In Sickness and in Health

I don't know that I've bragged much in this space about LG's crazy immune system. Or rather, I can't be bothered to check the archives to see if I have. We've been extraordinarily lucky with respect to her health.

In the 27 months she's been around (yup, today is the 27-month birthday), she's gotten sick a grand total of five times. AND the first time wasn't until just before her first birthday. AND at least two of those bouts of ill health were over in 36 hours. I was beginning to think her mutant power was enhanced healing factor. If bone claws suddenly popped out of the back her hands, I wouldn't have been as surprised as you'd think.

So it's probably with no small amount of karmic payback that--after six weeks of daycare--the universe has seen fit to smack LG with her first, honest-to-god, nose-running, stuffy-head, hacking cough (sweet holy moses why don't they make nyquil for kids?), prolonged fight with a cold.

To my friends and acquantainces whose children have been sick more often than mine: I'm sorry. I didn't realize what you were going through.

To everyone else: this sucks.

So without further ado, here are the top 7 things I've learned in the last 10 days of having a toddler with a wicked cold.

1. Blowing your nose is a learned skill. Much like using the bathroom or tying a pair of shoelaces, a child doesn't know how to blow her own nose. And I don't mean she doesn't know proper tissue placement for maximum de-stuffification. I mean she literally does not understand that she can exhale forcefully through her nose into a tissue and make herself feel better. Hollie has walked in on me exaggeratedly breathing in through my mouth and exhaling through my nose in front of LG trying to make her understand. To her credit, Hollie did not find this strange. To LG's credit, she sort of gets it, but then forgets the next time I ask her to do it.

2. A toddler's hoarse voice, is simultaneously sad and really funny. I don't want LG to have a cold, but if she's going to have a cold, I prefer that she sounds like Elaine Stritch after a pack of cigarettes and two balloons worth of helium.

3. Toddler coughs in the middle of the night in a dark house are among the saddest sounds in the world. Probably second only to infant coughs, but we didn't experience that, so I have nothing to compare this to. Granted, fast forward a couple of months to LG inevitably infecting G2 with another one of these colds, and I'm sure I'll find out.

4. As much as you might think otherwise, you don't have to respond to every cough, sneeze or wheeze. Up until last night, at the cold's low point, LG coughed once or twice an hour overnight, and it didn't even phase her. Slept right through the whole thing. Kids: they're stronger than you realize, and they just don't care what's supposed to make them feel bad. (Granted, last night, the phlegm started waking her up, and consequently, me.)

5. Just cuz she's sick, doesn't mean she's going to stop moving. Along the same lines as my previous point, LG doesn't care that she's sick. She wants to run, spin, twirl, flip, climb and kick, and a little mucus isn't going to stop her. It's going to freak me out as I'm chasing her around with a tissue to wipe her nose, but then, that's probably half the fun.

6. Just because she's sick, doesn't mean that other kids don't have it worse. At least seven of her classmates at daycare were absent on Monday because of a stomach bug. So it could be worse (and it might still get there). I've got my fingers crossed the cold bugs are fighting the stomach bugs and winning.

 7. Just because she's sick doesn't mean we have to stop having fun. It's Christmas for crying out loud! Runny nose or not, in the last 10 days we've: visited the Macy's Light Show and the Dickens Christmas Village; picked out a Christmas tree and decorated it; bundled up and walked around the neighborhood after dark to look at Christmas lights; went shopping for gifts; made presents for family and friends; and pretty much didn't let it stop us from celebrating the season.

Think of this as Santa's runway.

So take that, rhinovirus. You're not the boss of me or my kid. (But please go away soon. I would like to get some sleep before G2 shows up and wrecks that whole thing.)

20 Week Ultrasound: We're having a...

It wasn't that long ago that I posted about the newest addition to our family unit, but we've been living with the reality of our expanding brood for quite a bit longer. Which means we've waited almost five months to learn whether we were going to have a boy or a girl.

Yesterday morning, we found out. And now I share with you the ultrasound that revealed it to us.

Apparently we're having a Mr. Burns.

Okay, so I don't have an actual ultrasound to show you. Chances are good you've seen a million of them already, and they all look the same anyway. There's a very good reason that I've got nothing of substance to show for the two hours we spent at South Jersey Radiology this morning (and no, it's not because of the ultrasound tech who-will-not-be-named, although she did make a brief appearance).

Despite the very best efforts of a very nice tech, Little Geek 2.0 squirmed, kicked, bobbed, weaved and swam (yes, swam) out from under the wand at every opportunity. Through some quirk of biology, Hollie is pregnant with Aquaman's newest sidekick. This was not entirely unexpected, since at her last OB/GYN appointment, you could literally hear the baby "swoosh" out of the way of the doppler device they use to hear the heartbeat.

"But Matt," you may be asking, "Isn't it possible this tech (however nice) was just as incompetent as the  one you encountered last time?" I might've been inclined to agree, if I didn't watch the little bugger juke and pivot for several minutes at the end of the exam.

And the tech, whatever her skill level, actually managed to get the important information like heartbeat, face, limb and organ development, and all the rest.

