The Shrieking Seal

This last week, Cleo found a new thing to play with: her voice. Looking at it from a purely experiential point of view, voices are awesome. There's weird vibrations going on, interesting sensations as you go from low to high and loud to soft, and not to mention the new sounds and echos that are going on! Having a voice is pretty cool!

That is the objective point of view. MY point of view as a parent is: PLEASE! Why can't some benevolent/vengeful god strike me DEAF! 

H has taken to referring to her as the Shrieking Seal, and even though I later corrected her that it's supposed to be the Shrieking Eels... the name has stuck.

Throw in the fact that she is teething AGAIN and it pretty much never stops. I have, however, complied a rough interpretation of her various cries and screeches.

Cry #1: aaaaHHHAAAHHHHAAAaaahha! = Cleo is happy. Probably.

Cry #2: AAAAAH! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH! = Cleo is teething. Possibly. She may also be happy.

Cry #3: WAAAAAAAAGHHHH! = She is wet. Or tired. Or hungry. Or teething. Or happy.

Cry #4: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHH! = GREAT LORD YOD SODDOTH WHO DWELLS BETWEEN WORLDS! I HAVE TAKEN THE FIRST STEPS OF THE PROPHECY TO AWAKEN SLEEPING CTHULU!  ... or she's teething/happy.

Is this... food?

Thankfully, H was able to get a day off during the week for all of us to hang out together. Due to the way we've set up childcare, H and I rarely get a full, 16 hour day off together, so this was pretty freaking cool for us, and frankly, if there ever was a week for H to have an extra day off, this was it.

We started off with a foray to story time at Green Bean Books, a cute little local kids bookstore. We are, perhaps, a bit ambitious with trying to expose Cleo to books. Her favorite activity during storytime at home is to attempt to grab and eat the book, so I assume that she views bookstores as a variation of a supermarket and that they should come with free samples. The best part about this trip, though? Cleo had her expertly timed, I-know-I-haven't-crapped-in-18-hours-and-we-just-left-the-house-10-minutes-ago-but-here-it-is bowel movement that is the hallmark of an adventure with Cleo... and I didn't have to change it!

A sight to bring tears of joy to a father.

The rest of the day was just so genuinely pleasant. We went out to lunch at a family friendly place close by that we were meaning to try out and had a great time. We went for a long walk in the area where we are trying to get a new apartment and the weather stayed calm. Even when we did something mundane like shopping, it was still fun and pleasant. It was a wonderful realization for me of how taking something as taxing as the constantly crying baby and splitting up the workload between the two of us didn't make the job seem half as hard, but it made it feel like a quarter of the job or even less!

Life hasn't dealt us a hand right now that allows us to spend more than a handful of hours at a time together as a family, but it's nice to know that when we have the opportunity, we all play along like a well rehearsed family band...featuring the Shrieking Seal on lead vocals.