I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike.

About twelve years ago, I started bicycling as my primary form of transportation. In truth, this originally came about as a way to stay quit from smoking. I figured the opposite of spending money on ruining my lungs was to save money by salvaging my cardiovascular system.

When I started biking, it was a torturous, wheezing affair. Honestly, I'm surprised I didn't have a stroke! As weeks went on, I got better and better. Knowing that starting smoking again would negate any and all progress I had made kept my resolve strong and little by little, I became a bicycler instead of a smoker.

One side effect of this is that I'm not a fan of driving, which is what happens to many bicyclists. Simple errands that CAN be done by bike slowly start to feel like they SHOULD be done by biking until you begin to see using the car as a sign of failure.

As such, having a kid has been tough. We live in a society where rocketing around at 70 mph in a primarily fiberglass and plastic cage is widely considered safe for a child, however, there are no such assurances extended to bicycling. Bicycle product manufacturers won't clear a product for an age group unless they are almost certain they won't get sued, with most bike seats and carts coming with instructions to not use them until 1 year. In fact, in Michigan, children aren't even allowed to BE on a bike until 1 year.

Which is strange since there are many families in Denmark and Holland that don't even have cars and are two wheeling their babies around from day one.

So which is it?

Unfortunately, there really isn't a consensus  as this great Bike Portland article points out.

Test Run

It's really hard to find good info on this. It seems like opinions from Europe = the American recommendation + 3 months. I've personally come to the conclusion it seems that while 12 months is pretty much guaranteed for ALL to be safe, sometime around 9 months is where it's GENERALLY okay, depending on the kid's neck strength (and Cleo has had exceptional neck strength from day 1). Top that off with me finding the Mini Yepp that, unlike everything else we have encountered, actually clears kids of 9 months to be able to use it and I finally found a rational to get this kid on two wheels!

While the Yepp wouldn't fit on my commuter bike, it did fit on my mountain bike. This was a blessing in disguise since the super fat tires, knobby tread, and lower gearing meant I wouldn't outrun H on a ride (who does not bike nearly as much as I do) and the shocks would provide a much smoother ride for the kiddo. Yes, this meant doing things like putting a kickstand on it which is tantamount to installing seat warmers on a dune buggy, but for my girl, I was willing.

We did a small test ride on Thursday and the kiddo seemed to enjoy the ride even if she hated her comically large helmet. Seriously, the moment you unbuckle that thing she overhand throws it with both hands as far away from her as possible. Her helmet contempt is regrettable, but at least her form for soccer throw-ins is being developed. And while the carrier negatively affects my pedaling form a bit, it's really only for short rides anyhow. 

Then on Sunday we did our first family bike outing in a ride to the food carts nearby, a little over 1 1/2 miles there and the same distance back. I was really freaking nervous! Last time my palms had been so sweaty was the time I had to give a best man speech at my buddy Mike's wedding! But ultimately...

IT WAS GLORIOUS!

The kid laughed on the ride there and made fun noises while I sang songs to her. She would grin at her mom when she would pull up along side us. We had a fun outdoor breakfast and then cruised back. All in all, a great time was had by all and I'm looking forward to squeezing in some more bike rides before the sun goes into hiding for the winter!

Parklife

Back in the early 90's, a girl introduced me to Britpop and namely to Blur. Wanting to seem cool and knowledgeable, I bought the CD's, listened to them, and even enjoyed some of them like "Boys and Girls". Some I really didn't understand. Take Parklife.

The meat of it is Blur singing about some guy hanging out at the park. Now, these days you can look it up on the internet and find information on how Blur was satirizing some sort of class situation in London, but to a teenager in the pre-internet mid nineties growing up in a small eastern Washington town, I really had no frame of reference. I had a friend who lived in an RV Park and I honestly thought that's what parklife was.

Which brings us to why I was singing this song to Cleo as we drove to visit my mom recently.

