Week Off

Sorry for the late update. H and Cleo were gone for about four days to see family for my niece's birthday which gave me lots of free time... that resulted in me wasting said free time. You would think that more time would result in MORE productivity. The truth is that if you cut loose a jet engine from a plane in flight, it may be free but the lack of direction benefits no one. Dishes piled up in the sink! That's crazy considering I'm using 1/3 of the amount of dishes!

You had a life before me?!? Who allowed this?

Delving back into bachelorhood really made me realize how much I have changed. Before Cleo and, to a lesser extent H, were in my life, I had time to burn. Work accounts for approximately 1/4 of your time during the week and sleep another 1/4, throw in commuting, and a single person has 80 hours of free time a week to just do whatever! These days I'm lucky to get 10 hours a week of just free time, and frankly, some of these are actually stolen from sleep time. What happens, though, is that you make the most of it. A parent is a lifehacked, super efficient, frugal time user and you get stuff done!

Sucker!

I was trying to explain my behavior this weekend to a friend about how it's like one of those people who wins the lottery and squanders it all, except substitute time in place of money. A person living in poverty rarely lives prudently and simply like Warren Buffet when they suddenly encounter a fortune. What's more likely to happen is that they fly all of their friends to Vegas, rent out the top floor of the Bellagio, and wake up a month later with all of the money gone and actually owing a couple hundred thousand.

I did the bachelor dad equivalent of this by eating lots of takeout food and pizza rolls, leaving all the dishes and boxes scattered throughout the house, playing video games as late as I wanted, and then sleeping in late while sprawled out diagonally on the bed in order to maximize the amount of space I could take up. It wasn't until the day that H and Cleo were coming back that I actually looked at the place and had to give a resigned sigh about how much work this whole bachelor binge was going to take.


Anyhow, here are some pictures H sent me from their trip!

Cleo and her birthday cousin.

Being cool with her aunt

Walking on the grass

And gets a hug from her other cousin

Photobomb!

Missing Out

So the day finally came. I knew it would be here eventually, though I tried to convince myself it would never come to this. I put it off as long as I could, but I could not deny it any longer.

The day came where I chose soccer... over my family.

Okay, that's a bit more dramatic than what actually happened. It's not like I abandoned Cleo to go to a futsal game. The US National Team was playing a World Cup Qualifier in Seattle. Despite being a HUGE national team fan, I've never seen the Nats play and my friend Chris got tickets!

Except... it was on a Tuesday, a day semi sacred to me and little C.

If that wasn't bad enough... it was also on mine and H's anniversary!

And I chose soccer.

Now, before I get tarred and feathered, it's often said that men in families only communicate their love through their shared interests. For my father and I, it was soccer and comic books.

My love of the Nats goes back to 1989 and a Paul Caliguri goal that booked the US back to the World Cup for the first time in over half a century that made both me and my father, both soccer nuts, feel like there was hope in this country for the sport we loved. Sure, it's kind of silly to put so much stock into a game, but this was back in the day where they made jokes about soccer being un-American and that people who liked it were commies. For guys like my dad and I who were passionate about soccer, being able to dress up in the Stars and Stripes IN ORDER TO support soccer was a vindication.

Someday soon, I'll just take her with me.

I remember vividly that my father bought a Soccer America magazine that had all of the US players for Italia 90 profiled in it like trading cards and I had them all memorized! In the years since, we would sometimes get together to watch the Nats play on TV and often talked about the team, especially in years like this leading up to the next World Cup. When we couldn't get together, we sometimes would call and stay on the phone while we watched the same game.

So when the tickets went on sale a week after my father died it was a balm upon my soul for me to buy one. (To be fair, I didn't realize it was on a Tuesday and H forgot that June 11th is our anniversary when she cleared me to buy them.)

Because I had to work on the 16th, we really didn't get to do much for Father's Day this year. But in all honesty, getting a free pass from my family to watch the US win and go to the top of the Hexagonal... to feel that my father's spirit was with me watching Altidore score a goal... well, for me, Father's Day was June 11th this year. USA!

Baby Lead Weaning

The kid is getting big. I picked her up the other week and let her stand on my chest the way she likes to do and... I really had to reach to hold her steady. Growing like a weed, as they say.

The biggest downside to this is that the routines I've carefully developed over the past few months will slowly stop working. Playing, feeding time, nap, music time, feeding time, and a jog or walk has worked pretty well, but the more I feel I've got the childcare thing down, the more she likes to switch things up. Nothing lets me know I'm in for a rough patch than a feeling of confidence. Those Greeks were right about hubris.