And although the squirming caused her initially to express skepticism about her ability to tell us whether we were having a boy or a girl, halfway through the exam she shouted, "Ha! I know what you're having!" The excitement of pinning down a shot of the organ in question evidently was too much for her to hold in.

But she did hold it in until I got into the room. Upon which time she didn't have to say anything, because no sooner did I enter the room than our son somersaulted and flashed a spread eagle in front of the wand before kicking off one side of the womb and out of the way.

With form like that, the boy parts were kind of hard to miss.

So there you have it. Little Geek 2.0 is a boy! The rummage sale for two-years-worth of pink clothes will begin momentarily.

P.S. For the record, they suggest his weight is currently 13 oz. Given our previous experience, I estimate this places his actual weight somewhere between 2 oz and 30 lbs.

Hurricanes and Slow-cooked Pork (only one of these tried to kill me this week)

Let me first say that my family was extremely lucky this week before, during and after the arrival of Hurricane Sandy. Friends of ours from Pennsylvania to Connecticut are still without power five days after Sandy made landfall. I was able to provision the household without difficulty, we never lost power, and the damage to our property was nearly non-existent (several dead tree branches and a toppled scarecrow notwithstanding). In fact, the worst thing that happened to me had nothing whatsoever to do with a weather event. So first things first, I'm extremely grateful for the easy hand I was dealt this past week.

That said, you learn a lot about yourself during times of crisis, and this week was no exception. In no particular order, here's are some lessons learned from the past seven days.

There is no better motivator than an impending crisis. At the time Sandy was forecast, it was the end of October. There's no reason I shouldn't have had the yard cleaned up and prepared for winter. And yet, the deck chairs were still out, the canopy still up, grill still uncovered, gutters remained uncleaned and various other end-of-summer chores had not been completed. When Hollie and I woke up Sunday to discover that it had not yet started raining, the first thing we did (around 7:45 AM) was head outside get our property squared away. You know how long it took to do all of that? About 90 minutes. There's no reason I should've put all that off until Sandy forced my hand.

Hurricane preparedness is all about the right outfit. 

'Nuff said.

Taking down all of the Halloween decorations before a storm means taking down ALL the decorations, not just the large flat ones. We put the Peanuts characters in the shed on Sunday, but I didn't move the scarecrow or sidewalk stakes. 

That'll teach me.

When you know you're going to be stuck in a small house with a toddler for 2-3 days, take your outside time when you can get it. You know when we took LG outside to play as Sandy was bearing down? The same time I was cleaning up the backyard. We bundled her up and chased her around the back and front yard while we straightened up, then Hollie took her to the park while I prepped food in case we lost power. All in all, the only day we weren't able to leave the house for at least a little bit was Monday.

When you know you're going to be stuck in a small house with a toddler for 2-3 days, you better plan some activities ahead of time. Thankfully, we took this lesson to heart before the storm hit. We managed to come up with a list on Saturday and bought anything we needed early on. A partial list of activities LG took part in:

• Made corn muffins
• Made cookies
• Made pancakes
• Made apple sauce
• Painted pumpkins
• Glued stuff to pumpkins
• Started homemade Christmas presents
• Played in Birthday tent (made by my aunt Kathy, and packed away for just such an occasion)
• Hide and seek (which Hollie and I took turns doing. There are maybe three decent hiding places in the house)
• There were many more planned activities, but several days out, and I'm already starting to forget.

Yes, I said glued stuff to pumpkins. This might've been the biggest hit of the week.

If you don't know if/when power is going to go, get your laundry/dishes/cleaning/showering done as quick as you can. I'm not sure we've ever picked up after ourselves as rapidly as we did Saturday and Sunday. We did not want to lose power in the middle of a laundry/dish cycle or some other activity requiring hot water. It all started to fall apart some time on Monday as the continued threat of the storm coupled with the growing exhaustion of chasing LG around led to toys staying wherever they landed when we were done playing.

The dog doesn't care that there's a hurricane, she just doesn't want to go outside by herself when there's that much wind and rain. Few things are more frustrating than knowing that if your dog would just run outside quickly and pee in the yard, you'd both get a lot less wet than you will when you take her for a walk during a hurricane. But just try to explain that to the dog.

Making barbecued spare ribs before power goes out seems like a good idea, but when you least expect it, the food will try to kill you. I shared this on Facebook late Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning, but after the storm was over, I ended up in the Emergency Room to get a chunk of pork dislodged from my throat. I was never in any real danger, but it's worth noting that you can prepare all you want for a particular calamity; it's the one you don't see coming that'll get you.

The ER is no respecter of persons. It doesn't matter who you are or how many kids you've brought with you to the hospital; if you don't appear to be in tremendous pain or have a life-threatening injury, you will wait at least four hours before being seen. I was never happier that Hollie's parents live close by than when I watched three different families with small children come to the ER and just wait... and wait... and wait.

The last thing you want to hear before you go under general anesthesia is an OR nurse asking "Has anyone seen my glasses?" I hope this requires no further explanation.

When you're really, really tired, 40 minutes of general anesthesia makes for a great power nap. I don't think I've ever woken up more refreshed than I did at 11:50 PM on Tuesday night when the drugs wore off.

