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.

NJ's Ever-Evolving Social Skills: A Case Study

How She Gets What She Wants
Something I learned this week: If you go into your favorite sports replica clothing store wearing a cute baby who's happy and joyfully smiling at everyone she comes into contact with, the charmed storekeepers are likely to give her a free Seattle Angels t-shirt that she'll be big enough to wear in about three years.

How She Ignores What She Doesn't Want
NJ quite obviously and wantonly humored her father yesterday, something I'm sure I'll see again and again for the rest of my days. We were sitting on the couch playing with one of her ring toss games, and I started talking about something I'd just seen on the Internet. I'm doing my best to ix-nay the baby talk, lest she grow up thinking "boo-pa-doo-ba-doo" is an actual greeting to be used in all of society. So after I talked about what I was talking about I poked her in the tummy lightly and said "Know what I mean, kid?" She'd been watching the dog, who was by the end of the sofa, and when I poked her she turned toward me and widened her eyes a bit -- as if she'd been busted in class for not paying attention. Then she nodded her head, uttered a sound that was about ninety percent of "Uh-huh" and flashed the fakest, most last-minute, half-hearted, half-smile I've ever seen. I was actually a little taken aback at how cavalierly she'd treated me as she went back to watching the dog. Then, to add insult to injury, she darted her eyes back toward me -- to see if I was still looking at her -- and, upon seeing that I was, she quickly turned away again and began playing with toys and uttering noises that sounded suspiciously like the "duh-ta-da-ta-da" humming people do in movies when they're being conspicuously inconspicuous. It was a little soul-crushing, but a few minutes later she'd forgotten that I'd bored her silly with info on that night's starting pitchers. Hooray for short baby attention spans. I'm dreading the day she learns how to roll her eyes dismissively, though.

Otherwise, it's been a pretty uneventful week here at Dad Solo HQ. We're gearing up for The Wife's first Mother's Day as an honoree, something I need to think about this afternoon. I told The Wife my original plans a couple of evenings ago, and her response was about as enthusiastic as NJ's reaction to Felix Hernandez's ERA.

When Dad's Head Weighs Forty Pounds

I've been sick all week. It started last Saturday with a very sore throat, which ebbed a bit the following day before hitting again on Monday with full force, along with a stuffed head and all the other bells and whistles that accompany a cold. It was so bad that The Wife worked from home yesterday so she could look after NJ and, to a lesser extent, me. I even had to skip going out to watch the NFL Draft with The Guys, something I've only been looking forward to since last April. (Longer, actually -- Dallas didn't have a first-round pick last year, so I was already anticipating this year's draft two years ago. But I digress.) After about 18 hours on the couch yesterday (the Draft, 'Blade Runner' on blu-ray, etc.), I seemed to have turned the corner and hopefully will be right again by the time the weekend starts this evening.

So with me lugging around what felt like a giant concrete head, hocking and nose-blowing and spitting all day, and slipping into the occasional Nyquil-induced funk, you may ask: How did things go with the kid? Things went fine. Monday and Tuesday went as per usual, and we even went for very long walk on Tuesday -- to the drugstore for throat lozenges. The bad day was Wednesday, when I was laid too low to do anything other than sit around. And NJ was a champ. She played with her bazillion toys and napped like a pro and didn't complain about anything, ever. Which leads me to the buried lead of this post:

At eight-plus months, NJ is a very happy baby.

Yesterday she started fussing and crying at about 5 p.m., and after a few minutes deliberation The Wife and I realized she didn't get a meal after her afternoon nap and was hungry. So she got a bottle, and I tried to think back to the last time she'd cried like that. And I couldn't remember. I can count on one hand the number of times she's woken up in the night crying. Putting her down for a nap, or at bedtime, used to mean enduring a five- or ten-minute temper-tantrum cry; now she hits the mattress and either goes to sleep or jibbers and jabbers to herself for a while until she's out. (The Thumb helps, too.) No crying on wake-up, either -- oh, perhaps a couple of baby shrieks, but once you're in the room you're greeted by a smile that'll melt your heart and put a cartoon bluebird on your shoulder. And yesterday, I was laying on the couch when I realized that I'd been hearing NJ laughing hard for a couple of minutes straight. I got up to find she and The Wife having a laugh-off at the high chair. The Wife was damned if she could tell me what started it. Organic laugh-offs are the best.

I could go on forever about this stuff, but if you want more Internet cheese I suggest you go here. I need to keep in mind the unwritten rule that hangs over this blog, which is that while all these things are new and wonderful to me, I'm late to the game and all parents have been there and done that. But mostly, I feel like I'm jinxing the whole thing by typing it out like this. So I'll end it here and go blow my nose.

Super Solo Daily Diary

Here's the day, as best as my creaky memory can relate:

11 p.m. (Monday night): NJ's cries come through the baby monitor on The Wife's nightstand. Twenty-five minutes later, after a steady escalation, I go down to check on her. After a few moments cribside, I leave and the cries intensify. Fifteen minutes after that, The Wife trudges downstairs to feed her. We haven't had a problem with NJ waking up in the night in months. The Wife gets back in bed at about 1.30 a.m.