As you may or may not remember, my mom and stepdad bought an RV recently. Since my mom is a teacher, this has given her the opportunity to hang out close to us for a month this summer. My mom gets to see Cleo, Cleo gets to see her grandma, and I get to enjoy air conditioning. It's really a win, win, win situation.

About the only losers are my mom's dogs who are, at heart, country dogs that are used to having an acre to run around on. An RV park cramps their style and taking them to a dog park is overwhelming for them. Well, one of them adapts well, but the other is prone to anxiety. There is normally nothing more he likes than a good game of catch, but with cars racing around and a billion other scents at the dog park, he kind of implodes a bit like Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Man" and stares blankly  into space when you throw the ball.

Still, it's overall a great experience. If the weather holds, Cleo and I might even brave the pool next week!

Signs

First off, sorry about the lack of an update last week! I took on some more shifts at work, my mom had just got into town for a four week stay, and I had to have my Tuesday adventure with Cleo in the morning and then go straight to work once we got back from it!

Every day, Cleo seems more like a little girl and less like a baby. I suppose that, technically, that IS what is happening, but it's more like it's becoming more obvious. She claps her hands, she reacts to facial expressions and little games, and is able to make connections between things. The other day, she started crying when I put on my bicycle helmet since she has figured out that helmet = dad leaving for work.

So with her forming these complex connections, I decided to sign us up for a Baby Sign class. Of course, I'm cheap, so I located  a free one out at the Beaverton Library and... well you get what you pay for. The class was really disjointed and chaotic and the teacher of it, while enthusiastic, was more interested in singing songs and being quirky rather than actually making sure parents were learning the signs to the songs.

It did increase my enthusiasm for trying baby sign, though. I've been doing some for a while, but I'm trying to be more consistent about it. And you know what? I think she understands some of  the signs. She grins like a maniac when I do the sign for milk or food. She just doesn't get the concept of a back and forth signing exchange yet. The subtext of our mealtime conversation goes something like this:

Gimme!

Me: Milk?
Cleo: Sure!
Me: Cleo want milk?
C: Uh... yeah. I smiled at you. That means yes. Duuuhh.
Me: Cleo hungry?
C: Look mister, are you gonna give me the milk or not?
Me: Cleo want eat?
C: *sigh* I'm gonna go back to playing with my feet. Don't interrupt me unless you're actually serious about giving me food.
Me: Cleo not hungry?
C: *Ignores dad*

I'm thinking we'll probably skip the other classes for now and just focus on mastering what we've got so far since, as you can tell, I already feel that the kiddo has mastered nonverbal expression of indifference.

Art Time

I'm really pleased to say I finally got this one crossed off of our list! Portland Art Museum has, once per month, Baby Hour where you get to go around the museum with a docent who explains things and no one can complain about your fussy little one. However, compared to a lot of the stuff  we do (free) it ain't cheap ($15) so I wanted to have a reason to go there.

Enter Cyclopedia. It's an exhibit featuring all sorts of crazy bike designs. My favorite: A bicycle from Finland with a studded back tire and a skate in place of the front tire. It never caught on due to numerous injury lawsuits, but who hasn't dreamed up something like that? I'm pretty sure I've seen something like that in a Dr. Seuss book, but there it is in metal and rubber reality hanging right in front of you when you go!

However, while our ticket would allow us to go to Cyclopedia, we had to first experience the more traditional art of Gaston Lachaise. Let me just say that Portland really let me down on this one after dissing on Beaverton last week! About 30 adults went on the tour, all female. In my group of about 15 adults and 15 babies, the only Y chromosomes there were me and one baby boy. What's disappointing is there actually was one other dad there at the beginning when we all were at the entrance, but he buggered off somewhere before the tour even started leaving the kid with the grandmother!

Anyhow, Gaston Lachaise. Like many artists, he was a very weird man who died before he experienced any real success.  He graduated art school, became obsessed with a slightly dumpy shaped American woman who was 10 years older than him that he labelled his muse, married her, and almost exclusively sculpted just her. This by itself was pretty cool because she was an authentic female form rather than a female "model". Sure, he made her more powerful in the sculptures, but he didn't slim her down in order to achieve this.