Being in the ER for 10+ hours really makes you miss your kid. I knew I was going to be okay, but somewhere around the point I had gone 14 hours without food (except the bit trying to kill me), nearly 10 of which were spent waiting in some form at a hospital, I was told I'd be put under for an emergency endoscopy. The waiting, the lack of food, the weariness, and the prospect of something else mixed into my IV drip all combined to make me really sad. At that moment, I wanted more than anything to see LG. But I had to wait 'til morning.

So that's it. I know many people had a more eventful couple of days, and some are still dealing with the aftermath of the storm. Did any of you learn anything this week, whether it involved slow-cooked pork or a horrifying effect of climate change?

Status Update: 2 Years, 1 Month

Another year, another doctor's visit. In the interest of continuity, here are the vitals:

Weight: ~27 pounds - 47.5%

Her exact measured weight was 27.8 lbs, but they weighed her with clothes on. I need my data accurate, people!

This represents a 5-pound gain from her 15-month weigh-in, and brings her within spitting distance of average, up to almost 48% from 35% at 15 months, and 26% at 12 months.

Height: 34 inches - 45.2%

As ever, she's wiggly. I rate the margin of error at about .25 inches.

That's 4 inches of growth in nine months, which sounds kind of crazy when you write it out. And it actually drops her percentile by a few points, from 50% to 45%, but well within the margin of error. It should also be noted that I checked these figures against three different sets of weight/height charts, and the percentile scores ranged from 42% to 52%. Clearly, it depends on the data sets you use as your baseline. 

I still contend that the numbers are open to interpretation. Since these charts compare your kid to the aggregate of all other kids, and since the obesity epidemic in the U.S. pushes younger kids' weights higher, it's not clear to me whether I'm comparing her weight against an ideal weight distribution for her age, or a modern, super-fat distribution. Help me, science! You're my only hope!

One finger prick and two shots, and this visit finished pretty quickly, according to Hollie. As I understand it, the doctor used the words "perfect" and "impressive" more than once. When the doctor first arrived in the exam room, she did so to LG pointing at one of her books saying, "It's a blue heron, Mama!" That'll do, LG. That'll do.

The trauma of the shots didn't last long, either, but then, I suppose that's the purpose of the lollipop bucket at the receptionist's desk.

Lemon? Really? Gross.

On the Mysteries of Sleep

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Strange that I've covered more than two years of my daughter's life, and I don't think I've talked about sleep. Like most parents, we didn't get enough of it early on, and we appreciated it dearly when we did.

We would've killed someone to get her to sleep this soundly at 6 weeks old.

Sleep has been relatively easy for a while now, and LG normally gets 10-11 hours each night, depending on a number of factors. It used to be a glorious 12-hour stretch, from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., every single day. Then, a few months ago, she started talking to herself after we put her down. Bedtime stayed at 7, but she would babble for a while before falling asleep. At first, it was just a few minutes, but eventually these monologues for an audience of no one stretched an hour, sometimes more. There have been nights when she'd keep it up for two hours, passing out around 9.

(There was a brief respite from this behavior. For about two weeks in the summer, she went back to falling asleep immediately after we put her down. It was glorious.)

Most of the time, she sleeps just fine in the car. Most of the time.

I need to make it clear that 95% of the time, she's just talking to herself. She's not crying, not upset, doesn't have a dirty diaper. So we've been content to let her go. But that doesn't mean it isn't frustrating when you're cleaning the kitchen or watching TV, and you hear your daughter's hi-pitched squeal informing her stuffed mouse that she rode a pony, and the pony was white, and the pony was named Honey, and the pony went in a circle, and she likes ponies, and she likes rides, and...

In your head, or under your breath, you just keep saying "Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep!" And the whole while she just keeps going.

All the pre-sleep talking goes out the window when we're away. Travel seems to take all the vigor right out of her.

We've got no particular solutions in mind, although we did push her bedtime to 7:30 p.m. We figured we'd tire her out for another 30 minutes at best, and at worst, we spent another half hour playing together, which is just fine by us.

There have been a few days, however, that have tested how much babbling we can endure. A couple of nights of talking 'til 9:30, one 'til 10, and we start to worry that she's not getting enough sleep.

At first, I didn't think it was travel, but rather the Pack-n-Play. An ill-fated experiment involving setting the portable crib in her room proved that the Pack-n-Play has nothing to do with it.

So now, every night that she stays up talking until 9 p.m., I go into her room and give what Hollie has taken to calling a "sleep pep talk." More specifically, I suppose it should be an "anti-pep talk" since we want her to just calm down already.

Here's a sample conversation.

Me: Hey there. Why aren't you sleeping?
LG: I go to bed. I want to sleep.
Me: Do you? Cuz it doesn't seem like you're sleeping.
LG: (Some rundown of the events of her day, or, more likely, a listing of songs she's been singing to herself for an hour.)
Me: Okay. Do you know how we go to sleep?
LG: Nooo....
Me: First, you stop talking. No more talking, just stay quiet. Then you close your eyes. When you close your eyes, then you can start dreaming. And when you're dreaming, you're asleep. Do you want to dream?
LG: Yes!
Me: Do you want to sleep?
LG: Yes!
Me: Okay, then let's do that.

Just last night, she decided she would tell me how to go to sleep. So she ran through my part of the above conversation on her own. "I sleep! I be quiet! I close my eyes! I dream! I sleeeeeeep!"