4 a.m.: NJ begins crying lustily again. There's no point in trying to wait her out, so The Wife climbs out of bed and heads downstairs to feed her. NJ woke up at roughly three-hour intervals, something that hasn't happened since her first month. This does not bode well for Dad Solo's Super Solo evening, I think as I stretch diagonally across the bed and drift back to sleep. Willie rests his chin on my leg.

7 a.m.: The Wife wakes me up, saying that NJ's ready for her morning nap. That's what happens when you don't get enough sleep during the night: You're napping again shortly after 7 a.m. I take NJ to the basement and strap her in the swing. After puttering around a few moments and saying my goodbyes to The Wife, it's almost 7.30 a.m. I lay down on the bed next to the swing. NJ is already out like a light. In a matter of minutes, I am too.

9.30 a.m.: NJ stirs and coos. I'm pretty sure I mumbled something.

10 a.m.: The coos escalate to that sort of irritable crying babies sometimes do -- not flat-out bawling, but the I'm-tired-and-vaguely-unhappy-about-something-I-can't-put-my-finger-on whine. I sit up and she smiles, knowing that Dad Solo is dragging his butt out of bed. Finally, Old Man. Finally. I e-mail the first of the day's batch of NJ photos to The Wife.

10.30 a.m.: NJ is having her first Dad Solo bottle of the day. I'm trying to make sure she doesn't turn her head toward A Clockwork Orange on the TV.

11.30 a.m.: Needing to get out of the house on a surprisingly sunny day, I dress NJ in her tiny Mom jeans and "Born to Love" t-shirt and we head out to run a couple of errands. In our neighborhood, I pull over to talk to someone on my phone and, after a five-minute conversation, I look in the rear-view mirror to see the child out cold. The car used to have no effect on NJ, but now it's an automatic sleep-maker. It's like me on an airplane. Ten or fifteen minutes in, and it's "Who's snoring?"

12 p.m.: I've decided against the supermarket run, because NJ had a rough night and she is pooped. However, I realize, this early nap is going to throw her (us) off for the rest of the day. I grind my teeth and go on a long drive that includes a drive-through coffee and a stop at Burgermaster for lunch.

1 p.m.: I'm eating my burger on the coffee table and NJ is in her car seat on the floor, staring at me so sleepily that she is as still as a statue for least ten minutes. Maybe I was really wolfing down the chow and she was too horrified to move.

2 p.m.: NJ is eating again, while on the TV Alex is getting his first taste of experimental aversion therapy. His appreciation of Ludwig Van will never be the same again.

3 p.m.: The Wife receives another batch of photos. NJ and Dad Solo are having a grand old time playing in his office.

4.30 p..m.: We've sailed through NJ's usual naptime, because of the car nap she had early in the afternoon. I finish up the movie as she slurps on her bottle, occasionally trying to rub the tired out of her eyes.

5.10 p.m.: NJ collapses in my lap, and I move her to the crib. This late nap is not good, not good at all. I get on the phone -- software customer support -- and after thirty minutes on hold I hang up, go upstairs and make a lot of noise in the hallway in hopes that she'll wake up naturally and easily. She does, at about 5.50 p.m.

6 p.m.: Determined to keep NJ occupied until a 7 p.m. bath, I plant her next to me on the couch with her music box, which she frantically punches in hoping of hearing some tunes. (It plays Mozart, not Beethoven, so I won't have any Clockwork Orange flashbacks.) She's happy up until the second the sound stops, or the second her rattle is out of range of her mouth, and then it's fussing time.

6.20 p.m.: I strap on the Baby Bjorn and wear NJ as I do a little laundry and other housework.

6.40 p.m.: Not wanting to do too much housework, of course, I switch to kitchen dancing as I get her bath ready. NJ in particular likes "Twisting By the Pool" by Dire Straits and "Happy" by the Stones. At one point she cranes her head back to get a look up at me. She does it again, smiling big, and this time I lean down and kiss her forehead and then bow my head down to sort of hug her. She continues to smile and mashes her face into my cheek, holding it there for several moments. I am convinced she's kissing her dad and the room starts to get a little dusty. I am, indeed, "Happy."

7 p.m.: Bath time goes off without a hitch. The Wife receives a batch of (tasteful) nude photos of her daughter splashing and smiling in the tub.

8 p.m.: Dried and fluffed, NJ finishes off every bit of her evening bottle and tries to keep her eyes open as I burp her. She gets into her sleep sack and goes down in the crib without a peep. It's an hour later, and as far as the baby monitor knows, she's out like a light. I've already got a pot of coffee ready to be brewed, all I'll have to do is stumble downstairs and switch the coffeemaker on as I get her. I hope she's going to sleep through the night, but if she doesn't -- eh, no biggie. I'll get up whenever, try to nap when she does, drink lots of java. It's not like I have anywhere else I'd rather be.

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.