out there. I don't know many, actually, but the couple I do know are raising beautiful, smart kids. To the previously untrained eye it looked pretty effortless. It was impressive enough then, but now that I've had some first-hand experience with it, I'm in awe. Kudos!

Also: The calendar tells me that today is the 70th birthday of the World's Greatest Househusband. Happy birthday, John. I haven't baked bread with my kid yet, but she's only 1 year old. Hopefully, there's time for that.

(In his last interview, Lennon said: 'I don't believe in yesterday. Life begins at 40, or so they promise. And I believe in what's going to come." Three weeks later he was assassinated. So maybe "Hopefully, there's time for that" is exactly the wrong message to be taking from the whole thing.)

Sometimes, But Not Often, It Comes To This

Nap time.

Lazy Sunday (And a Blog Post That Reflects It)

It's almost twenty-four hours later, and The Wife is still walking on air because yesterday, in line at Piroshky Piroshky in Pike Place Market, a stranger snapped a photo of NJ. (I know what you're wondering, the real question, and the answer is: I had the beef and cheese.)

NJ was decked out in the new sun hat we'd purchased moments earlier at a place that I'm going to have to sneak back to without The Wife, because they had some awesome rock and roll baby clothes. (Actually, I'm on the fence about returning because I overheard one saleswoman tell the other that she didn't like Eric Clapton, something I cannot abide. That's like saying you don't like sunshine.) Turning 9 months old has marked a growing milestone of sorts for the kid; no growth spurt, per se, but lots of clothes she's worn for a while have ended up in the "too small" pile over the past week. The Wife bought a couple of garments that I figured NJ would have to grow into over a few weeks; she's wearing them today, though, and they fit perfectly. Kid is growing -- pretty soon she won't be able to perform her favorite sleeping trick anymore, the Horizontal Spin:

NJ in 15 years: "Yes, Dad, it was creepy to photograph me while I was asleep."

Random Notes: NJ scooted backwards about two feet two days ago, further proof that babyproofing is in my near future ... Current favorite meal? Chicken and yogurt. Maybe NJ inherited my parents' distaste for lamb ... We think we taught her to "slip me some crimson, Timson" this morning, but her moves need work ... NJ also has been crushing hard on The Two Idiots lately, waving and/or clapping at them whenever they appear, and her affection is almost -- almost -- reciprocated. Willie the Lab has relaxed around her a great deal, and Zeus will even hang around her for a few moments. Still, there's no better way to get them out of a room than for NJ to let out one of her happy shrieks.

Movement On Movement

NJ turns 9 months old this weekend, and she's marking the occasion with a multi-day Wrigglepalooza leading up to the big day. Until recently she hadn't shown any interest in crawling, something that's both perplexed me ("Crawl to the toy! You'll never make the Supreme Court at age 30 if you don't step it up!") and relieved me ("Let's avoid childproofing and chasing her around as long as possible.").

Her peers are figuratively all over the place -- one 10-month-old we know has been crawling for months now, and a couple of other 10-month-olds still haven't bothered with it. The crawler can really book, too; she's crawled rings around NJ a couple of times, leaving NJ grabbing air as she moves past.

Over the past few days, though, NJ has become a lot more mobile. And a lot more interested in being mobile, which may be a distinction without a difference, but still. Three weeks ago, let's say, when NJ found herself on her belly she'd fuss for a moment, then look around, then decide to lay there with her thumb in her mouth before rolling over onto her back. Two weeks ago, for some reason she decided that rolling over immediately was the way to go. A week ago, there some leg action and, instead of immediate thumb-sucking, she's lift her torso up off the floor for a few seconds with her chubby baby arms. And the last couple of days, there's been an obvious escalation in the progression. Now the legs are churning, she lifts herself higher, and when she's laying flat she turns herself around using her arms. She does 360s on her tummy, basically, and occasionally inches forward a little bit before sliding back to her original position. It's fun to watch.