The weird thing is, it seems to work. Nine times out of 10, she's asleep (or at least blessedly quiet) within about 5 minutes of the talk. The caveat: It doesn't work if I try to do it before 9 p.m.

Work hard. Play hard. Sleep harder.

The Power of 2

Given that we've just celebrated LG's second birthday, it's probably not surprising that '2' has been on my mind a lot lately. There's significance to '2'. I see '2's everywhere.

I should not have had two pieces of cake.

It's hard to fathom that I've been a parent for two years. I can now call LG a 2-year-old, rather than refer to her age in months. Since her first birthday, there have been two gallons of milk in our fridge: a gallon of whole and a gallon of skim. For various reasons, we have two strollers, two highchairs, and two copies of Green Eggs and Ham (I'm a little unclear on how the last one happened). As we get closer to sending her to daycare, it's become more obvious that we need to have two cars, just to handle the logistics of it all.

And it brings me back to the original two, me and Hollie. We were the beginning, the dynamic duo that started this whole thing. Two was comfortable, happy and stable. Think of us as 2: the first prime integer. 2 is made of the factors 1 and 2. We were made up of two factors: we could be 2, but we could also be 1. She could exist as Hollie, and I could be Matt, or we could be Hollie and Matt. We were a single unit divisible only by ourselves and each other.

Then we chose to expand our unit to become something more, 3. Technically, still prime, but an odd prime. Rarely do we consider ourselves individuals now. I am no longer just Matt; I am Matt, father of LG. Previously, neither Hollie, nor I, expressed ourselves in terms of each other. But now, we cannot be expressed in terms apart from LG. The same isn't necessarily true for our daughter, though. As she grows, as she becomes more independent, she has begun to express herself as individual. She defines us, but we don't define her.

Nope. This smile defines her.

That's about to change, however. As the title above suggests, this post is about the power of 2. The power of two to become more.

Two to the power of 2.

2²

In other words, the two that became three are about to become four. And LG will have the chance to define herself as a big sister.

If she's half as nice to a younger sibling as she is to the dog, we'll be fine.

Year 2 in Review: The Pictures

The 2nd Annual Solving for G Year in Review focuses less on how different LG looks, and more on the ways in which she has developed. At 12 months, she could stand, take a few steps unassisted, pass a baby doll several dozen yards, and say a small pile of words (most of which were animal noises). Now, she runs practically everywhere she goes, has a vertical leap of an inch or two, and her vocabulary has increased beyond my ability to count accurately (several hundred words at least, a few of which are still animal noises, and some of which are Muppets).

Without further ado, here's the 2nd Year in Review, with commentary as necessary. As with last year, each of these photos was taken on or near the 12th of each month.

September 12, 2011

Here's where we left off last year, the morning of her 1st birthday in Ocean City. As happy as my daughter is most of the time, this pensive look is pretty typical, even a year later. You can always see the wheels turning, like she is going to figure out whatever is in front of her.

October 14, 2011

Favorite pastime at 13 months: piling rocks on things. Sometimes benches, sometimes the rear bumper of the car. One day I pulled into the driveway after running a bunch of errands and when I went to open the rear hatch of the Cruiser, I realized there were three rocks on the bumper. This is either a testament to the stickiness of the rocks in my driveway, or the smoothness and stability of my driving.

November 14, 2011

At 14 months, she didn't like couscous. She still doesn't, although I've never been able to figure out why. It's so good! However, she had discovered how to look at me with eyes that said, "Seriously Dad. Not gonna eat this couscous."

December 16, 2011

It feels like she's been holding markers, brushes and pencils her entire life, but maybe it's just me. She will grab any writing implement and scribble on any available surface. You may remember how that turned out with paint around this time in December.

January 12, 2012

It's also kind of amazing how many places she's found to hide in our small house. Behind the rocking chair in the living room was one of the first.

February 12, 2012

On her second trip to the Philadelphia Zoo, LG got up close and personal with a baby orangutan. The picture doesn't do it justice. It was awesome, and she still talks about the orangutan. Side note: How awesome is that she knows how to say "orangutan"? She also know what an aye-aye is. Just sayin'.

March 11, 2012

We bought this sand and water table before LG was born. Cuz we're those people, and it was on sale. I don't remember if this was the first day we had it out, but she liked it from Day 1.

April 8, 2012

On Easter this year, we could've hid just three eggs over and over again. She was primarily interested in breaking the plastic eggs open before dumping them in the basket.

May 14, 2012

By 20 months, we definitely had her helping in the kitchen, although I can't remember what the heck she's eating here. Sweet potato? Squash? Tomato sauce? She's pleased with herself, whatever it is.

June 13, 2012

In Hollie's ever-expanding attempt to make the most absurd kind of mess possible, she bought a can of Barbasol and some food coloring gel and let LG go to town. And there you go.

July 7, 2012

This was our first visit to the Please Touch Museum. It can be fun, but man it crowds up fast. This was in the blessed first 15 minutes of relative quiet.

August 13, 2012

Another favorite game of the last year: running around the front yard like a crazy person, making the neighbors look at us funny. Specifically, she says she is "a lion in the jungle," and "daddy is a dinosaur." Let it never be said she doesn't have a healthy sense of imagination.

