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.

Mouthy Little Kid

A partial list of things that have found their way into NJ's piehole lately:

• Black olives (off Dad Solo's slice at Zeek's for lunch yesterday -- yum)
• Dog hair (straight off Willie the Lab's back -- yech)
• Tooth No. 2
  
• Blades of grass (Dad Solo likes to pluck a blade and tickle NJ's nose and ears with it; she puts a stop to that by grabbing it away and trying to eat it)
• Small flowers (can't play outdoors without trying to eat a little vegetation)
  
• Small leaves (they get tracked into the basement on our shoes)
• Sippy cups (NJ's very adept with these, but doesn't get it right 100 percent of the time)
• Dad Solo's electric toothbrush (Good times. Good times.)

Gaping maw? I'll show you a gaping maw!

¡Viva La Diddle Poca!

Back in the fall we took NJ to a Mexican restaurant for lunch. Halfway through our meal her face turned a little red and she started crying, and things escalated to the point I had to get her out of there and rock her on the sidewalk in her car seat. Well, that was weird, we thought.

A couple of weeks after that, The Wife was cooking up some chicken verde enchiladas and NJ was next door to the kitchen in the dining room. Suddenly, she freaked out and started crying violently, and couldn't be placated for what seemed like hours. Hmmm, Mexican food again? I thought. She doesn't like it? This is not my child! ("Take a look at her -- of course she's yours," The Wife replied, rolling her eyes.)

So imagine my relief today when we went to lunch at an excellent Mexican place in Madison Park -- on NJ's 9-month birthday, no less -- and she was an utter delight. Smiling, waving and clapping, and generally charming the dickens out of the waitstaff, fellow patrons and anyone else who ventured within a ten-foot radius of her. She even downed a couple of spoonfuls of guacamole. I was so stunned I barely touched my chorizo chimichanga. (That's a lie. I inhaled it as if I hadn't eaten in weeks.)

¡Sí se puede!

Each of the three excellent Mexican places in town we know of are kid-friendly. (Trivia note: We ate at this one the night before NJ was born, and we're sure the spicy food helped convince the kid to make her debut.) So hopefully there will be plenty of tamales, enchiladas, Spanish rice, migas and Tums in our future.

The Reluctant Carnivore

Yesterday marked NJ's first real foray into the order of Carnivora. In the only bit of work she performed on her first Mother's Day, The Wife made a lamb-and-lentils recipe, and the resulting dish was actually quite tasty. NJ will need some more convincing, though.

Great Odin's raven!

You know, mixing this vile concoction with the plain yogurt, which I love, doesn't make it any better.

Admit it: You're flat-0ut torturing me so Dad Solo will have another excuse to post one of those dumb photo sequences of me making funny faces on the Internet. That's just lazy blogging right there. I'm so disappointed in you. And on Mother's Day even!

Eventually we moved on to plain yogurt, but there's lamb and lentils in the fridge and I'll be making another go of it later today.

UPDATE: NJ ate the lamb and lentils for lunch today, but only when it was slathered in yogurt. In fact, only yogurt could be visible on the spoon before she'd take it. Then there'd be a head shake and a stream of what sounded like Polish swearing. But: She ate it. So there, kid! So there.

Potentially Regrettable Baby Milestone: Baby's First Fried Food

The Barking Dog Alehouse on 70th Street is a great place. Good food, an impressive beer list, a very impressive single-malt selection, and never too crowded (I'm sure that'll change now that my legions of followers are reading this). And today, it was the scene of NJ's first foray into the wild, wacky, delicious world of fried foods. The Dog serves tasty waffle-cut fries with its burgers and sandwiches, and as the chips that you find commonly paired with (fried) fish. Today, The Wife got a burger and I got the F&C, so there were plenty of available waffle fries. And NJ availed herself of them.

Yes, give me a taste of that bad boy.

Hmmm ... not bad. Not bad at all. Pardon me while I spread this across my face.

Waitress? Can we please get another pile of these things? Now?

Yeah, salty and savory are taste sensations my young palate is going to have to get used to. But I'll get there, don't you worry.

We also gave her bits of burger and fish, but they only got lost in her lap or dropped to the floor. The waffle fries, she hung on to those. The solid food revolution continues apace.

The Age Of Sticky

Now that we've boldly entered the solid food-eating phase here at Casa NJ, there's a thin veneer of sticky all over the place. One end of the dining room table. Part of the dining room floor. NJ's clothes, bibs and spit-up rags. Her living room play mat. Plastic toys. NJ's face, hands and arms, and occasionally her legs.