Pretty soon, that knee is going to dig into the carpet and she will pull herself forward until the other knee sticks. Then, Katie had better bar that door we're always hearing about. Or, maybe tomorrow she'll just crawl across the basement floor and stand up at the washing machine, out of the blue. Her most recent milestone is clapping, which she did for the first time yesterday. And it came completely out of nowhere. We clap with her a lot, and she had held our hands when we clapped, but she never showed an interest. Then, yesterday morning The Wife came to drag my butt out of bed and she sat NJ down next to me. NJ sat up and slowly, surely, and very happily clapped her hands together several times. Ever since, we've clapped our hands red trying to get her to do it some more (because it's beyond adorable to watch), but she does it on her own time, when she feels like it. Which is as it should be. (I hate it when the "CLAP!" message comes up on the baseball park scoreboard.) This evening when The Wife walked into the house, NJ smiled big and clapped and, well, it was so sweet and touching it should be an insurance commercial.

Now, even when I sit her at her play tunnel (photo above), she's interested in the toys that are far away from her, not the ones within arm's reach. And sleeping? I have no idea what this kid is doing when she sleeps. We put her smack in the middle of her crib, and for a long time we'd find her in the morning or after a nap in almost exactly the same position. For the past couple of weeks, though, when we go in for her we see a lot of this sideways stuff:

Seriously, who's that cheery when they wake up? Don't worry, kid, life will beat that happiness and childlike wonder out of you eventually.

And yesterday, I went to get her after an afternoon nap and came upon this:

I thought I saw a quarter over here.

Now, she obviously rolled over onto her stomach, and then rolled over again up against the railing there. But how did she get from the middle of the mattress to the corner? If it was a trick -- sorry, NJ, an illusion -- surely I would have heard The Final Countdown.

Crib Notes

Three months ago we began the transition from the Moses basket in our bedroom to the crib in her room. Even with a highly sensitive baby monitor, it wasn't easy psychologically on The Wife. It went well, though -- the first two nights we visited her in the grand tradition of Dr. Richard Ferber, and after that she's slept like a ... hold on, wait for it ... like a baby. Since that first week, NJ has awakened and cried only three times (ironically, last night was one of them). We've heard tales of kids waking every two hours during their teething and growth spurts, but NJ hasn't sprouted a tooth yet and, while she's definitely growing, there hasn't been a spurt uncomfortable enough to set her wailing. The vast majority of the time, NJ"s sleeping from about 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. or later now.

A couple of weeks after that transition began, we decided to move her naps to the crib, too, and out of the basement, home of the swing and soothing rock music lullabies. How'd that go? Thanks for asking -- not too good. NJ pitched fits that would have made Dr. Ferber reach for the whiskey, cigarettes and Xanax after a few minutes. We felt like we were lucky that she was sleeping through the night, so we decided to cut our losses and return to the basement for naps for a while.

"A while" ended this week.

Her afternoon naps in her crib have been short -- half as long as a typical basement swing nap -- but she has, indeed, slept. The room has blackout shades that darken the room to the appropriate level, and I shut the door so no dog wanders into her room to see what's in her waste basket. I zip her up in her sleep sack, borrowing part of the evening routine in hopes of making it more soothing and familiar. On the monitor, I can hear her yammering softly to herself for a few minutes, then ... silence. Sleep. Sleep good. But when she wakes up, she screams and cries like it's the end of the world. It's excruciating -- the kind of crying that makes your shoulders involuntarily hunch and your eyes get as big as saucers. The room is plenty dark and there's no extra noise; I don't understand the difference between sleeping in there at night and during the day. Apparently, though, there is one. As soon as NJ learns to talk, I'm going to ask her what it is.

Once we nail this crib nap thing, we'll expand it and NJ will take her morning nap there as well. (The Wife could, theoretically, put her down right before she leaves for work, letting Dad Solo slumber peacefully until NJ wakes up again. In reality, this will never happen.) But it's going to be a long, loud road.