And because the more things change, the more they stay the same, here's a shot of her on the beach this year, compared with the trip last year.

September 11, 2011 - September 12, 2012

It's been a year, but she still really wants that umbrella.

But for the honest-to-god, real-deal, Year-1-to-Year-2 comparison, here are shots from her birthday, 2011 and 2012.

September 12, 2011 - September 12, 2012

Oh man. Where did the baby fat go?

Kids' Music: The Good, The Bad & The Danceable

Turns out, it's pretty much all danceable when you're a toddler.

Those are some serious jazz hands in the lower left.
And in the lower right she practices her rhythmic gymnastics routine.

Let's back up.

There's been a suspicious lack of discussion in this blog regarding my efforts to expose LG to a wide range of music. There are two very good reasons for this.

1. Once you have a kid who is running around doing things, it's hard to spend considerable effort on something like the "perfect playlist."

2. It turns out that once kids age to a certain point, they start to have preferences about stuff.

Back when I wrote about making playlists to dance to when LG was a few months old, she couldn't tell me what she didn't like. She didn't try to steal my phone out of my pocket so she could play with it. She also couldn't tell me to play The Wiggles, Hi-5, or Wee Sing, over and over and over and over again. In general, though, I think we've been through these stages.

Stage 1 - We Sing
If I had to guess, I'd say her conscious relationship with music began sometime around 6 months old. Around that time, she was awful in the car. She cried for most trips longer than 5 minutes or so, and we were at a loss for what to do about it. We sang a lot in those months. Mary Had a Little Lamb, The ABCs, B-I-N-G-O, whatever we could remember. It's sort of weird how hard it is to remember kids' songs and nursery rhymes when there's a screaming kid in the back seat. My inability to remember the words led me to sing bizarrely long versions of Old MacDonald where I would name animals according to the alphabet, then start over again with a different set. You don't know the line separately sanity from insanity until you've tried to come up with multiple animal names and sounds for the letter 'Q.'

Stage 2 - Wee Sing
At 10 months or so, we we started playing Wee Sing for her. Something about those awful, off key children's voices really did it for her, and she'd calm down. But then a funny thing happened.

She learned the word "No."

When a song came on that she didn't like, she'd say "No." And if we didn't change it, she'd say it again. And again. And again. So we did. This process went on for a while, until there were only about 4 songs she'd tolerate for any length of time. Then I discovered more children's music. The slightly more on key Countdown Kids, for example. At first, she liked most of that music, too. Then "No"reared its ugly head once more, and we whittled those songs down to about 4 that she liked. For those keeping score, we now had about 8 songs that were played on an infinite loop in the car. And woe unto me if I somehow deleted that playlist from my phone and had to skip through 20 songs to find the ones she wanted.

Stage 3 - The Muppets Sing
This process repeated for a while, but the very best thing that happened is our discovery of the vast library of music produced by The Muppets. At first, not surprisingly, she only like Elmo songs (Specifically, "Elmo's Song"). Then, gradually, she started to like Grover* ("Fuzzy & Blue" is awesome).

(*While I fully recognize that none of us are immune to commerce and the ever-present nature of licensed characters, I get a ridiculous amount of satisfaction out of the fact that my daughter's first exposure to Sesame Street was aural. It's sort of funny to me that she knew who Grover was, what he sounds like, and that he was blue well before she had ever actually seen him.)

After that, it was only a matter of time before Kermit, Miss Piggy, and Fozzie worked their way into circulation. I cannot express how happy and relieved I am that I can now listen to the soundtrack to The Muppets or The Muppet Movie rather than the umpteenth version of "Itsy Bitsy Spider."

And there is nothing better than a toddler singing "Mahna Mahna."

Still, I couldn't help but think there was a way to get her to listen to non-kids music, at least some of the time. Like many things, an answer came accidentally.

Stage 4 - BJ, Dionne and Dusty Sing*
Hollie and I needed to go shopping for something or another, and whatever the need, we had to go together, which meant taking LG with us. At some point on this trip, it started to rain, and on the walk back to the car, I started absentmindedly singing "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head."

To put it bluntly, LG thought this was amazing.

I make up a lot of songs on the fly, and I think she may have thought that's what I was doing; the big difference being that this was actually a good song. Every time it has rained since then, she goes "Raindrops keep falling on my head, Daddy!", which is occasionally just a statement and occasionally a singsongy request. Either way, it finally occurred to me to play BJ Thomas' version of the song for her.

Breakthrough!

That was just the beginning. On the album of Bacharach songs I have on my phone, "Raindrops" is followed by "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?", the high-pitched "whoa whoa whoa" chorus for which seems tailor made for little kids. And despite the regressive gender stereotypes implicit in the song, "Wishin' & Hopin'" also seems to push all the right buttons for LG.

In case you think I'm making this up, get a load of a recent dance she did to some Bacharach.


You'd think it was a remix based on these sweet moves.

*Much credit to Burt Bacharach and the recently departed Hal Davis. You don't realize how many of their songs you like, let alone how many of them were sung by Dionne Warwick, until you start looking at their output online.