From a psychological point of view, though, he is fascinating. A lot of his sculptures of he and his wife together have poorly defined lines between them (eg: when they kiss, their faces become one), when he was apart from her he sculpted her constantly, and towards the end of his life he got really weird and only sculpted body parts of her (seriously, there's some weird ones featuring just her breasts and vagina only). From my point of view it screams of a man who has lost his own sense of self, defined himself through her, and struggled with this as he got older and realized that other people cannot be the container for your sense of self without losing your sense of them.

After the tour, we hung out in the discovery room and let the babies play. It's always interesting to see the developmental variance! One kid only a few weeks older than Cleo was crawling around while a kid months older was smaller and struggling to sit. These things will all smooth out over the next few years but it's so interesting seeing how each kid has a peak and a valley in terms of development. And yet, some things remain consistent as my little girl continued to be the observer of things. As every child made a mad grab for the toys, she was initially content to watch and figure things out for some time before entering the fray herself.

Afterwards, dad finally got to see the bicycles for a bit before the overstimulated baby was taken home. I'm still not sure what Cleo actually thought of the whole experience, but if nothing else, we both earned our nap that day!

Juggler

(Life has settled down a bit so it's refreshing to just be doing a regular Tuesdays with Cleo post!)

I'm really, really loving seven months. I think this has been my favorite age so far. She's more interactive and more aware of the world now and playing with her is actually an involved experience! Before this, playing was more or less "Dad does something and I stare blankly or maybe smile a bit". Now it's actually something where I feel like there's give and take in the activities. 

So as I've mentioned before, Cleo likes it when I juggle, which has prompted me to juggle more. My control is very rusty to say the least, but so far my skill is good enough still to have prevented any injuries to my little girl. One day an errant club will bounce off of a couch cushion and be pulled by mystical forces straight at her head and on that day we will see if she can maintain this love of juggling. Til then, we're both enjoying things.

Based on this juggling love, I thought it would be nice to take Cleo to a show. There was a juggler named Curtis Carlyle performing at the Beaverton Library and I thought this would be perfect! I'm glad we did because I learned a lot of things from this experience.

1) The suburbs are a much, much different place! The place was completely freaking crowded. I hate crowds so much and almost turned around. Additionally, I joke about other dads being a rare commodity at events, but in Portland proper, I'm usually not completely alone. There is often another dad or two around, even if they are out with their family and not solo. Not here. You're on your own in soccer mom territory. I'm surprised I wasn't boxed in by minivans and SUV's gangland Chicago style when I tried to leave and told not to come back.

2) No one in Beaverton takes their babies to this stuff. The crowd had a lot of kids from toddlers on up to what looked like 3rd or 4th graders. There were babies there, but they were in carry-on baggage mode so that mom could pry her older kids from their video games and enjoy something real. This is a shame, because I plan on taking Cleo to more stuff out in Beaverton and I don't like feeling the odd man out. True, Cleo was often more preoccupied with the crowd than with the actual performer, but it's nice to get her out and experiencing stuff.

3) I had met the juggler before! I actually did not realize this until I got home and looked up the guy and saw some sans mustache pictures of him. Ten years ago when I got bored with my limited three ball juggling knowledge and decided to try leveling up my juggling skills, I started going to the juggling club at Reed College. At Reed, juggling is a PE credit, but they open things up to the public all year and during the summer they all juggle on the lawn. It's nice, although if you are not a part of the community it can all be a bit daunting.

Anyhow, my first time there I didn't have a clue what to do, and Curtis lent me some of his clubs to use. I hadn't ever juggled clubs  before this and I dropped them so many times that I damaged one of them (the foam on the top of it broke off). I was mortified and apologized profusely, but he pulled out another club and as he gave it to me he said, "It happens. Just keep throwing!" Such a wonderful gesture that quite possibly kept me from running away from juggling completely. I'm glad I finally got to see him perform!

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!