It's all over the place, in other words. But it's not a giant flood of applesauce, half-chewed rice crackers and spilled pureed veggies. That, almost, would be better. No, it's little dabs of residue here and there, where you (I) least expect it. Yesterday I put a glass down on the table and picked it up again to find a little cereal star clinging to the bottom like it had grabbed onto the last helicopter out of Saigon.

I don't care how you feel about these things. I like 'em! Bring me more!

Not all of them end up in NJ's mouth, of course. She knows how to pick them up, and she knows they belong in her mouth. But if she closes her hand into a fist, that fist is what ends up in her mouth. The cereal may end up in her mouth, too, but it also may stay in that fist, soaking up drool, and come back out again. And stick to the back of her hand. Or her chin. Or her bottom lip. Or her shirt. Or ... just about anything.

In the photo above, NJ picked up all four of the pictured cereal stars, and 1) managed to eat one; 2) lost two in the palm of her very own hand, where they turned to a gooey mush; and 3) dropped one into her lap, where it eventually bounced to the floor. That's where Zeus snagged it. (Hallelujah for The Two Idiots and their ever-vigilant patrolling of the house. Yesterday NJ grabbed the edge of my cereal bowl and toppled it, spreading flax-seed granola and milk all over the office floor. I called Willie over and he quickly, efficiently cleaned up 80 percent of the mess.)

I'll eat half of this now and ball the other half up into mush and keep it in my hand for an hour.

When mixed with copious amounts of baby saliva, the rice crackers and cereal bits mix into a paste you could use to repair cracks in concrete. It sticks to everything and congeals in the blink of an eye. The resulting crust sticks to NJ's face and hands like barnacles on a ship's hull and she is not a big fan of mine when I clean it off her.

Anyone know a metal band that needs a lead singer? I can go with a green, red or white goatee, too, if orange is a deal-breaker.

The steamed, pureed fruits and veggies -- and yogurt, which was added to the mix last week and is a big favorite -- end up all over NJ's face, of course. But her new-found penchant for thumb-sucking has increased the mess factor four- or five-fold. You stick a thumb into a mouth that's festooned like the one in the photo above and that stuff is getting all over the hand. Then that hand goes to the hair, then the high chair table, then the other hand, then the shirt sleeve, then the sideboard next to the high chair. Soon it's "Carrots all around!"

Food Revolution

Sure, you're having a hard time getting me to eat vegetables, but I can't get enough of sweet, delicious fruits like this applesauce. Look at how I've cleaned out this bowl. I'll be needing something new and different for my next meal. What else ya got?

Is that one of those quick-dissolving rice cracker thingies? Fork it over! (And I say 'fork' ironically, Mommy and Daddy, because it's finger food. No utensils needed. Get it? Sheesh -- tough room.)

Oh. Oh my. Uh, are you sure this is right? I'm supposed to be eating this, consuming it? And not, say, lining the inside of my shoes with it? Huh.

OK, I'll just jump right in with both feet then, even though I'd feel safer jumping if my feet were protected by a shoe liner made out of this. Here goes nothin'.

I'm still not sold on the taste of rice cracker -- unless it's not supposed to have any taste at all, in which case I say, 'Bravo, well done.' But just look at all these little pieces. The capacity to make a mess with these things seems limitless, and that's enough to earn the NJ stamp of approval. Good job. Now, make me laugh.

NJ Has Two Daddies ... For an Hour

My friend came over the other day to check up on NJ, beer in hand, and ended up on feeding duty:




NJ spent most of the time trying to grab that thing off his chin.

A lot of the guys I know who have daughters (older than NJ) are especially interested in her progress, it seems. They run the gamut from a dad whose tween daughter is starting to rebel a bit to a guy who says he's wanted a couple of blonde daughters ever since he was a kid (he got them).

Of course, there's going to be lots of interest in NJ anyway, what with her being cute and beautiful and happy and smiley and all that. But I think a lot of it has to do with the don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-it nature of kids growing up. Just about everyone I know with kids older than NJ is quick to suggest I pay close attention to her because she'll grow up so incredibly fast.

And it's true -- yesterday I had trouble remembering the days when we first brought NJ home and were up every two hours feeding. Those days, which were very intense and trying, seem like half a lifetime ago, when in fact they were just half a year ago. I had to flip through some of our two bazillion photos to jog my memory. Oh yeah, once upon a time she was tiny and didn't smile and cried a lot and didn't care about toys.

I thought about all this when NJ and I were at the supermarket, which was the first time all week we'd even left the house. We've had fun playing around the house -- NJ is sitting up now, a mite unsteadily still but getting better all the time. Voluntarily holding yourself captive in the house is not good, though, and today it'll change. The weather is great, The Wife is here, and the three of us will be accompanying the dogs to the lake in a little while.