Stage 5 - ???
It's ongoing process, for sure. Hopefully, I'll be able to sneak even more music into the rotation. Current plan of attack: Show tunes, followed by punk covers of show tunes. All the hours I've wasted on Me First & The Gimme Gimmes albums are finally going to pay off, I can feel it.

Bonus:
Sometimes just singing isn't enough. You need an instrument to express yourself fully.

Many Hands Make Light Work, Unless Two of the Hands are Very Small

One of the many signs that LG is growing up (she turns 2 in less than a month) is the fact that she wants to help with everything. In some cases, it means we actually get stuff done (marginally) faster, like when she wants to help put her diapers away. It other cases, it's something you put up with because it keeps her occupied and happy, and maybe you can actually make dinner while she's pretending to chop a tomato with a butter knife. In the best scenario, it's really cool, because it lets us share activities that I already enjoy. It gives me hope that we can come to enjoy these activities together, especially once she's a little more coordinated.

In nearly every case, though, it makes a huge mess.

Take this muffin adventure from two weeks ago.

Center bottom: "No, I don't know why Dad is wearing a v-neck to make muffins."

See those dishes in the sink? Yeah, like 90 percent of them were from muffin making. Between giving LG her own bowl of ingredients for every step and trying to prevent cross-contamination with eggs, I think we used half the Gladware and bowls in the kitchen.

That said, this was a lot of fun for all concerned. LG loves wearing her apron, so giving her a valid excuse to do so rather than just letting her wear it around the house is always a plus. (Hat tip to the Sreholser's for the good Captain.) If memory serves, she was actually a bit cranky before we decided to bake, and the act of helping out actually calmed her down.

The below video may be a bit on the long side, but it's amazing (to me, at least) how calm she stayed during the whole thing. I took implements out of her hand, kept eggs away from her, and she still took it all in stride because the whole process was just so interesting to her.



Side note: Pardon my attire. I had just gotten home from work, and we decided to do this right before bed. Easier to just doff the dress shirt than change clothes, given the time constraints.

Then there are one-off tasks, which in the below instance wasn't really a task we were actively engaged in. She just wanted to sweep.

I really enjoy the sidelong glance she's giving the broom, like she just doesn't trust it.
Neither do I, sweetie. Neither do I.

The day after the muffins, we got some corn at the farmers market. I have fond memories of shucking corn with my brothers in our garage when I was young, although I remember being really bad at it. I guess this is a bone to pick with my Dad. Why did it take me so long to shuck corn?

If I had to guess, I'd say it's because I did it the same way LG is attempting: a single layer of husk at a time. All the more reason to get her started early, so by age 6 or so, she can do it by herself, quickly.

Please note our choice of age-appropriate pop culture t-shirts.

I won't embed the video of the corn shucking, but you're welcome to check it out on our YouTube Channel. Feel free to hum the corn-shuckin' folk song of your choice while watching.

More recently, LG helped out in the kitchen at Hollie's parents' house. While she spent equal time eating pepperoni as actually helping, she certainly enjoyed splashing tomato sauce all over these pizzas.

Guess how many toddler handsful of cheese it takes to cover a pizza.
Answer: Way more than I have the patience for. That's why Hollie and Aunt Heather helped her on this one.

Other activities she wants to help with:

- Walking the dog: For which I need to use the extra-long leash so I have room to hold the middle so Lola doesn't drag LG down the sidewalk.

- Selecting produce at the supermarket: Okay, so I select the produce. But I do let her put it in the bag. Anything to keep her in the cart.

- Wiping her tray after dinner: She barely lets us clean her face after any given meal, but give her the wet washcloth afterward, and she'll wipe all manner of smeared apple sauce, yogurt or mushed peas off of her tray. Granted, most of this ends up on the floor, but that's when the dog helps out.

Everybody pulls their own weight somehow!

Too awesome to forget (but we might, hence the blog record...)

LG's mama here. I have been bugging Matt to make a list of all the funny things LG has been doing recently so we don't forget them. She's turning into a little person right before our eyes, with full sentences and opinions and an imagination. I'm afraid she'll grow out of these particular toddler-isms soon, and we won't remember them. He then suggested (rightfully so) that I record them in the blog, so here we are. In no particular order, here are some of the completely endearing things LG has been doing lately:

• Oranges

LG knows all of her colors--not puce or chartreuse, but the biggies. She sometimes confuses black and white, which I like to attribute to the fact that she is unconcerned with the racial divide that still plagues this country, but for the most part, she nails it. However, nothing is ever "orange." Ask her what color her orange hat is. "Oranges." What about Zoe from Sesame street? "Oranges." Oranges? "Oranges." It is the sweetest thing in the world, and it's contagious as Matt and I have started using the plural for the color, too.

These flowers? Oranges.