Last week was definitely one of the hardest. Nothing seemed to work. Anything that calmed her down would work for about ten minutes, then start extinguishing over the next ten, and finally morph into angry crying over the final ten. H came home and took over on Thursday and I ended up passing out from exhaustion on our half reassembled futon while waiting for the Thorns game to start.

I felt like Failure Dad for a few days until we discovered she had cut two more teeth during this time, which was a huge relief. The problem wasn't me, it was Cleo's gums! However, that brings the tooth total up to five, which is officially one fourth of the baby teeth that will be coming in.

You know what that means? That's right, time for solids.

Ready... Start!

H had planned to do the baby led weaning where instead of giving the kid pastes and purees, you give them a piece of real food. Like if you cook spaghetti for yourself, you cook up a few pieces of rigatoni for the kid and let her have them. It's a very natural way to transition the kid to actually eating real food.

It's also freaking terrifying. As the babies learn to handle the food, they WILL gag on it. This is partly because they have an over developed gag reflex at this age, but also because this is such a weird freaking experience to go from 100% liquids to something solid. It's the whole learning to breath a gas rather than a fluid dilemma all over again. The people behind the method are quick to assure you that gagging is not choking and is just a part of her learning limitations.

And here we are 3 minutes
later. It's possible some food
got in. But not likely.

The reason it's terrifying is that at this stage in parenting, you have learned that babies have the self preservation instincts of a Chicken McNugget. Seriously, I'll be holding her gently in the morning trying to get her to practice sitting up and then suddenly she's all "Oooo! Shiny!" and spazzes out in my grip, faceplanting on the bed while trying to reach something three yards away. She had no idea she was on a bed. She could have been on concrete or over a pit of spikes and she would have done the same thing.

So when you have a creature in your care that is determined to injure itself, actually giving it the means seems like insanity. She stuffed half a brussel sprout in her mouth the other day and then started crying. I'm approaching her as if someone gave her a grenade... calm, reassuring, no sudden movements, then I reach into her mouth and disarm the situation. Of course, then you realize that she had eaten half of it and really wasn't in any danger, but seriously, would you trust this face?

Moving

I thought it was a truism in life that the more you did something, the less unpleasant it became. Working out, walking in the cold, eating brussel sprouts... you get acclimated to it over time and it gets, if not better, then at least not as bad.

I have found that this is not the case with moving.

Those were the days...

I've moved from crappy places to good places and vice versa. I've moved form home to dorms to frats to apartments to houses to duplexes to back home again to back out again and NONE of them have been pleasant. The only time moving was half bearable was when, in college, I distilled all of my possessions down to the point that they could be transported in a Ford Festiva with a futon mattress strapped on top. Even then, it still sucked, but it was only one trip.

The last time we were happy in this process.

For some reason, it's ALWAYS the same dilemma. You get stuff boxed up, you get the big stuff moved, and  you start thinking "Huh. This isn't so bad. Maybe I have it down finally." And we did really good with planning this! My stepmother came down to help us, we hired movers for a few hours, we started collecting boxes about a month before the move... H and I were high fiving each other about how we had this down!

Then you start boxing up the small crap. And boxing up the small crap. AND BOXING UP THE SMALL CRAP. A nearly empty kitchen has now somehow created three carloads of boxes! You can't clean the place until the boxes are all boxed. You can't brush your teeth or shave at the new place because your stuff is in a box and you can't waste energy unboxing stuff when you have stuff to box and clean at the new place. So you drift in this hellish limbo place for a while, cursing your decision to move, slowly becoming more convinced that the boxes are watching you... conspiring against you... cardboard is the enemy...

Er... anyhow... Cleo hasn't been taking it well either. Let's face it, almost her whole life has consisted of two rooms and a bathroom. Everything she finds comforting and soothing has almost always been within line of sight. Now? Spread out over a few rooms and two floors, almost all of it boxes... boxes as far as the eye can see. Oh.... and you must watch them!

Naturally, she has not enjoyed this experience.

While I am sympathetic, it HASN'T been helpful. Standing in a room that you are so sick of cleaning that the only reason you don't simply vomit all over it is that it would be counterproductive to your goal, the last thing you need is a screaming baby who is inconsolable and gives no indication of why she is so agitated.

Life as we know it.

But... that's what she does cause that's what babies do. All you can do is calm and comfort her and binge on takeout food later because even though you kinda have a hunch about which boxes the cooking utensils are in... you're just going to pretend you don't have a clue so you can get a burger and shake and not have to rationalize it.




Cardboard is the enemy!