Absence Makes the Something Grow Something Something

I'm about 2,400 miles from NJ right now, thanks to an unexpected trip home to Houston. Four days away from the kid. The first time I've spent more than three hours away from her, I think. Some ridiculous number like that. And ...

When Dad's away: Rockin' the eggplant knit hat, heart-and-peace-sign onesie and a new denim jacket.

... now I have a completely new understanding of what The Wife goes through when she leaves NJ in the morning and goes to work. The Wife, getting a taste of Super Solo-ing herself, has obliged with e-mailed photos, as has a very considerate friend, but it's not the same. The first night I was gone I looked at the clock, subtracted two hours for Pacific time, and wistfully said "NJ's getting her bath right now." I actually said that out loud.

So: I'm out four days and nights. The Wife's typical week: Out five days, home for those nights. I'm going to call that a draw and say that this trip is about equal to one of The Wife's work weeks. I'm counting myself as lucky that I only have to do it once. Because I sure do miss the little diddle. I left town thinking "nice little break," and by the time I landed the dial had moved to "She doesn't nap when I'm not there!" and other hand-wringing nonsense.

Here's one thing I missed:

For the love of all that is good and holy, I beseech you, woman: No more of this pureed !#&@^!&* peas* nonsense. Daddy would never let this happen.

When you're there participating in a fiasco like that, you hit the whole range of emotions, from "This'll be nutritious fun!" to "You're so cute" to "Come on, now" to "Sheesh, kid, EAT!" and "Get your hand out of that!" When you only get a couple of photos of it in e-mail, though, it looks like it was the Best Time Ever ... and I missed it. Sigh.

Oh well. Maybe missing out once in a while will make the next Best Time Ever even better.

Update: Pureed avocadoes, not peas.

Six Months: A Nice, Round Number

Yesterday was NJ's six-month birthday and her parents did nothing at all to commemorate it. We didn't even take a photo to mark the occasion. In fact, despite hitting the half-year mark, NJ didn't get any special attention. Just the usual amount of attention -- which, granted, is enough attention to choke a horse, more attention that you can shake a stick at.

Anyway, since her half-birthday was on a federal holiday, we'll just say that we got the presents and celebrating out of the way early. There's last week's Jumperoo purchase (the contraption has been moved to the basement, and I'm delighted/relieved to say that NJ has actually gotten bored in it a couple of times) as well as a couple of other new toys and books The Wife picked up on a short walk this weekend. (There's a very cool kids' clothes and toy store a mere two blocks away. A blessing and a curse.) We went on several outings, and NJ was fawned over appropriately everywhere. She and Dad Solo even had a giggle-fest at the supermarket, a place where she's usually too wide-eyed to notice her parents at all.

Sorry, kid. Six months is impressive, but you're still not old enough for that.

If we had made a really big deal of things, NJ would have had a candle plopped in the middle of a serving of pureed sweet potato. That's her favorite solid food for the moment, along with rice cereal. Pureed peas and squash? Not so much. Acquired tastes.

Change for a Fiver

NJ hit the five-month mark on Friday, and she and I hit our (approximate) one-month mark as a daughter-homedaddy duo. The biggest thing I've noticed in the past month is the incredible ramping up of her personality. She's all smiles lately, and is very interested in whatever's going on. Mostly, though, she's 'talking' all the time. Up until recently she would jabber randomly and occasionally. Now she's jibbering constantly, and at us. Directly at us. She has things to say, orders to give, pleas to make, points to emphasize. It's fun watching her figure out how to use her mouth and vocalize; the tongue makes regular appearances now, and The Wife was delighted when NJ blew her first true raspberry a couple of days ago.

We're also getting solid food into the mix, and NJ is digging that, too. I was a little nervous about it because we had a tiny bit of trouble getting her to eat from a bottle. She loved her milk-and-rice-cereal concoction, though -- leaning forward toward the spoon, opening wide, and eating more of it than she didn't eat. And there was your standard-issue adorable baby-food-on-the-chin mess, of course. I was thrilled to be able to break out the ridiculously cool Rolling Stones bib, too. A friend commented that it's probably the same one Mick and Keith are using these days.

Tonight The Wife and I are going out to dinner. We've done it once before, when my parents were in town, when we sat down to eat at 5 (two margaritas each AND dessert!) and were home by 6:30. Tonight will be an early-bird special, too. We're dropping her off with a couple who has a son who's two weeks older than NJ, and will be returning the babysitting favor this coming weekend. The Wife has been nervous about leaving NJ with others, parents or friends or whoever, but our first outing went off without a hitch and that put her at ease, so hopefully there won't be any hiccups tonight.