•   Okay

Up until recently, LG never said "yes." Her responses to our never-ending questions where either an emphatic no or silence. Silence was obviously affirmative, so we went with it. She does actually say yes on occasion now, but more often than not, we get an "okay." Here is an example of a line of questioning that makes me laugh every time:

LG: Have it! (pointing to Matt's bagel and shaking her hands as if to imply that if she does not get the bagel in the next 10 seconds we'll regret it for the next 10 years.)
Me: Do you want a piece of Daddy's bagel?
LG: Okay. (said as if the sharing of the bagel was an unexpected but perfectly acceptable idea that Mommy came up with all on her own. A tiny toddler shrug is implied.)
END SCENE 

•  Give the dog a bone

LG knows lots of dogs: a beagle named Kola, a shih tzu named Chewie, a boxer named Chloe and, of course, Lola. She likes them all well enough. She's not all love them and kiss them and hug them and squeeze then and call them George about it like some kids, but she likes them. There is a pretty adorable trend though. When she's not around a particular dog for a while, she becomes very concerned about whether or not said dog has a bone. For example, if you're talking about how she's going to Connecticut to visit Kristen and Don, she asks about Chewie. Once you let her know that, yes, she will see Chewie, she asks in a voice dripping with anxiety: "Bone????" She relaxes a little when you assure her that Kristen and Don would not deny this poor dog his bone. Then the calming mantra of  "Chewie has a bone" begins.

• Toddler Loops

Doing silly things over and over again is not LG-specific. Toddlers are masters of the loop. However, there are two baffling loops she gets into. One may be my fault. I once took two cups and knocked their ends together and said the fateful phrase "Clippity Clop." Now, it's like a never-ending Monty Python skit in our house.* Everything must be shoved onto/into one's hands and made to go "Clippity Clop." Cups,  blocks, dinosaurs, anything. Mama must do it. Daddy must do it. All. the. time. The other loop is totally Matt's fault.  One evening Matt made a game of letting LG shuffle away from him and pulling her back into his lap with a "No, no, no" to emphasize that her attempts at escape are futile. Giggling ensues and all is right with our little family unit. Sounds fun, right? Less fun the 15th time she has dragged you to the living room demanding the "Nonono" game. She even recognizes that, by the 6th time, we're not into it because she stops really trying to get away because she knows we'll let her.

Don't even get me started on the hokey pokey. Or, rather, don't get her started on the hokey pokey. We'll be turning ourselves around all night. 

• I heart nature

This one is a point of personal pride with me. Kid loves touching bugs and will talk about all buggie encounters for days. LG's retelling of an encounter with a pillbug was filled with flapping arms and wiggling fingers, breathless excitement, and shouts of "UP MY ARM!" in full voice. LG is usually very gentle and not at all squeamish. She can also identify by name with some consistency robins, doves, geese, cardinals, blue jays, parrots, ducks, chickadees, and chickens. For the record (because I will forget) she's been naming these birds for months now. 

The aforementioned pillbug. UP MY ARM!
(Notice the cup on her hand.  That was a "Clippity Clop moment in progress.)

And, I may have mentioned it before, LG calls seeds "baby trees."

I can say without hyperbole that that may be the single cutest thing ever released into the interwebs.

• Running and jumping

It may come as a surprise to our friends and family that Matt and I may not have produced the most athletically gifted child. With his estimated Little League average at .050 and my two big points spanning my basketball career, LG will most likely not be a professional athlete. We've come to terms with it. Plus, if she was physically adept, I would not have the joy I feel every time I see this kid run and jump. Jumping only recently involves her feet leaving the ground, which is a step above the stage where she shouted "jump," but only simulated actually jumping with her upper body. You know when a gymnast takes that big stutter step after a particularly complicated vault that causes the whole arena to gasp? That's every hop for LG. However, the running is the best. I will be very sad when LG starts running like an actual human being. The poetry that is all of her limbs moving in opposite directions when she tries to run defies description, but since this is a blog I'll try. It's like a crab is simultaneously trying to swat away a fly and rumba... but with some forward thrust. Can't visualize it? This video may help a bit, but you really should see it in person. It's amazing.

All in all, there is way too much that she does every day that makes me laugh to include here. So, as a parting gift, a portrait:

Man, I love this kid!

*Get it? Holy Grail? Horse sounds with coconuts? No? Uncultured swine....

Making it Rain

I like to make things. Whether I get it from my parents (who have been crafting and woodworking my entire life) or whether I'm just tapped into the current Maker movement, I just like to create. It's why I like LEGOs, origami and cooking so much, I think. (It's not coincidence that all of those things usually involve a set of detailed instructions. I said I like to create. I didn't say I was creative. I leave that to Hollie.)

Now hold that thought.

When it got super hot last week, Hollie and I were initially satisfied to break out LG's little kiddie pool to help her (and us) cool off a bit. LG, like most kids, loves playing with water. That said, the pool has a finite capacity for creative play. In short, Hollie and I got bored with it faster than LG did. So, in an effort to expand the kinds of play available to us, Hollie got some water balloons.

These were a big hit! Though they mostly hit the ground right in front of her.

Seriously, she does enjoy water balloons, but playing mostly involves throwing them straight down while yelling.

While this was an improvement on basic pool play, Hollie and I both thought we could do more. And then the Maker bug hit.

I don't remember when Hollie passed me a link about making a water wall, but it stuck in my head. So on Independence Day during LG's nap, I dug through the shed and the recycling bin, and found everything I'd need.

The best thing about being the sort of person who likes to make stuff is that you almost always have things on hand to make that stuff. My father, for instance, literally has been collecting wood for decades, and if he wants to build something, he has several tons (This is not an exaggeration; you can measure his collection in tons.) of wood lying around ready to go. Likewise, my mother's stash of paints, paper, stencils, stickers, beads and baubles is apparently limitless (and impeccably organized).

Start with a couple of pieces of scrap wood, some plastic bottles, and a handful of screws. Add a small cordless drill and about 40 minutes, and voila!

Not as complicated as the one I linked earlier, but if you look closely, you'll see that it's modular, which means I can add to it or change it around later.

The temperature kept rising last week. We got the pool out around 85 degrees, water balloons at 89, water wall as the mercury cruised into the mid-90s on July 4. But the forecast for Saturday was 103. And as the temperature rose, so did my enthusiasm for doing something crazy. Heat will do that to you.

Earlier in the summer, we pulled out the oscillating sprinkler, which fascinated LG. She kept shouting "Raindrops on my head!" Having already introduced her to BJ Thomas' classic take on Burt Bacharach, this pleased me.

And once Hollie showed me what you see to your right, I knew what I had to do.

After a quick sketch with dimensions and a family trip to Lowes for some PVC and a handful of other supplies, I was well on my way. I was confident I could have something built in less than an hour.

But as a wiser man than I once said, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

Or in my case, no rough sketch will take you all the way to implementation if you don't accurately count how many PVC joints are necessary to finish the darn thing. In short, I needed two additional trips to Lowes.

But at least I had help putting it together.

In the meantime, though, Hollie had her own set of creative things for LG to do in the water.

No, she is not baiting tiny pool sharks with chum.

Hollie had been thinking about dye-play for a while, and the extended time necessary for me to finish my project meant that she could experiment with dye packs she created using food coloring, water and small condiment containers. The only real problem was LG's apparent inability to walk to the opposite side of the pool.

Back to my boondoggle, er, creative endeavor, when it was all said and done, it probably took me about two-and-a-half hours to finish my one hour project. This is normal. You can't rush creativity! (Or PVC cement.)

But when it was complete? We had a good time.

The massive puddles in the yard were unexpected, but I prefer to think of this as a feature, not a bug.

She was reluctant to go through at first, but she got over it.

It should be noted that by this time, the water was quite cold.

And if she needed a little encouragement, well... that's what Daddy is for.

Father's Day, Year Two

Sometimes, you hit a particular milestone--say, your second Father's Day--and you struggle to put into words exactly what meaning that milestone has for you. You knew the day was coming, and you specifically thought about what you might write, but you came up blank.

And then sometimes, the day actually arrives, and a series of events crystallizes your thought process, rendering moot hypothetical situations like one described in the previous paragraph.

This past weekend, the day before Father's Day, we hosted a small get-together for a few friends who recently had children. The kids in question are still quite young (says the guy with the 21-month-old), just 4 and 6 months old. We really enjoyed the time together as young families (at least, Hollie and I did. I hope everyone else did, too).

But for me, what was neat was watching two other dads interacting with their kids. I'm not about to wax nostalgic about LG as a 4-or-6-month-old infant; I enjoy a regular night's sleep too much for that. And it got me thinking about that time in our lives. I watched as these two guys went through the same routines with their kids as I did, and I realized just how much has changed in a really short amount of time.

For instance, I rarely need to rock LG to sleep anymore. She doesn't need me that way because she learned how to soothe herself to sleep. And while I do pay attention while she eats, she can mostly handle that task by herself, too, so I don't have to sit her on my lap or spoon anything into her mouth (minus the occasional vegetable). If she's fussy, I don't spend nearly as much time guessing what's going on in her head, because much of the time, she can tell me. In this small span of time, she's amassed a tremendous amount of skill and knowledge. She's still the same kid, but she's also sort of not.

And in another year or so, those kids will have the same skills and knowledge. Some of it will come from their dads, just like LG learned some portion of those things from me. It's not easy--though often fun--but we're building these little people, one nap, one spoonful, and one word at a time. When I see how far she's come, it doubles as a realization for how far I've come. (Cue the very special episode music.) And how much further we have to go.

Now that the metaphors have been dispensed with, I also have physical evidence for how far we've come. Last year on Father's Day, we went to a rinky-dink carnival at a local mall. You know the kind; half the thrill of any given ride is whether or not the thing will fly to pieces while you're in the middle of it.

Last year, LG and I rode the carousel, and it was difficult to get a picture because she spent most of the ride reaching out for me to pull her off the godforsaken fiberglass horse. This year, between the carnival and a trip earlier in the day to the Camden Children's Garden, she rode the carousel five times.

But who knows, maybe it was the chicken.

Hollie and I also crammed into a very small train last year, and while there was slightly less clawing to get off than on the carousel, we did bear witness to one of the first instances of the phenomenon we would come to call "worried hands." This year, there was no train to be had, which was fine because LG didn't need Mom and Dad cramping her style by tagging along.

Not when there were steering wheels and bells to be had.

I'll need Hollie to back me up, but I think she might have ridden that fire truck two or three times in addition to a similar set of jalopies, which she rode multiple times.

We take a lot of pictures, and we don't often take the time to compare one particular point in the year with another. The changes are fascinating and bittersweet. And, frankly, more than a little terrifying.